#All-Star -Story Mode- Rewritten

[icefir-windbreaker]

Welcome to How To Make Friends In Other Universes! Step One: Get into a fight and be shocked to see a fallen angelic version of yourself. (With a original version of yourself watching this) Original (I did say I wanted to digitalize this!)

@muzzleroars's Fallen Gabriel is trying to give the Archangel-to-Fallen-Archangel talk with my Gabe but he is taking it much harder than he realizes. And Canon Ultrakill Gabriel is shocked to see this crap go down.

Again. I hope it goes well!

[allstarsstorymode867]

[fecto-forgo]

pokepasta masterlist

masterlist of all pokemon creepypastas ive read so far, at someones request+for funsies.ranges from "everyone knows this one" to "deviantart user heaven" to "wiki recommended at 2 am"

(note ill be linking each pastas latest version if they have been rewritten, either by the creator or done with their permission.shouldnt be hard to hunt their original versions if you wanna see smth you remember from old days)

lost silver (fan game in link)

strangled red

glitchy red (r slur is used in a certain part)

buried alive (rom hack)

hypno's lullaby* (song cover)

easter egg:snow on mt silver (fan game) (fan game 2)

(creepy) black (rom hack)

lavender town syndrome (supposed original song)

ash's coma

satanic lavender town (rom hack) (alt ending rom)

HM slave

tommy boy

my shining star

forever mine (TW for suicide in this one)

explorers of death

bad egg manaphy

nasty plot

pokemon dead channel

pokemon dead channel 2

pokepark wii:pikachu's return

ashamed

.194

my guardian angel

pokemon:perfect

pokemon lovelost

flames of life

fallen leaf

jessica

event gone wrong

little red rabbit

disabled

braid

tarnished gold (short rom)

battery ditto

dark green

abandon lonliness (rom hack)

prevention of evolution

lonely pikachu

blue tears (rom hack (flashing cw))

bittersweet

i love you, doll!

hell bell

stained silver

ketsuban

false pokémon copies news report

*as far as i can tell the creepypasta is mostly the song, as looking it up shows multiple different stories based off of it+w the fnf mods name its now impossible to properly hunt a supposed original down as it takes over the results

bonus:

escape from lavender town:game maker game using assets of pokemon yellow based on the lavender town syndrome rumors, very short, heavy flashing warning, the sequence after the game is closed might induce nausea.

uhcakip.exe and it's prequel pokemon death version:screamer games with some flashing by the creator of IHATEYOU.exe, the much more known mario creepypasta game, they're no longer downloadable but have full gameplays up

pokemon monochrome ask blog:ask blog made by person responsible for a lot of the stories linked here! has full art n photos, huge recommend! (note:the chrono tag feature is usually broken on mobile tumblr, open it on desktop mode on a browser if it leads to an empty page)

purin's lullaby:archival wiki for an old DeviantArt ARG, the link will take you to the timeline page, i havent looked much myself but i believe enough links have survived the test of time you can understand it (not to be mistaken w FNF's purin, they just share the design)

this list will be updated as i read more, feel free to suggest any not here

[kirbybecomesastarwarrior]

You said this was a rewrite... what was the original plot of the story going to be like?

The original story was supposed to be very different... It was going to be more low-stakes, so to speak... It was merely about Meta Knight becoming Kirby's father figure and him learning to adjust to the peace after the war... but it's pretty much become a grand epic now.

(this was before the Star Allies saga and Planet Robobot...)

I had the beginning and ending planned out, so here's the ending of the story:

*knuckle crack*

As the story progresses & Kirby takes out all of the game villains, Kirby becomes really famous at this point... and then that's when $h*t hits the fan!

In the original story, Sir Arthur was the surprise villain (or secret villain, if you will)... this was when it was trending back then (the Dinsey Frozen Era...).

He sees Kirby as a chance to restore the GSA to its former glory. Now that Kirby has gained fame from his adventures, he sees his as the perfect opportunity to rip him away from Dreamland and take him away from all his friends and family...

It all comes to a head when Sir Arthur comes to Dreamland in person for the first time and reveals his master plan. Basically, making him the poster boy of the GSA. And another revelation: MK was in on it too... this was what Meta Knight had been training Kirby for all along.

(Quietly in the background for each arch of the story... Sir Arthur's intentions were hinted at and revealed more until we reached this point...)

Originally, MK wasn't as kind as the rewritten MK (the current one); he was crueler back then. The original story was going to be about how his time with Kirby brought back his humanity.

BETRAYAL ARC! (Grand Finale GSA vs Dreamland)

The Kirby gang feels backstabbed by Meta Knight's shocking reveal, especially Kirby. He thought Meta Knight had grown to care for him... (but MK had: he just was in denial). He kept insisting that his duty had always come first. This breaks Kirby's heart; he tells MK that he hates him and he isn't gonna go with him...

Sir Arthur had trained MK and taken him in for the sole purpose of using him as a weapon. (living war machine) Meta Knight was doing the same thing to Kirby... but he can't bring himself to force him into that lifestyle. (and how messed up it was, yadda, yadda, yadda.)

The reason why Arthur was able to let MK join the GSA is that Galacta Knight had turned MK into a monster... by order of Nightmare. Sir Arthur saw an opportunity to manipulate Meta Knight into a weapon of his own design... (to him, he was in the right because it was for the greater good.)

And the Meta Knight would come to terms with how precious Kirby was to him... and how awful he feels now. The ends did not justify the mean... He'd realize his time and Dreamland had changed him, and he saw Kirby more than a potential soldier... he saw him as his own child... he certainly wasn't about to let Arthur get away with making Kirby his little poster boy.

So when the time comes for Meta Knight to choose between love & duty, he stands up to his old master and shuts him down... He apologizes to Kirby and tells him how much he means to him. They make up, but this touching moment is cut short then- BAM (180).

Sir Arthur: Well then... I didn't want to do this, but... it looks like I have no choice...

Sir Arthur villain mode is activated. Meta Knights gets arrested and pulls him away from Kirby in a heartbreaking scene. Arthur already started to notice how attached Meta Knight was getting to Kirby, so he prepared for this scenario.

Martial law is enforced by the GSA, and Dreamland is shut down. Sir Arthur uses King Dedede as an excuse since he used to order monsters & reports of him being a tyrant were recorded. (King Dedede wasn't redeemed in the original story yet, so this was his karma.) And Arthur officially dethrones King Dedede... And he's arrested. (throws him in the same jail cell as Meta Knight)

And this was supposed to be the beginning of King Dedede's redemption arc. Now Sir Arthur is using Dreamland & Meta Knight as leverage against Kirby... if he agrees to leave Dreamland permanently and join the GSA... he'll let Meta Knight & the others go.

(Then I think I wrote "dies in a horrible accident," in the original draft while in the jailbreak arc because Galacta Knight shows up to fight MK. And kills Sir Arthur like he's nothing...)

After "Star Allies," the overall message of the story changed... We had so many more revelations and plots added to the franchise that I could not ignore. I gave a whole new meaning to Kirby's story as a whole.

The message I wanted to tell with the story had to change it. All the characters had to get a major overhaul in their personalities.

And I love the new direction I have for the story... And I'm very glad for the changes I've made. Though it's nice to visit the past now again and see how far you've come no matter how cringy.

[lasclly]

Dynasty warriors 7 xtreme legends complete edition

DYNASTY WARRIORS 7 XTREME LEGENDS COMPLETE EDITION DOWNLOAD

This can be configured to be triggered manually by pressing both the normal and charge attack buttons. Storm Rush is then initiated automatically when the gauge is fully depleted in Xtreme Legends. It is shown through a blue gauge above the opponent which decreases as you attack. If the player faces an officer whose affinity is weaker, they may trigger the “Storm Rush”, a multi hitting attack that requires repeatedly pressing the attack buttons. The game features new battle mechanics that rely on a new concept called the “Three-Point System”, where each weapon is given an affinity of either “Heaven”, “Earth”, or “Man” each affinity is strong against one of the affinities and weak against the other. As relationships improve, the player’s territory may expand. Players can build their palaces by building relationships with the characters they have earned in their ranks. This feature is unlocked once the initial goal of building Tongquetai Palace is achieved. Ambition Mode Ambition Mode has been revised to become a near-war simulation feature, with the overall goal of uniting Han China. Optional mission objectives loosely based on those found in the original game’s story mode are available to players. DYNASTY WARRIORS 7: Xtreme Legends Definitive Edition Free mode: The user interface has been changed. It is also possible to unlock “Other” scenarios after completing the objectives in the four main factions. Various non-playable or minor role characters in the story mode play out in an all-new hypothetical storyline, where they last for eight stages and focus on additional battles or alternate versions of existing ones. He and his faction star in their own long storyline for this title. Story Mode: As a reminder to the first expansion of this type, the developers have declared that Lu Bu is the “protagonist” of this port. In order to unlock the hypothetical path, players must complete all of the optional objectives in both the main and side stories prior to the critical point of the storyline. Each mission may have a number of optional objectives which unlock additional side story missions or alter the course of history, such as the moment where the flood attack in Fan Castle fails and therefore saves Guan Yu’s life from being extinguished and therefore in relation also saves Zhang Fei from the betraying officers. The story has been entirely rewritten, with each of the four factions’ stories dividing into a historical path and a hypothetical path at a critical portion of their stories. A selection of up to four characters will be offered for each stages in story mode, instead of controlling a pre-defined character the mission objectives in each level differ based on the character chosen. Stages now have more freedom of progression for the player, unlike the previous installment, which was strongly preset in means of stage routes. In addition, each of the characters of the “Other” faction has one scenario dedicated to them, forming a loose “Other” faction story mode, in a first for the series. The story mode retains the same faction-based storyline and returns with seamless cutscenes. Having more than 82 characters featured in the game, the game largely based its system on Dynasty Warriors 7 and focused on adding more content for replayability while also making several tweaks to the combat system. The story is based on the 14th-century Chinese historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

DYNASTY WARRIORS 7 XTREME LEGENDS COMPLETE EDITION DOWNLOAD

DYNASTY WARRIORS 8 Xtreme Legends Complete Edition freeload RepacklabĪnd more! What’s more, a revamped Ambition Mode and completely new Challenge Mode offer whole new ways to enjoy the “Dynasty Warriors 8” universe.

[girlcalledwhatsername]

Bollywood Films Based on Shakespeare's Plays

(that I can think of off the top of my head)

((because I'm bored and procrastinating))

(((also my thoughts)))

1) Maqbool (2003) - based on Macbeth

Possibly the best adaptation I've watched of anything in general. The translation into a different culture plus a modern time is seamless. Newer technology is incorporated into the plot devices, prophecies rewritten to be appropriate to the culture and context plus the "witches" are easily believably a part of the story instead of some highly mystical supernatural forces. The kingdom at stake this time is the underworld that was quite active and famously involved with Bollywood itself at the time, brilliant actors in all the roles, and the whole 'Lady Macbeth's children' thing is also leaned into quite well. 10/10 would recommend.

2) Omkara (2006) - based on Othello

From the same direction, Vishal Bhardwaj. Another amazing adaptation, a lot of the foreshadowing and metaphors are expressed through songs, a staple move for Bollywood so it also adapts well into its medium. Banger performance by Saif Ali Khan as Langda Tyagi (Iago). The ending is changed a wee bit as well, but it's highly significant in how it re-attributes agency that has been taken away from female characters in the original texts quite often. In this adaptation the matters revolve around a local election and the politics at play in the village. The cultural setting is made use of here as well characters are given well rounded personalities and motives that gives a new life to the play honestly. 10/10 because I'm such an easy person to please, I genuinely enjoyed this film.

3) Haider (2014) - based on Hamlet

Another one from Bharadwaj, I swear I'll move on to other stuff after this. "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark" - I think one of the most important aspect of this adaptation was choosing a setting where the city can be its own character the way Denmark is in the original. In this case, the setting is Kashmir, a valley that has had a bloody and contentious existence. Politically, it is a coveted piece of land where India and Pakistan have both laid their claims. This has led to continuous exploitation, army rule through a special act that allows civil liberties to be done away with and all mistreatment swept under a rug, and Kashmir becoming a battleground where the residents bear the brunt of these political battles. The issue of Kashmir is quite complex, that doesn't even begin to cover it, I will leave that alone for now. Haider is a resident of this valley and his father, a doctor, went missing with no news of him whatsoever. Instead of the ghost of his father he is visited by his father's cell mate, nicknamed Rooh (Spirit) who guides him on how to uncover this plot of people going missing with no news. The film follows the oppression in Kashmir through the lens of Haider while he slowly descends into madness. Ophelia (Arshia) is a journalist, and the play-within-a-play is conducted making use of local theatrical traditions. Great film, definitely worth a watch.

4) Qayamat se Qayamat Tak (tr. From doomsday to doomsday) (1988) - based on Romeo and Juliet (kinda)

The star-crossed lovers story is technically not exclusive to Romeo Juliet. There are quite a few local stories that take the same form too, and it can be seen as a trope rather than a proper adaptation. However, it is credited with a revival of the Bollywood romance film, and is quite an important movie for the genre in that sense. 7/10 idk, personal biases about romance, it's nice though.

5) Goliyon ki raasleela: RamLeela (tr. A Dance of Bullets: RamLeela) (2013) - based on Romeo and Juliet

Talking of Romeo Juliet, this one actually does follow the play as an adaptation. It is set in a fictional village, and the lovers belong to two factions who are engaged in an on-going conflict. Though the film is generally not regarded as a good one, i think it does an okay job of putting the story in a modern context and also uses festivals and cultural omens to tell the story. 5/10 it's not that great

6) Angoor (tr. Grape) (1982) - based on Comedy of Errors

This is a FUN film, hell yeah. Maybe I just have a bias towards comedies, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Makes use of a bunch of running gags, takes common problems of the average Indian household to create comical errors, chock-full of shenanigans. 9/10 I promise it's fun

7) Dil Chahta Hai (tr. The Heart Wants-) (2001) - based on Much Ado About Nothing

This is as such a story about three friends but it's also about three parallel love stories. This is quite a landmark film in Bollywood because of all the taboos it broke through and for being an important bildungsroman film about friendship and familial relations too. There is your Benedict-Beatrice battle of wits eventually turning into a love story. There is also the story of a womaniser who thinks that people talking about what it's like to be in love are exaggerating or outright lying until he falls in love himself. The most controversial part of the film, however, is the third romance, which has a massive age gap between the third friend and his elderly muse. The two connect with each other through common interests, and the friends have a falling out over the relationship. They come together eventually, each having matured in different ways and with a more freeing understanding of human relationships of all kinds. 9/10 definitely watch this one.

Okay that's all I got for now, have fun ✌🏻

[irondad-creator-awards]

The Nominations So Far (Kinda)

Some of you have been asking to see who’s nominated in which category, so I’m putting up what I’ve done so far. This is by no means everyone nominated, as we’ve had 96 submissions to the form, and I’m not going to be able to log them all until nominations close. But if you’ve been contacted to say you’re up for an award, you should be listed below...

Good Luck to everyone nominated x

1. THE ONE THAT MADE YOU GASP! — A story which had a plot twist you didn’t see coming. Something that caught you so off guard that you had to stop a minute and take a breath before devouring the rest. What’s the story for you?

A Peter Parker Problem by Spagbol99

Chaotic Peter Parker by Isnt_It_Pretty_To_Think_So

Cycle Through by Ambivalentangst

Ever In Your Favor by Iron_Spider

Irondad Ficlets by Ironxprince

Like Father, Like Son by An_Odd_Idea

Love Leaves A Memory No-One Can Steal by Ironmum

More Peril In Thine Eye  by Iron_Spider

No Longer In Service by Starryknight09

Proof Of Concept by Flurrbee

Serenity by Jolinarjackson

Spidey Tot by Kevy_Grayce

Stab Me In The Back (I'll Catch You From Behind) by Lansfics7

Stop, Look, Listen by Forthenightisdarkandfullofterror

  2. THE MULTI-CHAPTER YOU COULDN’T PUT DOWN — A story which kept you up all night or calling in sick for work so you were free to read. Who’s the culprit?

 A Parent Apparent by Happyaspie

A Peter Parker Problem by Spagbol99

A Sailor Went To Sea by by Yellowdistress

Air I Breathe by Heartofcathedrals

And You’ll Blow Us All Away by Losingmymindtonight

Astronomy In Reverse by Pansley

Come My Darling, Homeward Bound by Iamirondad

Every Beautiful Lie (Always Has An Ugly Truth by Da_Moose

Five Times Tony And Peter Chaotically Cleaned by Ironmum

I Will Carry You (Always) by Thestarvingwriter

Identity Crisis by Kitcat992

If They All Knew About You by Mshermia

In Unlikely Places by Looneylizzie

Irondad Ficlets by Ironxprince

Mr. Parker Declined To Commentby Apisdn

Pain Will Always Come Back To Haunt You by Kevy_Grayce

Permanence by Theexhaustedalchemist

Pieces Of Echoes by Geekymoviemom

Proof Spiderman Loves Clickbait by Mauvera

The Lost And Forgotten by Lizcraz

 3. THE ONE-SHOT THAT THAT HAD YOU HOOKED — Some writers can cram more greatness into less words than a 100k monster. What’s the one-shot that did it for you?

 5 Times Peter Sleepwalked And The 1 Time He Pretended He Did by Losingmymindtonight

Countless Ways To Say I Love You            by Hopeless_Hope

Familiar Faces by Happyaspie

First Wednesday Of March by The Case Of The Missing Museum Bea-Storer

Fitting In (Tiny Spaces) by Aloneintherain

I Can Hold The Weight Of Worlds (If That's What You Need) by Bluesweatshirt

I Promise I'll Do Better by 221broadwayiron

I Will Soften Every Edge by Losingmymindtonight

Petey And The Hermit by Eccentric_Artist_221b

Something Here Will Eventually Have To Explode by Madasthesea

What You're Feeling Is Probably Normal  by Finny3120

 4. THE BEST THINGS COME IN SMALL PACKAGES — A drabble (under 1k) can pack in all the goodness that you need in a coffee break read. What’s that story for you?

 Butter Me Up by Iron_Spider

Cuddle Bug by Marvelous_Writer

Food At Home by Aimaim94

Insomniacs In The Dark by Littlemissagrifina

Irondad Cuddles by Lilacsoulw

Let The Mind Games Begin by Ironmum

 5. THE BIODAD THAT TOUCHED YOUR HEART — Some of the greatest stories flip canon and make Tony Peter’s biological father. Be it baby Peter taking his first steps or Tony dealing with the fact his son is following in his superhero footsteps as Spider-Man, which is the one you loved most of all?

 An Abstract Concept by Iron-Spider

Be Careful What You Wish For, You May Just Get It by Savana_Marlark

Built From Scraps by  Peter Stank

Happy Hogan Never Forgets A Face by Jen27ny

Hardest Lessons (Softest Results) by Mainstreamelectricalparade

If They Knew All About You by Mshermia

My Little Bambino by Maicaly

Return To Me, The One I Love So Endlessly by Superherotiger

Slow Down, Start Again From The Beginning by Cassiecasyl

Sound Logic by Aytheria

Spiderson by Emily_F6

Stars, Hide Your Fires by Yellowdistress.

The Less Than Secret Life by Yellowdistress

The Ties That Bind Us by Winterturtle

They Say Boys Don't Cry (But Your Dad Has Shed A Lot Of Tears) by Tempestaurora

What’s In A Name? by Geekymoviemom

 6. THE ONE WITH THE FIELD TRIP — The field trip trope is one of the most popular in the fandom. What’s the story that you think pulls all the elements together to make it great?

 A Different Take by Cyberwolfwrites

Constant Internal [Spider] Screaming: Semi-Connected Scenes From A Graduating Senior’s Life by Isadancurtisproduction

Field Trip by Inkinmyheartandonthepage

Field Trip Flip by  Happyaspie

I Don’t Want To Talk About It Anymore by Bees_And_Wasps

Mr Stark Enough For You? (Another Field Trip Fic Bcs We Dont Have Enough) by Livinei

Neon Liar (Hiding In Plain Sight) by Isadancurtisproduction

No Reason To Go by Pokegeek151

Tower Of Donuts And Doubts by              Platinumdollz

Who Is He? by Velarisstars

 7. THE TIME AFTER TIME ONE — There’s some great time travel stories out there, but which is your favorite?

 Be Careful What You Wish For, You May Just Get It by Savana_Marlark

Every Beautiful Lie (Always Has An Ugly Truth) by Da_Moose

I Have Time by Peterparkr

The End Is Just A New Beginning              by Tytach

The Time Traveler’s Mentor by Iamirondad

Whatever It Takes by Starryknight09

 8. THE ONE WITH ALL THE OWIES — Another massively popular Irondad trope is hurt/comfort, and there’s some amazing stuff out there. Which is the one that you love most of all?

 A Peter Parker Problem by Spagbol99

Air I Breathe by Heartofcathedrals

Be Weak by Fluencca

But What Is Grief? by Odd_1

But What Is Grief? by Odd_1

Danger Pizza by Alice_In_Ink

Darkness Will Be Rewritten by Marveal

Dude, Do These Tacos Taste Funny To You? by First_Page

Follow The North Star Home by Fallingforbees

Foolish, Fragile Spine by Plnkblue

Outnumbered by Heartofcathedrals

Sometimes It’s Easier To Just Swim Down by Mjscorner

The Room Where It Happens by Notapartytrick

We All Chase After A Few Dying Stars by Losingmymindtonight

What I Have, I Give To You by Aatticsaltt

When My Body Won't Hold Me Anymore (Where Will I Go) by Madasthesea

Your Heart Changed (Mine Stayed The Same) by Loisselina (Loisselina)

 9. THE ONE THAT HURTS SO GOOD — We all like a bit of angst sometimes, so what’s the story that you wanted to hide from but you had to keep reading to get to the happy ending?

 Built From Scraps by Peterstank

Cycle Through by Ambivalentangst

Fifteen Years In The Making by Potts89

Held On As Tightly As You Held On To Me by Itsreallylaterightnow And Killerqueenwrites

I Need You To Be Free by Marveal

I Promise I'll Do Better by 221broadwayiron

If You Listen You Can Hear The Ibis by Yellowedistress

Let's Get On With Living (While We Can) by Almond_Blossoms

Let's Get On With Living (While We Can) by Almond_Blossoms

Love Leaves A Memory No-One Can Steal by Ironmum

May Parker's Complete Guide On How To Raise Your Spiderling by Embarrassing_Myself

More Peril In Thine Eye by Iron_Spider

Of Flying And Falling by Polaroid15

Sunlight by Ardenskyeholmes221

The Room Where It Happens by Notapartytrick

When Trauma Comes Knocking by Kevy_Grayce

 10. THE ONE THAT SOOTHES THE PAIN — What’s the story that you go to when you need a pick-me-up after the angst?

 5 Times A Spider-Baby Got Dad Smooched by Buckets_Of_Stars

5 Times Peter Made Tony Laugh Out Loud by Grilledcheesing

5 Times Tony Stark Protected Penny Parker by Emily_F6

Be Careful What You Wish For, You May Just Get It by Savana_Marlark

Bitch Better Have My Money by Neicy286

Career Day: A Short Story by Shewritesall

Early Childhood Education by Thedisneyoutsider

Five Times Peter And Tony Chaotically Cleaned by Ironmum

Hardest Lessons (Softest Results) by Mainstreamelectricalparade

I Can Hold The Weight Of The Worlds (If That's What You Need) by Bluesweatshirt

Instant Kill Mode by Isnt_It_Pretty_To_Think_So

Kids These Days  by Isnt_It_Pretty_To_Think_So

The Road So Far by Nicolemoon8

No More Lonely by Shewritesall

Petey And The Hermit by Eccentric_Artist_221b

That's How You And I Will by Frostysunflowers

What You're Feeling Is Probably Normal by Finny3120

Whatever It Takes by Starryknight90

 11. THE ONE WITHOUT A HOME TO GO TO — There’s some wonderful homeless Peter stories out there, so which is the one you were blown away by?

 A Difference In Husbandry by Happy_Cloud

After The Landslide by Freyaatterton

Distracted by A Dime by Happyaspie

I Told You I Had Issues by Bergen

Is It Too Much To Ask For Home That Lasts? Ft. Peter Parker by Wakandaforever2357

The Little Things (That I Miss) by Da_Moose

The Third Option by Uncertainty_Principle

Unexpected (Everything I Never Knew I Wanted) by Moonchild2593

 12. THE ONE THAT’S A WHOLE NEW WORLD — There’s lots of imaginative AUs in Irondad fic. Whether it’s Steve and Tony as baseball players or Pepper being Peter’s mom, which one is your number one?

  A Guardian Among Us by Superherotiger

A Soul's Best Friend by Superherotiger

Ever In Your Favor by Iron_Spider

Have Patience, A Quick Wit, And A Gentle Heart by Ironfamjam

I Battle My Jerk Step-Dad by Andromath

Petey And The Hermit by Eccentric_Artist_221b

Sea Spider by Bean_Reads_Fanfic

Spidey Tot by Kevy_Grayce

Though Everything Is A Miracle by Overtures

Until It Disappeared From Me by Ashleyparker2815

When I Am On Your Shoulders by Ladyblackwater

You Mispronounced Spider by Lliblo

 13. THE TWEAKING THE SETTINGS ONE — There’s things we all wish we could change in canon — *cough* Endgame *cough* — so which canon divergence does it for you?

 5 Times Peter Made Tony Laugh Out Loud by Grilledcheesing

Be Careful What You Wish For, You May Just Get It          by Savana_Marlark

Beautiful Boy by Emily_Davison

Bittersweet by Kevy_Grayce

Built From Scraps by Peterstank

I Will Restore All That Was Broken            by Killerqueenwrites

May Parker's Complete Guide On How To Raise Your Spiderling by               Embarrassing_Myself

Moulded Minds by Wingswithstrings

Pieces Of Echoes by Geekymoviemom

The End Of Infinity by Friendlyneighborhoodfangirls

The Returned by Nicolemoon8

What Was Missing Was You by Happyaspie

What Were The Words I Meant To Say Before You Left by Madasthesea

 14. THE ONE YOU GO BACK TO AGAIN AND AGAIN — Some fics deserve a re-read or ten. What’s the story you go find yourself going back to?

 A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood by Ambivalentangst

A Parent Apparent by Happyaspie

Age Regression Was Impossible... Right? by Chvotic

Am I Just A Shadow You Drew by Ironxprince

Apartment 43B by Ironfamjam

Back To Bed by Eccentric_Artist_221b

Beautiful Boy by Emily_Davison

Family Is More Than Blood (It Is Light) by Moonchild2593

Keeping Company by Whumphoarder And Xxx_Cat_Xxx

Keeping Company by Whumphoarder And Xxx_Cat_Xxx

Moulded Minds by Wingswithoutstrings

Play by Losingmymindtonight

Rules Are Made To Be Broken by Ironmum

Sins Of The Fathers by Geekymoviemom

The Darkest Hour Is Just Before The Dawn by Starryknight09

The Lost And Forgotten by Litcraz

The One Where Peter Is Bucky’s Weakness by Jinxquickfoot

The Rise And Fall Of A Spider by Spidersoning

The Spider-Man Conspiracy by Tempestaurora

 15. THE SERIES THAT SWEPT YOU AWAY — Some of us love to go on a long ride with a series, so which is the world of multiple stories that you binged or waited anxiously for each update?

 Another June Day by Skeeter_110

Chaotic Peter Parker by Isnt_It_Pretty_To_Think_So

Home by Glwilliams97

I Love You More Than Anything (Bio Dad Au) by Iron_Spider

I Love You More Than Anything (Bio Dad Au) by Iron_Spider

Irondad NSAP by Chvotic

Lights To Guide You Home by Jolinarjackson

Mr. Stark & His Kid by Writerstrash

Once Upon An Adoption by Kevy_Grayce

Out Of Darkness by Starryknight09

Soul Stone Realm by Marvelmusicmystery

The Room Saga by Iamirondad

Tony Stark Is A Good Mentor by Happyaspie

Was That A Star Wars Reference, Dr. Stark? by Jen27ny

We Forgot Peter by Inkinmyheartandonthepage

Webcams And Webshooters by Losingmymindtonight

 16. THE IN-PROGRESS ADVENTURE — What’s the story that has you checking your email each day, hoping for an update?

  A Difference In Husbandry by Happy_Cloud

A Perfect Storm by Grilledcheesing

Ain't My Blood; Still My Boys by Parkrstark

All The Stars Align by Ashleyparker2815

Be Careful What You Wish For, You May Just Get It           by Savana_Marlark

Every Beautiful Lie (Always Has An Ugly Truth) by Da_Moose

Fifteen Years In The Making by Potts89

Found Family by Thedisneyoutsider

If They Knew All About You by Mshermia

If You're Going Through Hell, Keep On Going by Baloobird

Mr. Stark, Something Is Wrong by @Simping-For-Peggy

Outnumbered by Heartofcathedrals

Outnumbered by Heartofcathedrals

Peter’s New Step-Brother by Bowtiez

Priorities by Jlmonroe1234

Priorities by Jlmonroe1234

Return To Me, The One I Love So Endlessly by Superherotiger

Sleeping Through A Rogue Winter Storm by Pogokitten

Survivors Guilt   by Ember_Darla And Marvel_Cinematic_Universe_Fan

Tech Of Nondestructive Yakking by Wabisabi

The Case Of The Missing Museum Bea-Storer by Ironmum

The Hero Of Our Own Story by Kingdomfaraway

The Many Adventures Of Iron Dad And Spider Son by Lbigreyhound13

What You Were Then I Am Today by Madasthesea

You Are My Sunshine by Iamconstantine

 17. THE COMPLETE FIC THAT YOU CHERISH — Whether or not you’ve got the patience for an in-progress or not, there’s a wealth of complete stories you can devour at leisure or all in one coffee-fuelled binge. What’s yours?

 Intern Spider by Emily_F6

Only For A Little While by Eccentric_Artist_221b

The Guardian by Emily_F6

 18. THE ONE THAT GAVE YOU ALL THE LOVE — We all love Irondad, but some stories come with bonus bonds that give us just as much. Do you have a Peter & Bucky, or a Peter & Steve working alongside which delivers all the found family goodness?

 "I Have A Nephew!" by Zimnokurw

5 Times Happy Hogan Nearly Had A Heart Attack Because Of Peter Parker by Thespydersargon

Be Careful What You Wish For, You May Just Get It by Savana_Marlark

Brighten Up, Sunshine by Iron_Spider

It Must Be Nice (To Have Mrs. Potts On Your Side by Sdottkrames

It Takes A Village (To Make Sure You're Okay) by Baloobird

Kingdom Come Undone by Killerqueenwrites

Project: Get Bucky Barnes A Dog by Ruxian

Road Work Ahead by Toniwilder

Rules Are Made To Be Broken by Ironmum

When In The Dark by Kevy_Grayce

 19. THE PROLIFIC WRITER AWARD — Irondad has some amazingly prolific writers. Which are the ones you’ve subscribed to get at that fic-wonder goodness of 10 works or more?

 Aimaim94

Buckets_Of_Stars

Emily_F6

HAPPYASPIE

Inkinmyheartsandonthepage

Ironmum

Iron-Spider

Jen27ny

Littlemissagrafina

Madasthesea

Magicalyss

Mshermia

O0CITRUSEE0O

Parkrstark

Superherotiger

 20. THE NEWBIE — New writers are joining the fandom all the time. Who’s the newbie (posting for 12 months or less) that’s delivering the good stuff for you?

 107thinfantry

Fallingforbees

Ironmum

Jinx_Frost

Just_Ppeachy

Kittybellestark

Lilacsoulw

Maicaly

Polaroid15

Spagbol99

Sunflowerspideyy

 21. THE OG — Who’s the writer that’s been around for a while (12 months or more) that keeps you captivated?

 Ashleyparker2815

Emily_F6

Happyaspie

Iron_Spider

Jen27ny

Kevy_Grayce

Parkrstark

Snarkymuch

Spooderboyandtincan

 22. THE WILD CARD STORY — The story that does (or doesn’t) fit into the above categories but you believe deserves the prize. Which one is that for you?

  Aliens Really Are Out To Get You Aren't They? by Some_Sort_Of_Trash

Born To Cherish by Ironfamjam

Everyday Superhero by Stoneage_Woman

Five Times Tony And Peter Chaotically Cleaned by Ironmum

Guess I’m Not Good Enough by Freyaatterton

I Can Hold The Weight Of Worlds (If That's What You Need) by Bluesweatshirt

I Will Soften Every Edge by losingmymindtonight

I’m Not Telling Him. Period by Scooter3scooter

Irondad NSAP by Chvotic

Irondad NSAP by Chvotic

Kids Suck, But You're Great by Gymlily06

Long Gone | Marvel Au Strangerlyparker

Play by Losingmymindtonight

Tech Of Non-Destructive Yakking by Wabisabi

The Reinvention Of Tony Stark by Losingmymindtonight

This Ride Is A Wild One  by Just_Ppeachy

What You're Feeling Is Probably Normal  by Finny3120

 ART 1 — DIGITAL MEDIA - Who has those PhotoShop skills, who makes the best mood boards? We have some wonderful artists in the Irondad fandom, and we’re here to celebrate them. Who's your favorite artist?

 @Itsybitsyspiderling (Tumblr)

@monireh (Tumblr)

@Blackchessknight (Tumblr)

 ART 2 — SKETCHES  — Who has the skills with the original medium of art in sketches? Whose pencil can create the characters we love best?

 @broskev (Tumblr)

@Dakt37 (Tumblr)

@monireh89 (Tumblr)

Ellarie.png (Instagram)

 ART 3 — CARTOONS — Chibis, Manga, Anime, who can create the very best?

 @Maryo274 (Tumblr)

yes-i-am-happyaspie (Tumblr)

 ART 4 — FANVID — Some of the greatest creators are the ones that match the music to the mood, find the perfect scenes to make us laugh and cry. Who does that for you?

 All My Life || Tony & Peter (Father/Son Au) by Akapotatogirl (YouTube)

Emsxworld (YouTube)

Tony Stark & Peter Parker | Ashes  by Mythicalroyalty (YouTube)

 ART 5 — BEST IRON FAMILY FANART — Who can create those feeling of Ironfam with their art? Who captures the characters we love in that iconic family.

 @broskev (Tumblr)

@moonestaly (Tumblr)

eccentric_artist_221b (AO3)

Ellarie.png (Instagram)

[shadowofroserade]

LADIES, GENTLEMEN AND FELLOW BLUE HAIRED PRONOUN HAVING HUMANS, I PRESENT TO YOU: *drumroll* BUDDY BOY!

Buddy Boy is my concept for a chapter 3 superboss. Since I believe chapter 3 will be a TV world, I wanted the character to be based on an old, long cancelled show, as well as something from the Dreemurr iving room, as well as something that is commonly discarded, much like a joker card or spam email. So I came up with Buddy Boy, the sidekick from the hit show from the 60s: STAR MAN: DEFENDER OF THE SOUL! As we see, tehre are a lot of action figures in the Dreemurr house, which I presume to be Asriel’s old toys. He had an action figure of Star Man and Buddy Boy that Asgore passed down to him when he was young, but the Star Man figure was broken and thrown away and the Buddy Boy figure is lost under the TV. 

SO. Some more backstory for this little guy. Shortly before the cancelation of his show, a strange someone appeared and showed him something... interesting. A script. One that detailed all the events of the future, including how the story would end and his own role to play in it. The script promised him a happy ending, where he could finally live out his greatest dream. Becoming a true hero, a STAR! Like any good actor he memorized his lines and when they were supposed to happen. After the last episode had aired, he killed Star Man, like the script said he would, leading to the cancellation of the show.

Fast forward to Deltarune chapter 3: Kris, Susie, Toriel and Undyne fall into the Dark World. Undyne takes the role of a boisterous super heroine that the main bad guy, Mike, tricked into working for him. 

The first encounter with Buddy Boy is as her sidekick for one of her fights with the cast, to her behest as she doesn't know who he is and doesn't like him much, though she appreciates having a sidekick.

-Second encounter: Found in Star Man's unused and vandalized star room. Star Man's name is crossed out and replaced with Buddy Boy's. He asks for help from Kris, saying the script says they need to work together to find the Shadow Mantle in an Indiana Jones parody area. He mentions how his role is to be the sidekick to any hero. He asks Kris to meet him there.

-Third encounter: Kris falls through a trap, getting seperated from Susie and Ralsei, into an area where Buddy Boy is waiting. Buddy Boy becomes a temporary party member. You cannot control him, like Susie in Ch1, and just like her, he just does big damage to the first enemy in line. He also gives you the ability to switch your soul colour from red to green with the pres of a button. After going through a new dungeon together, the two find the Shadow Mantle. Buddy Boy picks it up, and gives it a look over. He seems shocked and appears to have a mental breakdown. He raves about how the script he sees now is different from the one he was shown, like it has been rewritten. He takes a moment to flip the corner of the game window to glimpse the end like the 4th wall breaks in comics. He takes a moment to collect himself and slaps himself to "get into character". He then announces that he must become the villain and defeat you so that the world may be saved and he can finally be the star, the protagonist, the hero that saves both worlds. He takes the Shadow Mantle and wraps it around his neck like a cape, transforming into BUDDY MAN! Before he can finish Kris off and take the soul, Ralsei and Susie come in for the rescue.

-Boss Fight: Buddy Man uses the same gimmick as when he was your party member. The voluntary green soul. His attacks consist of star projectiles, undodgable punches, and weaponizing comic book text boxes. Toa void some of his attacks, you need to activate green soul mode at the right time to avoid big damage, hard to dodge attacks. To defeat him with acts, you must simply tug at the shadow mantle cape until it is taken off.

After the fight, Buddy Man has a breakdown. He says that his defeat is impossible, as the scipt had already been written, and his happy ending had already been decided. He freaks out and before he becomes the Sidekickers or Buddy Blade, he has a heart-to-heart with Kris where he muses about how all he did to follow the script was for nothing because in the end, everything he did, everyone he hurt because the script called for it, how he killed Star Man, it was all for nothing, as the script can be altered at the will of some unseen force at any time. But he does feel some hope and relief that people do actually have some sort of agency, although he’s unsure how much they really have. The unknown that is the new future and the idea of true free will terrifies him.

-Weird route: As you break the script of the game before meeting him, he's able to break free of his given role and goes around helping people escape you, finally being the hero he wanted. He is offended by the fact that you think you can use your role as protagonist of this story to hurt and kill and ruin the lives of everyone with no remorse or consequences. He stops you before you can seal the fountain and tries to kill you while you're by yourself. Before he is killed by Toriel's snowgrave equivalent, he announces that "HEROES ALWAYS WIN, AND TRUE STARS NEVER BURN OUT. THAT'S NOT HOW HEROES' JOURNEYS WORK! A TRUE PROTAGONIST IS UNSTOP-". He is then icinerated and screams in pain as he turns to ash in front of you.

And that’s Buddy Boy/Man! Any questions, or criticism about him are more than welcome. Do you think he would fit well in Chapter 3? Guess in the end we’ll just have to wait.

But until then...

Don’t Forget.

I’m with you in the dark.

[kaialone]

Kirby Planet Robobot Translation Comparison: Meta Knightmare Returns

This will be a comparison of the original Japanese version and the US English localized version.

Specifically, this will cover all the cutscenes that appear in the Meta Knightmare Returns mode.

You can also watch these cutscenes for yourself in English (1, 2, 3) and Japanese (1, 2, 3).

For the comparison, the usual points apply:

Bolded is the original Japanese text, for the reference.

Bolded and italicized is my translation.

Italicized is the official NOA translation.

A (number) indicates that I have a specific comment to make on that part in the translation notes.

As you read this, please keep in mind that with translations like these, it’s important not to focus on the exact literal wordings, since there is no single “correct answer” when it comes to translations.

Rather than that, consider the actual information that is being conveyed, in which way, and why.

--

Encountering Star Dream:

Star Dream:

……R…E…A…… ……D…Y……………・＞

...R...E...A... ...D...Y... ->

L...O...A...D...I...N...G...

Star Dream:

……………………。

...

.........

Star Dream:

アナタが…新しい… ゴシュジン様…デスネ。

YOU must BE... the new... MASter.

You must be... the new admin.

Star Dream:

……ナルホド、とても ツヨイパワーを お持ち のヨウデ…。

...UNDERSTOOD, it APPEARS that you possess quite TREMENDOUS POWER...

Yes. You possess incredible power...

Star Dream:

……………… OK＞

...OK >

...OK.

Star Dream:

…デハ、ソンナ ゴシュジン様ガ ノゾム…

...THEN, AS SUCH A MASter WOULD DESIRE...

As a new admin, you must supply your credentials...

Star Dream:

コノ星でも… カナリの 強サを持つ…

YOU SHALL be given... THE OPPORTUNITY TO CLASH with a "sword USER"...

to the strongest warriors of this planet.

Star Dream:

「剣のツカイテ」と、 タタカワセテ…さしあげ マショウ。

WHO possesses CONSIDERABLE strenGTH... even for THIS planet.

Executing Sword_Master.EXE.

-

Before Battling Sectonia Clone:

Star Dream:

……おみごと デ、ゴザイマス。

...MasterFULLY DONE.

...Impressive.

Star Dream:

ゴシュジン様には ショウショウ モノたり ナカッタ かも しれマセンネ。

Perhaps THIS was A LITTLE UNsatisfactory for you, MASter.

That may have been a bit too easy for the admin...

Star Dream:

ソレでは 次に、 美シク まうようニ 剣を アヤツる…

SO then, for THE next one, the most powerful queen...

Next up is one whose swordplay resembles a beautiful dance...

Star Dream:

最強の女王を、 ヨミガエ らせ マショウ。

WHO HANDles her blades liKE A beautiFUL dance, shall BE RESURRECTED.

Let us bring back the most powerful queen from the void.

Star Dream:

ソノ たぐいまれな 戦いのセンスと 王たる オーラ…

HER exceptional APTITUDE for battle, and her majestic AURA...

Experience her royal presence and unparalleled fighting skills.

Star Dream:

ドウゾ ゴたんのう クダサイませ。

PLEASE, ENjoy them thoroUGHLY.

She will be a fitting test for you.

-

Before Battling Galacta Knight:

Star Dream:

サスガ、ゴシュジン様デス。 では サイゴに…

WELL DONE AS ALWAYS, MASter. Now, FOR THE LAST one...

You are mighty indeed. Now for the final test...

Star Dream:

かつての ゴシュジン様にハ キンジられて イタ…

THE "Spacetime Transfer Programm", WHICH the previous MASter had FORBIDDEN...

This was prohibited by the previous admin...

Star Dream:

「時空テンイ プログラム」を アンロック シ、

SHALL BE UNLOCKED,

Preparing to boot the Space-Time Transport program...

Star Dream:

イニシエの時代ノ 剣士ヲ、 ヨビダシ マショウ。

TO CALL FORTH A swordfighter from ANCIENT TIMES.

Let us bring back a legendary swordsman from a forgotten time.

Star Dream:

…カレに コノあたりノ 星ハ ホロボされて シマウと 思イマスガ…

...IT STANDS TO reason that HE is LIKELY TO DESTroy the SURrounding planets, BUT...

He may end up destroying a nearby planet or two, but such is life.

Star Dream:

キット、 サイゴノタタカイを 楽シンデ イタダケル ことデショウ。

You will MOST CERTAINLY find THIS LAST BATTLE to be enjoyABLE.

The benefits of this final battle outweigh the collateral damage.

Star Dream:

ソレでは………！

NOW then...!

Prepare yourself...

Star Dream:

時空テンイ プログラム… アンロック… 異空間ロード… リブート…

UNLOCKING... Space Time Transfer Program... REBOOTING... Another Dimension Road...  (1)

Executing Space-Time Transport... Extra-dimensional road... Booting...

Star Dream:

…………３

3...

3...

Star Dream:

…………２

2...

2...

Star Dream:

…………１

1...

1...

Star Dream:

…………………GO!!

...GO!!

...BEGIN!

Translation Note:

I’ll go over it in more detail in the section below, but the term I translated as “Another Dimension Road” is called 異空間ロード/Ikūkan Rōdo in Japanese. This term previously appeared in the Japanese version of Kirby’s Return to Dream Land.

--

Comparisons & Thoughts:

Since the cutscenes of Meta Knightmare Returns all occur towards the end and are pretty short, I decided to cover all of them in one post like this.

Still, just because they’re short doesn’t mean there is nothing to talk about.

-

It’s only mentioned briefly in these cutscenes, but I want to go over the term I adapted as “Another Dimension Road” in slightly more detail.

In the original Japanese version, the term is 異空間ロード/Ikūkan Rōdo, which first appeared in the Japanese version of Kirby’s Return to Dream Land.

To start off, 異空間/Ikūkan by itself could be translated as something like “different dimension", “different space”, “different realm”, or anything along those lines, 異/i meaning “different”, and 空間/kūkan meaning “space” or “dimension”, and the like.

This term has come up a few times in the Kirby series since Return to Dream Land, and the Japanese version of Star Allies actually gives it the English reading “Another Dimension”, which is why I also like to adapt it as that.

The term 異空間ロード/Ikūkan Rōdo, adding the English word “road” to it, also comes up a few times in Return to Dream Land.

Given what I explained above, I like to adapt it as “Another Dimension Road”.

Magolor mentions this term when he talks about his home, saying that it’s far away, but that it’s connected to Pop Star via 異空間ロード/Ikūkan Rōdo.

The English localization of the game adapted this as “interdimensional tunnel” in this instance.

Also, the cutscene that is called “Final Battle” in the English version is simply called 異空間ロード/Ikūkan Rōdo in Japanese.

Going by that, it seems safe to assume that this term can refer to the “road(s)” that connects different dimensions, realms, or the like.

Now, there is a lot more I could potentially talk about with these two terms and how they come up in the Kirby series, but it would be too long for this section here.

I might make a dedicated post just for that at some point, if that would interest people.

So, most relevant to Planet Robobot, is the fact that “Another Dimension Road” is a term we had seen before in Return to Dream Land.

The English version might be trying to keep the connection to Return to Dream Land by adapting the term as “Extra-dimensional road“ here, possibly referring to the Extra Mode of that game.

-

Back to Planet Robobot, here’s something potentially interesting about Star Dream in these cutscenes.

You’ll find that in both Japanese and English it uses about the same speaking style as it did during its appearance in the main story.

And the English version actually adapts it in the same way as it did back then, so I appreciate the consistency there.

Like before, the English version has it use some more computer-like sounding phrases here, like saying “admin” instead of “master”.

Most notable as a change is probably the phrase “Sword_Master.EXE”, which would imply that Star Dream might have a dedicated program just for either cloning Dark Matter Blade, or sword users in general.

But what’s really interesting to me is something else.

Now, I don’t know if this is just a coincidence, but Star Dream does not refer to itself in first person at any point in these cutscenes

With the way the Japanese language works, this isn’t all too uncommon, but it still stands out a bit, because Star Dream referring to itself in first person during the main story was a notable trait it had.

A machine wouldn’t normally refer to itself like that, so Star Dream doing that seemed like a result of it gaining a sense of self during those events.

And keep in mind that those events, namely Star Dream fusing with Hatlmann’s spirit, don’t actually occur during the story of Meta Knightmare, meaning Star Dream actually should not have a sense of self in this scenario.

So, Star Dream not referring to itself in first person during these cutscenes could be meant to reflect that? But that’s just my guess.

In any case, because of the above, I decided to adapt its dialogue in these cutscenes without using any first person either.

And from what I can tell, it looks like the English localization may have thought the same thing, since they also don’t use any (singular) first person for Star Dream here.

I realize this means there isn’t any difference between versions when it comes to this aspect, but I still wanted to mention it, because it’s easy to miss.

-

In the Japanese version, Star Dream’s dialogue here contains more direct references to Milky Way Wishes, with it using several of the same phrases that Galactic Nova used.

Most notably, this includes it counting down from 3 and finishing the counter with the words “Go!!”, which is also referenced during its boss battles.

In the English version, these phrases are slightly rewritten and don’t match Galactic Nova’s dialogue from either English version of Milky Way Wishes, with the countdown in particular ending with “Begin!” instead.

As a result, that final line also no longer matches the visuals of Star Dream’s final boss battle.

If you only look at the text in this game right here, it does make sense to rewrite these phrases slightly, “Begin!” certainly sounds more appropriate than “Go!!” out of context.

But this, combined with the fact that any other subtle reference to Milky Way Wishes in the text so far has been glossed over in English makes me think that the English localizers either didn’t realize that these were references, or ended up ignoring them for some reason.

Whatever said reason may be, I still think it’s a shame, because when you add all of them up, there is a great deal of connections to Milky Way Wishes in this game’s text that are lost in the English version, leaving it only with the visual and musical references.

And those are still nice, don’t get me wrong, but it still feels like you’re missing out just a little.

-

Somewhat related to the above, Star Dream’s reasoning for its actions in these cutscenes is quite different between versions, changing a lot about the context of what is happening.

In the Japanese version, Star Dream seemingly comes to the conclusion that Meta Knight wishes to fight strong opponents. So, the reason why it proceeds to summon several powerful warriors is specifically because it is attempting to comply with that desire.

And that really seems to be all there is to it in the Japanese version, no apparent additional motivation other than to satisfy its new master Meta Knight.

At most you can speculate whether or not Meta Knight really was actively wishing for this to happen, or if Star Dream was misinterpreting him, but...

Considering this is a direct parallel to Meta Knightmare Ultra, and Meta Knight did wish for something exactly like that over there, I’d wager it’s safe to bet Star Dream’s assessment of him was at least partially accurate.

And of course, this also gives Star Dream another direct parallel to Galactic Nova.

In the English version, Star Dream instead states that Meta Knight has to supply his credentials, and thus all the battles that follow are portrayed as “tests” for Meta Knight.

This also implies that Star Dream would probably test any potential new admin in such a manner, in contrast to the Japanese version, where Star Dream seems to accept Meta Knight right away without question.

I know that this particular change has caused English-speaking fans to speculate what sort of test Haltmann may have had to pass, which can be interesting of course.

But for the reference, no such tests seem to exist in the Japanese version.

-

And still related to the above, in the English version, Star Dream states that Meta Knight must supply his credentials “to the strongest warriors of this planet”, which might even be a small translation error?

Because in the Japanese version, Star Dream only states that Meta Knight will have the opportunity to “CLASH with a sword USER… WHO possesses CONSIDERABLE strenGTH… even for THIS planet”, so that latter part is only referring to the clone of Dark Matter Blade.

There is no clear plural in Japanese, so one could interpret the Japanese line as referring to all three warriors that Star Dream ends up summoning, but since it gives a little introduction for Sectonia Clone and Galacta Knight, I think it’s more likely this line right here was just its introduction for Dark Matter Clone.

The English phrasing also makes you wonder why Star Dream would even summon Galacta Knight, who’s not taken from this planet, or even this era for that matter.

It just kinda doesn’t add up when you think about it more.

-

And that’s about it for these cutscenes.

The most notable change is the completely different reasoning behind Star Dream’s action here.

I personally feel it gives this entire ending scenario a different vibe, and potentially the implication of what Meta Knight’s role in it is, considering the parallels to Meta Knightmare Ultra.

With that, we have covered all of the cutscenes of Kirby: Planet Robobot, but we are not done quite yet.

There is still more story to this game, so for the next part, we will start tackling the pause screen descriptions of the boss fights!

Feel free to check it out!

--

< Previous Part | Start | Next Part >

--

[tiesandtea]

An in-depth & really interesting review of Head Music’s various - often forgotten but actually brilliant - b-sides. Originally posted on The Vapour Trail London blog on 20 November 2019.

The folklore of early Suede and the B-sides compilation ‘Sci Fi Lullabies’ would lead the casual observer to believe that the band had peaked creatively to the point that post-1997 B-sides would not be worth investigating, however I believe differently and now, thanks to the reissues of ‘Head Music’, these can now be easily accessed for wider reappraisal.

Full article under the cut.

Coincidentally coinciding with the recent release of Brett Anderson’s second memoir ‘Afternoons with the Blinds Drawn’, Suede have issued the 20 year deluxe edition of their fourth album, ‘Head Music’. Their final number one album to date was issued in May of 1999 to much fanfare, following in the footsteps of their classic ‘Coming up’ in 1996, a record that spawned no less than five top ten singles and saw them achieve astronomical fame across Europe and Asia (indeed, Anderson remains a genuine celebrity in parts of Scandinavia as a direct result). Whilst ‘Head Music’ was a hit, its making has gone down in the annals of history as being even more fraught and littered with personal scandal than even that of their second album, ‘Dog Man Star’, the record that infamously served as original guitarist Bernard Butler’s swan song. The chief reason was Anderson’s spiralling addictions to heroin and crack, which in the eyes of the singer served to influence what he and many others deem the patchiness of the record. Indeed, when Suede first reissued their heyday albums back in 2011, Brett would include within the sleeve notes his own rewritten track listings in each, citing Suede’s fervent devotion to ensuring that their B-sides were up to the same quality as their singles and album tracks, thus costing the associated albums some potential improvements. Songs from the album that often raise debate amongst its makers and listeners include ‘Asbestos’, ‘Elephant Man’, and the almost universally-derided title track, a scrappy, crappy exercise in suggestiveness that even producer Steve Osborne initially refused to have anything to do with.

Perhaps due to all of this, the resultant B-sides of the album’s singles have been lost in time somewhat. Whereas the B-sides associated with the first three albums reached legendary status in such a short space of time that the band issued a compilation double album of nearly all of them in 1997, ‘Sci Fi Lullabies’, their 1999 counterparts are rarely spoken of within the same reverent breath. I would argue that this is vastly remiss to the point of sacrilege as, taken in one listenable chunk, they serve to create what on its own would be an incredible record.

But before we investigate further, it’s worth exploring the genesis of Suede’s musical direction at this point. As Brett and the band have noted many times over the years, Suede sought to follow each album with a record almost diametrically opposed to its predecessor stylistically. The kitchen sink gutter glam of their groundbreaking debut was consciously followed by an ambitious, widescreen and darker ‘Dog Man Star’, the pretension and bluster of which was then followed by a strict album of ‘ten singles’ in ‘Coming Up’. Each time, at least one B-side would serve as a blueprint for what would follow; 1993’s ‘High Rising’ and ‘The Big Time’ served very much of signposts for what would follow in 1994, and then again in 1995, Richard Oakes’ sexy glam pop of ‘Together’ would point the band towards ‘Coming Up’ in 1996. Here, they would seek to expand upon the sonic direction of Mat Osman-penned ‘Europe is Our Playground’, a song they so loved they reworked its arrangement live and subsequently re-recorded for the aforementioned B-Sides compilation of 1997. Caked in icy synths and led by a dub-inspired bass line, it signified something cold and electronic, the desolate melancholy of ‘Dog Man Star’ reimagined by Kraftwerk or Berlin-era Bowie. The band promised this new direction in interviews and the public’s appetite was whetted.

Early in 1998, as part of a Pet Shop Boys-curated tribute to Noel Coward’, the band released one of their prime hidden gems, a suitably synthetic and clinical version of the great writer’s ‘Poor Little Rich Girl’. Unfortunately this was shown to the masses on television via a mimed performance that saw an utterly wasted Anderson grinning inanely with zoned out eyes whilst trying not to fall off a chair. This performance distracted from the impressive song (also featuring the highly talented Raissa, who had supported Suede on their Coming Up tour, on vocals) and seemingly left no impression on anybody.

And so to fast forward to the album. The making of the record has been documented extensively not only in Anderson’s second autobiography but also in David Barnett’s authorised biography ‘Love and Poison’ and Mike Christie’s recent documentary set ‘The Insatiable Ones’. If you’re not familiar with the story, it is a jaw dropping tale of decadence, debauchery and depression, the likes of which have seemingly and thankfully been removed from the culture of music making today. Indeed, there’s not a lot of money around now for bands to blow on endless recording sessions fuelled by endless drug abuse. But what emerged was a flawed but often brilliant record that has stood the test of time well and honestly sounds as fresh as the day it was released. The album’s track list can and will continue to be debated but ultimately, had they shaved off two of the more superfluous numbers (I would argue that the title track serves no purpose as does the turgid closing track ‘Crack in the Union Jack’), it would likely be held in the same high regard as the vast portion of their other records. But we won’t dwell on that here.

First single ‘Electricity’ was accompanied by no fewer than five b-sides, all of which carry some merit. ‘Popstar’, a concise lyrical study of the relationship between fan and band, contains the kind of crystalline synths and dubby bass that the band had sought to highlight with their two musical blueprints prior to the album. Richard Oakes’ guitar parts are sparser than ever before but serve the song well, and the chorus is cold and epic in a way that takes the song from good to great. ‘Killer’, complete with a lyric that seems to expand upon the ficitonlised femme fatale of ‘Coming Up’s ‘She’, is more impressive still; a dark, brooding slice of electro-noir that slinks and stalks in the manner suggested by the song’s lyric. It builds and builds to a desperate crescendo and brings to mind the best of Depeche Mode at their ‘Violator’ zenith. ‘See That Girl’, complete with yearning Anderson vocals lamenting ‘this dog shit world’, is less impressive but still good. A real undersung high point of the time is the Neil Codling-written and sang ‘Waterloo’, an electronic folk classic that sees some beautifully melodic guitar lines almost acting as choruses, and a tenderness rarely reached by the band. The fifth and final b-side (it was on the minidisc – yes, minidisc – version of the single), is ‘Implement Yeah!’, an old co-write with Justine Frischmann where Brett parodies Mark E Smith to amusing effect over a gutter-punk thrash that the band premiered with Justine at the 1997 Reading Festival.

‘She’s in Fashion’ followed in 1999 and quickly became one of the band’s better known songs via endless radio play that perhaps contributed to it being their first single since ‘New Generation’ in 1995 not to reach the top ten. Looking back, I imagine the fact that you could walk into any shop at any time during that Summer and be exposed to it as one reason why fewer people bought it than they might otherwise. The B-sides rank among the band’s very best. ‘Bored’ continues where ‘Implement Yeah’ left off with a Stooges-like guitar thrash adorned by sweet synths and a classically anthem Suede chorus. During an interview at the end of 1999, Mat Osman threatened a harder, rockier direction for the next album which never did come to fruition and it’s possible that this would have been one of its blueprints. ‘Pieces Of My Mind’ is better still, and a rehearsal recording of it sounding very different can be found on the new reissue. Taking its cue from ‘Europe is Our Playground’, it is a dreamlike wander through almost psychedelic electronica and its lilting chorus imprints itself on your mind immediately. ‘Jubilee’, a Codling creation, is one of the best of the era and would probably have made for a better first single than ‘Electricity’, a romantic epic that chugs along like ‘Trash’ and bears a dramatic and addictive chorus that would surely have been incredible live. Perhaps the lyric was somewhat off-putting to the band, a blank retread of other songs including the ‘run with me’ hook of the ubiquitous ‘Europe’. If so, this is a shame as if we are to be honest (and Brett has said so numerous times himself), the entire era was marred by some seriously autopilot lyricism that was charming in places in its framing of the Suede lyrical lexicon of language, and just plain boring in others. The single is rounded off by the gorgeous ‘God’s Gift’, a simplistic piano piece aided and abetted by swirling synths and understated bass that had been written by Brett about Justine many years before. As with a few of Suede’s records (most notably the first album), the spectre and influence of Ms Frischmann lurks around the songs of this era but in perhaps a much more positive way; the two had rekindled their friendship prior to the making of the album and it was Justine’s love of new wave that inspired some of the music.

‘Everything Will Flow’, the great lost ballad of the era in the same way as ‘The Wild Ones’ had been five years prior, saw an interesting bag of B-sides attached that differed in style in a far more pronounced way than the two earlier singles. ‘Leaving’, which Brett sees as the ultimate casualty of this period, is prime Suede in its romantic portrait of a girl departing relationship for a new life, although the underlying sentiment is entirely opposite of that of ‘Another No One’ in 1996. Although still featuring synthesised textures, its abundance of gentle guitar and piano is much more organic and not only serves as an appropriate backing to the not dissimilar ‘Flow’ but also as a subtle nod to where the band would go next. ‘Weight of the World’ is entirely a Neil Codling construction as with the earlier ‘Digging a Hole’ on the ‘Lazy’ single of 1997, however here he is eschews piano in favour of nylon strung guitar. Ruminating on the idea of his own demise, the song finds Neil in introspective form and perhaps shows a window into how he must have been feeling at the time, his health suffering significantly during the making of the record resulting in a chronic bout of ME of which he would never fully recover. It is sad and beautiful and at the time I wondered whether he would one day make a solo record. To date, he never has. ‘Seascape’ is up next, an ambient instrumental piece at odds with the majority of Suede’s output (indeed I believe this is Suede’s sole instrumental within their canon). Pleasing and dreamy in a subtly Eno-esque way, it lures you into a false sense of security for what would follow. The final song of the ensemble is the shocking and brilliant ‘Crackhead’. Noted by Q at the time for its outlandish appeal, it remains one of the most captivating songs in Suede’s history. Built around a staccato electronic motif, it lurches and grinds in a manner the band never achieved before or since, as a hoarse Anderson vocal tears apart his own addiction to the ice with suitable ice. At the time, Brett was in recovery, however this sounds like an isolated howl from the depths of dependence. It roars and builds to a final shrieking chorus of ‘you can’t give it up’ which says all that really needed to be said.

The final single of the era, ‘Can’t Get Enough’, another candidate for what should have previewed the album in place of ‘Electricity’, limped to number 24 in the charts but boasted perhaps the greatest array of B-sides of all the singles. In archetypal Suede fashion, ‘Let Go’ cut an honest precursor to the musical way forward, which would culminate in the predominantly folky ‘A New Morning’. Three-layered harmonies and melodic acoustic strum back one of Richard Oakes’ finest guitar performances, chiming and chugging riffery that would be revisited on later single ‘Obsessions’. Brett’s lyrics convey an all-pervaying positivity minus the bland triteness of the single of the same name, capping off an irrestible euphoria that would be deemed suitable for release as an A-side in their commercial home from home that was Sweden. It’s a shame that they were unable to replicate the feeling of the song across the subsequent ‘A New Morning’ album, however upon reflection the fault may lie in the fact that said album would be over-produced to the point of clean-cut nothingness by the otherwise accomplished Stephen Street. Next song ‘Since You Went Away’ is folkier still and retains much of the same charm, with Brett lamenting the feeling of loss felt in the aftermath of a realtionship break-up. Again, this is truly lovely stuff and acts as a further blueprint for album number five that would never quite be capitalised on. Heading over to CD2, ‘Situations’ is powered by a synthesised Eastern motif and ponders the ‘lonely minds’ and ‘vacant stares’ typical of Anderson’s lyrics of the time. While slightly over long, it would have worked on ‘Head Music’ had it been the more darker record the band initially promised, and even to these ears sounds somewhat influential on final Suede single (at the time), 2003’s ‘Attitude’. The very final B-side of this era is the brilliant and biting ‘Read My Mind’. As with ‘Crackhead’, it reveals a starker, harsher sound complimented by the blank words defining a phase of depression, most likely revealing the way the writer was feeling at the time. The chorus harmonies add to the relentlessness of the piece and once it’s over, you’re honestly left wanting more.

So these B-sides make up the lost record of 1999 whilst also pointing towards Suede’s final record of their first run. The rockier record that Osman hinted at was surely influenced by the likes of ‘Bored’, ‘Crackhead’ and ‘Read My Mind’, whilst the likes of ‘Let Go’, ‘Leaving’ and ‘Since You Went Away’ were very definitely influences on what eventually did surface. The folklore of early Suede and the B-sides compilation ‘Sci Fi Lullabies’ would lead the casual observer to believe that the band had peaked creatively to the point that post-1997 B-sides would not be worth investigating, however I believe differently and now, thanks to the reissues of ‘Head Music’, these can now be easily accessed for wider reappraisal.

[mamthew]

A Final Fantasy Ranking

Over the course of the quarantine, and because I had such a good time with the Final Fantasy VII Remake, I've ended up blazing through a ton of Final Fantasy games. Since April, I've played IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XII, and XIII. 6, 7, 9, and 10 I'd beaten before. 4, 12, and 13 I'd played to some capacity before. 5 and 8 were completely new experiences. I had no interest in going further back than IV, since it was the first one to really put any effort into character work, and I didn't play either MMO because MMOs don't really appeal to me (I'm planning to try XIV whenever this new update drops that makes the story mode more accessible, but it keeps getting pushed back so oh well). I also didn't replay XV because I've played XV three times and watched other people play it in its entirety twice, so I have a much better handle on it than any other game in the series.

Anyway, I didn't really have any plans for what I'd do with this, besides get a better understanding of the series as a whole, but I was kinda inspired to do my own Final Fantasy ranking. I'll probably be a bit more detailed than I should be because I tend to overanalyze my media and end up having too much to say. I’m actually not placing VII Remake in this ranking half because I regard it as a spinoff and half because it’s not yet a complete story, even though Part 1 is unquestionably a complete game. If I were to put it somewhere, it would probably be close to the top, possibly even in second place. Also worth noting that this is gonna have SPOILERS for every game I discuss here. I really just wanna use this as a place to nail down some of my thoughts on these games, so they’re pretty stream of consciousness and I didn’t bother avoiding any details from the plots.

10: Final Fantasy VIII.

I don’t think there’s another game in the series with a more obvious corporate hand in it than VIII. It’s kinda the Fant4stic of FF games; there are the bones of a substantive game in there somewhere, but every aspect of the game is such a bald attempt at checking off a 1999 list of “things gamers want” that the whole affair feels hollow and sickening. A major trend I’ve noticed throughout this series is the extent to which FFVII’s success pushed the architects of almost every subsequent game to try to recapture whatever it was that worked about VII, and VIII got the worst of it. It’s got the sullen guy with a special sword. It’s got the sci-fi. It’s got the terrorists with hearts of gold fighting against an oppressive state. It’s got the train scenes. It’s got the case(s) of amnesia that hides the true premise of the story. It’s got the ability to give any character any loadout.

Besides that, they kinda crammed in just a bunch of stuff popular with kids at the time. Jurassic Park? It’s in there. Beauty and the Beast? Here’s the ballroom scene. Hunchback of Notre Dame? Here’s that carnival. Alien? Now you’re alone on a spaceship running away from a horror monster. Saving Private Ryan? The party shares brains with war veterans and dreams of their experiences at war I guess. Half of anime? It’s all about a high school for mercenaries and the party is trying to get back in time for the school festival.  Fandom culture? Zines are a collectible item, and each one you find adds an update to Selphie's Geocities page. It also has astronauts, and transformers, and a haunted castle, and a prison break, and Rome, and Alpine Wakanda, and war crimes, and lion cubs that have attained enlightenment, and there’s almost no connective tissue from one idea to the next.

Also the junction system is convoluted and terrible, using magic makes your stats worse, all enemies level up every time you do, and I couldn’t tell you which character excelled in what stats. The characters were all very flat, and the first time I felt like I was seeing the characters interact in ways that helped me to understand them was in the cutscene that plays during the end credits.

Also the female lead’s role in the story changes entirely with no warning every five hours or so. She’s a terrorist, oh no she’s aristocracy in the country she’s terroristing against, oh no she’s jealous of the others because they grew up together and she didn’t, oh no she’s Sandra Bullock in Gravity, oh no she’s the villain and it’s too dangerous to let her out, oh no it’s actually fine and they were bad for locking her up.

It’s an absolute disaster of a game. However, the music and background art is absolutely beautiful. Maybe they never gave me a good enough reason to be in an evil time traveling haunted castle, but damn is it a gorgeous rendering of an evil time traveling haunted castle.

9: Final Fantasy XII.

I’ve known for years that FFXII had issues in development. The writers came up with a story for it, and execs got scared because there were no young characters and they’d convinced themselves that young protagonists are what makes games sell. So two more characters - Vaan and Penelo - were added, one was framed as the protagonist of the story, and the entire story was rewritten so it could feasibly be from his perspective.

While the two characters they added are egregiously tangential to the plot, XII honestly has no protagonist. The writers originally wanted Basch to be the protagonist, but his entire arc is really just following Ashe around and being sad about his evil twin. Ashe is probably the most important to the story, but doesn’t have much presence for a good chunk of the story, and makes her most character-defining choice offscreen before having it stolen from her by a side character. Balthier has the largest presence in the story, and is most closely related to most of the events of the story, but has pretty much no role in the ending.

Honestly, if I were writing FFXII and told it needed a young protagonist, I would have aged up and expanded the role of Larsa, the brother of the main villain, who shows up as a temporary party member from time to time. The entire game is about family ties, and a journey spotlighting Larsa could have involved his learning about Ashe, Basch, Balthier and Fran’s family situations and using their experiences to grapple with his own. Damn, now I’m sitting here thinking about how good that could have been.

As it is, the game feels disjointed and aimless, and the ending is so bad it’s farcical. When I reached the ending, I watched Basch and Ashe forgive Basch’s evil twin for his villainy rampage, harking back to the moment earlier in the game when Ashe turned down the chance to gain powers that would have allowed her to avenge her country because she realized that those powers could also drive her to hurt innocents in the crossfire. In this moment, I realized how Vaan fit in as the protagonist of the game. “Oh, he’s going to realize that violence begets violence, and that he must break the cycle by forgiving Vayne for the death of his brother. He’s going to let go of that hatred he’s been trying to push onto someone for so long, and it’ll finally allow him to heal.” I realized that even though the road to this point was rocky, the writers had managed to craft a satisfying ending from the seemingly disparate pieces of this uneven plot.

And then Vaan picked up a sword and screamed AAAAAAAAAAA and charged Vayne down and stabbed him, and Vayne turned into a shrapnel robot dragon and exploded all the star wars ships and I threw my controller aside and laughed uncontrollably while my characters beat him up and completed the game on their own without any further input from me.

Oh yeah, the battle system is also incredibly boring. Instead of battling, the player writes up an AI script for each character, then lets them act based on those scripts. I would straight up put the controller down and watch youtube videos whenever a group of enemies showed up. I was pretty excited about the job system, but then there didn’t really feel like much of a difference between jobs, and my characters all behaved pretty much the same as each other.

The hands-off battle system, unfocused story, lethargic voice acting, and tuneless music all left me pretty uninvested in the whole affair. The art style and locations are beautiful, though, and it did make me want to eventually check out some of the Tactics games, which take place in the same universe but are supposed to have excellent stories and gameplay.

8: Final Fantasy XIII.

I’m not sure I’ve ever had two such opposing opinions of a game’s story vs. its gameplay. This game is the only one that plays with a bunch of story elements from FFIX, which did a lot to endear it to me. It’s sort of a game in which the protagonists are Kuja, the villain of IX. Like Kuja, they are created as tools by an uncaring god for the purpose of fighting against one world on behalf of another world, and are subsequently forced to grapple with the horrors of having an artificially shortened lifespan.

The story actually has a lot of Leftist themes, too. The gods of that universe spread ideology among the populace, and the people unquestioningly believe these false stories, as the gods have provided for them for as long as there has been written history. Much of the character arcs center on the characters being forcibly removed from their places within those ideological frameworks and having to unlearn what they’d always believed to be objectively true about the world.

So the story actually is pretty good, but it’s held back by some really clumsy storytelling; it constantly uses undefined jargon, has almost no side characters with which it might flesh out the world, actively fights against players trying to glean information from environmental details, and maintains (at least for me) a weird disconnect between the characters in the gameplay and the characters in the cutscenes. I think this partly stems from Square’s original failed plan for FFXIII to be the first game in a much larger series of games sharing themes and major story details. Despite these issues, however, the characters are all likeable and (mostly) believable, and their interactions are grounded in real emotional weight even while their universe feels intangible.

This all got dragged down by the gameplay, which is total dogshit. It’s got the worst battle system I think I’ve seen in an RPG. The game only stops being doggedly, unflinchingly linear about thirty hours in, the whole game took me about fifty hours, and I spent the last fifteen hours beating my head against each individual battle, waiting until the system hiccuped long enough to accidentally slide me a win. That meant I had about a five hour window of euphoric play, convinced that I actually loved this game, thrilled with every new experience it gave me, and excited to see what would happen next. I guess those five hours are what pushed this game over XII in my ranking.

7: Final Fantasy V.

Until FFXV, this game was the last of the “Warriors of Light” games, in which the game follows a party of four set characters for its entirety. To this day, it’s the last of the “Warriors of Light” games to let the player customize which character holds which roles through the job system.

FFV’s job system is the reason to play the game. Its story is mediocre, and its characters are all fairly flat, but there’s something viscerally satisfying about building party members up in jobs that might enhance the role they ultimately will fill. For my mage character, I maxed out Black Mage, Blue Mage, Mystic Knight, Summoner, and Geomancer. Then at the end, I switched her to a Freelancer with Black Magic and Summoning, and she kept all the passive skills for those jobs and also the highest stats across those jobs.

It was super fun and kind of a shift of focus for me, since I tend to place story above anything else in games. Despite the story not being special, though, the game’s writing is actually a ton of fun. It’s definitely got the most comic relief in the series, and I came away loving Gilgamesh as much as everyone else does.

And while it’s nothing special graphically, it does have some really cool enemy designs, and the final boss design is one of the most memorable ones they’ve ever done. Which is impressive because I keep having to look up Exdeath’s name because the character himself is super forgettable.

6: Final Fantasy IV.

This wasn’t the first game in the series to feature actual characters with names and depth, but I have no interest in playing FFII, so it might as well be. I actually played the DS Remake for this game, so it definitely had some quality of life improvements, like full 3d characters and maps, voice acting, an updated script, the ability to actually see the ATB gauge, and the ability to switch to other characters whose turns are ready without using a turn.

Apparently one thing the remake didn’t do was rebalance the difficulty for more modern sensibilities. Instead, this remake is...harder? It requires more grinding than the original? Why??

Either way, though, the story is actually solid! The game opens on its protagonist, Cecil, committing a war crime on the orders of his king, who raised him as a child. The first ten hours of so of the game follows Cecil as he tries to understand why he was ordered to kill so many innocents, turns his back on his country, and works to redeem himself.

This arc is reinforced by the game mechanics, too, which is super clever. His redemption is marked by a change in job from a Dark Knight to a Paladin, which also resets his level. For a time, his life is considerably harder because he’s finding his footing as a new person, which is marked by battles which had been easy becoming much harder for the player for a time.

This game places storytelling over gameplay more than I think any other game in the series. Each character is locked into a job, which I much prefer in my RPGs to games where characters function pretty much interchangeably. I dunno if it’s because I cut my RPG teeth on Tales, but it really bugs me when I can give Tifa the exact same loadout as Barret. I want the lives of the characters to bleed into their functions as gameplay devices.

However, the developers clearly had a ton of different jobs they wanted to add to their game, but hadn’t figured out how to allow for the player to switch in and out party members in standby. To fix this, they increased the in-battle party to five characters rather than or four (or the later constantly frustrating three), rotated the roster a ton, and had a ton of characters who straight up leave permanently. One character dies and never comes back. Two characters die and only are revived after it’s too late to rejoin the party. Four characters end up too injured to continue traveling.

This let the developers make a ton of jobs, but it doesn’t let the player exploit these jobs to their fullest. Characters’ stats reflect their role in the story, as well. One character is quickly aging out of adventuring, so his magic stats increase on levels, but his attack and defense stats actually decrease, signifying his failing body. Another character has already achieved some form of enlightenment, so he gains no stats when he levels up at all. The purpose of IV is the story, over any other aspect of the game, which makes it even more mindboggling that the remake would have increased the difficulty.

Besides that, the biggest issue I had with this game was the overbearing constant drama of it. While there were a few more lighthearted parts, they were mostly relegated to NPC dialogue and sidequests. The characters in this game don’t become friends so much as they become companions who bonded over shared tragedies, and this makes for quite a few scenes of every character separately wallowing in their own immeasurable sadness. I played FFV directly after this game and the light story and jokey dialogue was a much-needed palette cleanser.

5: Final Fantasy VI.

Before the unexpected success of FFVII irreparably changed the franchise, Square constantly mixed up the story formula for the series. IV, V and VI all handled their stories really differently from each other, and what I remember of III also felt fairly different from the games that came after.

Every game from VII on had a very clear protagonist (except XII, whose botched protagonist was still clearly marketed as the protagonist). The concept of the Dissidia crossover series is built on the idea that every FF has a protagonist at the center of its story. FFVI’s Dissidia character is Terra, but Terra is not the protagonist of FFVI.

Apparently while developing FFVI, the directors decided they didn’t want the game to have a clear protagonist, so they asked the staff to staff to submit concepts for characters, and they’d use as many as they could. This game has fourteen characters, each with their own fun gameplay gimmick in battles. Three of the characters are secret, and one can permanently die halfway through if the player takes the wrong actions. Of these fourteen characters, the main story heavily revolves around 3-6 of them, while five more have substantial character arcs.

There’s kind of a schism in the fandom over whether this game or VII is the best one in the series, and I can see why; this game is absolutely fascinating. No other game in the series has done what this game did, which means it’s one of the two FF games I really want to see remade after they complete this VII remake.

The first half is very linear. It breaks the beginning party into three pieces, then sends each character to a different continent, where they meet more characters and build their own parties before everyone reunites. Once the story has taken the player everywhere in the world, the apocalypse hits. The villain’s evil plan succeeds and tears the entire world apart.

The second half of the game picks up a year later with one character finally getting a raft and escaping the island on which she’s been marooned. In this half, the player navigates the world, which has all the same locations, but in completely different parts of the map. The driving factor for much of the second half is to learn from incidental dialogue where each party member has gone in this new world, to track them down, and to try to fix some of the bad that’s been done to the world before finally stopping the villain who destroyed it.

It’s unique and clever and occasionally legitimately tugs at the heartstrings some, which is impressive for a poorly translated SNES game. The final dungeon is a masterpiece all on its own. It requires the player to make three parties of up to four characters, then send them in and switch between them as new roads open. This way, the game manages to feel like an ensemble piece up to the very end.

4: Final Fantasy VII.

As I previously mentioned, there’s kind of a schism in the fandom over whether FFVI or FFVII is the best game in the series. Neither is the best game in the series. FFVII is better than FFVI. Oops.

When I was first drafting up this list, it was before I’d reached my replays of VI or VII, and I tentatively placed them next to each other, with the strong assumption that I’d end up placing VI a bit higher than VII, since it has so many strongly differentiated characters with solid story arcs, beautiful artwork, great music, etc. etc. Then I reached FFVII and not even four hours in, I realized it would have to be higher on my list than VI.

VI has a better battle system, its characters are much more differentiated by their gameplay, its character sprites have aged much better than VII’s character models, and it has four party members in battles instead of three. But I couldn’t overlook VII’s gorgeous artwork, sharp character work, and character-driven story. In the end, I had to give it the edge.

VII is a strange beast. It simultaneously really holds up and has aged horribly. The story is excellent and I love the characters, but the actual line-to-line writing is pretty bad, making the whole experience of the game a bit like swimming upstream; you’re getting somewhere good, but the age of the game is still pushing you back the best it can. Similarly, the background artwork is fantastic and gives the game locations a sense of place incomparable to anything that had come before it, but the character models are so low-poly that the two are constantly at odds with each other.

Still, the game is more a good game than it is an old one. I think it’s managed to duck the absurd level of hype around it by actually being very different from what the most popular images of it make it out to be, if that makes sense. The super futuristic techno-dystopia city only makes up a very small portion of the larger game, and most newcomers to the game won’t have seen Junon, or Corel, or Cosmo Canyon. Heck, I didn’t know Cait Sith or Red XIII were characters before I played the game for the first time. One of the many reasons I’m excited for the rest of this remake is to see newcomers to the story learning just how much variety there is to the world, events, and characters of this game.

FFVII also began (and pulled off really well) a number of storytelling trends that continued in subsequent games in the series. Obviously, almost every game since this one has a clear protagonist with a cool sword for cosplayers to recreate, and an androgynous villain whose story is closely linked to the protagonist (or one villain who is linked to the protagonist and a second one whose purpose is to look like Sephiroth), but it’s started broader, more quality shifts, too.

FFVII is the first game in the series to try to give all its characters arcs based on a similar theme, for example, a trend that has helped give it and future games a sense of thematic unity, especially in IX, X, and XV. Heck, that trend was why I almost came around on XII before they nuked it. It was also the first game in the series to have a real ending, rather than closing out with essentially a curtain call featuring all the party members, like they did in IV through VI (and I assume earlier).

Another common feature of FF games that it didn’t start with VII but certainly was canonized with it was the mid-game plot twist tying the protagonist to both the villain and the larger story. FFIV had this as well, of course, but I feel like the orphanage twist in VIII, the Zanarkand dream twist in X, and the time skip twist in XV were all meant to recall VII’s twist of Cloud’s…very complex existence (IX’s two worlds twist actually is a clear homage to IV, but it’d be hard to argue that Zidane’s connection to Kuja - and the character of Kuja generally - weren’t more influenced by VII).

2: Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XV.

Sorry, this one is a two-fer. I’m not gonna spend too much time on why I placed these two together in the #2 spot (I wrote a long thing on it here, if you’re interested). In summary, the games kinda mirror each other, in story and design. Each game can be seen in the negative space of what the other game leaves out, and at the end, the characters react to similar situations in completely opposite ways. For this reason, and that they’re of comparable quality, I think they’re best viewed as companion pieces.

FFX was the first mainline Final Fantasy game I ever completed, six years late. It was the first FF game with voice acting and many fully modeled locations. It also kinda marks the beginning of the series’ constant changes to the battle system.

That’s not to say the previous games’ battle systems didn’t also differ from each other, but they all had the same setup, with levels and an ATB gauge. This was the first game since III not to have any real-time element to its battle system, nor numbered levels gained through experience points. Since X, no two FF battle systems have been remotely comparable, which is cool and innovative and keeps things fresh, but also means I’ve been starved for just a regular ATB FF game for too long.

In many ways, FFX feels like a bridge between the PS1 games and the later games. It feels much more streamlined than VII, VIII, or IX, in terms of both storytelling and design. The game is very linear, pushing the player from one area to the next and not allowing much backtracking until the very end. It also loses the aging look of the PS1 games’ menus and UI, finally updating the classic font and the blue menus with white borders to fully modernized and sleek graphics.

However, movement still feels very similar to movement in VIII and IX, the music definitely evokes the PS1 games more than the later games, and most locations are portrayed with beautifully painted backgrounds, rather than modeled in (which I actually prefer, and I was glad to see that VII Remake has gone back to that in some places).

Voice acting in this game is phenomenal for 2001, and honestly on par with many contemporary games. I can’t think of a voice actor for the main cast who didn’t do a great job. Tidus’s narration, especially, is emotional and evocative in all the right ways. Grounding the plot in a very personal story about Tidus’s difficulty coming to terms with and proving himself to his abusive father keeps the story relatable and real.

Something interesting about my experience with X is that because it was my first Final Fantasy game, I thought for a very long time that the series was about organized religion, and the ways it is used to justify evil acts. This might be the only game of the ones I’ve played that is about organized religion, or even prominently features a religious doctrine, which really sets it apart from the rest of the series.

The game’s thematic unity is on point, even if there is a scene where they state the central themes a bit too plainly. Every character, and even the entire universe of the story, is held back by the past, and every subplot and the main plot revolves around finding ways to move forward and leave the past behind.

I love FFXV. It feels like a return to form after XII and XIII. It’s also probably the furthest any game in the series has strayed from the original formula. Battles are entirely real-time, and the game is a straightforward action game. There is very little time spent with menus, and even the leveling system has been stripped down to a few skill trees. It’s immediately obvious that the game was originally created to be a spinoff, not a main title.

FFXV is also probably too much a product of the current era of microtransactions and payment plans. The full story is spread out across *deep breath* a feature film, an anime series, an anime OVA, a standalone demo, two console games, four DLC story chapters, a multiplayer side game, a VR fishing game, four phone games (though really three phone games because A New Empire straight up isn't in that universe and also is terrible), an expansion including several entirely new dungeons, and finally a novel set to release sometime this year. That’s a whole lot of story. I’ve not played the phone games or the VR fishing game, or read the novel yet, but I’ve experienced all the rest.

But I also played FFXV when it first released, before any patches, before I knew there was a film, just the game all on its own. So you can believe me when I say that without any supplementary material, the game is still great.

It goes back to the FFI, II, III, V “Warriors of Light” system, where the party has four characters who do not change at all throughout the game. While this bugged me at first, I soon came to appreciate having a story where almost all character interactions involved these four characters. It meant I came to understand them well enough to feel like they were my friends, too. Most characterization in this game is understated, presented through small shared moments, dialogue, and body language as they travel the world together. Much like X, the overarching story might be expansive and far-reaching, but the real show is in the personal journeys the friends have.

Much of the first half of the game is spent exploring an open world, driving along the road and getting out of the car for pit stops or to explore the forests nearby. This is one of the very few games where I don’t mind just exploring an area without the promise of an upgrade or a new scene, just to see what’s around the corner, or to hear whatever banter the characters might engage in next.

The entire world of this game is gorgeous, and the orchestrated music is some of the best they’ve ever done. The main plot is beautiful, too. It’s bittersweet and emotional, with a charismatic villain and a twist that blew me away the first time I reached it.

The supplementary material is also mostly really quality. I’d recommend the Royal Edition over the original edition for sure, and to watch Kingsglaive as well. The anime series is quick and fairly fun, and Comrades expands on the universe in some great ways, but neither has as much bearing on the overall plot as the DLC chapters and Kingsglaive. I’m so in love with the DLC chapters, actually, that two years ago I wrote a piece just on how much Episode Ignis affected me (here if you care).

This is definitely getting long, so I guess I’ll move on after saying I’m upset that they patched Chapter 13 to make it easier, and I’m angry at everyone who complained that Chapter 13 was too hard. It was a brilliant piece of storytelling through game mechanics, and it’s mostly been stripped of all that, now.

1: Final Fantasy IX.

It’s IX. It was always IX. I actually did come into this with an open mind, wondering if one of the new games I’d experience (IV, V, VIII, XII, XIII) might end up hitting me harder than Final Fantasy IX, but as I replayed my favorite game in the series I quickly realized that wouldn’t be happening.

There are only a handful of games that make me cry. IX is one of two without voice acting. There are several songs from IX that make me tear up just when I hear them.

The story of the black mages gaining sentience, learning that they can die, and trying to force themselves back into being puppets just to lose that knowledge really moves me. The same goes for the story of Dagger no longer recognizing her mother, setting out to find a place to belong, learning that her birth family is long dead, then watching her mother return to her old self a moment before losing her forever. And Zidane’s story, where he has nowhere to call home, finally discovers the circumstances of his birth, and realizes that had he stayed in his birthplace, he would have become a much worse person than he ultimately did.

More than any other, though, Vivi’s story will always stick with me. He was found as a soulless husk by Quan, a creature with the intention of fattening him up and eating him, but each of them awoke something in the other, and Quan ended up raising Vivi as his grandson. When Quan passed, a rudderless Vivi went to the city to find a new home, and eventually learned he was created as a weapon. Other weapons had also gained sentience, but none had the worldliness that Vivi had gained from his loving relationship with Quan. When Vivi discovers that most weapons like him die after only a few months, he grapples with the possibility that he may die at any time, and eventually decides that he can only take control of what life he has by living each moment to the fullest. He ends up becoming an example for the other weapons to follow.

FFIX is a game about belonging: both yearning to have somewhere to belong and learning that the place where you think you belong is actually toxic and harmful to you. Even the menu theme is a tune called “A Place to Call Home.”

IX ran counter to the trends of the series in a number of ways. It was a return to high fantasy after the more sci-fi VII and VIII, and was also much more lighthearted than those games, while still being heartfelt and occasionally bittersweet. Gameplay-wise, it locked each of its characters into a single job, gave them designs based on their jobs, brought back four-character parties, and introduced a skill system in which characters learn skills from equipment. It also had a much softer, less realistic art style, and mostly avoided the attempts to recapture VII that have plagued most other subsequent titles (besides Kuja’s design, I guess).

The story is also structured so well. It regularly shifts perspective for the first thirty hours, allowing the player to spend ample time with each of the party members, and shaking up character combinations for fun new interactions. It introduced a system similar to the skits from Tales games, showing the player often humorous vignettes of what’s happening to other characters at the time. Once the characters have all come together in one party, the game has earned the sense that all of them (except for the criminally underexplored Amarant) have become a family.

The supporting cast are a blast as well. Zidane’s thief troupe (who double as a theater troupe) are likeable and fun. Kuja’s villain arc allows him to be sympathetic without losing his edge. The black mages are tragic without being overdone.

The development team for this game put so much more work into this game than they had to. The background artwork was all made in such high-definition resolutions that the act of downscaling them to fit in the game removed details. Uematsu traveled to Europe to make sure he’d get the feel of the soundtrack right, and has said it’s his favorite score he’s ever done. Sakaguchi, the creator of Final Fantasy, says IX is his favorite game in the series.

FFIX is one of the two games I would like them to remake after they finish the VII Remake, but I’m terrified they’ll mess it up in some way. Honestly, the game’s only flaws (which I do desperately want them to fix) are a lack of voice acting, the underdeveloped party member Amarant (and to a lesser extent Freya), the dissonance of Beatrix never getting punished in any way for her hand in a genocide, and the fact that very few of the sidequests are story-related because so many of the smaller story details that would normally be relegated to sidequests are covered in the main plot.

Despite the danger, though, I think revisiting IX is absolutely essential moving forward. It represents so much of what made older games like IV and VI great, and its story is much more grounded in real emotion than many current Square stories tend to be. Remaking VII will be good for getting VII out of Square’s system. Remaking IX would be good for putting IX back into Square’s system.

Here’s a IX song as a reward for getting this far. I’m gonna go listen to it and tear up again.

[icefir-windbreaker]

Late to the new meme on the internet but-

[allstarsstorymode867]

The curses that crush you, the prayers that forgive you both shined inside my heart In a collapsing world, a gradually dissolving voice will bloom the flowers of life -Nigredo, Magia Record Anime Episode 13

[arigatouiris]

daughter of artemis // p.p — [15]

c h a p t e r  f i f t e e n

Pairing: Peter Parker x Demigod! Reader [Female pronouns]

Warnings: swearing; angst [a lot of it]; greek mythology rewritten [completely my interpretation of it, oops]; slightly based off the games god of war and assassin’s creed odyssey; hurt/comfort; cliche; fluff; mentions of sex and gore; slight alternate universe

Follows events after Endgame, but Tony, Natasha, Steve, Loki are alive in this universe.

Word count: 4115

Author’s Note: Thank you so much everyone for writing back to me and telling me you enjoyed this story. It means so much to me, and I cannot tell you how much this story has made everything better for me mental health wise. Thank you, each and every one!

And for those who would want to read more of my work, I’m writing a Bucky x Reader series after this and if you want to be on the taglist for that, just send me an ask! 

15 // χαρουμενα  happy

❅

    “Could you place the plates on the table? Morgan will help.” Pepper grinned, as she pointed to the plates on the kitchen slab.

(y/n) looked almost clueless; she had almost always ordered food, or her uncle brought it home to her. She hadn’t ever worried about placing cutlery on a table and eating together. She knew this was how families usually ate, but even when it was just her mother and her, they’d sit by each other and eat under the stars. A dinner table was new to her.

She had returned from Greece with Peter, as Apollo dropped the kids back at their apartment. He hated seeing how much Peter and (y/n) were clinging to one another, and promised them that the next time they travel, it’d be by flight and the speed of light wasn’t working out well for them. Pepper had welcomed (y/n) back more gloriously than Tony had, who merely just sat and stared like a cat would. She looked at him and wondered if she could smile, but the awkwardness made itself rather clear.

Pepper then announced that they’d eat dinner together, and with (y/n) agreeing on moving in with them, it’d be their first dinner together as a new family. (y/n) was nervous, and wondered if things were moving a bit too fast, but that didn’t matter at the moment. She knew of Tony’s awkwardness, but he had tried; and now it was her turn. Determined to make the first move, (y/n) grabbed four plates before heading to the dinner table. She saw Tony sitting there, quietly, almost as if he were lost in thought, and she gulped.

She placed the plates gingerly on the table, not wanting to interrupt Tony’s deep thinking, and just as she was about to place a plate in front of him, Tony helped her. Letting out a sigh, he stood up, confusing the girl, and looked at her with a pained expression.

    “Uh…” She didn’t know what to say.

Just as Tony was about to say something, Morgan and Pepper came in with the food. (y/n) was moved out of her reverie and she turned away, helping Pepper and her younger sister who was paddling along by her feet. Morgan was naughty, this she had guessed from the first time she had met her, but that night, she would learn that her sister was a mastermind.

    “Dad keeps talking about you all the time.”

Tony almost choked on his salad. He hated salads, and he normally, even without Morgan’s revelation, would have choked; but this called for a reaction. Pepper grinned to herself and kept quiet, not wanting to interfere. Unlike Tony, she was quite experienced in displaying open modes of affection. It wasn’t as if Tony was not affectionate; with Morgan, his affection was quite natural. It was (y/n), and everything that he wished to know about her that caused the difficulty. He didn’t want her to be uncomfortable, and he knew that to most people, in their first go, Tony can be quite intimidating. And he certainly didn’t want to cause any sort of mental disturbance to his own daughter.

(y/n) sat next to him on the table, Morgan sitting across from her and Pepper next to Morgan. Dinner was pretty simple, but it was indeed the best dinner (y/n) had the luxury to eat. Pepper asked her about things she liked, Morgan teased her with Peter, which caused something to burn inside Tony’s heart; and the casual aspect of dinner that night was something (y/n) had craved for ever since she set foot in America.

This was what she had in mind when she came looking for Pepper and her father. A family, a family that accepted her, albeit the awkwardness that Tony displayed. She understood him, however, and knew why he was being this way. It was as difficult for him as it was for her, to suddenly meet someone out of the blue and be introduced to them as an immediate member of the family.

Pepper stared at her husband, who was thinking primarily on how to welcome her.

Right after dinner, Tony rushed to wash the dishes, which left the women at the table. (y/n) looked at Pepper and chuckled once, knowing that even if dinner was a bit quiet, it was home.

    “He doesn’t know what to say to you.” Pepper said, slowly, making sure not to let Tony hear.

    “I know… I don’t either, really. I’ve always wanted to meet him and I always thought I’d have so much to say, but… I’m speechless.”

    “Maybe you should say that.” Pepper said, placing a hand on the girl’s own hand.

(y/n) smiled and nodded, turning to where Tony was, and heading over there. Turning to Pepper and Morgan, (y/n) looked almost hesitant, but what she saw was comfort smiling back at her. Morgan raised her hands in a thumbs up and giggled, with Pepper smiling from ear to ear. What (y/n) knew at that second was nothing far from the truth; Pepper and Morgan were family now, and she was already growing to love them. Turning back, she entered the kitchen to find Tony just standing there, by the sink, staring at his gloves.

    “Um…” She didn’t know if she was disturbing him or if she was getting in the way of something.

Tony looked at her, almost startled. Walking over to him, she was aware of his eyes on her, as she stood beside him.

    “Need any help?” She asked, looking up at him now, his eyes already on her.

    “I’ve got this.” He said, frowning.

    “Tony?” She said this time, wanting to address the elephant in the room.

Tony was quiet. This wasn’t a moment meant for a sarcastic statement or something funny. Tony had realized that now was when he could address it, and he was slightly thankful for all those other things like her prophecy and whatnot, which kept her occupied, and kept them from speaking about what actually mattered. He took a deep breath and just stood there. The dishes were not getting done.

   “I… I’ve never really thought of what I’d say to you when we meet, you know?” Tony looked at her from the side. They were standing next to one another, shoulders touching. “All those years ago, when I first came here, I thought you’d be this warm and welcoming person, who’d just… probably make me forget about Olympus completely. Maybe, someday, and even if this sounds terrible, I wanted to feel better about losing mom—”

    “That doesn’t sound terrible. Not one bit. Kid, I’m sorry I wasn’t—”

    “No, see, I...“ She gulped, feeling fresh tears in her eyes now. Her hands were resting on the sink’s side, close to Tony’s gloved hands. “I wasn’t being much of a sport there, either… Running away from you and—”

In one quick sweep, Tony pulled the girl into an embrace and held her; he removed his gloves and threw them by the sink before pulling her closer to him, shutting his eyes and just breathing. He could feel his chest hurt, and he felt her shake slightly.

    “You’re my kid. You’re my kid. I’ve missed so much of your life already, (y/n). You’re my daughter. The moment I got to know about you, I should have taken you in. I was just scared. I couldn’t believe it, and I didn’t want to. I thought it couldn’t be, especially with everything—”

When her hands wound themselves around him, Tony cried. (y/n) hugged her father back for a solid two minutes, and Tony stood there, taking in everything about her. She was so small in front of him, she was so precious, she was everything that had kept him alive when times didn’t make sense, and he didn’t even know it. Pulling away from her, he wiped the tears off her face and stared at her; his hands on either side of her cheek.

    “You’re my kid.” He said, as if affirming it.

(y/n) chuckled and nodded, hugging him once again. She closed her eyes and calmed down, feeling at ease. Tony’s hands held the girl’s, and he noticed how small they were compared to his own. He ruffled her hair and felt it, finding it similar to his own. She had his jawline, she had his eyes. She had his smile.

    “God, you’re melting.” She joked, and Tony laughed.

That night, either of them didn’t get too much sleep. She told Tony about her mother, and about everything that she had seen or gone through back in Olympus. They were sitting by the front of their cabin, shoulders touching, Tony playing with his daughter’s hands. He loved her, he loved her like his life depended on it, and if there was ever a choice, or a situation where he had to choose between himself and his daughters, he would gladly sacrifice his life for them.

    “What about Parker?” Tony asked, cocking his eyebrow at her.

(y/n) raised her eyebrows, but didn’t say anything. Tony leaned forward and squinted at her, wanting the answer out of her.

    “Yeah, so… He was the first person I met when I was teleported here.”

    “Parker or Spiderboy?”

(y/n) frowned at her father before muttering, “Spiderman, but yes. Spiderman.”

    “And you figured it out over the years that he was in the costume?”

(y/n) shook her head, “Not over the years, but after I met Peter as Peter. I mean, we were talking about Star Wars and I,” she laughed when she remembered this, “I asked Spiderman if he had seen it, and I guess it was his reaction that gave it away.”

Tony scoffed, “Right. When something nerdy’s mentioned, he lets it slip. Some secret.”

(y/n) playfully hit her father’s shoulder. Tony chuckled.

    “He’s a good kid. I’m…” He cleared his throat as he continued, “I’m glad it’s him you’re playing tonsil hockey with.”

    “Ew!” (y/n) was wide-eyed, scrunching her face at Tony. “How can you even—? That’s disgusting!”

    “But, that’s what you two do, so don’t deny it.”

(y/n) was blushing so hard, she tried to cover her face with her hand. As she was groaning, Tony watched her, with a soft smile on his face. He was so glad she was sitting next to him, and if hadn’t ever showed up, he’d have never understood what he was missing.

    “You’re crazy, old man.” (y/n) said, still covering her face.

Tony let out a dry chuckle, “Well, this old man cares about you.”

After a brief silence, Tony cried again. It was a simple shedding of tears; an emotional response to a closure. He had wondered what it would feel like when he became a father. Ever since falling in love with Pepper, someone who had invariably changed him inside and out, he had wanted to start a family. He wondered what it would feel like to have his child’s hands in his, the kid’s eyes looking right back at him, smiling and giving him another reason to breathe.

He wondered if it would make him feel full. Full of something.

After that brief silence, just before Tony shed tears that night, he felt that fullness. He felt that fullness when his eldest daughter took his hands in hers and leaned her head on his shoulder. A simple gesture, but it ended with,

    “I love you, dad.”

Tony breathed in sharply, and remembered what he shared with her. Their thing, like Morgan’s 3000. Kissing the girl’s head, Tony closed his eyes. He was full of that something, and couldn’t possibly wish for anything more.

    “I love you, moonchild.”

❅

MJ hated hugs, but for (y/n), she made an exception. When she saw the girl walk into the classroom that morning, MJ stood up on her own and approached the demigod. Hugging the girl like her life depended on it, MJ didn’t realize that she had widened her eyes.

    “Oh my god!” MJ whisper yelled, shutting her eyes.

(y/n) held her back and chuckled, “Let’s not worry about gods anymore,”

Pulling away, MJ grinned at the girl.

    “I’m serious, I’m really done with that life now. Let’s finish school here and do something normal.”

    “What about that dagger? Still have it?”

(y/n) grinned, “Nope. It’s with mum now.”

MJ smiled, placing a loving hand on the girl’s shoulder. Nodding once, they retreated back to their desks, feeling warm.

    “Apparently, we have a new English teacher. Girls in class are devastated.” MJ said, scoffing.

    “Yeah, uncle had to head back. Godly duties.” (y/n) frowned a bit.

    “Right. So normal.”

(y/n) rolled her eyes. A moment later, she noticed Peter and Ned walk inside class, and her heart skipped a beat. She didn’t tell MJ yet that Peter was there with her in Greece, after everything was done. Peter gave (y/n) a look before smiling and waving shyly, causing the girl to chuckle.

    “Why’s he acting like that?” MJ asked, frowning.

    “It’s cute.”

    “Ew.”

Sometimes, she worried about Zeus returning. However, the prayer she had made to Hera told her that things would be okay. Hera, she understood, was a terrible person. Terrible because she was filled with jealousy, anger and everything that made her rude to everyone around her. However, as a goddess and a Queen, there was no one like her. And when someone prayed to Hera, (y/n) understood, they were protected.

Please keep my family safe, she had prayed, intently meaning every word.

After school, (y/n) approached Peter, who seemed like he was in a hurry. Folding her arms in front of her boyfriend, she narrowed her eyes before wondering if he had even asked her out in the first place.

    “What’s wrong?” Peter asked, blinking.

She pressed her lips together before saying, “What are we, Peter Parker?”

Peter’s eyes widened before his hand shot up to his mouth in surprise.

    “I—I was meaning to, but w-with everything that h-had happened, I just—”

    “Relax,” She leaned forward and kissed the boy’s nose. “I’m here. And I’m not going anywhere.”

Peter relaxed at her words, and his hands flew to her side. He looked at her lovingly for a moment before pulling back, causing the girl to chuckle.

    “Let me guess, Stark Internship?”

Peter shrugged before kissing her squarely on the lips and running off.

    “I’ll see you later tonight!” He yelled before rushing out of school.

That evening, she was meant to take her things from her old apartment into Stark’s cabin. She was still getting used to things, with her now openly calling Tony as ‘dad’ and Pepper as ‘mum’. It was harder to call Pepper ‘mum’, but perhaps it was because it was Pepper that she made it easier just a bit. There was no force, there was no hurry. Pepper told her to ease it in, if she wanted to, and the choice that she was given made all the difference.

When she entered her apartment, she noticed all her things were already in boxes. Her eyes were wide, as she entered the flat and looked around. Standing by the entrance to her room was her uncle, wearing nothing but an orange tank and brown cargo pants.

    “Uncle?”

Apollo turned to her and shrugged.

    “A godly favor.” He said, causing her to roll her eyes.

She walked over to her uncle and hugged him, causing the god to hold her back. Pulling away, she turned to her things and stared.

    “So this is it.”

Apollo nodded, “It was strange. I always knew I’d get along with you eventually, but this was…”

    “The way it happened was weird.” She said, laughing.

Apollo chuckled before turning to the girl, “Peter Parker is a good boy. I always knew it, and maybe that’s why the vision came forward in the first place.”

(y/n)’s eyes widened as she turned to her uncle with shock, “You made me see that vision?”

Apollo scoffed, “I am an oracular god. I thought the visions would help you. I didn’t know what they are before I made you see them.”

(y/n) chuckled. “Wow. So you can think beforehand. That was… that was quite smart, uncle. Hestia is indeed missing out.”

Apollo’s eyes widened, “How did you—”

    “How did I know Hestia turned you down? Come on, uncle. Everyone knows that.”

Apollo’s face reddened before he turned away.

    “Despite everything,” She was playing with her fingers now. “Despite me thinking you hated me, and how we came this far, I… I want to tell you that you were like a dad to me.”

Apollo blinked. “(y/n)—”

    “And you will always be the best dad ever.” (y/n) said, grinning.

Apollo’s eyes filled with tears, and in hindsight, three or four more large clouds formed in the sky. It wasn’t Apollo’s doing, just sometimes, he had no control over how his emotions affected the atmosphere.

    “Don’t make Stark feel bad now…” Apollo said, blinking away his tears.

(y/n) giggled, “He’ll have his chances, but he’s certainly got a lot to live up to.”

A second later, “Uncle, are you crying?”

    “Clear this apartment, you stupid child.”

❅

The last person Natasha Romanoff was expecting that evening to turn up at her little flat was (y/n). No one, not even Stark knew where she lived, so this was a bit of a shocker. Smirking, the red haired woman let the girl in, before shutting the door behind her.

    “How did you—”

    “Followed you last night, you like coffee from that one store near 9th street.” (y/n) said, folding her arms.

    “Your skills have gotten better. How’s Tony taking you?”

    “I really didn’t think he’d cry.”

Natasha chuckled.

    “Nat,” The woman looked up at the sudden mention of her name, “I want to begin where we left off.”

Nat cocked her eyebrow, “What do you mean?”

The girl shrugged. Sparring with Black Widow made sense to her back then because there was a purpose. However, it was something that (y/n) looked forward to on most days. Natasha was a great teacher because she wasn’t too soft, and she wasn’t too brittle; she was the right balance of experience and skill, showing the girl what she had to know. Ultimately, later on, it had become something out of a want than for her purpose.

She missed it, basically.

    “The sparring. I just… Now that I really don’t have to worry about it, it doesn’t mean I have to forget it, right? I had fun.”

Almost expecting Natasha to say the same thing, (y/n) eased when Nat smirked.

    “Yeah, it was. When do you want to start?”

    “Right now, if you’re up for it.”

❅

That morning, (y/n) felt nervous as she walked into class. She saw Peter and Ned already in there, who were looking at her oddly for being late. There was a reason for it, and the reason was something she didn’t even tell Peter or MJ; it was something she wanted them to find out on their own, a sort of surprise.

She sat down at her desk and noticed Peter’s confused expression. Winking at him, she eased his worry instantly before the homeroom teacher walked in.

    “We have quite an announcement to make,” She said, her eyes wide. Clearing her throat, “Mr. Stark walked in this morning with a story to share. Turns out, he’s had a daughter all along. An illegitimate daughter.”

The class erupted in murmurs and Peter understood what was going on. MJ had no clue that Tony Stark was her father, but now she did. Turning to her friend, she mocked an expression of betrayal, which soon was taken over by an expression of elation.

    “The paperwork was done yesterday, so the announcement was due today. Welcome, (y/n) Stark.”

She felt her heart explode at the way her classmates cheered, both in shock and wonder; pure joy because she was related to the man who had brought everyone else back. Peter stared at her lovingly, slightly intimidated that she was Mr. Stark’s daughter, but that didn’t matter.

His eyes told her he loved her at that second, and her smile said it back.

After school, Peter and (y/n) walked out hand in hand, only to see Happy waiting by, waving at her when she exited the gates. She paused, before turning to Peter, who merely chuckled once. He leaned into her ear and said, “Get used to it.”

She turned to him and groaned.

    “Please, I can come by myself—”

    “Tony’s not gonna have that, kid.” Happy said, smirking.

Sitting inside the car, she felt at ease. Actual happiness always looked meagre in front of every bit of sorrow she had gone through in the past. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.

But, the second she got home, and saw Morgan running to her, Pepper and Tony on the couch, she wondered if grand was something worth fighting for. It was a simple image, them doing their thing and Morgan welcoming her. Tony’s eyes followed his youngest daughter and landed on (y/n), before his eyes warmed at the sight of her. Pepper looked up and waved, before ushering her to come sit by her.

She realized that grand wasn’t the pinnacle of any fight at all.

It was this. This simple and meagre result of a thousand fights. It was worth everything.

And she would find them; time after time.

❅

She had never gotten the chance to listen to the whole song because the last time, her father had interrupted Peter and (y/n) while they were listening to it. She played the song in her new phone, and sat there, humming along. It was right after dinnertime, when she had said her goodnights and had come back into her room to end the day.

She knew there was nothing stopping her now. However, just as she pressed play, she heard a knock on her window. Her eyes widened when she saw Spiderman there, waving at her. Sighing, she got up and opened the window, and letting him inside, as Peter took off his mask.

He held her and kissed her squarely on the lips, as her hands flew to his face. She kissed him back, having missed the feeling of his lips against hers, and relished how natural it felt to be in his arms. As Peter pulled away, he looked at her before muttering ten or twenty ‘I love you’s to her, as if he had never said it before.

    “I love you, too, Peter Parker.”

    “(y/n), will you be my girlfriend?”

She mocked him by pretending to think, causing Peter to grab her hips and pull her tightly against him. Giggling, she nodded.

    “Yes, yes! I will.”

    “I love you, (y/n). And each time I swing by New York and I see the moon, I see you. I see the sun, I see you. Casually, you’ve replaced almost everything there is around me, and I think of you. I love you.”

Her heart warmed at his confession. “I love you, Peter Parker. Ever since you saved my life five years ago to now. I love you.”

Moving forward, she kissed him on the lips before closing her eyes. Right then, he was oxygen and she was dying to breathe. The touch of his lips on hers was featherlight, tentative, uncertain. She closed her eyes as the kiss sent a thrill through her body, until it felt like her hair was standing on end, like her whole body was a live wire, humming with electricity. (y/n) felt his lips travel from her forehead, whispering something against her eyelids, her cheeks, her nose. His thumbs stroked the length of her jaw, but even they stilled as she pulled back and turned to look at him.

    “I love you, daughter of Artemis, girlfriend of Spiderman.” He said, and the rest was history.

    “Dad, Spiderman’s here!” Morgan’s voice suddenly sounded, and the two teenagers’ eyes widened with fright.

They turned to the door and spotted Morgan there, waving at them. Peter, right before he puts his mask on and rushed out of the window, kissed his girlfriend for the last time that night, just as they heard Tony’s voice.

    “Parker! You better not be smooching my daughter!”

❅

series taglist:

Those I could not tag, I’ve added your urls here!

@maddie-laufeyson, @mscoloneldanvers, @https://dancing-flame.tumblr.com, @daughter-of-stark, @spider-mendes, @nerdyandproudofitsstuff, @someonekeepstakingmyusernames, @alina-margaret, @yourwonderbelle, @viarogers, @https://huangsushii.tumblr.com, @eridanuswave @oliviaisnotlistening @mizpotatobiscuits @editsbyjenny @abbieroseb @justtrynagetthroughlife @secretlittlewonders @missmulti @shallowshawnshallowshawn.tumblr.com  @eunoiametonia @adistiany @justletmesleeptillidie @ppunderoos @myheartonthemove @heir2chaos @honeybutterparker @truthdaze @mvmakki @-thatgirloverthere-@growingthornz @freddies-fried-chicken @jinxedleohttps://www.tumblr.com/dashboard/blog/wrongyuckie @gogoca @kewl-r @death-by-viola @losersunitetonight @hungoverhellhound @ro2424 @https://www.tumblr.com/dashboard/blog/blackkookiebunn @absmiles123 @fxckingfat @ludwigvonbaethoven @xbabykookiix @madds-lolo @uwukinawa @sunflowernightss @diamonddia-mond @5knee @imsuperawkward @smileyishere92 @awkward-youtube-trash @spiderbabyx @theshortegg @samthesnoop @kaithezaftig @kissingg-incars @miamua-posts @jaayypasta @kimjeon7 @booksarebae2000 @tanya-diggory

[nezumasa]

FEH should do a “Side: B” type of story mode that you get to access an entirely rewritten Book I, II, and III (when III finishes) that isn’t “we were contracted and now we have to murder you” thing. Make it longer and have extra maps and an actual coherent and overarching plotline.

Make the rewards give an orb every other chapter or so if they don’t want to give out hundreds of orbs and have only one difficulty (Lunatic or Infernal).

Also, Make it accessable only to decently long playing players by giving the characters actual skill sets (Ex. Double Lion refined Alm w/ Galeforce and triple Brazen Celica or some shit; actual competitive or at least, decent sets and changed maps so they’ll benefit from the new sets). That puts another stop gate on it for players so it’s not all done in one go.

If they want to be really generous, give a 1 star copy (or a combat manual) of the featured chapter unit (ex. Hector/Lyn for the Blazing Blade chapter). You’re still gonna need to pull more for a +10 or more DC fodder anyway. Or even just give Jaffar/Nino/Eliwood/etc.

Furthermore if they can make the story and characters better written, they can make more money (considering FGO does that and we have people who whale for 3 star freebies like Jaguar Man and Bedivere).

Like... they literally forgot about Veronica’s insanity thing until it got brought up in a Seasonal paralogue and an entirely different gacha game. You’d also think Veronica would miss Xander more.

[aloha-solar]

The Spaces Between the Stars: Five

tw/cw for brief mention of rape/sexual assault at the very end

Rating: M

Ao3 link

The world was too bright. Shepard opened her eyes and immediately squeezed them shut again. She could tell by the gentle beeping surrounding her that she was in a hospital. Judging by the number of tubes piercing her body, plus the cannula shoved up her nose, she was in a pretty bad state.

“You’re alive.” Tentatively, Shepard opened one eye again. It was still blinding, leaving a purple ring and black spots wherever she looked, but she knew she’d heard that voice before. “I told you to die when you were crawling for help.” Shepard winced and tried to sit up, forcing herself up onto her forearms. Bad idea. Not only did the pain suddenly turn itself up to eleven, making her gasp in pain, but all her monitors went from steady beeps to screaming alarms. Shepard fell back, sweating from the effort of sitting up, her teeth ground together to stop herself from screaming. She stared at the ceiling, feeling her head pound and her eardrums explode from the shrill alarms surrounding her. She didn’t know anyone entered the room until she felt a cool, gloved hand on her forehead. Its owner stepped into view and despite the pain, Shepard felt her lips turn up into a smile.

“Miranda,” she gasped out. Miranda gave her a warm smile back.

"We really should stop meeting like this, Shepard,” Miranda said. “Putting you back together has become quite a bad habit.”

“You don’t wanna go for a third round?” Shepard said. She coughed and sputtered after she spoke. Miranda pressed a button to move the bed into a sitting position, before reaching over to a side table and picking up a cup of water. She eased the straw past Shepard’s lips, and rubbed her back until Shepard stopped coughing long enough to take a sip.

“Sorry,” Shepard said.

“You shouldn’t be sorry,” Miranda said, putting the cup back on the side table. “You saved us all.”

“You didn’t save them all,” the other voice said. “You only saved organics, not synthetics.” Shepard winced again and pressed her hand to her forehead.

“Is it your implants?” Miranda asked. “It did take them almost six weeks to get you awake again. I’m sure there might be some side effects.”

“No, it’s not…I was out for six weeks?” Shepard said.

“Technically, you’ve been out for two and a half months,” Miranda corrected. “You didn’t start regaining consciousness until six weeks ago. Before then, you were completely unconscious. I think it’s because the implants went into some sort of hibernation mode while the rest of your body recovered and slowly came back online so that your nervous system wasn’t overloaded.”

“Is that a theory or do you know for sure?” Shepard asked.

“A little bit of both,” Miranda said. She pushed a few strands of Shepard’s hair back. “Your saving grace was that you didn’t look as bad as you did when I rebuilt you for the first time.”

“Oh, yeah?” Shepard said, chuckling and then gasping in pain. “I don’t know, it sure feels as bad as the first time.”

“Only you would have a first time, Shepard,” Miranda said. She gave Shepard another sip of the water before reclining the bed again. “I’d suggest you get some sleep. I’ve had all the Alliance knocking down the door the second there was a slight change in your condition, not to mention Jack’s practically been holding a vigil every night—”

“Didn’t I just wake up?” Shepard said. She tried to sit up again but Miranda put her hands on her shoulders and gently pushed her back down.

“Yes, you did,” Miranda answered. “But they want to get you started on physical therapy as soon as possible—probably tomorrow—plus Hackett and the rest of the Alliance are going to interrogate you as to what happened on the Citadel, no doubt.”

“I see,” Shepard said. She swallowed. “What about the Normandy? They’re all okay, right? Kaidan and Garrus got hit by a Mako on the approach, and—”

“You should rest,” Miranda said, dimming the lights. “It won’t do you any good if you keep stressing like this, Shepard. If you need anything, just hit the call button.”

“Miranda—” Shepard protested, sitting up again, but Miranda already walked out the door. Shepard sighed, easing herself back onto her pillow. Miranda was right. She felt exhausted, and she’d been through enough physical therapy treatments to know that being exhausted was not exactly a benefit. Besides, if Hackett was—

“Your own crew didn’t even visit you,” the voice said. Shepard gasped as she finally made the connection as to who—or what—the voice belonged to.

“I thought you were supposed to be destroyed when the Crucible went off,” Shepard said, gritting her teeth. She was uncomfortable. There was a mass of bandages on her right side, meaning she couldn’t roll over and sleep in the position she wanted. Each time she moved, some part of her body started aching. The constant and burning urge to pee made her pretty certain that she had a catheter. And now she had to deal with the Catalyst.

“I was,” the Catalyst said. “But am I really here? Or are you feeling guilty about what you did?”

“Destroying the Reapers was the best option,” Shepard said.

“But why?”

“Because they were going to kill us!” Shepard said. She heard some of the machines start beeping rapidly again. Shepard swore, before taking several deep breaths and waiting until the machines calmed down with her. “I wasn’t going to let the rest of the galaxy die or get rewritten against their will. You said everyone would be synthesized—would that be husks, too? And brutes and marauders?”

“Of course,” the Catalyst said. “But wouldn’t that be better? With synthesis there would be no suffering, no pain. They would know that they were no longer organics, but they would accept that. Instead, you decided killing synthetics to save yourself was the best option.”

“You said that I’d be destroyed too,” Shepard snarled. “But I survived, so clearly you were wrong somewhere.”

“Because your organic parts must outweigh your synthetic ones,” the Catalyst replied. “But the others—the geth, EDI, Legion—do you think they deserved to die? Did you only destroy the Reapers because the other options ensured your death? You, who faced death so many times, are suddenly afraid of dying?”

“Don’t try and give me the bullshit guilt trip,” Shepard said. “The whole plan was to always destroy the Reapers. It wasn’t to fulfill the Illusive Man's power fantasy or the Reapers' ideal of a perfect life form. It was always to destroy them and you know it.”

“Did you actually gain anything?” the Catalyst snapped back. “You are once again at the will of a woman who saw no use for you beyond her own personal gain. The people you loved and trusted have not even attempted to see you.”

“You’re lying—” Shepard began, but the Catalyst cut her off.

“Am I? Where is Dr. T'Soni? Garrus Vakarian? Major Kaidan Alenko, the man who is supposedly the love of your life? If they cared about you, they would have never left your side.” Shepard squeezed her eyes shut. She knew that this version of the Catalyst wasn’t real—it was just her imagination—but God, why did it sound like the real thing?

“Perhaps it would have been better if you stay dead the first time,” the Catalyst continued. “Or if you died on Akuze. Or if you were captured by the batarians on Mindoir. Because that’s all organics do: serve their own interests, even if others get in the way. They held you up as a savior, but you are not anything special. You followed the exact same pattern that all organics follow, failing to see outside your own flawed bubble. Perhaps if someone else made it to the beam, they would have thought for the good of the many, but instead the flawed organic made it instead, and thought for the needs of the few.”

“I did think for the needs of the many,” Shepard whispered. “I saved every race in the galaxy.”

“Legion had over a thousand units living inside it,” the Catalyst said. “And the Reapers stored countless civilizations. The geth alone very likely had more units inside them than the entire population of the Milky Way. And you let them die.”

“Shut up,” Shepard said, tears squeezing out from behind her lids. She pressed the button Miranda left her frantically. “Shut up, shut up, shut up.”

When Miranda came barging into Shepard's room a few minutes later, she assumed the tears were from pain. Shepard didn’t bother to correct her, feeling relieved that Miranda decided to stick her with a sedative so that she could get some sleep. Still, even as Shepard let herself drift away into a haze, the Catalyst’s words still rattled around her head.

 It would have been better if you'd died.

As harsh and cruel as it was…could it be right?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The physical therapy was torture, as Shepard expected: the doctors noticed that Shepard could sit up without issue, so they started trying to get her standing up and walking. Shepard knew she had to do it (the alternative option of losing her mobility in general was ten million times worse than the pain) but it felt difficult working without the rest of the crew. Garrus and Wrex would have teased her as she stumbled across the room with Liara at her side, trying to help her keep her balance. Tali would have tried to create a walker that moved on its own without Shepard needing to put her body weight on it as James told her a million stories about all the times that he had to use a walker, with nine-hundred and ninety-nine thousand of them turning out to be fake. Joker would have cracked jokes about how Shepard's bones were weaker than the most crippled man in the galaxy, while Javik would have said that the primitives were so weak in this cycle, they hadn’t even figured out how to make their walkers float.

And Kaidan? He'd be at her side too, but he'd be encouraging her with every step she took, giving her a wink or a peck on the cheek whenever Liara looked away. He'd laugh at Joker and James’ jokes, he'd argue with Garrus and Wrex about Shepard's resemblance to a pyjak, he'd tell Tali that it would be better for Shepard to actually support her own body weight but would thank her for trying, he’d ignore Javik until the very last moment where he would pick Shepard up and say that the primitives didn’t need floating walkers when he could just carry Shepard around everywhere. And then later, when the rest of the crew left, he’d stay behind and reassure her that she was doing fine, no matter how slowly she was progressing. He’d promise to stay by Shepard’s side no matter what, until they were both old and grey.

But instead of Kaidan and the rest of her crew, Shepard faced doctors and physical therapists speaking with cloying voices, like she was a child. She dealt with Jack and Miranda bickering again, even though most of Jack’s students were out of the hospital and Miranda still needed to run tests on Shepard’s implants. She gave forced smiles during Jacob’s video calls, watching his relationship with Brynn bloom while trying to ignore the stabbing feelings of jealousy that sat in her stomach whenever they looked at each other. She nibbled at the boxes of chocolate Zaeed and Kasumi got for her and said that they each had excellent taste in candy, even though Zaeed ate his way through half the box by the time he ever gave it to Shepard, while Kasumi found chocolate that was so rich Shepard could barely lick it without sending herself into a diabetic coma. She tried to meditate when Samara came to visit, but Shepard always found her mind wandering: if Samara suggested that Shepard picture herself on a beach, Shepard’s mind immediately dashed to Virmire; if she suggested a forest, Mindoir; her bed, the last night she spent with Kaidan. Shepard felt guilty when the door opened and it was never the people she expected, because she loved them as much as the rest of her crewmates. But she knew they were safe; could she say that for the rest of the Normandy crew?

“Your fault,” the Catalyst repeated each time Shepard’s mind landed on that thought. “If you had chosen to merge synthetic and organic life, then you would have no need to worry about your crew.”

But as torturous as physical therapy and the daydreams and the Catalyst were, none could quite compare to her meetings with Admiral Hackett. One day, about a week after Shepard woke up, Kasumi uncloaked herself out of nowhere.

“Does privacy not mean anything to you, Kasumi?” Miranda said, turning around. She’d pulled Shepard up into a sitting position to check some stitches on her chest, tugging the hospital gown to Shepard’s waist as she did. Shepard felt her face grow hot, but then again, she shouldn’t have been surprised: Kasumi did go through her drawers after all.

“Do you want me to come back later?” Kasumi said. “Because I can. On the other hand, I don’t think Admiral Hackett really cares about privacy anymore. He wants to see Shep today.”

“Today?” Miranda said.

“That’s what Kasumi said, right?” Shepard said, tugging the gown back over her chest.

“But you aren’t ready to deal with him,” Miranda said, scowling. “I want you to have at least walked three feet without a walker and had the catheter pulled out before he even thinks about coming in here.”

“The admiral isn’t really the type to wait,” Shepard said. “Especially if it’s big news. I’m surprised that he even gave you a week, Miranda.”

“I’m more surprised he hasn’t barged in here already,” Kasumi said. “But never mind that: what are you going to wear, Shep?” Shepard blinked. Kasumi chuckled at the expression on Shepard’s face. “Come on. You can’t exactly wear your Alliance blues, and as nice as that dress for Donovan Hock was, I don’t exactly think it’ll be the most comfortable outfit given your circumstances.”

“She was injured,” Miranda said through gritted teeth. “It’s a bloody miracle she isn’t dead, and we want to play paper dolls with her?”

“Can I at least just put on a bra and call it a day?” Shepard suggested. Kasumi and Miranda both looked at her before looking back at each other and rolling their eyes.

They compromised in the end: Kasumi was able to find a pair of old sweatpants and a faded Fleet and Flotilla tank-top. Miranda donated a sports bra that probably cost more credits than Shepard even hoped to see in her life. Shepard managed to pull her hair up into a loose ponytail (how had it gotten so long?) and gave her teeth a quick scrub. Miranda took one quick glance at Shepard in the minutes before Hackett walked in before grabbing a washcloth and rubbing it over Shepard’s face vigorously.

“Jesus, Miranda,” Shepard said, trying to pull her head away. Her efforts were met with Miranda holding onto Shepard’s chin with one hand while attacking her face with the washcloth with the other. “I’m not a kid.”

“It’s just to be safe,” Miranda said, breathing heavily. “What if the press come with him? You know Khalisah al-Jilani’s chomping at the bit to get a video of you.”

“I’m more worried about Diana Allers,” Kasumi said, shimmering into view. “Honestly, Shep, what were you thinking when you brought her onto the Normandy? At least, what were you thinking bringing her on without providing Jacob as eye-candy?” Shepard rolled her eyes but didn’t say anything. Miranda stepped away, satisfied with her handiwork, before turning back to Kasumi.

“Can you get an ETA as to when Admiral Hackett will be here?” Miranda asked just as the door opened.

“Right now,” Kasumi replied, cloaking herself. Miranda stood up to her full height, putting her hands behind her back. Shepard followed her lead, shoving her blankets back and sitting up as tall as she could. As Hackett turned around from closing the door, Shepard immediately saluted him.

“At ease, Commander,” he said, a note of humour in his voice. He saluted her instead. “Seeing as you’re the one who saved the galaxy, I think it’s fair to say that you deserve a salute more than I do.” Shepard put her hand down.

“I couldn’t have done it without my crew or the Alliance sir,” Shepard said. “If it hadn’t been for all of you, this war could never have been won.”

“It could have,” the Catalyst whispered in her ear. Shepard clasped it and tried to make a face that looked like she was grimacing in pain. “You were just foolish to consider only one option.”

“I appreciate your flattery, Commander,” Hackett said, looking genuinely surprised and proud that she even acknowledged the Alliance. Miranda coughed, and Hackett’s eyes glanced over to her.

“Miss Lawson,” he said. “I want to thank you for getting Shepard up and running again.”

“Thank you, Admiral,” Miranda said.

“Best person for the job,” Shepard said, flashing Miranda a smile. Miranda gave her a small one back.

“Undoubtedly,” Hackett said. “We’ll have to find you a permanent position in one of our labs, Miss Lawson, because the work you’ve done is truly incredible. I’ll pass on a message to some of the teams, and I’m sure Shepard will be glad to write you a recommendation as well.”

“Absolutely,” Shepard said. “Miranda’s the only reason why I’m still here today.”

“I had some help as well,” Miranda said. Shepard might have been imagining it, but she was sure she caught Miranda blushing. Miranda cleared her throat. “But thank you. It would be…an honour to serve the Alliance.” Hackett gave Miranda a brief nod.

“We’ll definitely need to explore your skillset in private, Miss Lawson,” Hackett said. “And while I’d love to discuss it with you right now, the commander and I need to have a quick word in private. I’m sure you understand.”

“Of course,” Miranda said, giving Hackett a nod of her own. She squeezed Shepard’s shoulder before leaving, grasping at thin air until she found Kasumi. Kasumi squeaked and protested as Miranda dragged her out, letting the door close behind them. Hackett waited until he was certain Miranda and Kasumi were a good distance away before he faced Shepard again. He’d barely opened his mouth to speak before the question tumbled out of Shepard’s mouth.

“Do you know where the Normandy is?” Hackett sighed and shook his head. Shepard’s stomach and chest clenched as Hackett looked back at her with sad eyes.

“I’m not going to lie to you, Shepard,” Hackett said. “We’ve sent messages out through every single comm channel that we know of: human, asari, turian, salarian, we’ve hacked into the batarian systems…if our messages are getting through to them, their messages aren’t getting back to us. And with the relays down, we can’t even send a search party out. It’d take too long, months, maybe years. All we have to do is hope that they’ll contact us soon.”

“Of course, sir,” Shepard said. Her mouth felt incredibly dry. She licked her lips, trying to ignore the pounding noise of the Catalyst in her head. Was it laughing at her? Hackett kept talking, and Shepard strained her ears to hear him.

“But I wanted to talk to you Shepard because I’m curious as to what happened up there when you tried to fire the Crucible. When the reports said that someone made it to the beam, I assumed it was you…but then a second person made it up to the Citadel as well. Do you know who it was?” Shepard looked down at her sheets and swallowed. Anderson’s face, beaming at her after she was made Spectre, ran through her mind. The second image was less pleasant: watching her finger pull the trigger on the gun aimed at him, shooting him on the Illusive Man’s orders. Her head buzzed.

“Shepard?” Hackett prompted. “I know this must be upsetting for you, but we need to know what made the Crucible go off and who was up there with you.”

“Aren’t you going to tell him, Shepard?” the Catalyst asked. “Aren’t you going to tell him that you shot and killed the man who would move mountains for you? Aren’t you going to tell Admiral Hackett that you killed one of his best military men?” Shepard bit her lip and shook her head. How could she admit that she killed him? Even if the Illusive Man was controlling her, Shepard should have been stronger. She should have aimed the gun at the Illusive Man the first time instead.

“Anderson,” Shepard finally choked out. “I…I was the second one on the Citadel. Anderson got through the beam first.”

“Anderson got to the beam?” Hackett said. He rested his chin on his hand and shook his head. “But that doesn’t make any sense…I thought we told Anderson to stay with Major Coates…”

“It was…pretty chaotic down there, sir,” Shepard said. “I knew that Anderson was making the run to the beam, but once we were in the vicinity of the Reaper, it was all over.”

“I see,” Hackett said. His shoulders slumped and he took a deep shuddering breath. “Would I be incorrect in assuming that Anderson succumbed to his injuries once you were on the Citadel?” Shepard hesitated.

“Tell him, Commander,” the Catalyst hissed. “Tell him what you did.”

“Yes sir,” Shepard said. “He was trying to get the Crucible fired but his injuries were pretty severe.”

“You liar,” the Catalyst said. “Commander Jane Shepard, too afraid to admit that she’s done something wrong.”

“And then we can only assume that the blast from the Crucible incinerated his body,” Hackett said, sighing. He hung his head briefly before standing up straight again. “Thank you for telling me this, Commander. As soon as you’re able, the Alliance is planning to hold a memorial service for those we lost. We’re trying to wrangle the Council into it too—the Citadel is above Earth now, after all—and make it a full galactic affair, but at the very least, we need to show respect for the lives humanity lost. And as you were one of the few that knew Anderson best…” Hackett sighed again. “This was a very messy war, Shepard.”

Shepard swallowed again. “With all due respect, sir, I don’t think I’d be quite right for a memorial service. All those people we lost and with me still alive…it might be rubbing some salt in the wound.”

“Perhaps,” Hackett admitted. “But it might also do the people some good to see that the hero of the galaxy is alive and thriving. After all we’ve lost, we need a morale boost.”

“Yes sir,” Shepard said, her heart pounding. “Did you need anything else?”

“No,” Hackett said. “Well, there is the matter of promotions and other ceremonial details, but the list of awards you’d receive could probably reach the end of the Milky Way. We’ll have to discuss this at a later date.”

“Miranda could discuss it with you,” Shepard said. Her head was starting to spin as she realized the Catalyst hadn’t fucking left, but was sitting at the end of her fucking bed. It was silent but looking up at Hackett expectantly, waiting for him to leave. “Or it might be better to save some of those ceremonies for when my crew comes back. I’m sure there’s more than one award waiting for all of them.”

“Of course,” Hackett said. “Combined, I’m pretty sure that list could reach the Andromeda galaxy.” Shepard gave a small chuckle at that. “All right then, Shepard. I’ll go and track down Miss Lawson, and I’ll leave you to get some rest. You’re looking pretty worn out.”

“Thank you, sir,” Shepard said. The two of them saluted each other, but a piece of Shepard wanted him to stay. The Catalyst had become silent, and she was fairly certain that it was going to start the second Hackett left.

The Catalyst followed Hackett as he left, watching him close the door. Shepard pulled her blankets back up and watched the Catalyst, never taking her eyes off it. The Catalyst turned to face Shepard and the two stared at each other. Shepard broke the silence first.

“You know you’re not real,” she said. “You’re just trying to make me feel guilty.”

“But if you can see me, perhaps your guilt has some weight to it,” the Catalyst replied. “Tell me, how many people couldn’t you save? It didn’t start in your military career either: it started in the colonies.”

“Mindoir was different,” Shepard snapped. “I was sixteen and my mother hid me away. Not that it mattered—our house was one of the few the Alliance actually hit with an artillery strike.”

“You didn’t do anything when Elizabeth Armstrong was dragged away by the slavers,” the Catalyst said. “Nor did you when Alex Lovell was raped right in front of you. He screamed your name and you ran.”

“I shot the slaver first.”

“Only after Alex screamed your name and tried to crawl towards you. You only shot the slaver because he looked towards you,” the Catalyst said. “Do you not remember Alex’s face? How it was caked in mud and blood? How the batarians had tied his hands over his head and pulled his pants down in front of thousands of people? How you thought he liked you back when he smiled at you during class one day—”

“Shut up,” Shepard muttered, pulling her pillow over her head. “You’re not real, you’re not real, you’re not real—”

“Keep repeating yourself,” the Catalyst said. “But you know I’m right. You are pathetic. The batarians should have taken you when they took Mindoir instead of destroying the entire colony.” Shepard waited, gripping her pillow so tightly that she felt her knuckles nearly bursting from her skin. She didn’t pull it off her head until she heard the familiar click of Miranda’s heels as she walked in. She tried to smile and nod her head in the right places as Miranda gushed about how she could get a position working on making prosthetic limbs that were indistinguishable from real limbs, but she felt like a doll or a puppet, trying to say the right things to keep everyone happy.

Because deep down, Shepard knew the Catalyst was right: she was a fake, a fraud, dirty, disgusting, and more deserving of death than she was alive.

She wished Kaidan was with her.