#Frankly I think the implications of this connection are fascinating | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

rollflasher · 3 years

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So, since I’ve been fond of writing pseudo-essay type of posts regarding Sonic, I might as well do another one that’s similar to my hot take regarding Shadow, in particular involving a topic I talked about with some friends that involves the character.

Those who follow my blog will be aware that as time went on, I became a lot more critical of the idea of Eggman getting softened in a misguided attempt at making him more human, mostly because this in turn comes with the implication that he’s ‘’not so bad after all’’, despite the fact that the character’s selfish acts don’t match up with that. Well, there is another reason I have for thinking that keeping Eggman an evil bastard gives the character even more depth than what could be initially thought of and it specifically involves his connection with Shadow.

Both Eggman and Shadow are the extensions of Gerald’s will, and the contrast between the two characters’ agency is incredibly interesting to say the least.

Now let me explain what I mean by this, last time I wrote a whole essay about why Shadow’s agency in his devotion to justice is so important, and why he shouldn’t be tied to a morality pet in order to be an unambigous hero, but when you look at Eggman’s character there is a surprising contrast in his own agency and there’s a lot to be said about it.

Just like Sonic, canonically we don’t know much about Eggman’s past other than the fact that Gerald was his hero and role model, but what we do know is that we all did it together he didn’t know exactly what went down when the ARK got shut down, so we can confirm that for all intents and purposes Eggman most likely never angsted about his grandpa’s death, chances are he may have not been aware of it and by the time he did, he probably couldn’t care less by that point. (As a matter of fact, in SA2 when he mentions he found Gerald’s diary, he was more interested in the benefits he could get from it instead of what exactly happened to his grandfather) With this in mind, it’s safe to assume that Eggman did not endure a difficult childhood and probably it was quite the contrary, after all we are talking about a psychopatic manchild who’s massive ego has an endless hunger for attention, that ego had to come from somewhere.

This is a stark contrast with Shadow, who’s past we know very well, he has every reason to hate humans and do evil out of vengeance, whereas Eggman quite frankly lacks any reason whatsoever to hold grudges against the world.

Not only that, but unlike Shadow, Eggman’s motivations are completely selfish. When you think about it, Eggman has gotten chances to redeem himself, he’s worked with Sonic before and in the end of SA2, he got a moment to reflect with Tails...and yet, he still decides to be evil and if that wasn’t enough, with each game he appears to get progressively worse. Why? Because Eggman lacks empathy, he understands others' suffering but is too apathetic, as long as it doesn’t affect him it’s not his problem. All Eggman cares about is having the world all for himself, as he puts it, it doesn’t matter how much damage he causes as long as there is something to conquer, even if he has to enslave others or take lives for that matter. He doesn’t care about allies and when he does show care for his creations, he’s pretty much congratulating himself and we know from the E-Series robots’ perspective that living as Eggman’s creation is not pretty. This makes quite the contrast with how Shadow is troubled by the idea of making a bad use of his powers.

Okay, but what does this have to do with Eggman and Shadow being the extension of Gerald’s will? Simple, Eggman goes against everything his grandfather stood for, but in a way serves as a perfect representation of Gerald’s genius being used for wrong, and in a way mirrors how he ended when he eventually went insane.

Gerald dedicated his life to the benefit of mankind and was genuinely a good man who loved his creations as family, hence him considering Shadow his son, and he clearly cared about life-forms like him and Emerl having a soul and being individuals rather than weapons of war. Eggman in contrast only lives for his selfish desires and prefers a world where everyone is devoid of a soul, only living for the benefit of him. Meanwhile, Shadow being a hero out of his own will fits perfectly with the legacy old Gerald had, not because such role was imposed on him, but because that’s his nature.

When Gerald went insane, you can say that he became just as selfish as the people he condemned, because once he jumped the slippery slope, he only cared about satisfying his own wrath and eventually threw away his previous philanthropist ideals. In a way, while not motivated by revenge, Eggman fits perfectly with that selfishness that corrupted Gerald and could be seen as a representation of that darker side of the genius of the Robotnik family being used for malicious purposes.

Shadow represents the good legacy of Gerald while Eggman represents the darkness of it. Both characters had moments where they could have taken another path, but whereas Shadow eventually had the maturity to move on and do good because that’s the right thing to do regardless of having every reason to hold a grudge and not do so, Eggman chose to do evil because he simply refuses to change, the world never wronged him and gave him chances for an epiphany but the doctor is just too emotionally stunted and self-centered to ever change his ways, if there’s no Eggman Empire, life simply has no meaning for him.

Honestly, while Sonic will always be Eggman’s nemesis, I find it fascinating to notice just how deep Shadow and Eggman’s parallels could get, in a way, they can really reinforce the message that it’s choices what defines people, not their past. I think exploring the deeper implications of this makes the Robotnik family more interesting and even somewhat tragic, and is something that could have a lot of potential. Shame that IDW had the perfect chance to explore that but completely wasted it, but that’s besides the point.

Am I analysing a bit too much a franchise about a blue hedgehog? Probably, but it’s still pretty fun.

#sonic the hedgehog #shadow the hedgehog #dr ivo robotnik #dr eggman #opinion

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hellsbellschime · 4 years

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I was wondering if you could do an analysis on Sansas and Daenerys interactions in 8x02?

Totes, because I think it’s an extremely interesting character interplay that needed more development and that was either actually rife with subtext and just written really poorly or it was just dumb. But while I wish there had been more development for literally everything in season 8, I think that the dynamic between Dany and Sansa needed far more room to breathe and grow given that their incredibly brief relationship is one of the main catalysts for the climax of the story.

Jaime’s whole “trial” scene is one that I really wish we had been able to see the lead up to, because while the drama of starting off the episode with it is certainly compelling, I’d honestly really like to know how everyone even got to that point in the first place. Like, Dany is furious that Cersei has betrayed her and lied to her about her intentions... except how exactly does that square up to someone who came to a truce with their enemy and then immediately arrests them and puts them on trial when they actually follow through on their end of the bargain?

However, looking beyond that there is not just Dany vs. Sansa, it’s kind of Dany vs. Team Stark. Dany lays out all of the reasons why Jaime deserves to be punished and Sansa actually completely agrees with her and says she completely understands how she feels, but then Brienne speaks in Jaime’s defense and Sansa immediately agrees that Jaime should stay. Now as viewers we understand what Sansa is doing here, but I think that Dany does not. I think that this may be a sort of crucial moment for what happens later, because someone who is unfamiliar with Sansa but sees that she is popular among the Northerners might come to the easiest conclusion, which is that Sansa is easily manipulated, weak willed, or likes to agree with people and thus everyone kind of likes her even though she’s the type of person who shouldn’t really be seen as important or authoritative.

But when Dany kind of ropes Jon into it I think it’s even more interesting, and once again could be an implication that she doesn’t understand people who put the interests of others before themselves. Because way back when Melisandre told Dany to invite Jon to Dragonstone, Tyrion tries to sell her on it by explaining that the Lannisters have treated the Starks even worse than they theoretically treated her, so they have even more reason to want to see their downfall. So I think she inquires about Jon’s thoughts expecting her to agree with him, because quite frankly it’s just not in her wheel house to put the needs of others before her own. But he winds up agreeing to let him stay, and she feels peer pressured into acquiescing when she really doesn’t want to. That really puts her on the back foot and makes her extremely uncomfortable because it’s something she never does, and it’s basically taking her whole fantasy of conquering Westeros and destroying her enemies and basically forces her to give it up for the sake of maintaining her own mystique.

So she’s super pissed and Jorah talks her down, and while once again the show cuts away from shit that we actually need to see, it’s fair to assume that he said something along the lines of Sansa is Regina George and you’re currently Janis Ian, so you need to go talk to her and charm her into liking you and the rest of the Northerners will fall in line. So, Dany follows his advice and tries to actually talk to Sansa and to get her to see her as the Enlightened Despot she imagines herself to be.

Frankly, the conversation between Sansa and Dany is extremely weird and vapid on the surface, but I think it makes sense within a certain context. Namely, that Sansa and Dany both have very clear preconceived notions about each other, however Sansa’s assumptions are generally correct while Dany’s assumptions are completely incorrect.

Obviously at this point, Sansa isn’t being fooled by charm, and Dany unfortunately reveals herself to Sansa in completely unintentional ways that she doesn’t realize are actually really hurting Sansa’s perception of her. Dany is here to conquer Westeros and force the North into submission, and maybe I’m overestimating Sansa’s political genius here, but what I find extremely interesting is that Dany asks Sansa why they’re at odds with each other but she doesn’t answer. She waits for Dany to answer, and Dany’s answer frankly gives Sansa an enormous political and manipulative advantage by letting her know that she assumes Sansa would not like an invader with dragons and an army the size of a city because she’s jealous that Dany has her brother’s attention.

And yes, of course, Sansa loves Jon and is likely extremely concerned, but I just cannot believe that Sansa is being genuine in this conversation. This is the woman who had to convince Jon to accept the inevitability of their baby brother dying because focusing on saving him was an existential threat to their family and the North. I cannot believe that she would have more issues with the potential safety and manipulation of her brother who was a king, Lord Commander, and survived with wildlings beyond the wall than she would over Rickon. Not to mention, the notion that at this very moment when the North is on the brink of destruction and everyone is facing down the apocalypse, but somehow Sansa is concerned about the person that Jon may or may not be smashing, is an incredibly condescending and childish assumption to make about her.

However, Dany does seem to make that assumption. Dany’s whole impression of Sansa seems to initially be that she’s just a catty and frivolous girl, and she seems to think that assuring Sansa that her super cute new crush is the one who really has her wrapped around his finger is enough to reassure her that everything’s fine and that that’s enough for Sansa to accept Dany as queen.

But then Sansa quickly flips the script and asks about Northern independence, which I honestly think was a mistake on her part. Dany initially saw Sansa just like Cersei and Joffrey and Tyrion and the Tyrells and every other person saw her, as just a superficial idiot who can be easily managed and bent to someone else’s will. I understand why Sansa would never want to play that game again, but it also left her in an enormously advantageous position, and letting Dany know that she was actually very politically minded was not the right move at that moment. But of course, because this is the season of constantly interrupted interesting conversations, as soon as the discussion turns political it’s interrupted.

Now, what I think is very interesting about Dany is her desire to essentially acquire special people. She wants Tyrion, the “most brilliant man in the kingdoms”, to be her hand. She knows he’s exceptional, and she wants to basically own him. And she goes through the same thing with Jon. She perceives her feelings towards him as love, but I think she really knows nothing about him and just thinks that he’s extraordinary enough to be worthy of her and therefore they must be in love with each other. Dany sees herself as a person unlike any other, with no equal in existence or history, so when people fawn all over her or give her unquestioned loyalty it’s nothing more than what she expects, but when literally anyone seems to care about or respect someone more than they do her, she doesn’t understand it and often sees it as some kind of a betrayal.

So when Theon shows up to fight for the Starks, she doesn’t necessarily seem mad, but she is clearly baffled, especially because she has already categorized Sansa as someone not special. If she thought Sansa were special or important enough to warrant her attention, Jorah wouldn’t have had to tell her to go try to be friends. But when Theon arrives and asks Sansa to fight for her, she doesn’t get it because in her mind Sansa is not worthy of that kind of devotion because she’s too ordinary, and the fact that someone is prioritizing Sansa over her right in front of her face really puts her off. And what seemingly makes this interchange dangerous is that Dany’s reaction to seeing this doesn’t seem to be a desire to actually understand where it stems from, but seems to result in the immediate conclusion that Sansa herself must be stopped (which is an idea that Dany toyed with in the season premiere as well, but I think it only solidified that idea for her further).

But I think that Sansa and Theon’s interaction here is obviously fascinating as well, both in relation to Dany and in general. Honestly, that kind of raw emotion and vulnerability is something that people in GoT rarely display around one another, and I can’t even think of another instance of Dany actually witnessing two people who genuinely love each other emotionally connect in that way. That’s not generally a way that she feels about a lot of people, and in her world, she is always the center of attention. So even if there are people in her orbit who love each other, she never really sees that. I actually think Emilia’s expression captures that perfectly as well, she both seems put off but unsure of how to react and borderline unsure of WTF it is that she’s actually seeing, because again, it’s pretty abnormal to see people be that emotionally open in public anyway and because it’s something that Dany is completely unaccustomed to seeing when it’s not directed towards her.

And of course, for Sansa and Theon as a pair, it’s extremely heartwarming and emotional to see how deeply they care for one another, and it’s even more touching to realize how powerfully they have had to repress their own emotions for so long and that they have now gotten to the point where they’re so completely unashamed and completely lacking in self consciousness that they’re willing to be that raw no matter who’s looking.

Overall, despite the massive flaws of season 8, I do have to say that the scenes between Dany and Sansa are some of my favorite and I wish we had gotten so much more out of them. I actually think the performance chemistry between Emilia and Sophie is better than nearly every other character that Dany was introduced to late in the game, and I think it was a huge mistake to not explore that more and to not fully clarify that these two literal queens are not bickering over a boy’s attention.

#Anonymous #sansa stark #anti daenerys targaryen #dark!daenerys #got #got meta #sansa stark meta #daenerys targaryen meta #meta

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gofancyninjaworld · 4 years

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watching ONE write women

One of the joys of following a writer for a while is that you get to follow how their ideas develop. One of the things that ONE brought up in an interview (annoyingly I’ve lost the link) was that he didn’t think that he wrote women particularly well.

I was thinking about that. When ONE says that, what comes across to me is that he has no problem writing a female character as an individual rather than a role. All the girls and women he’s written so far have their own voices, own their problems, and have something to do within the story that would be noticeable if they weren’t there. Quite frankly, that alone is over and above what various tests of representation (such as the Bechdel test) ask for.

What he’s not so good at is appreciating what being female brings to a character’s experiences and outlook. But he’s not just left it at that. More on what he’s been doing in a bit (and under the cut).

“...the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges...” -- Anatole France

With his sharp eye and talent for exploring the implications of whatever he posits, ONE has brought up some issues are not inherently gendered, but usually are.

A: Childcare

Metal Bat appears to be the main, if not sole, carer for Zenko. How it affects him is fascinating. He’s one of the longest-serving heroes in the Hero Association, being there before Class S was formed, literally within the first six months of its establishment. He’s been extremely loyal and is highly trusted by the HA -- they put Narinki’s life into his hands without fear. His battle strength is literally praised to the heavens.

Metal Bat makes Zenko a priority, structuring his availability around her school schedule and being present in her life. He gets very angry if these times are threatened without overwhelmingly good cause. His reward is to be perceived by the Hero Association as less committed and so they under-recognise him in terms of ranking, and since rank and pay are linked, under-pay him as well. It’s a story all too many women can relate to. But that’s not all.

Because ONE writes so simply yet conscientiously, something else comes up and has a peek: intersectionality. It’s the concept that we often have multiple social disadvantages that interact and compound our problems. The first is sexism. Regardless of whatever childcare policy the HA has, the sexist assumption that only women care (for the record: this is bullshit) makes it unlikely for them to ask Metal Bat. Second, social capital. The fact that he’s Zenko’s sole carer means that he has low social capital, that informal network of people around you who can help out -- or tell you where to find help and what things to say in order to get that help. [Aside: this is why programmes to help people, unless they reach out aggressively, tend to disproportionately attract those who need it least.] Metal Bat doesn’t have the knowledge. The third is the challenge brought by his being a 17-year old boy. He’s quick to perceive challenge as threat, and threat as something to be met by anger. Witness him threatening to smash the HA headquarters if it turns out that he’s missed Zenko’s piano recital for nothing -- completely not useful to anything. [Another aside: the importance of learning to disambiguate emotions and do useful things with them even if it means being vulnerable as a part of growing up as a man is the whole point of Mob Psycho 100.]

What do the Neo Heroes do? They ask Metal Bat if he wants help with childcare AND HE JUMPS SHIP PRONTO. If that’s not an indictment of the Hero Association, I don’t know what is.

B: Emotional Labour

Saitama has been delegating more and more of the day-to-day work to Genos. What started as an act of service to express his gratitude, respect and love for Saitama is increasingly turning into a second job for Genos. It’s not just the cooking and cleaning and the shopping and the bailing Saitama out if he’s forgotten his wallet again, it’s also the worrying about Saitama, sometimes at inappropriate times. Has he drunk enough water? Has he clean clothes in good repair? What sales is he looking forward to? Have they been marked on the calendar? It’s honestly not doing Genos any good, and it’s one of those things all too many frustrated wives and girlfriends can relate to. This doing the practical and emotional work for another is not intrinsically gendered, but funny how often it breaks that way.

It’s not doing Saitama any good either. He’s using this freed up time to fritter his life ever more aggressively away, playing games with King and finding pointless competitions to enter, all while complaining about feeling less and less connected to anything (if you don’t address the problem, it doesn’t get better, duh!). Worse, he’s started to take that gift of service for granted, witness him airily telling King how he’ll just have Genos go clear up the mess of monsters he’s left outside the flat. I was heartened to see what happened when Saitama went a little too far and asked Genos to go cook and instead of jumping up, Genos gave him the the evil eye and let the awkwardness hang there. That was good -- there’s hope for this guy yet.

Speaking of Genos, he also over-functions for something else Saitama struggles with: advocating for himself. He tends to have Genos be the ugly one so he doesn’t have to be. You can see just how bad he is at self-advocacy when Forte and friends could invite themselves into Saitama’s house at will despite his protests -- and it stopped the instant Genos showed up.

In a sense, it’s not surprising that Genos can do that. When you’re differently-abled (and for once, this is not a euphemism) as he is, being able to clearly ask for what you want and need is life-and-death necessary. If Genos was shy about it, he’s long since had to discard that. But! Let me point to a nuance the story touches on. How pushy you can be without being punished for it depends a lot on who you are, intersecting strongly with race, gender, social status, etc (remember my mentioning intersectionality before). What’s called assertive in a man is called bitchy or sharp-elbowed in a woman. Even taking gender and race out of the equation, there’s still a noticeable difference in the way the world treats Saitama and Genos. You don’t need to be Sigmund Freud to understand the way the short, ugly Dr. Kuseno sweats making sure that Genos positively radiates youth, beauty, wealth and power. That’s part of his right to ask and be taken seriously. You can see how drastically different it is for Saitama, even from his middle school days. Genos notices, and makes sure to leverage his social power for Saitama.

What I love about these examples are that by not automatically heaving a woman into these characters’ roles, ONE’s brought a less frequently seen angle that illustrates the problems they deal with are not ‘womens’ issues per se but are rather inequities that disproportionately affect women -- which is at the heart of what feminists keep saying. When you read Makai no Ossan, you can appreciate that ONE could have gone with female characters and done a great job, but his choosing not to has brought a very welcome dimension to the story.

Women proper

“I’m not like other girls”

Still, bit by bit, ONE has been working more women into his stories. After his interview, the next thing he worked on was the single-volume sequel to Mob Psycho 100, Reigen. He took his challenge head-on by making the POV character Tome and putting her in an all-girls’ high school.

Throughout the story, we see Tome thinking of herself as special, better than her fellow classmates, whom she sees as vapid and shallow. The denouement comes with Tome being humbled as she gets to know her classmates better and realises that they pursue interests just as varied and weird as hers -- only they’re also practicing being socially adept on top of that.

It’s a gentle story, but it’s still a great side-swipe at self-internalised misogyny, the idea that it’s shameful to be like a ‘girl’ and it’s something to distance oneself from. Fortunately, Tome can laugh at herself and grow up.

“Ha ha ha”

For a long time, the only (named) women we had in OPM were Tatsumaki and her younger sister Fubuki. We’ve gotten more women both good and bad: in particular, it’s been very gratifying to find that one of the most dangerous, story-shaping villains in the story is Psykos.

In the webcomic, ONE’s pushed even further. A recent Tweet featured him talking about how hard he finds it to draw women. And he’s added several. No same-face for him! I’ll talk about the new heroines he’s added, but first, let me draw your attentions to something most artists don’t realize they do: massively skew the gender distribution of crowds, even when it is incredibly illogical to do so. With ONE, even drawing the crowds at the fair who gaggle at Amai Mask, he’s got a far more even balance of women and they’re not all young and pretty -- which is much more true-to-life. He’s in the business of drawing people.

ONE has featured microaggressions before, particularly in the way Fubuki can have perfectly sound things to say and be totally ignored, but he brings it properly to the fore with Suiko. No one calls her incompetent, but the little put downs she gets when she puts herself forward for the hero test in lieu of her brother, oh they’re well-observed The look on her face just makes it. I love the way she shut the recruiters up subsequently.

Let’s conclude this tour with a look at Webigaza’s lonely figure. We have another mono-manically focused cyborg in the story. Genos has been called a lot of things -- determined, obsessive even, but crazy? Never. Notice who it’s been reserved for instead. It’s no slip of the tongue.

Wrapping Up

I’m of the impression that ONE really wants to try to capture as much of the human experience as he can in his stories, however whimsical or fantastical the stories themselves are. I’m disarmed by his humility in accepting that he’ll never have the lived experience of half the world’s population but he sure as hell can put some effort into learning how to to writing well-realised, believable, female characters.

I watch ONE’s continued development as a writer with interest.

#OPM #Reigen #ONE #meta #long #women #female characters #I like that ONE treats women not as creatures whose problems and experiences can't possibly be understood #but as people first and foremost #perfect? No and who is #ongoing and adding to his understanding -- yes

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revasnaslan · 3 years

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1, 5, 9, 12?

anyway i can't figure out how to do a readmore on mobile so you get the whole post in all its glory. i apologize in advance i wrote a lot 😭😭

1. Which plotline or mission in the series do you feel had the most wasted potential?

anything having to do with cerberus is the first that comes to mind tbh. like making the protagonist join them in 2 was a very interesting choice, and i think the game tries to humanize them because of this, and i think in certain aspects it does this well... but then when 3 rolls around they made them cackling bad guys with absolutely zero nuance who seem to actively be working against everybody else because?? reasons i guess??

and i think that this had potential because i do think there is a way to make them being secondary antagonists in 3 work... like there could have been an implication or an outright statement that the alliance has fractured because of the reapers and the war and a lot of soldiers were going over to cerberus because they seemed like the best option. it would explain how cerberus (which was a spliter cell iirc) suddenly has all this manpower despite only six months passing between 2 and 3.

5. What's a scene you would have liked to see in the series?

i would have liked to see shepard actually acknowledge that their autonomy was taken from them when they were forcibly brought back from the dead in 2, and i just do not understand how people gloss over it a lot of the time. now granted i don't think the devs really thought about it hard but like shepard was stone cold dead, the comic implies their body was so mangled you wouldn't even be able to recognize them, and yet they were brought back because only they could do the job or something??

it's very weak justification for a) keeping shepard as the protagonist and b) having a reason for shepard to be aligned with cerberus despite everything cerberus has done in the past possibly including being the reason they're the sole survivor of their unit on akuze. and i'm not saying it isn't an interesting choice to be forced into that position because they're the only ones who seem to realize what's going on, but i do wish it had been in anyway acknowledged by the text.

i think that's why i'm so fixated on the idea mr illusive is shepard's father, and why i used it as the backstory for my sheps. because he is definitely the type of asshole who would disregard his child's autonomy for the greater good or to keep the humanity saving in the family, as it were.

9. Which NPCs would you have most liked to have as squadmates?

i have multiple answers for this one actually, but the context for them are very different!!

so i adore kolyat, anybody who has spoken to me for more than five seconds know that he's my boy, i'm Very Attached To Him. that being said, i can acknowledge that he probably shouldn't be an actual squadmate in 3 considering he's a whole eighteen-to-nineteen year old who really shouldn't be running around in the middle of a goddamn war. however i do think it would have been very fun to have him as one of the squadmates you could take in that arcade shooter minigame from the citadel dlc!!

there's also feron!! i'm really intrigued by him as a drell who is seemingly not connected to the compact at all and as an information broker with a very firm code of ethics he adheres to. he has a lot of potential to be an interesting character but both the writers and the fandom totally sleep on him. i think he gets all of three mentions in 3 despite being a major supporting character in lair of the shadow broker (who is kind of the reason that dlc happens at all), and the wealth of potential he has was completely overlooked. i would have even taken him being a guest squadmate in the same way as aria and nyreen in the omega dlc.

a very self indulgent answer is probably irikah. like if she had lived i could see it being so interesting to explore drell culture through someone else besides thane, and she is implied to have a very strong code of ethics she holds to that seem to run counter to a typical character in an action rpg. her reactions to events during the games would have been fascinating to see imo. i do have an au where she's alive but i haven't worked out how she fits into the squad dynamic yet or if she is even a squadmate in 2, but her being a squadmate in 3 could be an interesting direction to take it.

..... to the surprise of no one, all my choices are drell 😔😔

12. How happy are you with your ME3 ending of choice? What would you change about it, if anything?

personally, i don't really care for any of the endings and have been kind of poking at writing one of my own entirely from scratch that completely reworks the catalyst and the goddamn starchild sequence because i think it would have been a lot more poignant if the people who had died along your journey were the ones talking to you (i.e., default it switches between like thane, mordin, and ashley/kaidan) because the entire point of the starchild was to be invoking a form shepard would be comfortable with?? okay so lean into that manipulation of that, have the catalyst take the form of people shepard "failed" and invoke a guilt response.

now that being said, i usually take the destroy ending because i loathe the implications of synthesis and the non-consensual body modification therein, but i also kind of hate control because their own narrative shows how futile it is through mr illusive?? destroy has the least amount of holes in it imo.

but the narrative decision to make the destroy ending affect all synthetic life is beyond stupid because a whole theme in these games is whether or not synthetics are sentient people or not. and we know they are, because we see it in legion and edi throughout the games. which is why it's uh... kind of uncomfortable because what the game is having shepard do, with the knowledge that synthetic life are people, is committing mass genocide on an intergalactic scale?? and like that could be interesting, if there was some acknowledgement within the text that what shepard did was essentially doing to synthetics what the reapers have been doing to them... but frankly i wouldn't trust the devs to write that considering they wrote the whole arrival dlc with about as much delicacy as a 2x4 to the face so 🙃🙃

#rev's rambling again

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pentanguine · 3 years

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Queer language in definition vs practice: In which Python overanalyzes the English language, probably overshares, and gets all tangled up in transness

I’m thinking about the word transmasculine. It resonates so strongly with me, because I see it as being very broad and gestural, like “[waves a hand at manhood] something like that, more or less, kinda;” or literally: “I am trans and I am masculine.” But to other people it seems to mean “I am a trans man.” Which seems so counterintuitive to me, because…why is there even another word, aside from “trans man” and “FTM,” if it describes the exact same concept, with the exact same rigid boundaries??

And it’s important to me to have a word that gestures vaguely at queer masculinity, because otherwise I tend to feel a) guilty, like I am unconsciously playing into Harmful Nonbinary Stereotypes and not being gender neutral enough, or not being upfront about how not gender neutral I feel; and b) lost inside myself, like I should be as androgynous as possible at all times, and I should really try to be more feminine (because if you supported women and feminine people you’d embrace that for yourself, right, and anyway you have such a pretty body, you’d be so good at it if you tried). So it helps to have an anchor to hold on to and say “this is part of me, I know it’s there, I acknowledge it and I will make it deliberate and joyful.”

The only other (prominent) word that does that work seems to be butch, which is just…not me. At all. I associate it with a number of things that are either actively alienating to me or just factually untrue/not emotionally resonant, like: wlw culture and spaces; working class identity; externally recognizable masculinity; buzzcuts; sex; anarcho-communists on tumblr; flannel, etc. (Associations there, not a checklist) It’s a utilitarian word that gets me places in search engines, and doesn’t provoke much emotional response in me at all.

But then someone will define butch in the vaguest possible terms and it’s like…oh? Usually it’s something like “a queer relationship to masculinity, a reclaiming and rewriting of masculinity” and yes, yes, but…that’s what I mean when I say I’m transmasculine!! To me, transmasculine spaces (defined loosely as “places on the internet where that word gets thrown around a lot by the people in them”) are home, in a frankly alarming full-body gut-punch heart-wrench blood-rush aching yearning euphoric way, an emotional response like nothing I have ever felt before. I am not a very emotional person, and I don’t usually decide things based on emotions, but I feel like I can’t not identify this way, because otherwise the feeling is just there, inside me, gnawing me open until I feel like all my ugly gendered guts are going to spill onto the floor. And naming it is a way of containing it, and making it a reasonable, managed thing; a neat little thing I can put on a shelf in my room and point out to my friends when they come over (“Would you like to see my transmasculinity? I keep it in this little box here on the mantel and take it out for special occasions”).

Anyway—the word transmasculine resonates. I see myself here, and here, and oh god here, and I’m just not in here at all. Butch is a fascinating identity from a queer historical and cultural perspective, but it’s not me. Unfortunately, to return to the point, it’s the word people seem to want to use to describe my internal feelings about masculinity and queer identity. It’s probably not the word they’d use to describe my gender presentation if they met me in person, which is marginally gratifying, but I still feel like I am being seized from the outside and reclassified, like the boundaries of this word (transmasc) that I find so broad and welcoming are being forcibly narrowed so that I’ll stumble back into the awkwardly shaped waiting room called butch. That broad definition of butch is so resonant, but in practice I just feel lost and out of place; the definition other people seem to have in their heads about transmasculinity squeezes me right out, but when I encounter other living, breathing (albeit virtual) transmasc people, I just…explode, implode, start crying, start jumping, start smiling, start wanting, start hurting, something.

Anyway. There’s no point whatsoever to this, I’m just feeling…sad, I think, that this word I love so much and feel so connected to just does not articulate me well to other people, and the best way to accurately convey my feelings about gender to most other queer people is to use a word I find awkward and full of incorrect implications. I want language to be creative! I want queer language, especially, to be fluid and personal! I don’t feel like the word transmasculine is being given its full range in any of those departments.

(And on a closing note I do just want to say that transmasculine and butch are by no means mutually exclusive—I, personally, have a hell of a lot of feelings about the one and a sort of bemused neutrality toward the other, but there are plenty of people who identify as both, and I wasn’t trying to pit them against each other here, although that does seem to be how it came out.)

#personal #containing: negative self talk (said with self awareness)#some light body image issues #unconscionable amounts of 11pm navel-gazing #grammatically structured sentences in spite of myself #and visceral metaphors (literally)#the blue ones are just little sillies #there's probably a lot of residual feeling about the tumblr exclusionist lsbians lurking under the surface here as well #but i don't want to go into that because i'm not trying to bash words i don't personally connect to #i just want to muse on the joy i find in other words and how that joy gets lost somewhere between my mouth and other people's brains

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askmerriauthor · 5 years

Text

Pokemon SwSh Thoughts - Post Game

So I’ve finished Pokemon Sword’s primary content. All that’s left is to finish up the PokeDex and drive myself insane trying to whip up all the variations of Alcremie. That, and delaying buying an online subscription for as long as possible before I bother with trading to get the other game’s exclusives. Here’s some thoughts on the game after the fact:

Pokemon SwSh really needed to come out in late 2020, period. I’ve enjoyed the game so far, but I’ve played it for about a week without putting in too much time/effort grinding and I’ve already done pretty much everything there is to do. I had my Starter leveled up to 100 before I even left the Wild Area for the very first time. The pacing and content depth of this game are pretty much non-existent, whereas the majority of the effort has clearly been put toward refining the competitive combat development. That’s great for those players who really like the battle system, but not so much for those of us who like story and broader gameplay elements.

Pro - Streamlined Gameplay One thing I’ve wanted in Pokemon for ages has been the ability to skip tutorials. I understand the necessity of having them, as every game that comes out is going to be some player’s first and their presence is for that player. But at least having the option to skip them for us old hats would be nice. SwSh does that! I was delighted to discover that the game allows you to bypass tutorials with a simple yes/no prompt when a new element is introduced. How to catch Pokemon, type match-ups, how to heal at Pokemon Centers, and so forth - all the stuff previous games led us through by the nose has been made optional this time around.

I’ve seen some people saying that this game holds the player’s hand too much as it leads us from one gameplay element to the next and doesn’t let us progress at our own leisure. To some degree this is true, but it’s far less egregious than in previous games, such as SuMo. There’s yet to be a good balance between giving the player free reign and giving them enough guidance to ensure we never feel lost, but this has been an inoffensive example as far as I’m concerned. The game does end up feeling rather railroaded, but I don’t necessarily consider that a fault of hand-holding. I’ll get to this matter later on.

Pro - The Style Galar is a very pretty region and the game makes good use of the Switch’s higher capacity to produce excellent backdrops for the player to explore. Many of the Pokemon have charming animations (Falinks is my favorite on this respect). The towns are all really well-designed in terms of visuals, especially compared to the bare-bones looks of older generations. I feel like there could have been more, but what we got is still great.

Pro - Implications in Lore Those of you who know me know how much I love lore and world building. Pokemon, as a franchise, is ripe with opportunity to examine its lore to the most tiny and obscure detail, so any new addition to the franchise is welcome on that front. Galar has some pretty fascinating nuggets to contribute.

I love that the League in Galar, as well as competitive Pokemon Training in general, is treated like a career sport. In specific, I love that this view and practice is exclusive to Galar - I wouldn’t like it at all if the entire franchise shifted to this angle, but it works great for a one-off region. I like that Kabu specifically relocated himself from Hoenn to join the sports league as it doesn’t exist in his home region. The Champion being a sort of major celebrity/superhero, the way Gym Leaders can recruit proteges or even inheritors of their rank from among contenders, the sort of clique all the Gym Leaders have with one another - it’s a really neat dynamic. I also like the notion that actually completing the Gym Challenge isn’t something common and most Trainers who try rarely make it even halfway through. That’s an interesting contrast to other regions where collecting Gym Badges seems almost as a given and the League itself is considered the real challenge, or where the whole endeavor is designed to be finished as a matter of course, like in Alola.

There’s also some really neat additions to the overall lore brought in from the Pokemon Masters mobile game. While its place in canon is questionable, it does specifically mention Galar in a few places. The idea that Pokemon who do not appear in the current Dex are banned from Galar by customs (perhaps identified as potentially dangerous/invasive species) is an interesting one. So is the claim that Iris - the Champion of Unova in BW2 - is a cousin of Leon and Hop. I love it when there are connections amid titles like that as it really helps build a more unified setting.

-Edit-: Darn, apparently those screenshots were fakes. Strike that positive from the list, I suppose.

Mixed Pro/Con - The Availability of Pokemon and the Wild Area I’m not talking about Dexit - I have my own thoughts on that explained elsewhere and frankly don’t think it’s going to end up as bad as everyone is fretting over in the long run. No, in this particular case I’m focused on the availability of Pokemon that are in the game itself.

To put it simply... it’s too easy. I know that filling out the PokeDex isn’t supposed to be a huge challenge, but I’ve gotten the majority of it done - evolved forms, item-reliant forms, gender/size/color variations included - with pretty much no effort whatsoever. I like the idea of the Wild Area in principle but what it ends up being in practice is lacking. It’s too easy to just hoover up Pokemon at a breakneck pace, which leads to other zones and the Wild Area itself becoming pretty much immediately obsolete. I have no need to return to them once I’ve gotten everything I need and there’s not enough general content to urge me to visit again.

The Wild Area itself is a big open sandbox that you can roam around in, which is nice compared to more linear zones in past games. Galar has its railroad routes, but they’re brief (aside from the obligatory overlong water route, which even then is still quite a lot smaller than other regions’ have been). However, it’s just that - a big open sandbox. You can wander through it very easily and even traipse into the “high level” zones without fear because you can see all the Pokemon coming and give them a wide berth to avoid them. There aren’t any obstacles or challenges within the Wild Area itself, and the game makes it supremely easy to find Pokemon even under specific weather/time conditions, which I feel is a missed opportunity. I would have rather the Wild Area been MUCH bigger and more involved, full of places to explore and puzzles to solve. Similarly, I would rather that Pokemon were more difficult to come by as well - that a greater deal of effort would have been put toward tracking and discovering certain harder-to-find Pokemon, with more in-game detective work to find your prize.

Mixed Pro/Con - The Characters The ensemble cast of new Gym Leaders are great - I enjoy the majority of them and frankly want more interactions, more encounters, just more in general. That’s sort of the problem though - I want more. The game itself criminally under-utilizes these characters, especially compared to how much more involved and explored Gym Leaders have been in recent games. There is precious little content using the Gym Leaders here in Galar as it stands and I constantly found myself wanting them to hang out longer and have the chance to learn more about them. Their League Cards are a neat little addition full of interesting tidbits about their histories, natures, and relationships with each other, but I would MUCH rather have gotten to see all that play out in the game itself rather than read it as a flavor blurb.

On the con side of this, however, is the fact that all of the characters are extremely one-dimensional. We’ve been seeing a steady increase in the depth and development of supporting characters in the games since BW onward, with SuMo arguably having the most to date. The overall characterization in SwSh is incredibly lacking by comparison as we don’t get nearly enough time to be with the cast, nor is the cast given the chance to present more than one note per. Nobody has any sort of emotional growth or development. The closest thing to a character arc in the game is Hop’s acceptance of the idea that he’s not going to be the Champion, but it doesn’t have anywhere near as much punch as it could and is over in the blink of an eye compared to how he spends THE ENTIRE GAME repeating the same “I’m gonna be the Champion/Hokage/Pirate King!” spiel every time he’s on screen.

Con - Dynamaxing and Max Raid Battles I’m not really on board with the whole “Mega-Evolution is best! No more gimmicks!” train because that’s just silly to me. Every game has its gimmick and the way Pokemon gradually picks up tricks and traits from its past versions to consolidate into newer titles is one of its strengths. That said, Dynamaxing is worthless and a pointless addition to the game, both in presentation and practice.

The visual of a Pokemon going kaiju is a neat concept and one I was initially intrigued by, but in practice it falls flat because it’s as thin as cardboard. It’s just Mega-Evolution and Z-Moves smooshed together with an additional 3 round time limit tacked on. All it functionally does is buff your Pokemon’s HP pool and add additional weather/status effects to certain attacks, but in some cases the Dynamax versions of attacks are actually weaker/less useful than their base form. In Gym Battles all the way through the final League fight with Leon, I didn’t bother with Dynamaxing because my Pokemon were strong enough to not need it. I could one-shot Dynamaxed Pokemon with ease using a non-Dynamaxed Pokemon and that really shows a flaw in the design if ever there was one. Dynamaxing doesn’t add or improve anything vital to gameplay - it’s just fluff.

Max Raid Battles as found in the Wild Area are even worse. For those of you who don’t know, these are instanced battles against a Dynamaxed/Gigantamaxed wild Pokemon where you team up with three other players/NPCs. If you win, you get a bunch of useful items and have the chance to catch the wild Pokemon as well, which is the only way you can get certain Gigantamax-capable Pokemon reliably.

The issue with these Max Raid Battles is that they’re an absolute slog. In the early stages of the game they’re all super easy to the point that I could solo them and thus gathered mountains of EXP-boosting candies, which let me overlevel my Pokemon beyond reason. Since the whole “your Pokemon is too high level and won’t listen to you” thing apparently doesn’t apply to Starters and special Event Pokemon, I was able to max-level and run rampant across all opposition with my Starter and my special “thanks for buying early” Meowth. HOWEVER. The difficulty scale of the Max Raid Battles increases with your game progress, so by the time I finished the game and went back into the Wild Area, the Max Raid Battles’ difficulty had ramped up. That’s an okay compromise on its face, but the manner in which the difficulty has increased is poor game design. The battles aren’t any harder, they just take longer - the wild Pokemon has more HP, tosses up a few rounds of shields to soak damage at the start and again halfway through the fight, and purges stat boosts from the player and party throughout the battle. It just makes the fights a pain in the ass to get through rather than making them more challenging or fun, and it’s gotten to the point that I don’t even bother with them anymore. They’re just not worth the trouble, not even for the sake of trying to farm EXP candies because, at this point in the game, all Pokemon in the Wild Area scale up to level 60+ and thus are perfectly serviceable as EXP farming fodder themselves.

On a lore side of things, Dynamaxing is really confusing. There’s the whole visual aspect of the Pokemon growing to giant sizes and sometimes changing their appearances, and there’s these massive arenas built to facilitate the whole thing. But the game itself goes out of its way to impress the fact that the Pokemon aren’t actually getting bigger. They just appear to grow in size and haven’t actually physically changed themselves so Dynamaxing is more like a giant hard light holographic projection than anything else? It’s just a really weird design choice to have made and I don’t understand why it was included.

Con - The Writing So, writing is very important to me. It’s literally been my job for the past decade with various game studios. I don’t consider myself any sort of literary snob as I feel there’s a place for schlock right alongside masterpieces - they all serve a specific purpose and fulfill a particular hunger the reader would like satisfied.

That said, SwSh’s writing is abysmal.

Right on the face, there’s not enough of it. The game is criminally short and light on content, which directly impacts its pacing. Remember earlier when I mentioned that things felt railroaded? That’s because there’s not enough story to rest on - it all flies by as fast as can be, forcing the player along a very narrow and brief chain of events that don’t feel consequential at all. Further, the player has no agency in events whatsoever. It’s not the player’s story - it’s Hop’s story. We’re the supporting role to his journey, shallow as that arc may be. Hop is the one who initiates the events of the game without our input as a character and then we spend the entire game following him around, or being pushed into the next event by other characters who are facilitating Hop. At no point is the player ever given the chance to express their own characterization, motivation, or even opinions. Nearly every two-choice dialogue option that appears boils down to “Yes” or “Slightly More/Less Enthusiastic Yes”, which is a huge downgrade from the genuine negative responses and NPC reactions that were present in SuMo.

In terms of overall plot, SwSh has pretty much the same level of depth and complexity as the original Red/Blue titles, and that is as scathing a criticism in this modern age as I can possibly imagine. The whole story is “run in a circle, collect badges, fight vaguely present villainous threat, fight league.” We are actively forced from one gym fight to the next with no time to breathe, no story-focused events in between, and not even any chance to appreciate the gym, its leader, or even the towns they take place in. It’s one and done - once you’ve got the badge there’s no reason to hang around and the story shuffles us along quickly as can be. I mean that literally in some cases - there are hints of a greater plot at hand with Sonia investigating the history of Galar’s legends and the potential machinations of mega-corporate mogul Chairman Rose. But each time those are broached in game play, the game pushes the player off-screen and says “Well, that’s not something you need to worry about. Go get another badge!” I mean, LITERALLY! There’s a point where The Plot begins to kick in where Pokemon begin to spontaneously Dynamax and cause havoc, which is the narrative queue for the player to become involved and for the story to reveal a new facet. But when that happens, Leon LITERALLY says “leave this to the adults, you just focus on your Gym Challenge” and runs off-screen to handle it himself. It would be a good narrative subversion if it led up to things eventually getting out of hand and the player getting roped into things, or the player having the ability to defy such warnings and interject themselves into danger. But that doesn’t happen - the game just forces us to focus on the Gym Challenge alone and keeps all the actual plot of the game off-screen away from us. This is very poor narrative design and game design alike, and it all comes to nothing because we’re forced to clean up everything in the end anyway by battling the villain and legendaries as per usual.

Though I should also point out that there’s no villain in this game.

But what about Team Yell and Chairman Rose, I hear you ask? They’re not villains, both literally and figuratively respectively. Team Yell never really does anything other than act as brief gate locking elements throughout the game until you finish the Gym you’re at, then they bounce off to the next part of the route they’re set to block. They don’t do anything bad and, as it’s later revealed, they’re actually just a bunch of Spikemuth Gym staffers who are posing as hooligans to support Marnie. They’re literally not villains and, once you beat the Spikemuth Gym, they actually become supporting characters who cheer for the player character and help out against the actual supposed villain of the game.

The actual “villain” of the game is Chairman Rose and his assistant Oleana. However, they’re only villains because the script says they are. They don’t actually do anything bad throughout the entire game nor is there any indication that they have some sort of grand master plan. The most we get is some unusual happenings like small quakes and explosions in the distance, but the game never allows us any chance to investigate - we’re just shoved off toward the next Gym each time. So when Chairman Rose is finally revealed to be the Big Bad, it comes completely out of left field and seems to happen for no reason whatsoever. Further, IT IS FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER. Chairman Rose’s plan and goal is never explained in depth - all we get is the vague indication that he believes that Galar isn’t sustainable and there will be an inevitable energy crisis in about 1,000 years, and somehow his EVIL SCHEME will fix it. But, like, even Leon flat-out says “I understand your concern but you’re being hasty, this doesn’t need to be rushed, chill out for five seconds and let’s figure this out reasonably”. Instead Rose interrupts the Champion match and announces his EVIL SCHEME on global broadcast for literally no good reason. There was no dire immediacy that required him to do it right then and there, or in that manner, but the plot needed to move us along so that’s how it goes.

It really doesn’t help that, prior to all this, there’s absolutely no indication at all that Rose nor Oleana are bad guys. They’re just business folk who appear to have nothing but good intentions and support for Leon, with the other adults of the cast all happily trusting them. There is nothing to make them seem suspicious in practice and they offer no reason to doubt them at all, so them suddenly being the bad guys is just confusing. Further, how the player is first introduced to the concept of them being antagonists is easily the most ridiculous logic jump and overreaction I’ve seen since the old Adam West Batman television show. So get this: after a battle, Leon says he’ll meet Player and Hop for dinner to celebrate. Player and Hop wait for Leon, but he never shows up. Another NPC explains that Leon was called in for a last-minute meeting by Chairman Rose (who is his boss and has made such requests of Leon’s time throughout the game, as I feel is important to point out) and apologizes for having to miss the dinner plans. Simple enough sort of situation, right? The sort of thing that any reasonable person would shrug and say “Well, that sucks but okay, let’s go eat on our own then” to, right? So what happens here instead?

The Player, Hop, Marnie, and her Gym Leader brother GATHER A SMALL MOB AND STORM CHAIRMAN ROSE’S BUSINESS HQ, FIGHTING THEIR WAY THROUGH SECURITY.

I mean, escalation much? We all have smartphones - just send Leon a text, for goodness’ sake. I’m playing through these events constantly going “why the hell are we doing this and why is everyone acting like it’s some sort of dire emergency?”. And do you know what happens when we finally kick down the doors to Chairman Rose’s office? We find Chairman Rose and Leon quietly having a peaceful chat, after which Leon apologizes for having to cancel the dinner plans and we all walk out together like nothing happened. It was just this huge, needless overreaction that has no consequence and that neither Rose nor Leon even bat an eye at. We, as the players, learn absolutely nothing of importance and are back on the Gym Challenge immediately with no functional changes to the narrative.

Like... what was the point of that?! How was that the best option to try and put Chairman Rose and his underlings into the role of antagonists for us to oppose?

So what is Chairman Rose’s EVIL SCHEME anyway? Basically he wants to provide Galar with renewable clean energy which... uh... is bad? Somehow? Apparently he plans to use a Legendary Pokemon called Eternatus - apparently the source of Dynamaxing - which is literally never mentioned at any point in the game except precisely when it’s time to fight/capture it, nor does fighting/capturing it have any impact on the story or setting. You would think that the player being in control of a massive Eldritch horror that has UNLIMITED POWER at its disposal would be something of a sticking point somewhere in the story, but no. Eternatus and Rose’s plan are never mentioned until precisely the time you need to deal with them, and once that’s done they’re both never mentioned again. Done and done all in one. No gradual seeding of information, no hints and clues throughout the game, no development of lore - just wham, bam, thank you ma’am and off we go.

Y’know, call me silly but in a game that has undertones referencing climate change, extinction of animal species, and criticisms against capitalism run amok, is it really a good idea to depict the guy advocating for clean energy to be bad? That feels like a missed mark to me.

The post-game plot, should one bother to call it that, is just inane. It basically boils down to a pair of one-shot baddies who show up and say “Ha ha! We’re rich and that means we’re better than everyone! Watch as we cause trouble for vague reasons, get hoist by our own petard, and then fuck off forever! Byeeeee~!” The post-game is completely pointless and doesn’t add anything of value at all. Which, again, compare to older games like ORAS’ post-game expansion content and it’s nothing but a damn shame.

SwSh’s writing is shallow and limited at best, with one-dimensional characters, no genuine conflict or resolution, terrible pacing, and repetitive elements that boomerang around over and over and over again to the point of annoyance. Compared to what we’ve seen Pokemon achieve in earlier titles like BW, ORAS, and SuMo, it makes it all the more obvious that SwSh was not given ANYWHERE near the time and love it needed in development and is a massive downgrade in that respect.

Con - Lots of Style, No Substance To wrap all this up - I enjoyed playing SwSh as much as I did any other early Pokemon game. I think that, as a first installment on a new system, it’s fine. That’s all - it’s just fine. It’s serviceable as a means of establishing the franchise onto the Switch and completing its move off purely-mobile mediums like the Gameboy and 3DS. It’s pretty to look at and has a superficial level of engagement, but its prettiness and level of content very quickly reveal themselves to be only skin deep. Once you get past the initial gloss there’s really nothing to this game compared to the content, involvement, and writing quality displayed in past titles on lesser-powered systems. The towns are all pretty but there’s nothing to do in any of them aside from a Gym battle - there’s no additional fun to be had in each location, making them little more than set pieces. The characters have initial appeal and potential for more, but the game never explores them at all. There’s room for a bigger narrative and interesting story with the elements presented, but no opportunity to actually see them fleshed out. The Wild Area seems big and involved at first, but as soon as you’ve gone around its loop once or twice you suddenly realize how small and compartmentalized it really is, and it lacks any reason to revisit in the end game. The major game play function - Dynamaxing/Gigantamaxing - is little more than a novelty that is basically irrelevant to gameplay itself and, in an absolutely baffling decision by the folk behind the official competitive scene, is actually somehow banned from being used in competitions? Like, not even “we’ve disabled the Dynamax button in online” but rather “if the competitive Pokemon you’ve spent so much time perfectly constructing has a Gigantamax form, it will not even be allowed access at all, so you better have an identical non-Gigantamax version on hand if you want to play”. So, what exactly is the point of even having Gigantamax Pokemon then?

Everything about SwSh seems half-baked. The ideas are there but they aren’t finished. It should have been given much more development time and, having been in the position of the creative/dev team under demands from the shareholders, I completely sympathize with Game Freak’s devs in all this. SwSh is ultimately a weak product but one with a lot of good ideas that weren’t given the chance to really shine. As such, I’ve got rather high hopes for the next installment to improve on the unfortunately thin foundation SwSh has set. Game Freak’s team has given us some amazing Pokemon games in the past and, assuming they’re given sufficient time and resources to make a title to their satisfaction, I have every confidence they’ll do so again.

#pokemon #pokemon swsh #game review #wall o'text #game freak #thank you game freak #hey nintendo - quit breathing down the dev team's neck and stand up to the shareholders for them #spoilers

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seyaryminamoto · 4 years

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Hiiiiii - read your Iroh and Ursa metas, loved them. Might I ask if you've any equally Hot Takes on the fandom's favorite punching bags - The Great Divide and Avatar Day?

Uuuuh well.

If the hot take is expected to be “they’re GREAT episodes!”, I… I’m afraid I’ll disappoint :’D I dislike them both, but who knows? Maybe my reasons for disliking them are different than other people’s?

My problem with The Great Divide is a little personal: that was the first episode I ever watched of ATLA, and if only I’d caught another one, anything slightly more plot-relevant than that, I might have become a fan of the show much sooner. I watched it, found certain things entertaining, others not so much, and concluded ATLA was a “monster of the week” show masquerading as a show with a plot. Which… made it less interesting to me, by mere logic. I was also very much a teenager back then, and while I still had decent instincts as far as storytelling was concerned, they weren’t as polished as they are now. So I didn’t really see much of ATLA worth my while in The Great Divide, and so, from a personal point of view, it’s not at all amongst my favorite episodes.

Upon rewatching the show in full, I was more forgiving of the Great Divide, not only because I understood the show’s dynamics better, but because ATLA actually has other episodes that, while featuring occasional relevant information and characters, could also feature not-so-relevant developments later on. So it’s not just Avatar Day and the Great Divide: the Fortuneteller, while a pretty liked episode, is honestly about as lacking in plot-heavy developments as those two are. Yet most people like that one :’) why’s that? Shippy reasons? Weeeell…

The truth is, if you ask me, that the Great Divide and Avatar Day and the Fortuneteller are episodes that allow the plot to slow down. This wasn’t so good in the early stages of Book 1, where slowing the plot too much actually made you forget there was a plot altogether… but when you watch the show as a whole, those moments of less tension, featuring Aang resolving problems and saving lives of completely ordinary people, were actually pretty good for what they were. That, in particular, is something I missed in Book 3: Team Avatar minus Zuko certainly do their best to help common people here and there through the first half of Book 3, but Zuko never does (and then when Zuko joins them, they never really do that again). What would I give for an episode where Zuko actually had to reason with the harm the war has caused not only to the Earth Kingdom, but to his own people… frankly, that oversight from the writing department is still absolutely absurd to me.

So, my problem with the Great Divide and Avatar Day isn’t that they weren’t plot relevant. My initial problem with the Great Divide, like I said earlier, was personal. But there’s also the feeling that not enough growth for the main characters takes place in these episodes: Aang resolved the Great Divide’s problem in the goofiest way he could. It was funny, creative and helpful, and kind of unexpected for your kind-hearted hero to lie to deal with a problem… though it also makes the situation more complex because of that, since he’s doing something ethically incorrect to establish peace between warring tribes. He did an objectively bad thing… for good purposes. So… it’s complicated, but it’s cool. It’s not half-bad as a concept that the show could explore.

Nonetheless, you can’t feel a HUGE, PALPABLE CHANGE in the relationship between Sokka and Katara after this episode. You really don’t. They spend the bulk of the episode at odds with each other, and they set aside their problems later… but everything they do, post-Great Divide, really doesn’t look like they learned a lot from their clashing, such as how to see things from each other’s POV or being more fair with each other… I, at least, don’t feel much of a change. No idea if other people see it differently, but they continue to clash pretty wildly later on, particularly in Book 3. So, did they learn something at all? If not… then the episode does end up feeling rather pointless because it doesn’t feel like the characters really are impacted by what happened in it, right?

And that, beyond anything else, is what makes these sorts of episodes feel like filler content: The Ember Island Players WAS filler content, absolutely, but you have scenes such as Zuko talking to Toph about Iroh, or Aang and Katara’s catastrophic rejected kiss, and it feels like SOMETHING happened in the episode even if in general it didn’t do anything plot-heavy. But aside from these small scenes that offer characters a chance to make at least a little progress (whether forward or backwards…), you even get a chance to see how the Fire Nation views the war, how they see themselves, how they see their Fire Lord. Even there, the show is giving you information that helps in the worldbuilding of the show. This is absent in The Great Divide, where the two warring tribes are never seen or heard of again, and they’re not exactly relevant because of that. Do they add some diversity to what we ought to perceive of the Earth Kingdom? Yes. Is it useful for anyone other than the rare fic writer who decides to use these characters for something? (never really seen it but I bet it has happened) Honestly, no.

Now, Avatar Day is annoying to me for another personal reason, even if it connects with some of what I said above: I HATE the way Sokka is characterized in this episode. I have more than enough qualms with how he’s characterized for many episodes in Book 2, but this one takes the cake.

Sokka is usually sharper than everyone else, helpful, resourceful, even when no one is really acknowledging it. Often he’s the voice of reason, the one who figures out what’s going on (such as in the Cave of Two Lovers, where he realizes the tunnels are changing, just to name one thing), but Avatar Day decided to feature him obsessing with acting as an investigator, and he kept stopping Katara from making the big reveals because HE had to do it, and she just rolled her eyes at him all along (from the get-go too, since she goads him into investigating by spurring his ego and yet she still is shown visibly annoyed when he starts raving about how he figured out the seal jerky thing back in the Water Tribe). All of this is to make Sokka a punchline of the “Katara is the smart one” joke that doesn’t even work when you take the rest of the show into account :’) so… this particular thing will ALWAYS rub me the wrong way with Avatar Day.

From this episode, I do like that Aang has to deal with people who hate him because he’s the Avatar. I always complained about how LOK basically had everyone swooning and adoring Korra even if they hated her, everyone constantly in awe of her prowess and talent, and those who DIDN’T like her were constantly shown as unreasonable jerks, such as the kid who throws that snowball at her, and we’re supposed to feel bad when she calls Korra the worst Avatar ever :’) we are REALLY expected to feel bad and to dislike the kid… when we literally watched Aang dealing with a mob that sentenced him to boil in oil for his past life’s crimes, and who burned effigies in his image. Right. A spiteful little kid is so very harmful, so heartbreaking, so jarring. Wow.

What I like about Avatars dealing with people disliking them, be it for solid reasons or for stupid ones, is that it feels REAL. Because it makes sense that people wouldn’t have an unanymous opinion of the Avatar as the savior of all the world, it makes sense that there’d be people who are jerks because they don’t like him on principle (or lack thereof). It’s normal, natural, completely common in human beings to just see something popular and go “MEEEEH I’VE SEEN BETTER”. And that’s what Avatar Day gave me, as far as worldbuilding is concerned.

As for more worldbuilding, Avatar Day certainly offered more insight on Kyoshi, but while most people found that fascinating and the insight in question absolutely wonderful because oh woooow she bends LAVA, I found it damning instead. If you need to know why… feel free to read this post (seeing as you like my controversial opinions you might even enjoy the whole thing x’D). While there’s some new novels now about Kyoshi that shed more light on who she was and how she did the things she did, I have certain gripes with some of the ideas I’ve heard those novels bring up. All in all, though, they shouldn’t change what canon brings forward with Kyoshi’s behavior with Chin: just in case you didn’t read that ask, I’ll say that my problem isn’t that she killed Chin, if anything, my problem is that she only killed him when he only had two places left to conquer.

She wouldn’t sit passively while he took her home. Because, uh, that’s the only place the almighty Avatar had to defend, I suppose.

Basically, Chin pulled a Kuvira with no opposition because the Avatar apparently didn’t care to involve herself in this particular problem until he was knocking on her door. Seriously? Best Avatar ever? Oookay then…

So, my favorite Gaang member, turned into a bad joke and unable to tell he’s been turned into a joke + the birth of a fandom-wide circlejerk around a character because she bent lava, nevermind the implications of her disregard for a tyrant’s conquest until it reached her doorstep + the worst point of Zuko’s theft spree = I don’t like this episode :’)

Avatar Day’s only redeeming quality for me, like I said, is Chin Village’s Avatar-hating ways, but ONLY as a concept. Even so, I wish they’d tackled that particular matter far more seriously than they did, because sure, Chin Village’s villagers were damn stupid, but hating the Avatar because she killed someone they idolized wasn’t exactly a far-fetched motivation. Where you’d think this could even serve as a sort of parallel between Zuko and Aang, where they both find themselves as the new heirs of their respective, long legacies, legacies full of people who did good and bad things, and the ones being held accountable for those bad things are THEM, however unfair it might be…? The show just turned the whole damn thing into a joke. And that’s just a real waste of screentime. I’m not against ATLA’s comedic episodes at all, not as a concept, and I really like the show’s humor in general… but this episode absolutely could have used less of it, especially when offering an opportunity for Aang to actually find out that his past lives aren’t at all as idealistic and righteous as he might have thought they were, or, at the very least, he could have reflected on the fact that they didn’t necessarily share his principles and beliefs. But nope. Missed opportunity, right there.

In short… I suppose people dislike Avatar Day because of similar reasons why I do, I can’t say for sure. I assume people dislike the Great Divide for its filler-nature and general irrelevance to the show, and that’s pretty reasonable? But in my opinion, the problem with so-called filler content is that it ought to be used to expand on characters, to further develop them, they should be a chance to slow down and offer introspection during a brief chance that opens up when heavy plots give the viewers, and the characters, a chance to pause and breathe for a while. Both Avatar Day and the Great Divide fail at this particular wishful standard I impose on fillers, though. And that, along with my personal reasons, is why they’d be part of my personal “least liked episodes of ATLA” list, if I were to make one. It isn’t to say there aren’t a few redeeming qualities in both episodes, I hope I made that clear… but that’s not enough to offset the negatives in this case.

Also, I brought up the Fortuneteller too as an example for a filler episode that actually doesn’t achieve much, same as these two don’t. I actually enjoy this episode quite a bit? The animation is really good and smooth here. But that’s neither here nor there :’)

The Fortuneteller certainly emphasized Aang’s crush on Katara, it also expanded on Katara’s character by showing how she’s so quick to believe fortunetelling, as opposed to Sokka, who absolutely doesn’t believe any of it. This generated a ridiculous but fun dynamic between the three characters through the episode, and it added Meng to the mix as well by featuring her as the girl Sokka misunderstands Aang is pining over. There’s a lot of silly comedy, but it’s in a much nicer way (in my opinion) than the one presented by Avatar Day, especially as it emphasizes elements of the character’s personalities: Sokka’s unwillingness to believe in spiritual nonsense, DESPITE he has already been caught up in Spirit World shenanigans, Aang’s hopeless pining over Katara and Aunt Wu’s encouragement for him to find his own destiny instead of being trapped by whatever she told him, and Katara’s obsession with asking Aunt Wu about EVERYTHING in her life up until the point where she finds herself considering that the super powerful bender she’ll marry could be Aang.

In general, this episode does handle its filler qualities as best as possible. But, and this is a problem I’ve seen brought up by other people before, it’s also an episode that features Katara pondering maybe Aang could be her one true love… only for the next episode to absolutely forsake that plotline and go for a wholly different subject. Which is, of course, fine… the problem is, we could’ve had Katara treating Aang slightly differently if she found herself thinking of him in a new light. That she didn’t treat him visibly differently, if anything, makes it look like right after her “He really is a powerful bender…” reveal, she just went “NAAAAAH, no way it would be him” and just decided to push aside all romantic possibilities with Aang until the Cave of Two Lovers. Which, considering Kataang is the endgame couple, is honestly another fumble by the writing department, as following up on this development would have easily silenced all those detractors of the ship who have interpreted the whole show under the tried and tired guise of “but she’s just mothering hiiiiiim!”.

One great thing about romance is watching it grow steadily, gradually… and when you have such big moments you ought to follow up on them, to a fault. It didn’t even have to be acknowledged in any massive ways, but it could have been acknowledged by featuring Katara wearing the necklace Aang weaved for her during later episodes, or something like that. But… there’s nothing palpable. Nothing serious. And this isn’t to say Kataang is lesser for it, but it would have been greater if the next episode had addressed the pending elephant in the room instead of going around it and pretending it didn’t exist at all.

So, while the filler in ATLA in general is better than the frequent fillers from anime, for instance, or than fillers in certain liveaction TV shows… it’s not quite perfect, let alone is it always top-tier writing that, while slowing down the plot, allows proper character introspection and growth. I really do like the Fortuneteller, as usual Aang’s work to help of those who need him is probably my favorite thing about his character and it shows in spades in this episode. The comedy is really great here, and I love the way Sokka is portrayed here… as opposed to how he’s portrayed in the Great Divide and Avatar Day, where not only does it feel like he didn’t grow at all, it also feels like he’s reduced to slapstick comedy with zero respect for his character. So… yeah. I don’t really like those two episodes, not out of any genuine disliking of fillers for what they can be, but because, as far as chances to slow down plot and developments go, both Avatar Day and The Great Divide really didn’t do it the way I would’ve wanted them to.

#anon #... so tumblr didn't just change #it changed without dealing with problems #such as when you put a read more in an ask #and then post it #AND IT EATS UP THE READ MORE #so you end up plastering an insanely long post on everyone's dashboards #I am very sorry #*bows*#anyways #sorry if i disappoint #but I hope the answer is comprehensive enough

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wedekindstan · 6 years

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MORITZ & THE HEADLESS QUEEN MONOLOGUE

okay there is honestly so much content in the Headless Queen monologue i don’t even know where to start or how much to say…

so obviously it’s hugely ironic and all that moritz says “it seems like i’m a headless queen myself” because of his death and reappearance at the end of the play when he is quite literally headless. i don’t think that takes much convincing to sell you guys on.

but there are a lot of smaller things that are very interesting. for starters, beyond the death foreshadowing there is a very heavy implication of moritz feeling like he’s unable to talk or communicate with other people and the world around him and the Queen provides a useful metaphor for that. ”she couldn’t eat, couldn’t drink, couldn’t see or laugh or kiss. The only way she could communicate with her court was with her small white hands.” this feeling spans beyond just ”i am nervous and getting people to understand me is hard” and is much more aptly put as “the outside world is inaccessible to me and i am stunted in my ability not only to put anything out there but to take anything in. there is a disconnect between the world and i.”

the metaphorical usage of a Headless Queen is also well suited to portray moritz’s state of ignorance. because of this society’s insistence on coddling him in some horrible, prolonged childhood, he knows quite frankly very little about anything. he feels incapable of thought because of his lack of knowledge. he feels that his brain is empty of this vital information, or that he is without a brain, compared to melchi; he feels headless.

the story of the Queen reaches a happy ending when a king with two heads arrives and a wizard transfers one head to the Queen, whereupon they marry happily and the Queen gets a head for good. if we continue to operate with the metaphor we established of moritz as the Headless Queen, lacking knowledge, understanding, and worldliness we must then proceed to recognize the king with his two heads as a symbol for melchior, over-saturated with wisdom and answers. the story of the Headless Queen is a subconscious cry from moritz for melchior to give him his understanding and thereby give him the tools to connect with the rest of the world.

obviously this presents a somewhat blatant homoerotic undertone by implying that melchior is to take the place of the king and, in a fashion “marry” moritz for his happy ending. but the undertone doesn’t only come from the two boys. the fairytale itself has some interesting little quirks in the homoerotic vein. the king bears two heads, neither of which is indicated as being feminine (the only difference being that one is smaller) and this king’s (presumably) masculine head fits perfectly on the body of the queen- that is to say, the male spirit and mind fits well enough into the body of a female without conflict, taking on a ‘female role.’ when the heads are separated, “the two of them kissed each other on the forehead, on the cheeks, and the mouth,” displaying a connection that is not simply obligatorily romantic but shows affection that is non-romantic and displays feelings of companionship and friendship. this is another possible indication towards moritz’s feelings about melchior.

i could go on in this vein for a while, but i won’t bore you. moving on.

as the monologue nears its end, moritz confesses “whenever i see a pretty girl i see her without a head” which is of course a funny line on the surface, but is also very telling in conjunction with his dream about legs in stockings. moritz seems to only find attraction to women when he views their bodies apart from their faces or heads; to apply the metaphor we’ve been using, without their minds or personalities. the head in this situation is representing the part that makes the woman individual or builds up her disposition. he does not see ‘the female disposition’ in an attractive light, perhaps implying that moritz cannot find romantic pleasure with women. the body, yes. the person, not so much.

but interestingly, he follows this remark up with “and then suddenly it seems like i’m a headless queen myself” now connecting himself with his image of women. we can draw one of two conclusions from this: 1) he feels that he, in the same way he sees women, cannot regard himself in a sexual or romantic light. 2) he is identifying himself with the general feeling of being a woman. while i think the former is a valid assessment, i personally favor the latter because moritz completes the sentiment (as well as the monologue) with “sometime maybe someone will put another head on me” connecting back to his subconscious pleas to be fixed by melchior and henceforth “married off” into happiness. this last line is a cry for melchior’s knowledge but is also a willing self-categorization as a being in need of what he sees all desirable women to be lacking: a head.

(if interjecting a bit of a stronger position here is acceptable, i’d also like to posit that this monologue is a fantastic basis for interpreting moritz as a trans girl when added to the canon fascination with / longing for what a woman feels during sex. that’s my personal favorite headcanon!)

god this is way too long and i apologize…. this isn’t even everything i want to say but it’s Too Much for one post so take this and do with it what you will

#spring awakening #sa #moritz stiefel #melchior gabor #frank wedekind #headless queen #analysis

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iturbide · 3 years

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What do you think could have been done to improve 3H? Given the budget/time, what changes would you have done? Also, what elements do you consider KEY to a good story?

fffffff I would have done so many things differently in 3H it requires a read more but to your second question: I feel that characters are a key element of a good story. Possibly the most crucial element, to me. You can have the most epic, incredible plot in the world -- but if the characters taking part in it aren't interesting or able to engage the reader, then the story loses a huge part of its impact. It's only by caring about the people taking part that a reader can get invested in the story and its outcome; if you don't care about what happens to someone (either in a good or a bad way) then you're at best apathetic to the events, at worst bored by them.

Frankly everything else in a story -- narrative structure, conflict, etc -- is so malleable that I can't consider it key. You can easily make stories that have no classic conflict if you have characters that people care about, because just watching them interact with the world and each other can be beautifully engaging. So at least to me, the key is in the characters: whether you love them and want them to succeed or love to hate them and want to see them get their just desserts, they're the ones that do the heavy lifting in a story, so making sure they're compelling is one of the most important things to me when writing.

As for 3H though I have a lot of changes I would make. Throughout the whole game.

Academy Phase

Giving each House their own unique set of missions. I feel that part of why the Azure Moon route is considered so strong is because it's the most character driven, something that starts in the Academy Phase: everything from Lonato's rebellion to Miklan's theft of the Gautier Relic are highly personal to the Blue Lions students, with Ashe being Lonato's adoptive son and Miklan being Sylvain's estranged older brother (and someone who's well-known to Dimitri, Felix, and Ingrid on top of it). While these are both important events, for the Black Eagles and the Golden Deer there's not the same level of personal engagement: it's just a thing that's happening rather than a devastating blow to the students we love. While there are certainly missions that can and should stay the same (the raid on Seiros' tomb, Flayn's kidnapping, the Remire incident, etc.) having select missions be personalized by House to give that same level of engagement would have made for a far stronger narrative, since it enhances the player's connection with the students of their chosen House.

Just as an example: for the Black Eagles, rather than putting down Lonato's rebellion, maybe have their mission be aiding a small sect of the Church in the Empire that's being plagued by monsters or bandits. It gives us the chance to learn more of the history between the Church of Seiros and the Adrestian Empire, how close they were and how it fell apart a century before the game; Rhea might explain that she wants to improve these failing relations by having Imperial students go to aid this disconnected branch, and in private Edelgard could hint at her distrust of the institution and of Rhea herself even if she is following orders. Not only that, we could hear on returning that the Blue Lions students accompanied the Knights of Seiros in dealing with Lonato's rebellion, so we still get the fallout from those events and have a reason to choose the Blue Lions in another run.

Another example: for the Golden Deer, rather than going after Miklan and witnessing his transformation, maybe a report arrives that someone stole Failnaught and task the Alliance students with retrieving it. It lets us learn more about the situation in the Alliance, giving more details about Duke Oswald's situation, Claude's appointment as the heir to the Riegan House...and while he would never do it personally, have there be subtle implications but no hard proof that Duke Gloucester is behind the theft, just as he was the death of Claude's Uncle; on top of that, we could still get a battle against a Black Beast when Failnaught transforms the bandit, giving Claude a very personal look at how dangerous these Relics can be (something he likely wouldn't have had deep insight into, given his Almyran roots). And again, on returning to the monastery we could see the Blue Lions dealing with the fallout from Miklan.

More interaction between the House Leaders in general. There are only a handful of scenes where all three of them interact together, and I can only think of one instance where they're even in each other's company at the monastery (Claude and Dimitri in one of the early chapters). Having more of these moments where they're apparently interacting on the grounds or where we can see them together in cutscenes, giving us more insight into the leaders of the other Houses we didn't pick, would give us a lot more investment in them as people and make the eventual revelations at the end of the Academy Phase hit a lot harder.

Especially with Claude's ambition being what it is, it would have been a far better show of his character to have him hanging out with different students every month -- not just from his own House like Hilda, but from other Houses. Have him be talking with Petra in the dining hall one month, or with Annette at the reception hall another; if you sided with the Black Eagles or the Blue Lions, it would be very easy to suspect that he's up to tricks and trying to figure out individual weaknesses...but if you picked the Golden Deer, you'd likely realize very quickly that he's got no ulterior motives because you've been seeing him in action and getting Supports with him.

More Supports period. We were robbed of some fascinating interactions, like Ashe and Dorothea or Dedue and Petra, and some really strong Support chains stop before they reach their full potential (several Sylvain supports, including Marianne and Bernadetta). I want to see so many more of these and I would add in a ton if given half an opportunity.

Giving Byleth more agency. This bleeds over into the War Phase, too, but one of my biggest complaints about the game is how limited the response options are, especially when it comes to Edelgard and her frightening rhetoric as early as chapter 3. Give us more options with real varied outcomes, rather than it changing one immediate line of dialogue; give us real dialogue trees rather than minutely altered responses so that we have an opportunity to affect change. This runs the risk of drastically altering Byleth's relationship with the various House Leaders, but that potential is undeniably fascinating in and of itself.

War Phase

Azure Moon: Make Dimitri's turn more gradual. Show him grappling with Rodrigue's words more, have more scenes where he and Byleth talk and he tries to work through his understandably complicated feelings. It doesn't even have to take that much longer, honestly: every week for the next month, give us an extra cutscene and let there be a small change in how you can interact with him. For example, maybe he still doesn't attend the round table in the first week, but you do have the option of assigning him to a task around the monastery; in the second week if you explore, you have the option to invite him to a meal; in the third week he finally attends the roundtable and you're able to work on his skills again; and in the fourth week his supports finally unlock.

Azure Moon: Make Claude recruitable. Don't have him leave Failnaught and go waltzing back to Almyra, have him actually head up the Alliance in this time of need and volunteer to join forces with the Kingdom forces. You can have the option of turning him down, if you really want, at which point he might leave Lorenz in charge and go back home, but give us the option of bringing him on board along with any other former Deer that fought with him at Derdriu -- and furthermore, let us have some supports with Dedue and Dimitri to go with it. Ideally those Support chains would be available in the Academy phase and maybe you'd have the recruitment option only if Dimitr's Support level with Claude is at least a B (since you can get to A during the Academy Phase but not unlock it until the War Phase as I experienced many times). But still: Claude recruitment. Yes.

Verdant Wind: Make Dimitri recruitable. Having him die offscreen after Gronder is absolutely terrible, especially since we know for a fact that at least two people from the Alliance army saw what was either going to happen or directly happening. At the end of the battle, give us an option of going after Dimitri: if you choose not to, he still dies, but if you do you have the opportunity to save him and recruit any other former Lions with him. As abve, Supports between Claude and Dimitri would be great, and you could even keep Dimitri's Supports locked for a while and include scenes of Byleth and/or Claude and Dimitri talking and working with him until he starts turning around the way he does in Azure Moon. Dimitri's death in Verdant Wind is a travesty and it needs to be changed.

Verdant Wind: More character stuff in general. One of the things that makes Azure Moon such a strong route is that it's so deeply character-driven. Verdant Wind is much more plot-driven, and while it's still strong, it could have been more impactful if the characters were more directly affected and/or we got to see more of their individual actions. For instance: after securing Myrddin, have weekly missions where you actually go along and meet with the Great Lords and discuss with them before the final round table. Have Byleth and Claude go with Lorenz to talk to Count Gloucester and try to get his buy-in, and give us more dialogue trees where Byleth can contribute (for better or for worse) so that in the end you either get his full agreement or only grudging consideration because Lorenz intervenes. Get us engaged, show us more of the situation in the Alliance, and let us have a role in moving from this uneasy state of neutrality to full agreement that it's time to take action.

Silver Snow: A unique story in general. Basically everything in the route is a weaker copy of the events in Verdant Wind, and regardless of which came first, Verdant Wind handles the events in a way that makes more logical and narrative sense than Silver Snow does. So even if things could be changed in Verdant Wind to make it stronger and more unique, Silver Snow needs the most work and ideally should have a new plot made just for them that gives the Knights of Seiros a chance to really shine.

Silver Snow: More for Seteth to do period. Despite the fact that he's ostensibly our Lord stand-in for the route (since he's the one who meets you after the timeskip, where it's either Claude, Dimitri, or Edelgard who does in the other routes), he barely has a chance to do anything and doesn't make much of an impact on the route overall. Silver Snow could -- and ostensibly should -- give him a chance to showcase his talents and stand as a unique and engaging character, since his role in the Academy Phase was so minor; relegating him to the same general role in Silver Snow does him a great injustice.

Crimson Flower: Have Edelgard suffer consequences. This is one of my biggest complaints with the game on the whole: that Crimson Flower goes out of is way to glorify imperialism and Edelgard gets a rosy perfect ending with nothing ever going wrong according to her endcards. Logically the way she achieved her goal would have led to massive dissent, unrest, and civil conflict in the territories she conquered and subjugated; her route needs to show that, and make it clear that there are in fact consequences for her actions, both within the original Adrestian territry and without in the newly conquered ones.

Crimson Flower: Deal with the damn Agarthans. Given that she knows about them in detail the way neither of her fellow House Lords did, it's an absolute travesty that we never saw her go after them in her route: all she did was show her hand too early and cause hundreds of senseless deaths when the Agarthans fired on Arianrhod. Her route should have ended with a conflict against the Agarthan menace -- and likely a very hard one, harder even than the battle against Rhea, because she left them for too long and gave them time to bolster their defenses before she arrived. And given that she's killed Rhea, the end of that conflict would likely be a massive loss of life when Thales bombs Shambhala -- further consequences for her actions.

All Routes: Give Byleth agency. This is especially pertinent in CF where canon reduced Byleth to Edelgard's enabler: give them a chance to fight her, push back against things that either don't make sense or are only going to hurt people, argue and maybe force her to change her mind or see another viewpoint rather than continuing to barrel down a path of bloodshed and loss because she selfishly decided that war was the only way. But giving Byleth that same agency in other routes would be equally powerful: let them talk candidly with Dimitri, let them encourage Claude to trust his companions and reveal his Almyran heritage, just...let them have a chance to be their own person, with complicated relationships and the ability to speak freely.

#answered #21stcenturyhero #fire emblem: three houses #look i enjoy 3h a lot #but it's also kind of a mess when you think about it #these are just the immediate changes that come to mind #there are probably more improvements that could be made #but these are a good start #and would have made a much stronger game #at least in my opinion

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ao3bronte · 5 years

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Heat

8 < 9 > 10

Cue Spring Fever #3. Rated E for sexual content. #mlnsfw

Based on the 100 Kinks Challenge.

A/N: This will be a connecting drabble series I’ll do in my spare time when I feel so inclined. Have an idea? Send me an ask or a message! Want to sponsor a kink? Buy me a coffee!

Now on AO3!

9. First Time

Chat Noir is, quite literally, a genius.

She knew he was smart, his tactical skills and efficiency on the battlefield completely unparallelled, but Ladybug had no idea that Chat Noir could be so intelligent in other aspects of his life too. And yeah, maybe she’d been selling him a little short all this time but still; his carefree attitude could grate on her nerves sometimes and he was a shameless flirt, even if his claims of being in love with her alter ego were actually true, so it was no wonder that she didn’t take him quite as seriously as he would like.

Regardless, it should have occurred to her that she should take on a civilian boyfriend before Chat had mentioned it.

Rena Rouge was Alya and Alya had Nino. Marinette had no one, but it was no secret that Ladybug had a continent full of devoted potential lovers who would be more than willing to help her with her spring fever. One citizen came to mind immediately, one that she’d been fantasizing about for years, and she had it on good authority that he was a huge Ladybug fan.

So before her senses could catch up to her (and quite frankly, they had long since evaporated much to Tikki’s frantic jitters), Marinette had called her kwarmi into her earrings and flown off her balcony shortly after Chat had left for the night.

This isn’t the first time she’s happened to swing her way over to Adrien’s house and it won’t be the last if her hormones have anything to say about it. She’s practically itching with sexual tension as she lands on his neighbour’s rooftop and pumps her fist in victory when she sees his bedroom windows come alight.

She sneaks onto the mansion’s expansive grounds, deftly landing as close as she possibly can without alerting him to her presence and watches as he throws himself onto his mattress face first. He must be tired, she realises, but the thought quickly evaporates as she takes in the curve of his ass in those designer jeans and suddenly her suit is way too hot and way too tight for her to handle.

She’s clearly lost control of her body, she thinks, only mildly horrified as she jumps from the relative safety of the roof to his window sill. He’s not looking her way so it’s not like she has to worry and god, she could just eat him right now, his blond hair disheveled so perfectly, his bare arms perfectly tanned. Even his socked feet look attractive, they way they dangle off the ledge, just hanging there and then there are his legs, oh, his legs! They’re so perfectly shaped they might as well been carved from marble! She just wants to have her way with them, with him, with his whole body and mind and soul and what the hell is she talking about?

She can’t just march into his room and demand he have sex with her!

…

Can she?

Her heart is pounding loudly in her ears, her common sense overwhelmed by the desire to press her skin against his. Her sight narrows, her breath forming a small cloud against the glass as she leans closer, desperate to taste him and devour him whole—

NO!

Ladybug reels backwards, the implications of her behaviour finally thwacking through her ridiculous train of thought. Panicking, she hops back to where she’d been hidden before and tries to get a hold of herself, appalled and embarrassed and everything in between.

She’s bumping her forehead repeatedly against the HVAC when she spots him rolling onto his back, his forearm draped over his eyes and he’s...oh my god, is that what...he’s... is he taking off his belt?!

Ladybug buries her face in her hands and squeaks out loud, her fantasies coming to life. How many times had her stupid, heat-addled brain thought about this? About watching him as Ladybug, about watching him get changed or catching him getting out of the shower, shirtless and...maybe naked? Oh yes, definitely naked. She’d thought about it a lot and her train of thought promptly derails as she watches him unbuckle his jeans and...is he?

Is he touching himself?

Ladybug has never seen a penis in real life before and the possibility of it happening here is suddenly skyrocketing as he uses his other hand to shimmy the waistband of his jeans down past his ass, his eyes still determinedly closed. His briefs are everything she’d thought they’d be, having stolen a peek once or twice when she’d gone through his gym bag while he was in fencing class. Gross invasion of privacy? Yes, but does her heat addled brain actually care?

Not a bit.

And it’s certainly starting to short circuit now, time moving in slow motion as he reaches passed the elastic band and shoves them down and grabs onto...grabs onto it and is he going to pull it out? He’s moving his hand up and down and she’s entranced by the rhythm, the slow rocking of his hands beneath the fabric. He's doing something she can’t see with the other hand and she can’t seem to peel her eyes away, entranced and utterly focused and fascinated by the way his tempo seems to match the pulse between her thighs.

Oh!

The briefs are shoved down and Ladybug’s eyes bulge out of her skull because that is a penis.

Ladybug immediately covers her eyes and starts making sounds that would make a pterodactyl shudder, cursing all the while. What is she doing?! Why is she watching Adrien, her celebrity crush, her number one obsession, touch his...thing? God, it’s embarrassing to think about, what should she call it? Penis sounds weird, dick reminds her of Nino’s favourite insult (“dick move bruh”) and cock? That’s a rooster!

Blushing furiously, she peeks through her fingers and screeches as he keeps on rubbing it up and down like he’s evening out a piping bag and she doesn’t know how she’s going to be able to face him tomorrow morning, not with the way he’s worrying his lower lip between his teeth like he’s trying not to make a sound. His eyes are closed and his chest is rising and falling rapidly and Ladybug is briefly reminded of Alya’s all too explicit description of orgasms and how a man’s éclair, as Alya had so helpfully put it for her, bursts with pastry cream when he gets off and Marinette had all but killed Alya for that particular visual during lunch the other day, especially because she could hardly look at choux pastry anymore without wanting to crawl in a hole and die.

Unconsciously, Ladybug’s hand trails down her body and soon she’s rubbing herself through her suit as Adrien’s hand increases in tempo, his legs bending at the knees as he thrusts his hips into the air once, twice, three times and Ladybug’s lips part with a gasp as Adrien seizes, arching off of his mattress as come spills over her fingers, pooling on the exposed skin of his abdomen and fuck if that isn’t the hottest, most bizarre thing she’s ever seen in her life.

He twitches a few times before ultimately collapsing back onto his bed like he wants it to swallow him and Ladybug suddenly wonders what swallowing him must be like which, wow...where did that thought come from? Maybe thinking about éclairs is making her hungry? Hungry for him is more like it and Ladybug wrenches her hand from where its been buried between her legs and ventures closer for some stupid, inexplicable reason because nothing in her brain is working like it should.

Which, of course, is why she slips.

#miraculous ladybug #mlnsfw #ladrien #100 kink challenge #mating cycles/in heat

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theteablogger · 6 years

Text

Andy writ large

Several people have sent me links to the New Yorker article in which Ian Parker exposes author/editor Dan Mallory as having lied, gaslighted people, and engaged in other manipulative behaviors for many years in order to further his career. When confronted, Mallory tried to blame it all on mental illness. Anons have been discussing this on tf-talk and FFA, noting that Mallory sounds a lot like "the prestige drama version of Thanfiction", and I have to agree. I've written several times in the past about people who reminded me and others of Andy (Aiden Sinclair/Richard Outhier, Travis Aaron Wade, Kevin Spacey, Teri Hoffman and Tyler Deaton), and the similarities in this case are even more striking than any of those. So here are the things that stood out to me in Parker's article. This is a pretty long list, so I've broken it down into several sections for readability.

Generally manipulative behavior:

Tom Scott described Mallory, at their first meeting, as being self-assured and nonchalant in a way that (to me, as a reader) seemed studied. He also said that Mallory casually bragged about his success in a way that left him feeling charmed rather than nonplussed or annoyed. This matches up with several accounts I've read of people’s first impressions of Andy when he was in the LotR fandom.

Both Andy and Dan Mallory tend to get personal with strangers quickly and to overshare – e.g., the "lighthearted debate" at a festival in which Mallory abruptly got serious and spoke frankly (lying) about his alleged history of ECT. This kind of oversharing tends to elicit sympathy from listeners and to make them feel that this person is being genuine and vulnerable with them, which makes them more inclined to open up in turn. This is something that Andy was doing as recently as last year, but he misjudged his audience some of the time and they just found it off-putting.

They frequently engage in self-deprecating humor, which is endearing and encourages others to let down their guard. These days, Andy incorporates glib, jokey references to his past into this part of his shtick (e.g., "someday over a glass of wine, I'll tell you about the time I accidentally started a hobbit cult"), so it also serves to inoculate listeners against anything negative they might hear about him from other people.

Both tend to zero in on and exploit good-natured people who give others the benefit of the doubt.

Both pride themselves on (and brag about) using charisma and "wit" to talk their way into places/situations for which they are underqualified, that they can't afford, etc. See Andy’s remarks about getting "gorgeous service" at high-end boutiques based on charisma alone, and the commencement speech in which Mallory bragged about talking his way into a thesis program without doing the qualifying work.

These men hate to be in anything that could be construed as a subordinate role, although this is one area in which Andy is arguably more subtle than Dan Mallory.

Both enjoy hiding in plain sight—in Mallory’s case, through his novel.

Both have long histories of engaging in gaslighting, lying, and manipulation for their own benefit and/or entertainment.

Acquaintances have described both men's behavior as performative and calculating.

Neither could let go of their former victims, but instead kept contacting them to try and draw them back in—Andy did this with Abbey after she left him in Virginia, and Mallory did this with his former colleagues in London.

Lying liars who lie:

Both men have lied repeatedly and extensively about their physical and mental health histories, and can't be bothered to keep their stories straight. In Andy’s case, this has included claiming various psychiatric diagnoses with symptoms corresponding to their Hollywood portrayals, telling stories about allergic reactions and injuries that were wildly exaggerated at best, and more. Mallory told ever-changing stories of psychiatric treatments that worked either very well or not at all, blamed his chronic lying on Bipolar II (a claim that would be ludicrous if it weren't so offensive), repeatedly claimed to have brain tumors and/or cancer, and told a variety of lies over the years about family members' illnesses and deaths that never happened.

Both have lied about having mysterious, incurable ailments that would definitely kill them within a set number of years—which was prone to change—but that conveniently didn't stop Mallory from working when he felt like it, or Andy from traveling anywhere his friends would pay for.

Each of them has told a multitude of easily disprovable lies about his education, his family, and his personal history.

Both claimed to have been abused as children, though Andy told long, graphically detailed stories about it and Mallory doesn’t seem to have gone further than making an implication.

Each has lied about a younger sibling's identity: Mallory impersonated his brother in a long series of emails to former colleagues about his alleged ill health, and Andy told his friends that his sister was responsible for everything he'd done to people as Amy Player.

Both have inadvertently revealed themselves via verbal, syntactical, or spelling idiosyncrasies when impersonating others online.

Both impersonated other people to chronicle their fake or severely exaggerated illnesses and to describe their plucky/humorous behavior during alleged hospital stays.

Both faked accents—Andy was "Irish" and Mallory was "British".

Both have claimed, directly and by implication, to have connections and insider knowledge of Hollywood, the film industry, and/or screenwriting.

Aside from all the outright lies they've told, both men have engaged in lies of omission, deliberately not correcting others' misunderstandings or misperceptions about them.

When their lies were exposed, both claimed that their accusers were lying because they were sexually attracted to them and had either been rejected (as Mallory said of the CEO of a publishing house), or were disturbed by the attraction (as Andy said of Turimel).

Both tend to double down when confronted about an obvious lie, and then try to steer the conversation to other topics.

Miscellany:

Each is the eldest son of affluent parents.

Mallory's fascination with Tom Ripley is reminiscent of Andy's admiration of Frank Abagnale.

Both were involved in their college theatre departments. For Andy, this is true of his attendance at VCU, at Thomas Nelson Community College, and at Christopher Newport University almost twenty years ago. (I’m not sure what he did at George Mason. He wasn't there for long.)

The work of both men is, shall we say, "derivative". In Andy's case, this applies more to his art. I am not familiar with Mallory's work other than The Woman in the Window and a handful of quotations from essays and e-mails he's written, but it appears that in TWW, he may have ripped off a novel by Sarah A. Denzil that was published six months before he started trying to sell his book, and has almost certainly ripped off "Copycat", a movie from 1995 (see New Yorker article).

Mallory’s focus on process and strategy in writing, the way his own voice overwhelms that of the narrator, and Parker's description of TWW as "a thriller excited about getting away with writing a thriller" all reminded me of the experience of reading DAYD and the way Andy has often talked about writing and storycraft.

Many former associates of each man were at least somewhat aware of how sketchy they were, but were unable or unwilling to call them out.

A surprising number of people, despite knowing they've been lied to repeatedly and at great length, still like both of them quite a lot.

Both Andy's and Dan Mallory's parents seem like kind, decent people who love their sons and want to believe the best of them.

Specific lines from the "New Yorker" article that made me think of Andy:

A former colleague on Mallory: "'If there was something that he wanted and there was a way he could position himself to get it, he would. If there was a story to tell that would help him, he would tell it.'"

"He’d begin with rapturous flattery…and then shift to self-regard. He wittily skewered acquaintances and seemed always conscious of his physical allure."

Author Sophie Hannah: "Mallory 'renewed my creative energy,' she said. He had a knack for 'giving feedback in the form of praise for exactly the things I’m proud of.'"

"Speaking in Colorado last January, Mallory quoted a passage from Kay Redfield Jamison’s memoir, 'An Unquiet Mind,' in which she describes repeatedly confronting the social wreckage caused by her bipolar episodes—knowing that she had 'apologies to make.' … In more recent public appearances, Mallory seems to have dropped this reference to wreckage. Instead, he has accepted credit for his courage in bringing up his mental suffering, and he has foregrounded his virtues."

Mallory: "It's been horrific, not least because, in my distress, I did or said or believed things I would never ordinarily say, or do, or believe—things of which, in many instances, I have absolutely no recollection."

#andrewmblake #andythanfiction #thanfiction #dan mallory #andy blake #andrew blake #hiding in plain sight #mental health

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golden-pickaxe · 6 years

Text

Odal - Part 3

Fandom: Vikings

Paring: Ivar x Reader

Type: Viking Times

Word Count: 3527

Warnings: none

[All Parts Here]

A/N: Part 3 is finally here! Sorry again, the conference I am working at is taking all of my time atm!

Also, I made a playlist, and I think it fits amazingly to this story, so here!

Summary: When you were just a child, you had been adopted by two shieldmaidens, as one of six sisters. Now, all grown up, the lot of you join king Harald to avenge the death of Ragnar in England. A journey, that is going to change the life you’ve known before.

Tags: @lightningwitcher @lovelynerdytraveler @everlasting9 @cbouvier23

King Harald’s fleet departed for Kattegat in the early hours of the morning. You stood at the front of the ship, leaning against the impressively carved dragon head of Hrafnkell’s vessel, the wind blowing through your hair. It was a glorious sight to see this mass of ships sail around you, gliding through the dark blue waters of the ocean.

You had not slept all too well that night, had dreamed far too realistic dreams. In your dream you had seen a giant tree, its branches so high and thick that you could not see the sky, nor where they ended, while its roots went below the earth and over the land around you. The tree was beautiful and proud, although its leaves were too high up to make out what kind of tree it was.

In the branches you saw two ravens, looking down at you with ancient, beady eyes.

You asked them where you were, and they flew down to you, landing of each of your shoulders, speaking to you. You did not remember their words when you woke up, but you remembered that you understood the language of the birds, as if you had eaten from Fafnir’s heart.

The ravens left your shoulder again, just as a giant snake came forth from the roots of the tree, wrapping itself around your body. You knew you should feel scared, but you did not. Instead, you felt safe.

Gudrun had tried to interpret your dream, after you had told her every detail you remembered. She seemed a bit anxious about it, and told you that she did not know what it could mean.

She simply reassured you, that it probably meant that the gods had great things in store for you, but you knew her long enough to know that she was not entirely truthful with you.

You pushed the memory of the dream behind you, instead looking forward towards the sea. You anticipated your journey, everything else was not important. Whatever would await you there, whatever those dreams meant, you could not change your fate anyways.

You were on sea for almost two days, going south. The weather was fortunate, and Thor refrained from beating up any giants, so no storm threatened to blow you off course.

Finally, the king Harald’s fleet approached the fjord, leading to Kattegat. You spotted the giant city in the distance, gobsmacked, as you had never seen such a massive place before. The walls around it were fortified, while the harbour was already filled with a giant fleet under different sails.

The sound of loud horns reached your ear, as the kings ships drew closer, as the people of Kattegat seemed to recognise the yellow-orange sails, announcing your arrival.

“This is it, little one.” Asta was next to you, just like you, wearing a broad smile on her face.

You grinned back at her, before turning your eyes forward again, focusing on the city. You could not wait to explore the many streets of this place, could not wait to see what it had to offer. You wanted to know how people lived, how the bakers made their bread, and what exotic wares the merchants would sell in such a large trading point. You could not imagine how it was to be in such a giant place, with so many people around you.

“Mother once told me how she was in this city many years ago.” The woman next to you started, her eyes scanning over the place just like yours. “She said that back then, it was just an assemble of houses and a few connecting farms. Now look at it.”

The fleet had finally reached the city, due to the many ships already laying harbour not able to directly dock. Planks were put up to connect one of your ships to the other, and you and the other warriors made your way over them, to finally reach the shore.

The ship of Hrafnkell, as he was one of the king’s best warriors, was close to the royal ship itself, and so you were not far, when Harald stepped onto the docks, followed by his brother, where he was already anticipated by five men, one of them sitting on a barrel, all of them looking various degrees of threatening.

“These are all the sons of Ragnar.” Gudrun’s voice explained, a certain anxiousness underlying her words.

“How do you know?” Yeva asked, leaning forward over the railing of the ship you were still standing on, to get a better look at all of them.

“They look like princes.” The freckled one simply answered, and none of you even questioned it. In all the years you had known her, you knew that Gudrun often knew things she could not, things she even should not know, but she was never wrong about them.

She was blessed with some kind of sight, but you were not sure if it was seidr, or just a connection to the gods.

“They are all so impressive.” Yeva said with awe in her voice, and frankly, you could not agree more.

All of them were exceptionally tall, strong and mesmerizingly beautiful. All of them blond, except for the one sitting on a barrel, who had shorter, brown hair. Mustering him closer, which was not quite easy as you were still a good distance away from the shore, you could see incredibly blue eyes, a strong jaw, his hair un-braided and only brushed to the back.

Of all of them, you had to admit, he fascinated you the most right now, especially because he was just simply sitting when he greeted the kind, who in turn did not seem offended by this lack of respect at all.

Harald and Halfdan now approached the five princes, broad smiles on their faces. They seemed to be familiar with the brothers, especially the oldest looking one, although his expression was a tad less friendly than that of the others, and more suspicious.

But even now, the one sitting on the barrel did not stand up, only leaned forward slightly, his elbows resting on his knees. Harald greeted him happily, seeming fond of the young man.

Finally the greetings seemed to be over, and Harald turned around to bark commands at his ships. You had to admit, you only half listened to you, simply following your sisters, while your eyes were still attached to the princes, as they watched your fleet for a moment, before ultimately turning away. The brown haired one sat for a while longer, his sharp eyes wandering over the horizon with a content smirk on his face, before he suddenly pushed himself off of the barrel, landing on the wooden docks with a thump.

You froze in place, shocked by what you had seen, not knowing what had just happened, until you saw him, dragging himself over the floor behind his brothers. You had to swallow, as only now you noticed that his legs were bound together with leather straps.

“That is Ivar the Boneless.” You heard Gudrun speak again. “Now I know why they call him that.”

There was a large feast later that night, to celebrate the support of king Harald and his army. You and your sister had been invited, as part of Hrafnkell’s men, and so you were sitting together with Hallgrim, your eyes studying all the unfamiliar faces of the other warriors, seemingly coming from all over the known world, while you drank ale from a cup with was regularly filled by one of the many slaves of Lagertha.

The woman herself, who was sitting at the head of the hall on her throne, was quite impressive. She was beautiful and strong, despite her age, radiating the aura of a true queen. For one, you had to say that a warrior who had proofed herself over and over again in battle, was far worthier to be the leader of a kingdom such as Kattegat, despite her low background, but on the other hand her straight up murder of Aslaug, about which you had heard a lot of rumours already over the course of the day, was honourless and cowardly.

As if shooting a defenceless woman in the back was not bad enough, it became even more dishonourable, as she had already given up her kingdom, only wanting safe passage, and as the woman had been the daughter of two of the most famous heroes of your world. The daughter of a Valkyrie and a dragon slayer, a saga Gudrun had often told you at the fire in cold winter nights.

However interesting the other people in the great hall were though, your eyes seemed to always wander back to the princes, who also sat at the far end of the hall, but a bit off to the side, talking with some of their warriors. They all still seemed to be so young, except for Bjorn of course. By now you had found out all their names, next to quite a bit of rumours that were told about them.

It was hard for you to believe that you were to go to battle with them, with those incredible men, who were all strong and skilled, just like their father, descended from Odin.

Even though you were with Hrafnkell, with the sheer amount of people in the hall, you were quite surprised that you and your sisters had been invited in. Hrafna, of course, had said it was due to your recent meeting with the kind, and you guessed that maybe she was right in some way, although you were not so sure about the implications this would cause in the long run.

“Today, my friends, we feast!” the loud, booming voice of Bjorn Ironside echoed through the hall, pulling you out of your thoughts, and making you, along with many others, look over to him.

The man had risen from his seat, his eyes serious, as they studied the men and woman in front of him.

“But in only one month time, we will said to England, where we will avenge our father. We will kill the kinds of Northumbria and Wessex for his murder, and no on! No one will stand in our way!”

The crowd of Vikings cheered at his words, yelling encouragements and stomping their feet.

“Skal!” Bjorn and the rest of you shouted in unison, before drinking from your cups.

One month, you thought, as you cheered with them, one month was not long. The excitement in you grew even more, if that was even possible. Soon you would sail to the west, arrive in a land you had never seen before, raiding, conquering, going to battle.

Despite the feast the night before, which had dragged deeply into the early hours of the morning, Asta woke all of you up the next morning, to train.

“As we have heard, we don’t have much time until we depart, and we unfortunately haven’t had much time to prepare.” She said, as she lead you through the slowly waking streets of Kattegat.

Yeva yawned violently, dark rings under her pretty eyes, as she murmured something in her mother tongue, which was surly not something nice. Just as the rest of you, she blinked around tiredly, all of you carrying your swords and shields, which felt far too heavy in your hands after such a short night. How Asta could be so awake, you did not know.

“So, from now on, we will train every day. At dawn, after midday, and then in the evening.” Your oldest sister continued, when you had reached an area near the shore, which looked like training grounds. There were wooden shields hoisted up for target practice, with arrow holes inside of them, a sparring area, and enough room for surly a dozen fighters to train comfortably, without getting into each other’s way.

There were already a few people here, warming up their muscles, with all of you promptly joining them. They looked equally as tired as you though.

“Yeva, you stand here and fight Gudrun. Hallgrim and Hrafna, you form a pair too. Y/N, you’re with me.” Asta commanded, as all of you took up your swords and shields, positioning yourself opposite of your opponent.

None of you ever questioned Asta’s authority, although most of the time you all saw each other as equals. She was the most experienced in battle, was the oldest, and had proven herself to be worthy of leadership, whenever your mothers were not around. She never did things for her own gain, always tried to make the best out of any situation for every one of you.

You took a deep breath as you positioned yourself in front of your sister. Asta was always a challenge to fight against. You knew that the way the woman had split the six of you up, was exactly because it would be challenging for everyone.

Yeva was not the best with a sword, preferring the bow, but she was very quick, while Gudrun was very skilled in guessing her enemies next move, seemingly able to read their intentions in the way they behaved.

Hrafna was probably the best of you fighting wise, incredibly skilled with the sword, using the weapon like an extension to herself, her fighting often looking like a dance of well-practiced moves. Hallgrim on the other hand fought dirty, throwing up sand or knifes, and was completely unpredictable.

Asta, although she preferred to use a hammer, was still good when it came to a sword and a shield. She was incredibly strong, and very experienced, one bash of her shield usually brutal enough to knock any man back into the ground.

You, however, fought smart, calculating, using tactics. You had a more defensive style, only to break your opponent’s cover with a few, deliberate hits with your sword.

Thora had taught you early on how to spot your enemies weaknesses, and how to use them to your advantage. How to notice small mistakes in their moves, and use them to break their defences.

Hrafna was a far more challenging opponent for you, as it was almost impossible to spot any weaknesses in the way she fought, but what Asta lacked in style she made good with sheer strength.

You stood in front of your oldest sister, feet firmly on the ground in a balanced and stable position, your sword and your shield raised, waiting for Asta to make the first move. She soon did, raising her sword next to her head, attacking from above, while her shield was tilted slightly, so she could bash into yours with it, as she leaped forward. You pushed her shield away with yours, parrying her attack with your own sword as you took a step back, using the strong of your sword to push it away from you, quickly turning the blade to start a counter attack from the side.

It went on like this, like a dance, faster and faster, the moves of the two of your starting to quicken, while the attacks got stronger. You were already covered in sweat, that was running down your face and into your eyes, the morning sun of early summer burning down onto your neck and heating up your body beneath your linen tunic.

Asta’s breath was heavy too, as she continued her attacks, the power behind them never faltering, but something seemed to start to distract her. You stopped your sword short of her side, open and unprotected by her shield. If you had pulled through, you would certainly have gutted her open.

“That was careless!” you stated, a bit confused about landing this far too easy hit, pulling your sword back and tilting your head at your sister, who frowned. “What is it?”

“He’s watching us.” She simply said, getting into a fighting position again and restarting her attacks, taking you a bit off guard.

“Who?” you brought out, confused by her words, quickly trying to parry her attacks, which were even stronger now. She forced you backwards, as you tried to follow her moves. Your arms got heavy and started to hurt, sweat stinging in your eyes, until finally your sister forced your shield away with hers, using your momentum to press your back against her chest, sword at your throat. Your breath hitched, and you stood very, very still, feeling the sharp, cool metal against your heated skin.

“The cripple.” Asta spoke into your ear. “Over there.”

You looked up, blinking a few times to focus on the distance, where you saw the youngest of the princes sitting a bit off to the side of the training grounds on a bench, leaning forward and resting his arms on his useless knees. His blue eyes were fixed on the area the six of you were fighting in, although from this distance you could not make out who exactly he was looking at.

“He’s a prince, so it is probably not a bad thing when he notices us.” You brought out, as Asta finally released you. You turned around to her, quickly wiping the sweat off of your face with the sleeve of your tunic.

“I don’t like his eyes.. they are cruel.” Asta pursed her lips, shaking her head slightly, before she snapped out of whatever grim thoughts she seemed to have, turning her attention to your other sisters.

Yeva and Gudrun had stopped practicing a real fight, instead slowly going through certain moves and defence methods they knew, one attack parrying another, before countering it, while you turned around just in time to see Hallgrim kneeling down, shield over her head, before she extended one of her long legs, skilfully swiping Hrafna off her feet, causing her to fall over backwards.

With a loud huff the woman’s back hit the ground, where she just continued to lie, throwing her sword and shield to the side.

“Hallgrim, you are a snake! Well fought!” she brought out, as it seemed that the impact made breathing a bit hard for her at the moment.

You laughed at them, watching as Hallgrim went over to pull the ginger up, giving her a light pat on her dust covered shoulder. You were distracted though, as you still felt the prickling sensation of someone’s eyes on you, now that Asta had pointed it out to you, unable to ignore it.

You were not sure if the young prince watching you was by chance, of if he had deliberately come out to do it, although you did not know how he would’ve known that you would train that day, as it had seemed to be out of a whim of Asta. Maybe he was just there to enjoy the morning sun, or to watch some of the warriors train in general.

That thought calmed you down, pushing back a nervousness you did not understand, and you tried to simply feel proud that one of the sons of Ragnar had seen how good the lot of you were fighting.

“Sisters, this was it for this morning. Rest, eat, and we will meet again after the midday meal. If we keep up our schedule, we should be practiced enough when we depart for England.” Asta said. The rest of you agreed with an exhausted nod, before you made your way back to where you were staying, wanting to get out of your sweaty clothes, and wanting to wash your face.

Even though it would be a very hard and exhausting time, leading up to your departure, you knew that over the spring, which was always a very busy time on the farm, the six of you had neglected your training a bit.

The rest of the morning you spent exploring Kattegat together with Yeva and Gudrun, almost getting lost in the busy streets of the city, which seemed to stretch out endlessly before you.

The blond Rus had found a merchant from her homeland, who sold beautiful beads to braid into her bright hair, and even giving her one of them as a gift, as she sweettalked him in her mother tongue. Gudrun had at one point started a conversation with a Skald, who had come to Kattegat from Uppsala, and who told beautiful poems and stories of the last, big Blot that had taken place there, the three of you listening in awe.

Your mothers had told you all about Uppsala, of course, but you had never managed to make your way there yourself. Hearing the stories now, you wished you could go there as fast as possible, promising yourself that after whatever would happen in England, and if your death day was not fated before that, you would participate in the next Blot that would happen there.

After the midday meal you found yourself on the training grounds once more, this time fighting against Hallgrim, trying to guess what tactic she tried to use as she repeatedly bashed her shield into yours. Soon though, you felt a certain unease in your neck again, turning your head for a moment, only for your eyes to meet a pair of far too blue ones.

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