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#although this game is a decade old and we all own at least two versions of it at this point
jupitermelichios · 3 years
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So I’ve been playing a lot of skyrim lately, because it’s video game comfort food, and I decided it was time for my Redguard Dovahkiin to settle down. (Actually I specifically just wanted to be able to adopt some of the random orphans you meet because I felt guilty about them, but you need to be married before you can do that so that there’s someone at home to take care of the kids while you’re off galivanting).
So I travelled around a bit, chatting up likely looking npcs until I found one I both liked and didn’t feel guilty about marrying (I feel bad if I marry one of the warrior adventurer types, making them be a stay at home mum) and settled on an obnoxiously cheerful argonian called Shavee because her life was frankly shit, and I thought she’d probably be good with kids.
So off I go to Riften to the Temple of Mara to arrange the wedding. I book it in for the next day, realise I didn’t bring anything nice to wear, and spend the night before the wedding robbing every house in the city in the search for something to wear. Eventually decide everyone in Riften has terrible fashion sense and break down everything I stole into raw materials and use them to craft myself an outfit and some jewellery that i’m pretty happy with. I even carefully pick out my fanciest looking sword to wear.
(don’t know why I bothered, frankly, shavee turned up wearing a shirt covered in suspicious stains and weilding a pickaxe, it’s like she doesn’t even care about this marriage)
(also for comedy purposes, bear in mind I play with survival mods that mean my character needs to eat and sleep to live, and I literally spent the entire ingame night on this and forgot to eat and drink anything either and then just downed four bowls of wolf stew right before entering the temple so I didn’t starve during the ceremony. also I discovered during the wedding that I am dying of rockjoint, which I contracted from sleeping in a pile of hay on the floor of a skeever infested cave, so even being six foot tall and jacked can’t make up for the fact that I am exhausted, running a fever, and probably covered in wolf which I spilled because my joints are slowly atrophying, and even the fanciest clothes in the world aren’t going to cover that up)
so I enter the temple, and my finance is there, and Lydia my housecarl, and some random NPCs the game thinks are my friends because I did fetch quests for them
One of the random NPCs is Lisbet. Atfter I did her fetch quest, I then did another quest in which I discovered Lisbet is secretly a cannibal and part of a demonic cult that worships the daedric prince of decay by kidnapping priests, sacrificing them, and then eating their corpses. Raw. I think the raw meat is the sticking point for me here honestly.
I ultimately decided not to sacrifice the random priest to a daedric prince in exchange for one magic ring and all the raw human I could eat, because frankly, that doesn’t sound like much of a deal to me. I was expecting there to be some kind of dialogue choice where I could nope out at the last minute, but it turns out there isn’t one, so after they drugged the priest and tied him to the altar, I just got out my sword and started swinging.
I killed most of the cult (including the town butcher, because I had brought meat from him before and was extremely pissed off that he might have been secretly feeding me humans) but a couple of them got away, which I figured was fine because they weren’t trying to kill me.
Except it turns out, if any of them escape, then every time you see them in the future there’s a random chance that they’ll fly into a violent rage and try and murder you.
Lisbet is at my wedding. Lisbet decides that clearly me marrying this random argonian woman with two lines of dialogue is the happiest day of my life, and she cannot allow me that happiness, when I’ve taken so much from her.
So she tries to kill me. Only she can’t, because I’m stuck in a pre-rendered wedding animation, and also she’s sitting next to Lydia, my faithful retainer and owner of a really big axe.
It also turns out that Lisbet is essential, meaning she can be knocked unconcious but not actually killed because she’s needed for some quest or other. And the minute she wakes up from unconciousness, she tries to kill me again, so Lydia knocks her unconcious again, and I’m stuck, I can’t move, because I’m supposed to be in the wedding animation.
Except Shavee has, not unreasonably, see all this and decided that she doesn’t like me enough to risk getting murdered, and has done a runner, leaving me at the altar, but more importantly, leaving me trapped in a broken pre-rendered animation, so all I can do is stand there at the altar, staring at the space where my fiance was supposed to be, listening to the sounds of Lydia trying and failing to beat a cannibal to death behind me.
Okay, I think, clearly this wedding isn’t going to happen, I’m going to go for the registry office option and complete the wedding using the dev commands. I do this. The priest gives me a wedding ring, and I can finally move again. I chase after Shavee, who has an impressive turn of speed on her, and eventually catch up right by the city gates. I try to talk to her.
Apparently using the console has completed the wedding for me, but not for her, because she still only has the same 2 lines of dialogue she usually has.
Clearly this is working, I can’t leave my kids with someone who can only say 2 things and doesn’t even know she’s their mum, that’s irresponsible.
I try loading from inside the temple. I get the same problem.
Eventually I figure out that I need to use the dev controls to disable Lisbet’s entire existence in the universe.
Shavee and me get married. As the priest reads the vows, I stare at Shavee and wonder why she couldn’t even be bothered to put on a clean shirt. I wonder what kind of mother she’ll be.
Once the ceremony is over, and I’m happily married to the dirty green lizard of my dreams, and we’ve agreed that until I can make her recognise my extremely nice modded house exists I will share her single bed in the unheated flophouse in Windhelm she calls home, I re-enable Lisbet, because I’m worried I’ll forget if I leave it too long.
Fun fact about skyrim, it loads in quite a lot of npcs and objects by dropping them from the sky. I have no idea why this is the case, but it’s objectively the funniest way to load in objects.
I re-enable Lisbet. She falls from the sky, clips through the roof of the temple, and lands in the pew beside Lydia, stands up, draws a knife, and is immedately beaten unconcious.
I no longer care, because Shavee now has all the exciting new spouse-only romantic dialogue options like “Could you cook something for me” and “have you made any money lately”, and I know she’ll be a great mother.
I limp to the door of the temple, while around me the guests not involved in the Lydia-Lisbet murder cycle scream and duck for cover.
I open the door to the temple, immediately collapse and ragdoll down the steps, which is how I discover I am dying of rockjoint.
I limp to the orphanage down the street, adopt two kids, and then finally remember that I’m carrying garlic bread, which as we all know, cures all known illnesses.
When I emerge back into the street, full of the joys of motherhood and garlic bread, I find the town in disaray. Lydia is chasing Lisbet through the streets with an axe and a dragon is circling overhead, burning npcs to death. People are running for shelter, screaming, while the guards try to take down an entire dragon using only the worst bows and arrows in the game.
I decide that as a parent, I have to think of my own safety first and leave them to it.
I head out of the city, intent on returning home and figuring out why Shavee refuses to move in with me. A man hanging around the stables challenges me to a boxing match. For want of anything better to do, I agree.
Halfway through the fight he dodges at the wrong moment and I punch one of his horses in the head.
Two guards attack me while I desperately try to surrender. My kids will miss me, but I’m prepared to go to jail for my horse crimes, I’m an honest citizen. Also my horse crimes seem somewhat less important than the dragon.
The guards refuse to accept my surrender. I am stabbed to death. As I collapse in front of the indifferent horse, Lisbet exits the city, followed by Lydia. The last thing I see before I die is Lydia swinging her axe at Lisbet’s face.
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batarangsoundsdumb · 3 years
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guess fucking what? my inbox is so fucking full right now i'm unloading all of this shit in one post.
For the 11th gotham memes: gothamites react to bruce being jacked in a tiktok he made with kids, like super yoked, ripped as hell
fucking hilarious thanks. i think i did it in one meme post, but i genuinely don't remember which one
i dunno which of the batfam would do this but one time i was sleeping over at a friends house and ended up on the floor bc the bed was so very small and i just stayed there because the rug was soft
that's a drunk jason move i don't know what to tell you
tim and jason are "i listen to pop punk" solidarity. whenever jason highjacks the batmobile theyll go on long ass car rides blaring mcr and paramore and then never talk about it again
as they should!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! tim: no jason it's my turn using the aux cord i gotta put on my jams jason: don't you dare put on weird shit tim: don't worry, you're gonna love this *plays fearless (taylor's version)
hear me out hear me out, red hood stans 🤝 nightwing stans t h i g h s
holy shit yes.
SNL au: Bruce breaks character when pretending to superman and says something like "I'm not superman! You've seen his gps!! It's from 2001!!!" @sabeanybabe
superman flies past the snl building the next day just to say 'actually it's from 2005, i'm not a heathen'
does your back hurt from carrying the batfam fandom
it hurts more from the exotic rock collection i keep in my backpack, but thanks for the concern.
I love your posts by why would you always leave the best parts in the tags?
as a treat for the people that check the tags ;) (and also because i'm committed to the short post aesthetic)
somehow your playlist was everything i never knew i needed. i mean it. this is my new favorite playlist.
and don't you dare get a new favourite playlist!
babe ur stoner tim playlist is exactly too perfect, earth is literally blessed by ur existence
babe thanks so much! i love my stoner tim playlist because it's just my usual playlist but people think it's an artistic choice that i put taylor swift and britney spears in there, when it's just what i unironically like listening to
JANDKSKDK BILLY RAY CYRUS ON THE STONER TIM PLAYLIST I LOVE IT IT
again it's not even an ironic choice, i know every single word and i genuinely like the song
The last chapter of Fundamentals of Casework has me crying at work. Thanks I love it @dudelookitsalesbian
oh babe, i'm sorry, but also, not sorry i love chapter 4 so much it's my lovechild with the 'mental illness' tag
soooo....stumbled on your tumblr by some stroke of fate??? read your DC fanfic first. which is PHENOMENAL btw. then found all the batmemes; the funniest thing EVER bc everyone forgets about regular old gothamites. kept scrolling and your blog pops up as recommended. clicked on the ao3 for shits and giggles and waddaya know?!?!? it's YOU!!! you're LEGEND!!!! ever seen that meme? it's a video of a cat that got into a baseball field and the two announcers get really invested in his escape attempt and start giving a play by play of the cat instead of the game. memeable moment: "GREAT stuff from the Cat!!!"
i seriously think about this ask every single day and it's so fucking funny to me that i've never seen the meme you're referencing, but i still find myself going 'GREAT stuff from the Cat!!!' whenever i see something funny. but wow i'm glad you liked this steaming pile of garbage
Fav dc character overall? And fav batfamily character?
don't ask me to pick between the loves of my life, but i can tell you i've cried about every single batfamily member and also wally west (my beloved)
What's your opinion on fans having a problem with batfam being "too big"? And some even claim that batfam is just "Bruce Alfred Dick Damian" and the rest of them are just "friends and allies" (source: reddit) Personally, I like batfam because of this reason but idk
stupid. a family can never be too big. i'm not that big a fan of like huge batfam stuff with everybody from every single universe, because as much as it's funny for bruce to have like 30 kids, it just feels a little too OOC for me.
This is the best tag I've seen involving the batfam, thanks for thinking of it
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This is canon now @nctxrejects
lmao yeah i think at that point alfred has had to sit through like at least a dozen coming out talks and just has a pride flag collection in the attic that he pulls out whenever a kid comes out
idk why batfam hits different as compared to any other superhero family
bc it's found family and usually the other superhero families are almost all genetically related in one way or another
I don't know if you watch the umbrella academy but I saw your last post about batcest and saw the similarities. But the thing is (although I think it's weird) in TUA, they addressed it by saying "they were raised as weapons, not siblings" or something along those lines, which is simply not the case with batfam.
yeah i watched tua but i also thought it was ridiculous and they still treated each other as siblings so i didn't like the luthor/allison thing, and am glad they stopped doing that shit bc it fucking sucked.
Hot take: Batcest shippers are the same people who believe adopted siblings are not actual siblings
smoking hot take: batcest shippers are the people who watch 'my sister got stuck in the washing machine' porn
Duke was adopted by Bruce?
not technically no, but do i, tumblr user batarangsoundsdumb, look like i care?
True story but I had to change my freaking name because it used to be "Damien" and most people would go "OH LIKE DAMIAN WAYNE" like please I'm just tryna live
true story, but i don't actually think of damian when i hear the name damian, literally the first thing that pops up is damian darkh like bruh what?
apparently dc comics company supported comic stores by giving out new titles and stuff during the beginning of the pandemic to help them run and I just think that's wholesome
ah yeah that's so fucking cool, still don't like dc, the company, because this world is a capitalist hellhole and we're all owned by warner brothers or disney with no in between.
ayo looking at tumblr head canons and finding out bruce is actually a terrible father is a punch in the gut
lmao yes, in like 50% of comics bruce is a terrible father and it gives me whiplash
oooh I just saw the jason todd vs winter soldier post and the real question is: batman vs iron man
while iron man has like hundreds of cases of armor, batman could throw out an emp and have the guy dropping out of the sky in 2 seconds.
dickfast = fastdick = quickdick = quickie
magnum hot take
hey bata(?) just thought I'd let you know I have copied the obnoxious emoji and Billy Ray post for use on simping men going forth
thank you 😘🌷 (@spacebarsidecar)
why would you do that to your followers???? i get why i did it, but why would you???
what is scarecrow made the nightwing funko pop himself, like those diy-ers that paint over other ones
oh god no, horrible take, horrible take, that's a disgusting thought oh no
I see your HC that Bruce and Oliver fucked and raise you this: Dick and Roy ALSO fucked
yes they did and it was a horrible moment for jason to find out dick has fucked both of his best friends
"at this rate bruce adds like 1 child to his family every decade or so" Duke is introduced in 2013, Damian as Damian, not as an unnamed child, in 2006. And he is already 14 years old, Robins rarely remain Robins after 16 😬 It looks like a new Robin and Batkid will appear in a couple of years
i mean i can't wait? but somebody will probably die first tho, we're due for another major character death. my money's on either cass or duke this time.
BRO you're so right all of your Bruce's ex headcanons are amazing but they aren't ships, that's kinda wild. Like I don't want any peeks into how their relationship was I just want to see everyone make fun of them
lmao YES it's just i love bruce being a slut, like good for him.
I am in love with your posts your honour thank you
omg thanks are we like,, gonna kiss now?
The justice league needs to have a meeting to discuss how many of their members/partners have slept with bruce. Because through a combination of cannon & fannon (if DC wasn’t homophobic) we have AT LEAST: 1) clark 2) lois 3) oliver 4) dinah 5) john
Thats not counting villains or random civilians @dudelookitsalesbian
yes yes yes, they'll have a yearly meeting about how many of their collective exes could be out for revenge and batman's list just keeps getting longer.
tim was like "i'm drake now" and everyone was like ahh so your fursona is a dragon and tim was like pffffft no. ducks.
and what about it?
when steph's fighting livewire and she zaps her with lighting and nothing happens and then they both just. stand there awkwardly for a second and talk. yeah i couldn't stop laughing at that batgirl steph is the BEST
oh yeah that was fucking hilarious and i think it would be so cool and sexy of dc to give steph a little comic series,,, as a treat
Hi I absolutely adore all of yours "Bruce and Oliver very badly pretending they didn't fuck each other" memes
lmao i do too
I need you to know that “Bruce Wayne had frosted tips” is one of my favorite Bruce takes of all time it’s so galaxy brained. you’re right and you should say it
he also painted his hair blonde once when he was travelling and in conclusion, this is why he's being blackmailed by the gotham gazette.
you know my thing about gordon being branded as the only good cop in gotham is its a load of shit like arguably he's a good person and not working to screw people over or anything but the fact that he also works w. batman makes him a shit cop. like yea batman is better than the mob but its still illegal its still an abuse of power he just not making bank
babe, all cops are bad cops. (but yeah youre absolutely right, working with vigilantes makes you a shit cop, but also working against vigilantes just makes you an asshole cop yanno?)
ruh roh i think i’m about to add “so not yeehaw” every time i don’t like something
that's a very good vocabulary upgrade
somehow i feel like steph already knew. like babs obviously knew but i feel like bruce got high/drunk in front of steph and started telling his boarding school stories and steph was just like “oh you fucked up i’m never gonna forget this”
steph and bruce have weird uncle/rebellious niece dynamic and they just hang out sometimes and bruce will be like 'i once broke my arm when i tripped over a hedge when i was drunk so oliver drove me to the hospital on an electric scooter' and steph will just have to sit there with that knowledge in her head.
Hello I just wanted to tell you you are So right in all your steph opinions bc she is, in fact amazing and I think that's very sexy of you. Ps. Your Bruce/Oliver fic is hilarious
babe, thank you so much and yes steph is amazing and i love her and she deserves the world and she's the best member of the batfam hands down. also thanks
In Supersons we see a couple of kids that are implied to be Damian and Jon's children and the boy has laser eyes and can fly, so I asume he's not adopted. The girl, who calls Bruce grandpa, can also fly, btw. So it's canon (probably by accident) that Jon can have kids and he must have married one of Bruce's kids. (I'm hoping for Damian, mostly because any other of his children would be waaaaaaaaaaaaay too old.) @artemisa97
lmao that was probably an accident seeing as jon is a 17 year old superhero in the year 3000 (by the jonas brothers)
You know, I'm a die hard fan of your memes, but I gotta say one thing: if Gothamites actually took gas mask everywhere with them, then the Scarecrow would just be a weird dude in a weird costume, and not a villain oh so scary. DC really should just takes notes from you.
bold of you to assume there's no gothamite anti-maskers
How does it feel being the funniest person on this app?
horrible, next question.
I can't listen to Green Day or Billy Joel without thinking of your post about how Bruce got arrested at a Billy Joel concert @nightwings-kid
yeah that's your mistake, i on the other hand can't enjoy billy joel without thinking about the glee rendition of 'uptown girl'
I've FINALLY been watching the Batman animated series and I gotta say, after watching "the gray ghost" I am CONVINCED that Batman is a closeted super hero geek who was 100% freaking out the first time he met Superman and is just REALLY good at hiding it.
superman: so what do you do in your free time? batman, thinking about the superman fanfiction he's writing on the batcomputer: i have no free time
bruce and oliver be like boyfriends to co-workers 401k (do the justice leagues get 401ks??? not that bruce and ollie would need them, but-)
lmao yes just 400 thousand words of bruce realising 'oh dip oliver is such a fucking dumbass' (also i don't know what a 401 k is but i assume they don't?)
Gothamites would totally boo superman as he saves Gotham while batman is out. @meenje
he's like 'okay think about that next time you want to be saved from an alien octopus'
I just took long break from dc comics and I come back to see ric grayson ??
i think it's very cool and sexy of dc to see dick and just think 'you know what? let's just give him a traumatic brain injury' and then didn't develop his character in any real way
SPEAKING OF RIC GRAYSON, gothamites making confused memes out of ric grayson is much needed
'dick grayson is my taxi driver? can anyone explain what the fuck happened he looks like an italian plumber?'
i hate to say it but batfam are def "marvel characters" in that sense they are characters who are human but become superheroes unlike most dc characters who are gods trying to be human maybe this is why I like batfam
fair enough
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Timeline: Batman
google doc / ao3
This is my best attempt at a post-crisis timeline based on age-- specifically Bruce’s age every time he adopted and/or met one of his children. 
List of events:
Bruce’s parents die
Bruce becomes Batman
Dick’s parents die
Dick becomes Robin
Jason becomes Robin and is adopted
Jason dies
Tim becomes Robin
Cass appears
Dick is adopted
Tim is adopted
Cass is adopted
Damian becomes Robin
I’ll be citing my work by issue and panel. This isn’t my most organized work, and I don’t know how well tumblr will let me translate it, so I do recommend the google doc. I imagine the image quality here won’t be great. 
Notes:
This is a post-crisis timeline (1986-2011). I’ll be referencing a few pre-crisis panels, but I won’t be touching the New 52 or anything after it. That’s a different game of ball with its own, extremely bad, timeline.
Crisis on Infinite Earths is a 1985-1986 series that rebooted the DC timeline and altered some backstories, including Jason’s. Pre-crisis, his backstory was almost identical to Dick’s. Post-crisis, he changed to the “steal the wheels off the Batmobile” origin. Anything written before 1986 is a weak source for my purposes. 
My original question centered around Bruce’s age through the process of meeting and acquiring his children. In this timeline, those children are (1) Dick Grayson, (2) Jason Todd, (3) Cassandra Cain, (4) Tim Drake, and (5) Damian Wayne. I was envisioning an interview where the kids explain their family timeline to outsiders. I did not anticipate the project taking this long. 
We’re talking about 72 years of content here, which means decades of contradiction, conflation, and rewrites. I’m pretty satisfied with my work product, but please understand that there are no perfect answers. I’m going to cite my sources, and I’ll do my best to explain why I chose those sources specifically, but it’s pretty likely that for every panel I pull, there will be others with different numbers. We’re all going to have to live with that. 
Event timeline
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*I’m defining Jason’s age by the time elapsed since his birth, but you could make an argument for using time he has been alive, which is, of course, different. That’s why the parentheses are there. 
Age differences
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As Robin
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Bruce’s parents die
Pretty consistently, Bruce is written as eight years old the night his parents died. 
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Detective Comics #0 (1994)
This is a zero issue where Bruce thinks back on his origin story. It was written long after Crisis on Infinite Earths (1986), and I tend to give a lot of weight to ages written in summaries of past plot lines, my reasoning being that it’s easier to be consistent in one issue than it is to be consistent through a month to month story. 
Bruce first appeared as an adult in Detective Comics #27 (1939), and the Waynes were already dead at that point, so flashbacks are the only available material anyway. 
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Gotham Knights #6 (2000)
The text is Hugo Strange talking about Bruce, and the image is Tim and Dick playing at Wayne Enterprises. 
I’ll take a second here to note that I did find at least one alternate age for Bruce— in Superman/Batman Secret Files & Origins (2003), Bruce was 10 when his parents died. I’m disregarding that in favor of the stronger 8 year old timeline, especially in light of Batman #404 (1987).
Batman #404 is the beginning of Batman: Year One, which was explicitly written to clarify the Batman timeline post-crisis, and it’s the basis of most of my calculations for Bruce and Dick’s ages.
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Bruce becomes Batman
According to Year One, Bruce was 26 years old when he became Batman. I’m using his age at his parents’ deaths, his age when he returned to Gotham, and his 18 year timeline.
Batman #404 puts Bruce at age 25 when he returned to Gotham in January. 
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Batman #404 (1987)
Bruce gives his dramatic, “Yes, Father, I will become a bat,” line in March. In the same scene, he says that it has been 18 years since his parents’ deaths. Knowing that they died when Bruce was eight, that puts Bruce at 26 years old the day he became Batman, which makes sense considering Bruce’s birthday is usually set at February 19th. 
He was 25 in January, turned 26 in February, and became Batman at 26, 18 years after his parents’ death. 
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Batman #404 (1987)
Post-crisis, DC built timelines off the “Year” model. Year One is Batman’s beginning, and events after that are measured by how far away they are from the year Bruce became Batman. I’ll be using the Year model for Dick’s life events next. 
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Dick’s parents die
The Graysons died in Year Two. Using the Year Model, Dick was 12 when his parents died, and Bruce was 37. 
Year timelines appear a fair amount, especially in issues titled “Secret Files & Origins.” I pulled this bit from Batman Secret Files & Origins (1997) because it was the easiest to screenshot. 
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Batman Secret Files & Origins (1997)
Year Two would place Bruce at 27 years old. I’m calculating Dick’s age backwards, based on him being 13 years old during Year Three. 
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Batman Secret Files & Origins (1997) 
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Dick becomes Robin
Dick became Robin in Year Three, when he was 13 years old and Bruce was 28. I’m using two different issues to calculate the number. 
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Batman #441 (1989)
Batman #441 is from Tim’s introduction story. It takes place “months” after Jason’s death. We’ll get to that part. In Batman #441, Tim asked Dick to be Robin again in order to help Bruce, who was visibly unstable after Jason’s death. Dick says that he can’t go back to being Robin, just like he can’t go back to being 13 years old. The strong implication there is that Dick became Robin at 13, which corresponds to Dick’s statements in Batman #416 (1988). 
In Batman #416, Dick as Nightwing returns to confront Bruce about Jason becoming Robin. He says that he was Robin for six years, and he stopped being Robin at 19.
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Batman #416 (1988)
If Dick stopped being Robin at 19, after 6 years, that would put him at 13 when he debuted as Robin, the same number from Batman #441 (1989).
Dick was 13 during Year Three, so 12 during Year Two, the year his parents died. Those numbers answer the first bit of my original question. I wanted to know how old Dick and Bruce were when Dick became his child. It’s a bit more of a complicated question for Dick, since he was originally Bruce’s ward, then adopted as an adult. 
Based on the timeline so far, Dick became Bruce’s ward at 12 years old, while Bruce was 27.  
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Jason becomes Robin and is adopted
As previously discussed (see Notes), Jason’s timeline is complicated by Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985-1986). Pre-crisis, Jason first appeared in Batman #336 (1983) as a former circus acrobat very similar to Dick.
Jason’s origin story reboots at Batman #408 (1987), which describes the switch-off between Dick and Jason. I’m building a lot of my timeline off of that issue. At the beginning, Dick gets shot by the Joker, and as Bruce carries him away, the media ask if Robin is dead. Dick isn’t dead, but back at the manor, Bruce decides to retire Robin as a role, based on the idea that crimefighting is too dangerous for a child. 
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Batman #408 (1987)
This version is more or less from Bruce’s point of view, but there’s a contrasting version from Dick’s point of view later, in Batman #416 (1987). That one has a significantly different tone, and I already cited it once (page 13) because Dick talks about his age and the amount of time he was Robin.  
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Batman #408 (1987)
The second part of the issue takes place “weeks” later. Bruce goes to Crime Alley to mourn his parents on the anniversary of their death. He comes back to find that somebody stole the wheels off the Batmobile. The somebody was Jason, and by the end of Batman #409 (1987), Bruce is calling Jason “Robin.”
Batman #408 (1987) seems to divide Dick’s departure and Jason’s introduction by only “weeks,” in the post-crisis reboot. Dick’s version of the story in Batman #416 (1987) is much less charitable to Bruce— instead of ending on a panel of Bruce smiling, it shows the aftermath of Dick in tears as Bruce walks away. Dick goes on to describe leaving the house, going to college for a semester, then dropping out. According to Dick, Bruce didn’t even say goodbye. 
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Batman #416 (1987)
I don’t think the stories are contradictory; they’re just different experiences of the same events, separated by only eight issues. Dick tells us that he was 19 when he left Wayne Manor, and Bruce chooses his new Robin “weeks” later. 
As a summary, we know that Bruce’s parents died when he was eight, and that 18 years passed before he became Batman at 26. One year later, Dick’s parents died while Bruce was 27. One year after that, Dick became Robin at the age of 13. From those facts, Bruce is 15 years older than Dick. 
All of my calculations of Bruce’s age are based off of the age gap between him and Dick. Dick was 19 when Jason became Robin, so we know that at that time, Bruce was 34. We also know that at that time, Jason was 12. 
I can’t show a source for that number because it appears on the letter page of Batman #408 (1987), Jason’s introduction.
Even after a significant amount of investigation, I can’t find a copy of the letter page, but it’s cited by enough secondary sources for me to be comfortable using it. That issue is specifically written to show Jason’s origin, so it makes sense that it would contain Jason’s age at inception, even if the number wasn’t in the actual exposition. 
From Jason being 12, we can establish a seven-year age gap between Jason and Dick, who was 19 at the time. Now we know Bruce, Dick, and Jason’s ages, and the age differences between them.
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Back to my original question— when did Bruce acquire Jason? We know that Bruce was 34 when Jason became his ward, and Jason was 12. The next question, however, is when did Bruce adopt Jason? On this one, I’m making an educated guess. 
Again we have to differentiate between pre-crisis and post-crisis timelines. Pre-crisis, there’s a full storyline about the fact that Bruce did not adopt Jason, although not for lack of trying. In Batman #374 (1984), the Child Welfare Bureau investigates Bruce when it notices that Bruce has not adopted Jason— and is not even, in fact, his legal guardian. 
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Batman #374 (1984)
The rest of the storyline is about Jason’s custody. A villain named Natalia Knight (Nocturna) adopts Jason in an attempt to get Bruce to marry her in order to become Jason’s father. In the court scene in Batman #377 (1984), Bruce says that he filed to adopt Jason sometime beforehand, although it’s unclear to me whether he means he filed between those issues or the CWB documents were incomplete.
Natalia does adopt Jason in Batman #378 (1984), and he briefly lives with her before returning to Wayne Manor in Batman #381 (1985), directly before the reboot. 
I’m including all of that for two reasons: first, I do think it’s important to clarify both this version and the post-crisis version I’m about to address. Second, I spent years under the impression that Bruce adopted Jason pre-crisis because of one, well-known scene. 
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Batman #377 (1984)
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Batman #378 (1984)
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Batman #381 (1985)
Donna Troy gets married in Tales of the Teen Titans #50 (1985). At the wedding, Bruce and Dick have a conversation about Jason and about their own relationship. A few of those panels get spread around because they contain what I would consider a defining moment between Dick and Bruce. 
I’m certainly not complaining about the amount of times I’ve seen the wedding conversation, but I think that, in regards to Jason, seeing just those panels has created a misconception.
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Tales of the Teen Titans #50 (1985)
Without context, it looks, at least to me, like Dick is saying that Bruce has adopted Jason pre-crisis, which isn’t true. This issue takes place between the Natalia adoption in Batman #378 (1984) and Jason’s return to the manor in Batman #381 (1985), and the panels directly before the exchange make that clear. I just didn’t see those panels until I looked through the whole issue for this project. 
I’m reasonably certain that in the past, I publicly cited this issue as evidence of Jason’s adoption, and I was wrong about that. [Note: As it turns out, I was only partially wrong. See section Correction.]
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Tales of the Teen Titans #50 (1985)
As we see, the wedding conversation is in the context of the Natalia adoption. With that cleared up, and with the pre-crisis timeline filled out, let’s move to post-crisis. 
In my brief read-through of Batman #404-427 (1987-1988), I didn’t find any direct references to Jason’s status. Those issues begin at the reboot and end at Jason’s death. However, Dick and Jason’s statements after the fact do tell us that post-crisis, Bruce did adopt Jason. 
In Batman #436 (1989), Dick returns to the manor in the direct aftermath of Jason’s death, and while he is there, he sees that Bruce removed any trace of Jason from the house. There aren’t any trophies in the Batcave, and there aren’t any pictures of Jason on the nightstand displaying Bruce’s family photos. 
Dick says that Jason was Bruce’s son.
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Batman #436 (1989)
I think it’s fair to ask whether Dick is being literal here, because even if Bruce hadn’t legally adopted Jason, it would still be more than appropriate to call them father and son. I’m not going to place my opinion solely on this kind of statement, even if it does appear pretty regularly from 1988 to the end of the timeline.
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Green Arrow/Black Canary #4 (2007)
We get a more definite answer later, during Tim’s first appearance. In Tim’s origin story, he deduces Batman and Robin’s secret identities after he sees footage of Robin doing a type of flip that only the Flying Graysons could do. Tim was at the circus the night Dick’s parents died, so he saw Dick do the flip there, then saw Dick become an orphan. 
Because Tim knew that Dick was the first Robin, he correctly identified Bruce as Batman and Jason as the second Robin. He tells Dick all of this in Batman #441 (1989).
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Batman #441 (1989)
Tim does specifically use the word “adopts” here, and that’s good enough for me. The last part is guesswork— I don’t know for certain how old Jason and Bruce were when the adoption took place, but I’m electing to say Jason was 12, the same age as he was when he became Robin. 
I picked that number both out of convenience and because Tim seems to be putting Jason’s adoption and the second Robin’s appearance at around the same time. With that in mind, I think that Jason was 12 years old both when he became Robin and when Bruce adopted him. Using the age gap we already established, that would put Bruce at age 34. 
Circling back to my original question, Dick became Bruce’s ward when Dick was 12 and Bruce was 27. Jason became Bruce’s ward, then adoptive son when Jason was 12 and Bruce was 34. 
At this point in the timeline, Bruce is 34 with one former ward and one adopted son. 
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Correction 
A few days after I wrote my section about Jason’s appearance and adoption, I realized that I was missing a panel citation in my discussion of Jason’s death. The panel is from New Titan #55 (1989), and you’ll see me cite it when I talk about Jason’s death certificate. 
New Titans #55 (1989) is the issue where Dick, who is with the Teen Titans,  finds out about Jason’s death. While I was combing through the issue for the panels I wanted, I reread a scene I had completely forgotten about. Dick goes back to the manor to speak to Bruce, and it doesn’t go well.
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New Titans #55 (1989)
I have three comments here. First, I do think this scene is inconsistent with the simultaneous story in the Batman title. In this version, Dick and Bruce have a very aggressive confrontation, but in Batman #436 (1989), Dick appears to be returning to the manor for the first time since Jason died, and there isn’t any reference to a prior fight. 
Putting that aside, Bruce does explicitly say that he adopted Jason, and that’s more, stronger verification of a post-crisis adoption. Lastly, it’s pretty clear that Bruce and Dick are talking about the wedding scene. 
I already explained that the wedding scene is pre-crisis, and in the original text, that conversation is about Bruce wanting to, but not being able to, adopt Jason. New Titans #55 (1989) carries the wedding scene into post-crisis canon, changing the language in the process. In this version, Bruce has adopted Jason. 
I was still wrong about the wedding scene because in the past, I used it as evidence of a pre-crisis adoption. It isn’t pre-crisis evidence, but it is, in a roundabout way, evidence of the post-crisis adoption. I wanted to clear that up before I move on to Jason’s death. 
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Jason dies
Jason’s death is by far the shakiest point on my timeline, but I’ve chosen to put him at 15 the day he died in Batman #427 (1988). 
I think it’s safe to say that Jason was either 14 or 15 when he died, and my basic conclusion is that running numbers doesn’t give me a definite answer. There’s a cop-out option based on an extraordinarily poor source, and I’m taking the cop-out. 
The general consensus seems to be that Jason was 15 at his death, citation to Jason’s death certificate. Jason’s death certificate appears in two different places, and I think most folks conflate the two. 
To my knowledge, the only copy of Jason’s death certificate in full appears in The Batman Files (2011), where it does list Jason’s age as 15. 
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The Batman Files (2011)
Now there is a partial copy in Batman Annual #25 (2006), which I would argue is a very reliable reference when it comes to Jason. That issue is part of the Under the Red Hood story, the one where Jason returns to Gotham for the first time after his resurrection. In fact, the specific annual issue has a timeline for Jason’s events counting forward from his death. 
Here’s the problem: the issue doesn’t say his age at death. The partial copy of his death certificate looks like this. 
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Batman Annual #25 (2006) 
I think that when most folks remember a death certificate, they think of this one, the one from a very important issue, instead of The Batman Files (2011) which, as noted, is a very bad source. 
I have three issues with The Batman Files (2011): the format, the publishing date, and the other information on the certificate. First, The Batman Files (2011) isn’t a comic book at all. It’s a commemorative book published in collaboration with DC in 2011. Now I don’t think that fact completely removes the book as a source, but it certainly damages its value as one. 
My problem with that date, 2011, is that it’s the year the New 52 premiered. I called it a commemorative book because it’s meant to be a look back at a fully complete timeline, a kind of “this is us saying goodbye” product. The date and format alone make me hesitant to cite the certificate, but on top of that, the certificate is inconsistent with prior canon. 
I am intimately familiar with retcons and conflicting numbers in the DC timeline. I made a point at the beginning of this paper to tell you that although this is my best attempt to make a cohesive timeline, assuming that I can carve out a cohesive timeline is fundamentally flawed. 
I’m not saying that a single contradictory number is enough to make me disregard a source. I am saying that in this particular conversation about an already suspect source, I’m going to take inconsistency into account. 
In New Titans #55 (1989), the issue from Corrections, Dick finds out about Jason’s death because a team member notices Jason’s status is set at “unknown.” Dick uses Bruce’s passcode to access restricted information, and he and the Titans see that Jason’s real status is “deceased.” 
The death certificate in The Batman Files (2011) marks Jason’s height at 4’6 and his age at 15. In contrast, Dick’s scene puts Jason at 5’4, and its only reference to Jason’s age is a very relatable question from Donna. “How old was he, anyway?”
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New Titans #55 (1989)
There’s a substantial difference between the two heights, and I think it’s also worth noting that for a 15 year old American male, 4’6 is in the 0.1 height percentile. In the past, I and many others have tried to justify that height along the lines of Jason being malnourished or similarly afflicted. Personally, I liked the parallel between this height for Jason and Damian’s height at his own death in 2013, and I know I’ve talked about that in the past.
I’m not criticizing anyone for using the 4’6 number, but I do think the unlikelihood of a 15 year old that size is worth bringing up. 
In summary, The Batman Files (2011) is so bad of a source that I’m only willing to use it as a last resort. Unfortunately, it’s time for a last resort. 
I mentioned a timeline in Batman Annual #25 (2006) that counts forward from Jason’s death. I’m not going to use image cites here because they’re just isolated text boxes labeled either “six months later” or “one year later.”
Using that timeline, we know that Jason’s resurrection took place six months after his death. He spent one year in a coma, then one year on the street, then one year with the League of Assassins. Finally, he spent a nebulous time training before he returned to Gotham. 
We know that Jason was gone for a minimum of three and a half years, then whatever time “training” includes. Personally, I’m applying my best attempt at comic logic to say he was missing for somewhere between three and four years. 
To understand the next bit, I need to point out that from Jason’s death on, I’m going to be using Tim’s age to track time in the same way I’ve been using Dick’s so far. 
As a reminder, I know what age Bruce was when Dick became Robin (28), and I know Dick’s age at the same point (13), so I know there’s a 15 year age difference. As I track Dick’s age through the timeline, I add 15 to get Bruce’s. 
In the same way, I know what age Dick was when Jason became Robin (19), and I know Jason’s age at the same point (12), so I know there’s a 7 year age difference. I can use that number ongoing. 
I know that Tim was 13 when he made his first appearance as Robin, and I’ll get into that in the next section. After that, I’m placing Dick, Tim, and Cass’s adoptions based on Tim’s age. 
To do that, I need to know how much older Dick is than Tim, and I can only get that by knowing Jason’s age at his death, sort of. 
How long was Jason Robin? If I had that information, I could establish Jason’s age by counting up from 12, the age when he became Robin, then establish Tim’s age from there.  
I can’t really answer that question. There is a panel from Batman #436 where Dick, apparently in his first time at the manor since Jason’s death says the following. 
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Batman #436 (1989)
My instinctual interpretation is it’s been two years since he stopped being Robin at 19, making Dick 21 and Jason 14. In my opinion, that’s straightforward plain language, but it seems like I’m in the minority on that one, and most folks read it as Dick saying it’s been two years since he was last at the manor. We know from Batman #416 (1988) that Dick’s last visit to the manor was 18 months after Dick left home. 
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Batman #136 (1988)
I think the most honest thing to say is that Jason was Robin for an indeterminate amount of time that was somewhere between two and three years. I don’t know which number is closer. I also, if you remember, think that Jason was gone from Gotham for somewhere between three and four years, but I don’t know where in that range the real number is. 
Here’s why absolutely nothing I’ve said in the past seven pages matters: I need to build my timeline based on the age gap between Jason and Tim. 
I don’t know how old Tim was when Jason died. 
I know how old Tim was at his first appearance as Robin, and that’s a different number. 
We’ll finish this conversation in a moment.
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Tim becomes Robin
We begin, thankfully, with a straightforward fact. Tim’s first storyline spans Batman #440-442 (1989). The arc is called A Lonely Place of Dying, and we already talked about it. Tim, having watched Batman and Robin from the shadows for years, comes forwards in the aftermath of Jason’s death in an attempt to convince Dick to become Robin for a second time.
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Batman #441 (1989)
We know that Tim was 13 years old at the time, but I do need to clarify exactly what time that was— an indeterminate amount of time after Jason’s death. 
The word that pops up a couple of time in Tim’s first arc is “months,” from Tim and Two-Face. How many months? Who’s to say. 
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Batman #442 (1989)
So, from the top. We know that Bruce was eight when his parents died, 26 when he became Batman, 27 when he met Dick, 28 when Dick became Robin, and 34 when he met Jason.
Dick was 12 when he met Bruce, 13 when he became Robin, 19 when he left home and Jason became Robin. 
Jason was 12 when he became Robin.
Bruce is 15 years older than Dick. Bruce is 22 years older than Jason. 
Dick is 7 years older than Jason.
How long was Jason Robin? Unknown, but somewhere between two and three years. At that point, he died. “Months” after that, Tim was 13. 
Here, we need to acknowledge that Jason could have been either 14 or 15 at his death, and at the same time, Tim was either 12 or 13. We need to know how far they are apart to calculate Tim’s age in relation to Jason, Dick, and Bruce— ongoing, we will always know exactly how old Tim is, so (if we know how far apart Jason and Tim are) we will always know Bruce, Dick, and Jason’s age from there. 
How much older than Tim is Jason? Somewhere between one and three years, I guess, but I can’t really go beyond a well-researched guess. In my opinion, there isn’t a straightforward answer for this one.
Having presented my facts, here is my conclusion. Jason was 15 when he died. At the same time, Tim was 13. They are two years apart. 
Why? To begin, I’m more comfortable using the number we already have for Tim, 13, than I am dropping him to 12 on the mere possibility that he could have been 12. 
Second, even though The Batman Files (2011) is a terrible source, it does at least sort of indicate that the official DC position is a Jason who was 15 years old at his death. 
Third, visually speaking, Jason looks closer to 15 than 14 at his death. Is that good evidence? No, absolutely not. Comic book art is definitionally variable, but I am going to pull a few panels for you to look over. 
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Batman #427 (1988)
Finally, I feel that Jason and Tim are, in later works, treated as if they are different ages. I’m not going to go into much detail on that one because it is purely a personal reaction, but I would refer to Teen Titans #29 (2005) as an example. That issue has Jason and Tim’s first meeting, after Jason comes to the tower specifically to attack Tim. 
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Teen Titans #27 (2005)
Another well-known issue to check out is Teen Titans #47 (2007).
My basic position is that there are so many ways, all uncertain, to slice Jason and Tim’s ages that I can take my pick. I chose the ones that most closely mirror later canon, fall most squarely into the possible range, and feel the most intuitively right. 
They also have the benefit of simplicity, which was very much a factor. 
Don’t agree with me? Fair enough. I think I’ve given you enough information to make an educated judgment, and I’ve also gone ahead and made a timeline in the alternative. In this one, Jason was 14 at death, and he and Tim are only one year apart. 
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In the Alternative
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Cass appears
Having progressed beyond Jason and Tim’s age gap, we reenter simple canon. I hope you’re as pleased as I am. 
Cass was 17 years old at her first appearance, which we can establish easily based on two different issues. Cass first appears in Batman #567 (1999), during an arc called No Man’s Land. At the time, she is working for Barbara Gordon in the aftermath of an earthquake that destroyed most of Gotham. We learn Cass’s backstory through that issue. 
Cass’s biological father is David Cain, a villain, who raised Cass in isolation, never exposing her to a verbal language or allowing any kind of socialization. By comic book logic, her upbringing gave her a near-superhuman ability to understand and anticipate physical actions, as those actions are her only form of communication. 
Cain trained her as a child assassin, then took her to her first kill. Cass murdered a man and experienced, through his body language, the pain he felt at his death. Immediately afterward, she ran away from her father.
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Batgirl #62 (2005)
We know that Cass was eight years old when she killed and ran. We also know that her first appearance in Gotham was nine years after she ran, thanks to Barbara Gordon’s file. 
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Batgirl #1 (2000)
Simple enough. She was 17. How old was everybody else? We find out from Tim’s timeline. 
This next bit will come up a few times. We know that Tim was 15 from at least 1993 to 2003, established by three different issues. We know from Detective Comics #668 (1993) that Tim was 15 during Knightquest, the arc where Jean-Paul Valley was briefly Batman. Barbara tells us in 2002 that Tim is still 15, and Tim turns 16 on-panel in 2003. 
In Knightquest, Tim gets his driver’s license early, at age 15, because Jack Drake is in a wheelchair. I suppose the wording here is ambiguous on a technicality, but I don’t think there’s any significant argument against Tim being 15; if he was only 14, the language would be different.  
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Detective Comics #668 (1993)
Next, in Batgirl #24 (2002), Barbara says she’s “sending a 15 year old” as she reaches for Tim’s com line.
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Batgirl #24 (2002)
We could stop here for Cassandra’s appearance, since that happened in 1999, between the 1993 issue and the 2002 reference. For completion’s sake, however, let’s note that Robin #116 (2003) is about Tim’s 16th birthday. He forgets about it, so his step-mother throws a surprise party. 
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Robin #116 (2003)
Okay, so Tim was 15 when Cass appeared at age 17. That puts Bruce at 39, Dick at 24, and Jason at 17 if you’re counting by years elapsed since his birth. 
Bruce met his daughter when he was 39 and she was 17, in reference to my original question. Cass is 22 years younger than Bruce, seven years younger than Dick, the same age as Jason, and two years older than Tim. 
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Dick is adopted
This one, having already established Tim’s timeline, is very simple. Dick was adopted in Gotham Knights #17 (2001).
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Gotham Knights #17 (2001)
Again, Tim was 15 from 1993 to 2003, and 2001 falls within that range. Tim was 15, which makes Dick 24 and Bruce 39. 
At this point in the timeline, Bruce, a 39 year old, has two adopted children, one of whom is deceased as far as Bruce is concerned. His adopted children are (17) and 24. He has already met two of his future children, Cass and Tim. 
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This is PART ONE. I’ll reblog Part Two onto this post when I wake up, which should be around the same time this posts. 
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unweavinglies · 4 years
Text
Gonta Gokuhara Character Analysis: When a Genius is Treated like a Child
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So a quick disclaimer: Yes, I am very aware that this is most likely not canon, or at least not what the writers intended on being canon, nor am I saying that this is 100% canon and should be considered as such. This is just a fan theory/analysis I came up with for my own enjoyment and wanted to share with others, as I like coming up with theories/analysis posts and reworking canons to make enhanced stories and character development in my perspective. I firmly believe that the idea of making theories isn’t supposed to be a shouting contest to see which opinion is the most loud and correct, but should be something to share with others and find acceptance and understanding in different interpretations, even if you don’t agree with them.
Well, this has been a long time coming, hasn’t it?
I’ve been talking about wanting to do this analysis for months now to various friends and acquaintances, but I’ve only had the motivation to do as such recently, after writing a short story that dived deeper into Gonta’s mindset over the Mercy Killing Plot he and Kokichi attempted to carry out. Regardless of that, however, Gonta has been one of my favorite characters for quite some time, and I really feel like his character arc and the unfortunate tragedy behind the unintentional mistreatment of Gonta via his classmates.
So without further adieu, let’s talk about that--about what happens when a genius is treated like a child.
Warning, this does discuss some rather unfortunate topics, such as ableism, depression/self loathing, and the concept of mercy killing. Viewer discretion is advised.
The first thing we need to elaborate on, is why I am calling Gonta a “genius.” Gonta has shown difficulty in understanding simple concepts, and struggles to follow along complicated plots, such as we see in his Salmon Mode Event where he mentions that he cannot follow the plot of high fantasy stories because they tend to be so complicated. He even refers to himself as not very smart, tragically enough.
However, not is all what it seems for Gonta, as his intellect is a matter of fact, and not just an analysis, and the game’s introduction of him opens up this fact to the player in a round about way that may or may not be so subtle.
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Gonta admits here that he was a wild child, lost in the forest for ten years. While the logistics are... questionable, this is a work of fiction, thus I will suspend some disbelief. Gonta being lost in the forest for ten years means that he was probably about 5-8 years old when he was lost, depending on how old he is in the game.
Touching upon this briefly, studies of wild children, specifically referencing this case here, have an extremely hard time readjusting and learning to human language, customs, and interaction. The younger a child is upon becoming a wild child and the longer they are in the wild, the less likely they will be able to learn language and certain social behaviors and skills. While it is not impossible, the likelihood of Gonta being 15 or 16 in the game is very low, and even impossible once I elaborate, and we can safely assume that with the context of him being a wild child, he is probably at least 17 years old. So a safe assumption is that Gonta was lost in the forest when he was about 7.
(Note: I am very well aware of Gonta’s potential forest family not being wolves, and instead the reptites, but these creatures Gonta speaks of very well be his own imagination spiking from the isolation from humanity, or be something else entirely. Gonta makes several references to video game characters as well, claiming he met them in real life, so I consider it highly unlikely that “reptites” are an exception to this. Either way, it won’t matter if you believe otherwise, just that it may change certain aspects of what I’m about to say in regarding education and the sort.)
What’s the point of this elaboration? Well, quite a lot, once you remember that Gonta is the Ultimate Entomologist.
Firstly, there is the fact that Gonta is a high school student at all. Gonta was lost at a very young age--it would be impossible for him to be, since not only had he spent 10 years int he wild, but he also had to rejoin human society, relearn human language and customs, and then be put back into formal education. If Gonta is still a teenager and not over 21, then Gonta would have to cram in a decade’s worth of formal education into a few months, or a few years, at most.
This makes Gonta a literal prodigy.
Had Gonta not been isolated from humanity for a decade, Gonta would have been a child prodigy, a literal genius with an intellect that couldn’t be so easily matched. Having the capacity to learn advance mathematics, language (although in the English version, he is struggling with speak (speaking with the infamous “caveman” speech pattern) scientific methods, all of it within such a short amount of time proves that Gonta is, without a shred of doubt, a genius.
Even if you take the aforementioned reptites into account, it only makes Gonta’s accomplishments slightly less impressive, depending on your interpretation of what the reptites actually are. This is because Gonta still had to engage with formal education, and even in the best case scenario where the reptites were fully advanced beings with a civilization and education (which I quite doubt, if they were, then why not give Gonta back to the human race when he was still a child? Why not guide him back to his kind? Why keep him? Even if they were afraid of humanity, it would be far, far worse for the humans to find them while looking for their lost son... I digress.) Gonta still had to learn Japan’s education. Their history, their language, their social customs--and then, Gonta had to learn how to be an entomologist.
You need to go to college to be an entomologist.
According to this website here, the basic, bare bones higher education one needs in order to apply for certain positions related to entomology is a bachelor’s degree, with most positions and places requiring a doctoral decree. There are, of course, youth clubs for students under eighteen, but from my understanding, in order to be considered an entomologist, you need a college degree.
Gonta is a high school student.
For him to be considered an Ultimate Entomologist, Gonta would have to have taken college courses and gotten some kind of degree in order to be recognized as such. Thus, Gonta is still learning a higher education within a short period of time that is incredible for any human being his age, whether it be as drastic as him having no sort of education while living in the wild, or living with the reptites.
Either way, it is safe to say that Gonta is very intelligent, whether or not he is potentially a prodigy for it.
However, this has very unfortunate implications of the way Gonta is treated by his peers in the game.
Not only does Tsumugi here reenforce that idea in everyone else’s mind...
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She blatantly tells Gonta that he was being manipulated and or “tricked” into abducting everyone...
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When, in actuality, not only did Gonta know exactly what he was doing:
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Kokichi even elaborated on his plans quite explicitly to Gonta:
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And earlier on, the rest of the class had been treating him differently than they treat one another, sort of like he was a young child they needed to guide.
For example;
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Kirumi assumes Gonta is not very aware that hitting someone with such an object is dangerous... despite him being a peer to his classmates and a young man.
And when Gonta has a pretty valid concern;
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He is instructed against it and/or ignored on the subject:
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Even Kaede slips up a little;
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And during the investigation...
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Himiko is 100% convinced here that Gonta is the culprit, to the point where she is trying to trick him with this kind of phrasing.
“Are you not, not the culprit?” equates to “Are you the culprit?”
“Are you not, not, not the culprit?” equates to... I believe it would be “Are you not the culprit?”
And that’s the thing:
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Like how even I was confused and unsure about the triple ‘nots’ of Himiko’s statement, Gonta is too. Very reasonably so, actually--it’s extremely awkward phrasing purposefully meant to manipulate Gonta into saying he’s the culprit of Rantaro’s murder, and it takes Kaito and Himiko to realize that it was them causing the problem when Kaede called them out on such.
And again, after Gonta explains his actions during the murder, he gets very frustrated;
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Already, we are seeing the effects piling up, leading to a frustrated, angry outburst.
And by far, one of the worst examples of this sort of unintentional ableism is this:
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And Himiko even just... flat out does this:
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By “dumbing down” the explanation of right and left, and not noticing that Gonta is left handed, she caused him to accidentally switch the wires on the headset, causing the memory error and making this entire trial all the more worse for him. By treating him like a child, like the theme of this trial, she only made things worse for him.
And that’s the problem.
Despite Gonta trying to tell everyone that he has no idea what they’re even talking about, everyone just assumes he “can’t understand the Virtual World” and brushes him off. Again and again, Gonta was treated like a child and brushed off, and this time, it came with a heavy consequence.
These instances of “guiding” Gonta are subtle, and on their own, aren’t much to address as anything more than suggestions or words of caution. However, there is a very clear theme of “we have to tell Gonta what he should do” that starts in Chapter 1 and continues on until the end of Chapter 4. They’re unintentionally telling him that Gonta needs to be guided and needs to be reminded of pretty obvious and basic knowledge, and worst of all, that he can’t be trusted to think for himself and thus needs someone to tell him how to think and feel.
If it was one or two times, that would be a whole other story. However, these instances pile up, higher and higher throughout the entire span of Gonta’s time in the Killing Game, and the majority of the class ends up dismissing or ignoring Gonta’s concerns.
This sparks a growing desire to prove himself, to prove that he can be useful during the trials. To prove to his peers that he can do something on his own, think for himself, decide for himself, except even until his final moments;
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Even after Gonta’s Alter Ego telling himself and everyone explicitly that he was not tricked into killing Miu...
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... No one listens.
Instead of listening to Gonta, over and over, they continue to brush him off and treat him like a child they had to care for, and yet no one stopped to consider that Gonta is a young man. An intelligent, young man who’s socially awkward, but never the less, a peer to them. Yet they didn’t treat him like a peer, and in the end...
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Gonta died thinking he was an idiot. A child. A burden who made everything worse for everyone else. They all considered him as a child, and that’s how they saw him even in his final moments.
Gonta throughout the game constantly tries to prove himself, but no one is paying attention. When he learned of the Secret of the Outside World, Gonta didn’t even have anyone else to turn to for help or comfort. His feelings of uselessness compounded by the desperation to prove himself as an equal to everyone else drove him to agreeing to mercy kill the rest of the group... because how else was a stupid, burden of a child supposed to help anyone as he was? Even though he knew killing was wrong, with Kokichi’s plan, he was able to do something “for everyone,” and even that compounded into the ultimate failure.
It’s an unfortunate reality, because had the class treated him as a fellow classmate and peer, this might have been preventable.
Either way, what do you think? Was discussing the unintentional class ableism in depth towards Gonta a bit... too much? I do believe this is the first time I’ve ever done such a post, so you’ll have to forgive me. It’s also been quite a while since I made a proper analysis, hasn’t it? I must be a little rusty...
I will say--please, do not use this post for any discourse regarding the ableism and what have you if you choose to agree with this interpretation. I will not stand for it.
Either way, I hope you at least found this post to be food for thought. See you all next time.
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hurremshiv · 3 years
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Poison is Queen: What Made Livia such a Fantastic Villain in I Claudius (1976)
(TW: Mentions of sexual assault and incest)
The miniseries I Claudius (1976) took the historical figure of Livia and her portrayal in Roman histories (by authors such as Tacitus, Suetonius and Cassius Dio) and how Graves adapted that for a novel and then turned her into a charismatic, well written, entertaining and memorable soap opera villainess. She is one of the most memorable characters on the show due to how she is written and acted. Personally, she’s my favourite character on the show, even though I sympathise more with other characters. She was the smartest character on the show and someone who always achieved her goal, she embodies the show’s dark humour, and she straddles the line between a pure evil and a complex evil villain without losing character consistency. Overall, she is a well-rounded and well-written character
One of the most important reasons why she was such a villain was how intelligent and effective she was. The best example of this can be seen in how she killed Augustus in Episode 4 (Poison is Queen). In this the show takes for its inspiration an accusation that Cassius Dio made of Livia. According to this story, Augustus refused to eat any food that anyone else had prepared. Therefore, in order to poison him Livia painted the poison onto the figs on a tree that he would pick himself. Even though though this owes itself to historical sources written decades after the events they describe (and is apocryphal), it is an incredibly creative and clever method of killing someone. In addition to this, she clearly embodies patience and uses time to her advantage in order to get what she was. Not only can this be seen in the Prophetic Chickens speech in episode 1 (which is a brilliant introduction to her strategic insights and political awareness, as she could see how things were eventually going to turn out, gambled and patiently waited in order to see the results of her decisions take their course) how she waits for the right moment to kill people (such as Agrippa and Augustus), but Siân Phillips herself discusses it in her interview in I Claudius: A Television Epic. She may not achieve her goals quickly, but she succeeds in the end. Her strategy is the definition of playing the long game. And using her brilliant foresight and strategic political abilities, she accomplishes what she sets out to extremely well. She played a risky game, but ultimately for better or worse Tiberius did become emperor, the Republic never returned and she was eventually deified by Claudius. And even though there are implications that the corruption that the choices she makes brings risk destroying the empire and will bring about the fall of Rome, ultimately the final word on this is said at the end of the final episode (Old King Log) by the Sibyl to the dying Claudius. She says that there will be many emperors in the future and they “won’t all be a bad lot”. This, and Livia’s argument that keeping the Republic would have doomed Rome contribute to the possible argument that ultimately while what she did was unethical and immoral, in a sense Livia was right at the end of the day. It is certainly unclear whether or not she doomed Rome or saved it. There are obvious pitfalls of this, however. It is important to acknowledge imperialism, monarchy and dictatorship are deeply flawed political systems. Of course, because they are examples of absolute power, corruption and the abuse of power tend to be at their very core. And this also reinforces the misogyny of Graves’ original book because it shifts the blame from Augustus being responsible for the political decisions which he took that allowed him to set himself up as the answer to the crisis of the late Republic and the slow accumulation of more absolute power in the hands of individual strongmen. Although, these problems don’t in my opinion take away from the way in which Livia is set up to have far more political savvy than the men around her, as she is the character who sees the clearest how the winds of history are blowing. This makes her a compelling character because it makes her truly awesome: her methods are terrifying, but her intelligence and her effectiveness are impressive.
In addition to this, she embodies the link which the show makes between its most horrific moments and it’s funniest moments. This is contributed to by the employment of dry humour and dramatic irony in her dialogue. One of my favourite examples of this is when Marcellus telling her that cooking his food for him personally is a good thing for her to do and she replies that “Goodness has nothing to do with it.” This is a good example of how well the show used dramatic irony, especially in respect to Livia. While Marcellus thinks that she is simply doing something kind but smothering for him, both she and the audience understand that there is more to this (i.e. she’s going to poison him in order to free up Julia in order to marry Tiberius). Not only is this simultaneously a shocking moment (since as far as the audience is concerned she has practically admitted what she’s going to do, even though Marcellus is unaware of what she meant), but the fact that this is hidden behind what would otherwise appear to be a kind but empty platitude is both clever and hilarious. This is an important moment because it sets the bar for the dry wit, sarcasm and dramatic irony that often accompany Livia as a character, even in her most horrifying moments. Other examples of this include the “food poisoning” scene between Livia and Musa in the same episode after the death of Marcellus, the “don’t touch the figs” scene, and her brilliantly hilarious speech to the gladiators. Not only does this add to the characterisation of her intelligence, but it also adds to the entertainment quality of her as a character. As villainous and evil as she is, she is also genuinely entertaining and fun to watch, which makes her show version so enjoyable to watch and memorable in comparison with the version of her character in the book (This is a comment that other fans of the series, including Prof. Mary Beard herself, have made and I fully agree with it). By contrast, in the book, there is often very little ambiguity as to what Livia’s schemes and activities are, and there is very little dialogue. This means that one of the things that show!Livia is most memorable for, her one liners, were added in Pulman’s script, and they make for a far better character than book!Livia. Through the dramatic irony, we get a far better sense of her intelligence because the audience has to work out on our own what she has done before it is confirmed (which adds to the perception of her intelligence as we have to think it through for ourselves) and that and her humorous moments make her a far more enjoyable character than her book counterpart. Therefore the dramatic irony and humour that characterise Livia as a character make her a great villain because they make her more memorable than she otherwise could have been.
She goes between being a pure evil villain and a complex villain, although this is never made to feel contradictory as it is completely within her established character. She is perfectly willing to the lengths of murdering Augustus’ heirs and disappearing other people in order to get her way, but when she finds out how bad Tiberius has become and Caligula is, she calls their behaviour “disgusting” and refers to Caligula as a “monster”. Since their villainous actions are so different from what Livia does. She’s OK with herself murdering people in order to get what she wants, but she draws the line at incest, sexual harassment and assault. This also works well because it highlights her self-serving narrative: that she is doing everything for the good of Rome. Which is even emphasised by her outrage at finding out what happened to Lollia. She does not want to admit her role in turning TIberius evil by separating him from Vipsania (forcing him to divorce her and marry Julia, the original Disaster Marriage) and Drusus (by murdering him when he was injured, the one thing she can’t admit to Claudius), his two anchors. In episode 1 when he is speaking to Drusus, Tiberius says that they are the only two people whom he loves and describes his brother as his “lifeline into the light”. Therefore, by murdering Drusus and also forcing Tiberius to divorce Vipsania, Livia has a role in turning him into the evil person he becomes later on, and her outrage could be interpreted as a way to avoid the consequences that her toxic behaviour has had. I am not saying that she is responsible for his actions (that’s all on him), but she is responsible for turning him into the type of person who would do them, and that this is a fact that she conveniently ignores as a part of her self-serving narrative. While in some ways she is willing to revel  in evil, there are things that she cannot bring herself to admit to. So she both has the motivations of a complex villain and the entertainment value of a pure evil villain, and this works flawlessly.
What makes Livia such a great villain is that she is such a well-rounded and intelligent character.This can be seen in the characterisation of her intelligence, the humour that accompanies her and the way in which her depth as a character does not diminish her evil. She is a more interesting, entertaining and enjoyable character than her counterpart in Graves’ original book at least in part due to these reasons.
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zerochanges · 3 years
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2020 Favorite Video Games
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I don’t know if I am an outlier or if this is the same for everyone else but I really did not play a lot of games this year. 2020 was a very harsh year for all of us, especially for me for some personal reasons. So to get to the chase, I am just gonna say it left me not doing much in what little free time I did have, and I didn’t play much either. Usually I try to keep my lists for ‘favorite of the year’ to only titles released that year but since I played so little this year, screw it. I am gonna include any game I played this year regardless of release date.
Collection of SaGa
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By far a flawed rerelease. It’s bare bones: there are no advance features you would usually expect out of these kinds of emulated rereleases like save states, fast forward, or rewind, and there was no real effort made to touch up almost 30 year old localizations that had to meet Nintendo of America’s then harsh standards. This really is just 3 roms slapped into a nice looking interface with an option to increase the game speed (which by the way you better use, the characters walk very slow in these old games). 
I am bit harsh here, but only because I thought the Romancing SaGa remasters and the upcoming SaGa Frontier remaster all looked like they got a great budget and a lot of love while this is just another Collection of Mana situation (moreso specifically talking about Seiken Densetsu 1/Final Fantasy Adventure/Adventures of Mana part of that collection). I would have loved to see Square Enix do a bit more for these older games. Or at least include the remakes. Seiken Densetsu 1 had two great remakes, both unused in Collection of Mana, and all three of these original SaGa titles have remakes that have never seen the light of day outside of Japan. How great would it have been to get the Wonderswan remake of SaGa 1, as well as the Nintendo DS remakes of Saga 2 and SaGa 3? 
But my gripes aside, these games are still fun as they ever were. Replaying SaGa 1 specifically during the holiday season really helped calm me down and made me feel at ease. It’s easy to forget but even in their Gameboy roots there are a lot of funky and weird experimental choices being made in these games. They aren’t your run-of-the-mil dragon quest (or considering the gameboy, maybe pokemon would be more apt) clones. 
Raging Loop
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Perhaps my favorite game of the year, Raging Loop is one of the best visual novels I have ever played hands down. The level of creativity and splitting story paths that went into it is simply mind blowing. The basic premise is both a wonderful throwback to the old days of Chunsoft sound novels while still modern and somewhat reminiscent of both Higurashi and Danganronpa. Essentially you play as Haruaki, a poor slub that got lost in the mountains with no clue where to go until you stumble upon an old rural village with a strange history and even stranger superstitions. Before you know it there has been a murder and the Feast is now afoot.
The less said about Raging Loop the better, although I do want to say a lot about it one day if I ever can write a proper review of it. This is a gripping game that will take hold of you once you get into it though and never let go. I actually 100%-ed this and I very rarely do that. I got every ending, every bonus hidden ending, played the entire game twice to hear all the hidden details it purposely hides on your first play through, played all the bonus epilogue chapters, unlocked all the hidden voice actor interviews, collected all the art work, etc, etc. I was just obsessed with this game, it’s that damn good! And the main character is maybe the best troll in all of video games, god bless Haruaki. 
Root Double
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From Takumi Nakazawa, long time contributor to Kotaro Uchikoshi’s work comes a game any fan of Zero Escape or Uchikoshi in general will probably enjoy. Root Double, like its name suggests is a visual novel with two different routes, hence Root Double. The first route stars Watase Kasasagi, the leader of an elite rescue team in the midst of their greatest crisis yet that could lead to nuclear devastation as they try to evacuate a nuclear research facility that has gone awry. 
The other route stars Natsuhiko Tenkawa, an everyday high schooler whose peaceful life is thrown into turmoil when he stumbles upon a terrorist plot to destroy the nuclear facility in the city and his attempts to stop them. Together the two separate plots weave into one and creates a really crazy ride. Part Chernobyl, part science fiction, any fan of the genre will easily enjoy it. And hey it’s kind of relevant to include on this list too since it just got a Switch port this year (I played it on steam though).  
Snack World
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I was shocked upon starting Snack World as it is instantly incredibly charming, witty, and downright hilarious at times yet I heard almost zero people talk about it. EVER. This game is Dragon Quest levels of quirky though, and the localization is incredible. The game has such an oddball sense of humor that works really well with its presentation right down to the anime opening video that sings about the most bizarre things. Instead of the usual pump up song about the cool adventure ahead we get stuff like wanting to go out to a restaurant and eat pork chops. 
The self aware/fourth wall breaking humor is just enough to be really funny, but doesn't overstay its welcome and always makes it work right in the context of the dialogue. And finally, just everything; with the menus, the name of side quests and missions, and the character dialogue -- are all just so witty and full of quirky humor. This is one hell of a charming and funny game and addictive to boot.
Trials of Mana
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Trials of Mana has gone from one of those legendary unlocalized games, to one of the first major breakthroughs in fan translation, to finally getting an official English release complete with a fully 3D remake. In a lot of ways from a western perspective this game has had an incredible journey. As for this remake itself, I really found myself having tons of fun with it. I loved the graphics, and the voice acting while a bit on the cheaper side almost kind of adds to the charm since both the graphics and acting really give it an old PS2 vibe. I know that is probably just more me being weird but yeah, I had to say it. 
I really hope Square Enix sticks to this style of remake more often, instead of just doing Final Fantasy VII Remakes that break the bank and involve extensive tweaking to both plot and game play. I’ll take smaller budget projects that play more like the original game any day personally. I wouldn’t mind if they also deliver a brand new Mana game all together in this engine either. 
Utawarerumono Trilogy
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This year saw the release of the first entry in the series, Utawarerumono: Prelude to the Fallen--and thus finally after three years since the sequels Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception and Utawarerumono: Mask of Truth came out in 2017 the trilogy is now complete in English. I ended up binging through Prelude to the Fallen very fast shortly after it came out and immediately jumped on to the sequels. Perhaps the best part of 2020 was that I finally played all three of these fantastic games, and did so back-to-back-to-back. Playing the first Utawarerumono was an experience I will never forget, it was like visiting old friends again that I haven’t seen in ages, by and large thanks to the fact that I saw the anime adaption of the game when I was much younger, nearly a decade ago. Back then I would have never of dreamed that I would get to play the actual game and get the real experience. 
And it only got better from here, as all three games are such wonderful experiences from start to finish. The stories are all so deep, and by the time you get to the third entry, Mask of Truth, it’s crazy to see how they all connected over so many years and weaved together into a plot much bigger than they ever were. What carries it beyond all that though has to be the fun and addicting strategy role playing game aspect, which while a bit on the easy side, is still so much fun and helps make the game feel better paced since you get to play the conquests your characters go on and not just read about all the battles they fight. Beyond that the games are packed full of awesome characters, and I know I’ll never forget the amazing leads in all of them. Hakuowlo, Haku, and Oshtor will all go down as some of the greats to me. 
Ys: Memories of Celceta
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Ys: Memories of Celceta is a full 3D remake of Ys IV, a rather infamous game in Falcom’s Ys series. Not to get bogged down too much into the history of Falcom but by this point they were facing a lot of hardship and had to outsource this entry to other developers, and thus passed it on to two particular developers they had a business relationship with, creating two unique versions of Ys IV. Tonkin House who had worked on Super Famicom port of Ys III with Falcom ended up creating their own YS IV entry, Mask of the Sun for the very same system, where Hudson soft who had produced the much beloved Ys Books I & II remakes for the Turbografix (PC Engine) CD add-on created their own Ys IV entry Dawn of Ys for that console. Both games followed guidelines and ideas outlined from Falcom themselves but both radically diverged from each other and turned into completely different games. 
Falcom finally putting an end to this debate on which version of Ys IV you should play have gone and created their own definitive Ys IV in 2012 for the Playstation Vita. I played the 2020 remastered version of this remake on my PS4. I even bought this on the Vita when it first came out but I am horrible and only horde games, never play them. So it was a lot of fun to finally play this. 
Memories of Celceta is probably one of the best starting points for anyone looking to get into Ys, especially if you only want to stay with the 3D titles as out of all the 3D entries this explains the most about the world and series protagonist Adol Christian. Beyond that it’s just another fantastic entry in a wonderful series that has a few good twists hidden behind it, especially for long time fans of the series. 
Random Video Game Console Stuff
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Xbox Has Blue Dragon: I actually got an Xbox One this year for free from my brother. Because of that I started to play Blue Dragon again and there’s a lot I would love to say about this game. I don’t know if I am fully committed to replaying it all the way through however but I find myself putting in a couple hours every few days and enjoying myself again. Does anyone else remember Blue Dragon? I feel like it really missed its audience and had it come out nowadays and probably for the Switch it would have really resonated with the Dragon Quest fandom a lot more instead of being thrown out to die on Xbox and constantly compared to Final Fantasy VII and the like which it had nothing at all similar with. 
The Turbografx 16 Mini: This was probably one of the best mini consoles that have come out and I feel like thanks to the whole 2020 pandemic thing it was largely forgotten about. That’s a shame, it has a wonderful variety of great games, especially if you count the Japanese ones (god I wish I could play the Japanese version of Snatcher included), and a wonderful interface with fantastic music. One of these days I would really like to be able to play around with the console more seriously than I have already. 
Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon Never Existed: So Nintendo localized the first ever Fire Emblem game on Nintendo Switch which is awesome to see them touching Famicom games again--I haven’t seen Nintendo of America rerelease old Famicom titles since Mysterious Murasame Castle on the 3DS, but their trailer hilariously made it seem like this is the first time ever they released Fire Emblem when in fact they had already localized the remake Shadow Dragon on the Nintendo DS nearly 10 or 11 years ago. I and many other fans I talked to all found this really hilarious, probably solely because of how much they kept repeating the fact that this is the first time you will ever be able to experience Marth’s story.
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All that aside though I have to say the collector edition for this newly localized Famicom game is probably the most gorgeous retro reproduction I have seen in a long time, and I really spent many many hours just staring at the all clear glass mock cartridge. I have found myself really obsessing over retro reproductions during 2020, and obtained quite a few this year. I really hope this trend continues to go on in 2021 as recreating classic console packaging and cartridges is a lot of fun. 
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radramblog · 2 years
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Planeswalkers in Cube: White
It’s been a while since I’ve discussed cube, I think, and also a while since I’ve just dived into a stupidly long topic without thinking too hard about it. And so here we go.
Planeswalkers are kind of in an interesting place in Cubes. Most of the time, they’re powerful midrange or control threats, but a lot of them have more specialised roles that can make them better suited to particular cubes. They’re also popular to include, seeing as they’re big, cool, and splashy, and a lot of people really like playing with them. What home exists for something like Liliana, Death’s Majesty in any other format? (I know it’s fine in commander hush)
However, you can only afford so many slots for Walkers in your cube, depending on how you treat them. And so, you’re not going to see all of them very often. Here, we’re going to go through all of them, colour by colour, and figure out why you should or shouldn’t play them, and which go better in different builds. Starting off, as many things do, with Mono-White.
Some ground rules: I’m not going to talk about the Planeswalker deck cards in this post, because the answer to whether you should play them is pretty much universally “no, why”. I’m also not going to talk about the creature->planeswalker transform cards, because they get treated more like creatures in a Cube environment. Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy is kinda just Merfolk Looter.
My next point before I talk actual cards: I’m far from an expert on this sort of thing, and this is going to be my opinions! If you want a different perspective, Season 4 episode 6 of Solely Singleton is a great podcast about this exact topic, though it’s two and a half years old at this point so some things might be a bit outdated.
Finally: White is a colour that tends to get more good Planeswalkers than other colours. Turns out, most Gideons and token-producing walkers are good in slower decks, who’d a thunk it. So unlike, say, Black, the average here is a bit higher than most of the time.
Let’s get into it!
 Ajani Goldmane
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Ajani is kind of a classic, but the original iteration is kind of showing its 14 years of age. It’s a 4-mana walker (which is a very competitive slot) with a +1 that doesn’t really do anything, a turn-3 ultimate that dies to removal, and while the minus is good (see cards like Unbreakable Formation, or other Ajanis), it requires a board and isn’t really worth a four mana cast.
I had thought he’d be good in more budget lists, though. Except he hasn’t been printed since 2010 and so even though he sees no play he’s still like 5 bucks. So I’d pass on this version of cat dad.
 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
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On the other hand, Elspeth pt.1 is still one of the best Planeswalkers you can play. She makes blockers for days, can push through some serious damage, and does both of those things while getting more resilient rather than less. Her ultimate might not be game-breaking, but since she’s constantly pushing towards it anyway you don’t really mind. Also she’s only 4 mana, holy moly.
Elspeth is good in aggro, good in midrange, and arguably still more than playable in control. At 12ish dollars, it’s not the ideal price point, but if you can afford it (or have one sitting around), she’s absolutely worth the include.
 Gideon Jura
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Gideon 1 is a bit more specific. Aggro is not going to want him, seeing as the minus does basically nothing in that deck and the +2 isn’t really worth your time at 5 mana. On the other hand, this card is nuts in control. It’s a hard-to-kill wincon that is also removal that fuels its own condition and survives boardwipes. Gideon Jura is a chad in those decks, and kind of takes over the game the moment he comes down.
The other nice thing about Gideon Jura is that due to recent reprints in Mystery Booster and his Signature Spellbook, as well as not being very good in Commander, he’s ludicrously cheap. You can get one of these for under a dollar, making it perfect for budget cubes (that still include rares). Although, at that point, he might be warping to a cheaper format where aggro is worse, so keep an eye on him.
 Elspeth Tirel
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Elspeth’s second incarnation (which is the one with her last name, because ???) is significantly worse than her first. If you’re in a slower deck where you want the ultimate, she’s probably not going to live to make it there. If you want the tokens, there are better options at cheaper mana costs. And you don’t want the +2, unless you somehow have a decent board against a red aggro deck.
I remember really liking this card when I first started playing Magic. That was a long time ago, and we have had much better options in the near-decade since then.
 Ajani, Caller of the Pride
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The first 3-mana walker on this list, and one that shows the conservativeness WoTC had when first testing them at that mana cost. Just kidding, this came out after Liliana of the Veil.
Ajani 3is theoretically fine in an aggressive deck, but white has some seriously good 3-drop creatures that you’d rather just cast instead. Because when your options are a Blade Splicer or putting a +1/+1 counter on your two drop…I’m taking that token. And let’s not act like this card has any place in a midrange or control deck.
 Gideon, Champion of Justice
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This was the first Planeswalker I ever opened, so I have a soft spot for it. But not enough of one to put it in my cube.
As potentially threatening as this Gideon is, he basically doesn’t do anything? While token decks might have a hard time taking him out, seeing as his loyalty can get pretty huge against them, they can also just block him forever. The ultimate is a game-ender, but also would leave Gideon so small that your opponent might just have enough time to draw lands and get back in the game. And he doesn’t do anything to protect himself aside from get big, and doesn’t really progress your board, so. Sorry Gids, you’ll get them next time.
 Elspeth, Sun’s Champion
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Elspeths alternate being good, I guess. Elspeth, Sun’s Champion is basically unplayable outside of slow midrange or control, but is utterly incredible in those decks! She wipes out anything that would threaten her and makes enough blockers to easily protect either herself or you, and stalls long enough that those tokens can turn into a wincon via her ultimate.
It is not as universally powerful as the four-drop Elspeth, but the 6-drop one undeniably shapes the game when she hits the table. She stops aggro in its tracks, and nukes the shit out of midrange, especially green-based decks. I suppose there are times when she might be awkward to cast because she hits your own threats…but then just hold her back or +1, dude.
 Ajani Steadfast
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Ajani Steadfast is kind of trying to be a better version of Ajani Goldmane. And yet, funnily enough, the Vigilance on Goldmane’s -1 is so important, as is being a -1 instead of a -2, so he’s kind of in a similar tier. The loyalty counter upside is so utterly niche that it might as well not exist, but the +1 is unquestionably much better at least.
Like with Goldmane, Ajani Steadfast isn’t really doing anything at 4 that cheaper cards don’t do better. And he’s at about the same price point. At least the ultimate is better?
 Nahiri, the Lithomancer
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Nahiri is really specific. Like, if you’re at a power level where you have equipment worth playing Nahiri with, then you’re probably at a power level where she’s completely outclassed by things like Angel of Invention or…I mean, most other playable 5s. And some unplayable ones.
…I just remembered this card has 3 starting loyalty. On a 5-drop walker. You can -2 her and she’ll die to literally a goblin token. I sure hope that Equipment you got had Living Weapon!
 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
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The first 4-drop that really steps to Elspeth, Knight-Errant. This Gideon is kind of just good in any deck- aggro decks like a 5/5 top end that makes a token T1 or just is an unkillable Glorious Anthem, midrange loves an infinite source of 2/2 to block or beat down with, and control loves an infinite source of blockers that can clean up after a wipe. He’s just kind of a disgusting piece of cardboard for a whole variety of decks, making him easily one of the best walkers in the entire format.
Also he’s…surprisingly cheap? After one “real” printing, and being on The List (which doesn’t do much, trust me), Gideon Ally of Zendikar is still only like 5 bucks. So if you can justify spending that much on one card…probably do that? He won’t let you down.
 Gideon of the Trials
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Unlike our first 3-mana walker, this one is more than playable in slower decks. Gideon of the Trials is kind of awkward for aggressive decks, put what he does do is effectively remove some seriously big threats, adjust for whichever is the biggest problem around, and still punches peoples as a 4/4 Gideon. And he also has the unique benefit of being a Planeswalker that makes combo decks think twice, given that Emblem- though you’ll still go to 0 life if Splinter Twin or a similar combo is in play, and then die since they probably killed him too there.
Once again, though, this card is pretty cheap, sitting at about 3 bucks. As we get towards the more recent end of this list, a lot of these cards are going to look like that. I remember when I made my first cube, with the restriction of “Rares/Mythics that are under $2 US”, and getting 0 white Planeswalkers. I was playing the Planeswalker deck Gideon, for fuck’s sake! Things are so much better now.
Ajani, Adversary of Tyrants
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I could never really get a good read on this Ajani. It’s obviously something control doesn’t want, and the +1 isn’t doing a huge amount in midrange decks. But the -2 is powerful in creature-based decks, and the +1 is solid for quicker builds, but not enough to really justify 4 mana? There’s a lot of power here, but the parts kind of form a strange whole.
I guess it depends a lot on how deep that 2-drop slot is in your cube, and how deep the 4-drop slot is. Because you kinda need good 2s and medium 4s for Ajani to really shine. I’m a little bothered by how meh Ajanis are apparently in general in Cube, but the multicoloured ones are a bit more solid.
 Gideon Blackblade
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Take Gideon of the Trials, make it not playable in control, and make it really fucking good in aggressive decks. There you go, that’s Gideon Blackblade. Cheap in money and in mana, he’s here to die, aside from the part where he’s hard to kill.
The +1 on this card is not super great, but you have to keep in mind that you get that at the same time as Gideon being a creature. Honestly, it’s kind of easier to think of this card as a creature with a triggered ability than as a planeswalker, at least as far as cube is concerned. It also helps that the -6 isn’t actually that hard to hit, considering you can keep a creature back by giving it vigilance. He’s quite solid, and might just be the best aggro walker White gets. Certainly at 3, at least.
 Teyo, the Shieldmage
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A bit of a step down from our last 3-drop, Teyo is clearly not built for the same formats as Gideon Blackblade. But with him, we can talk about weaker formats, like Peasant, where Teyo is…still not great? 3 mana gets you a pair of 0/3s and immunity to burn spells, which I suppose control might like in formats where you don’t really get board wipes, but I can’t imagine any other deck wanting him. And that’s not a great place to be.
 The Wanderer
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Much like Teyo, I don’t think even Peasant wants this. I do think it’s kinda better- their static abilities are virtually the same, except Mx. ??? here extends the burn protection to your creatures. And they do serve as removal, but its both expensive and narrow. Like, how often is this just going to kill a 4/4 and then get killed by their 2/2? I wouldn’t play Smite the Monstrous but it gains 2 life.
I’m interested to see this character return at some point. Maybe next time they can be playable. Some of the uncommon walkers from WAR were great for Peasant (and some even in higher formats), but this isn’t one of them.
 Serra the Benevolent
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Okay, so. 4 mana Serra Angel that can stick around to make another one is quite powerful! Though the +2 basically does nothing, it’s still a +2, meaning you can get an unkillable Worship the turn after you play this if you aren’t under pressure, or go token into pump into token. Serra is clearly quite solid!
However, it suffers from two issues. One, it’s competing for that 4-drop slot, and is less playable than Elspeth or Gideon in slower decks since she makes tokens slower than those two do. The tokens are more threatening for sure, but token decks generally want more tokens rather than bigger tokens. And two: it’s more expensive than Gideon and similar in price to Elspeth, not to mention another card we’ll get to later, so she’s not even getting into cheaper cubes. Since a lot of cube slots like this are taken by cards with more general playability, Serra is going to sit on the sidelines more often than she maybe should. If you’re at like a 720 list, though, spare her a thought.
 Ajani, Strength of the Pride
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Take everything I just said about Serra, and make it worse, basically. I suppose 4 mana for two Ajani’s Pridemates is fine, but the plus doesn’t do anything (unless you have those tokens, in which case it’s okay) and you are never activating that 0 unless you’re already winning.
Oh also he’s more expensive than she is and is still at the same mana cost. Yeah nah I wouldn’t bother. Ripper in my Cat EDH deck though.
 Elspeth, Sun’s Nemesis
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This card is actually really interesting. Our last Elspeth is still mono-white, despite the art and flavour, but she almost doesn’t play like she is. I think most of the time, she’s likely to make 4 tokens and then probably cack it, but the Escape on this is really interesting. By the time you reach 6 mana, you probably will just have enough cards in the yard to cast this again.
I really don’t know how to interpret this card. She’s in my own cube, but I don’t remember seeing her cast yet, so that’s not really any help. My guess is that she’s mostly good in slower decks, but also making and pumping tokens does output a fair bit of damage over time. She’s only like a dollar, so maybe try her out? At least she won’t be an expensive mistake if she is one.
 Basri Ket
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Mr. Sandman here is pretty much just a better Ajani, Caller of the Pride. The +1 does more, the -2 actually puts things on board and is better for aggressive decks to get value out of, and the ultimate is actually attainable. He’s basically aggro-only, but he’ll get the job done in those decks.
However, the 3-mana Gideons kind of just outshine Basri here. He does literal jack squat without a creature on board, and his -2 is quite weak with only one or two attacking creatures to work with. The ultimate is nice, but +1ing over and over is extremely bleh, and you probably have better things to do. So sorry, Basri, maybe next time.
 Grand Master of Flowers
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Bahamut, you aren’t fooling anyone, it’s on the typeline. For reference, Monk of the Open Hand is a 1/1 for W that gets a +1/+1 counter if you cast two spells in a turn- so it’s not really worth running? And even if you do put it in your cube, there’s no guarantee you’ll have both in a deck, or want to play both in a deck…so…
Okay, fine, let’s assume you just get a copy of Monk of the Open Hand when you draft the card. I’m still not super enthused about this Planeswalker. The lockdown ability is going to miss more than you think it will, and a lot of the things it misses are the things likely to kill you. It can make a 1/1 every turn, but only one at a time, and if they exile it then the ability does stone nothing. And that “ultimate” takes forever to actually get to. Also it’s another 4-mana White Walker. I think I’ll pass on this one. Somehow, both Tiamat and Bahamut were disappointments.
 Teyo, Aegis Adept
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I wasn’t sure whether or not to include this, but I didn’t really want to end on GMoF, so. I’ve done a whole post on the digital-only cards, and I do think Teyo, despite being a Planeswalker, is one of the less fucky ones. You will need to track a lot of things, though.
So how does the card stack up? Honestly, I think it’s surprisingly solid. Aggro probably isn’t that interested, though Lumbering Lightshield’s ETB (makes a random card in the opponent’s hand cost 1 more) could be a real pain if you’re lucky. It makes a 4/4 every other turn for a bit, which is quite solid, and the ultimate isn’t that unobtainable. And you don’t have to worry about money, because this could only ever exist as a proxy.
I’d be really interested to see how Teyo, Aegis Adept plays. I don’t think I’m likely to, outside of Arena-based cubes, with the whole stigma around these cards and the added layer of having to proxy them. But in an Arena cube, with a restricted list of cards he’s competing with (It’s Adversary of Tyrants forward), he could really shine.
 This concludes White Walkers, the post. Please join next week when we discuss Blue Walkers. Make your own Game of Thrones joke here, I haven’t watched or read it.
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merinnan · 3 years
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Time Raiders
Okay, pausing the DMBJ 2 watches to watch the Time Raiders movie instead! I've been told that the entire movie is basically one big crackfic & I want to see how true that is
- Apparently the only place I can find it is YouTube 
- And we open with someone laying down cards which...seem to be making a qilin pattern. Okay. 
- And now we're at the Himalayas, and it seems to be a bunch of white soldiers shooting people? 
- Oh, this leader white guy has a classic villain look. I love the pocket watch, too 
- Wait, he's supposed to be a scientist? 
 - He obviously hasn't read the Evil Overload Handbook 
- And now this is giving me flashbacks to Xiaoge's first appearance in DMBJ1
- Ah, yes, I think this is the Xiaoge for this movie. Excellent. 
- DUDES. You have GUNS. You were using them just before. Why are you now using knives only? 
- I mean, it wouldn't do much better, because Xiaoge, but still 
- This is A Look
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- Finally, one of them uses a gun, and it's as useless as I expected it would be 
- Ahahahah, omg, what he did to these two guys is hilarious 
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- That is a TERRIBLE hiding place 
- Don't....don't leave him alive. JFC
- This flashback montage is super weird 
- Look, I don't have a tattoo myself, but I'm pretty sure that that's not how you get tattoos 
- And now we move to Wushanju 
- Oh, I think it's Sanshu who's been playing with those cards
- ...you have got to be kidding me 
- Really? We're really doing this? 
- I guess this is Wu Xie, then 
- What even did he just randomly put that mask on for 
- That is NOT a newborn
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- Awww, kid Wu Xie 
- Yay, creepy old houses. And ofc kid Wu Xie is gonna try to get inside 
- But that is a fucking massive lock 
- Yes, of course, wrap the porch in giant fuckoff chains, but don't lock the front door. Why not? 
- ....k 
- Sure, that happened
- And bratty kid Wu Xie still pinched one of the medallions after all of that 
- Okay, yeah, if you were a kid who had to go to a funeral every month, no wonder you'd be so bored at them
- This movie is all over the place in terms of timeline 
- I think we're finally into the time period of the main story 
- And it seems this one also has Wu Xie as having been an architecture student of some kind
- Oh, yes, that's exactly what you want to find while crawling through a tunnel 
- WX: "Sanshu can never know about this. You didn't tell him, right?" 
WM: *oh shit I'm screwed face* 
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- Hi Sanshu, I wonder how you got here
- I love that no matter what version it is, Wu Xie is a little shit XD 
- ...Wu Xie. Moths. Light. No. 
- Wu Xie gonna Wu Xie 
- Wu Xie, what are you doing? 
- OMG 
- Sanshu, this is all your fault for never letting him in anything like this. He doesn't know not to touch
- Wow, that wasn't subtle at all 
- That's some steampunky looking villain lair right there 
- I love how the 'passerby video' getting screened fucking everywhere is just the movie footage of that scene XD That's some high quality passerby video with interesting angles
- That's an interesting drinking spot, Xiaoge 
- I love that so far Wu Xie's instincts for everything is either 'touch it', 'wear it', or 'dismantle it' 
- ....okay 
- Yeah, I....I think this is going to be my reaction to most of the movie, tbh
- Although at least this whole magic Snake Empress and weird ancient technology/magic thing is more interesting than the bland het palace drama randomly dropped into the middle of DMBJ1 
- Oh, finally, some product placement 
- I was wondering what was taking it so long
- I love how all their desks and papers and such are inside what look like coffins, and then fold out 
- Oh look, Xiaoge's sword is inside one of the coffins. 
- And there's Xiaoge 
- Hei Ye gave Sanshu the sword decades ago?
- lol, this is like some Sword in the Stone bullshit right here 
 - I love it 
- a) Was all that really necessary 
- b) wtf even is that sword? 
- It's a really bizarre design, and surely being able to be moved like a mechanical device would weaken it?
- ...okay, that was a cute meeting, I'll give it that 
- Love how the older guys are teasing Wu Xie in the truck here. 
- Oh, Wu Xie's actually a psych student in this one
- And like, Wu Xie, how do you know Xiaoge was looking at his reflection. It's a window, he might have just been spacing out at the scenery 
- You must have been paying a lot of attention to him to notice it was the reflection he was actually looking at, hmmm? 👀
- This is a cute Wu Xie, tho 
- Yes, Wu Xie, despite your lack of modesty there I totally caught that you just called Xiaoge handsome 
- WU XIE WHAT NO DON'T DO THAT 
- Hahaha, Xiaoge had exactly the same reaction
- No, Wu Xie, it doesn't matter that you'd taken the ammo out, you should never stick the barrel of a gun in your face and look down it like that. 
- Even if you're certain it's unloaded, you just DON'T DO THAT
- Wu Xie, lacking impulse control and survival instincts without Xiaoge and Pangzi since....forever 
- (okay, lacking survival instincts was perhaps a bit too far, but still)
- I love Xiaoge's "omg what even are you" look at that 
- This is a very talkative and open to talking about himself Xiaoge 
- It's kind of weird
- lol @ Sanshu locking Wu Xie in the truck so he can't come with them 
 - I mean, really, does he actually expect this to work? 
- He knows his nephew both likes and is good at taking things apart, after all 
- lol, I knew it 
- Oh 
- Oh, that's not a good sign
- Even Coral's logo just screams 'villainous organisation' 
- These mercenaries look like video game characters from like COD or something 
- Oh hi, lady I presume is A-Ning 
- I like the haircut. Looks kinda like DMBJ 1 Xiaoge's haircut, just with the fringe over the opposite eye
- Oh, there's that gratuitous boob shot that @thosch3i​ told me about 
- I really don't see why it was necessary for A-Ning to crawl all over the truck like that when everyone else just walked past it
- There is some really nice scenery in this movie with all the mountains and cliffs and such 
- "What I'm doing isn't about right or wrong, it's about how much" I like this A-Ning. She is refreshingly direct and mercenary
- Damn, I though Xiaoge was going to notice the drone. I mean, it's so close to them! He should notice it! 
- Love Hendrix's surprised Pikachu face at recognising him, though 
- I'm honestly surprised that none of them have looked in the truck at all
- I do appreciate that this movie doesn't even attempt to pretend that they're not tomb raiders 
- And that they have no interest in preserving this place 
- Because BOOM! Let's just dynamite our way in and destroy half the wall
- Oops, no floor there 
- Hahaha, this tomb is a fucking platform game 
 - Lovely, a shootout in a tomb. Just what every good tomb raiding movie need 
 - lol, Sanshu 
- Don't you ever ever again wonder where your nephew's little shit tendencies come from
- I think Xiaoge and A-Ning are the only truly competent people on their respective teams 
- A-Ning, 'keep them alive' does not mean 'try to shoot one in the face at close range' 
- That little boot knife is kinda cute, though 
- Clever move, Pan Zi
- I love the Xiaoge/A-Ning fight. He really is the only one who could keep her distracted 
- I'm impressed at how well she held her own with him 
- IDK why he was holding back
- Also, Xiaoge participating in fight banter, no matter how minimal? Strange, but also kinda cool. 
- I'm going to be giggling about that "Not bad"/"I know" for awhile, I think 
- IDK how they had the time or the ability to stay still long enough to rig up that trap, I'm impressed
- lol, yeah, I didn't think that it would take Wu Xie long to get out of the truck 
- I take back my earlier comment about it being too harsh to say that Wu Xie lacks survival instincts without Xiaoge and Pangzi around
- Wu Xie, there is not enough light down here for you to get good shots without your flash being on 
- I know having your flash on is a BAD idea, but still 
- You cannot be getting good photos in this light
- Why is Xiaoge separated from everyone? He jumped down with them 
- I mean, it's good that he is, otherwise Wu Xie would be kinda screwed right now 
- Huh, bats, there must be an actual entrance to this tomb, not just the one that Sanshu's team made.
- A-Ning's tiny baby drones are so cute 
- The English dubbing in this is surprisingly good compared to the shows 
- Yes, good, the staring is starting 
- ...Wu Xie, you little shit 
 - He's so pleased with himself 
- Xiaoge is so confused until he explains it 
- OMG, a Xiaoge smile
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- OMG A XIAOGE LAUGH
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- Ah yes, multiple large tornadoes, a way to signify weird shit is going now 
- And weird spinny planets forming an...energy grid of some kind? 
- ...k 
- The mini drones apparently only pick up on people who are part of A-Ning's team, I guess
- JESUS 
- I mean, I had a strong suspicion that was gonna happen, but it still made me jump 
- Xiaoge to the rescue! 
- Damn, that sword is strong 
- This tomb definitely has a spider colony, but given it also has a bat colony that doesn't surprise me
- Those are some creepy looking mannequins 
- This set up looks like a game of Mouse Trap 
- A game of Mouse Trap with fire 
- That's actually a really cool way to light all the candles and lamps 
- I'm impressed that none of the cobwebs have caught on fire
- Oh, so NOW you use your flash, Wu Xie. When the room is all well lit and you don't actually need it 
- CREEEEEPY 
- Wu Xie and his compulsive need to touch things 
- Are all the puppets connected somehow, or are we gonna have spooky magical shit making them all come to life?
- Oh, the puppet band is like the bells, I guess 
- Huh, it seems Wu Xie's the only one who got thrown into memories in these illusions, everyone else's hallucination still has them inside the tomb 
- wtf, a lion is a weird thing to hallucinate
- Magic Zhang blood, go! 
- IDK why he needs to cut himself for each person, though, surely one cut should be enough to get all the drops of blood he needs 
- Good boy, Wu Xie, already so protective of his Xiaoge
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- This really is a fucking platform game 
- Guys, this is why you study up on the raid mechanics BEFORE you enter the instance 
- Ahahahah, the music playing as Wu Xie basically dances with the sword trap
- lol, the look on Xiaoge's face as he realises Wu Xie is just...fucking dancing and taking photos 
- And that it's WORKING 
- OMFG, this is basically just a bizarre dance sequence 
- I love it 
- It's so stupid
- The puppets having fucking crossbows 
- Because ofc they do 
- Repeating crossbows 
- ...k 
- So now we have a room full of skeletons stuffed into cages 
- Why not 
- Ah, we're about to have bugs show up 
- Excellent 
- This is what I've been waiting for
- Let the hilarity begin continue 
- Dude, you can quit right now as much as you like, but it doesn't mean you're going to be able to get out of here by yourself 
- I guess this guy's gonna die now 
- For the tropes are hungry and must be fed 
- Much like the bugs
- Yep, here we go 
- Hello, shibie, I've been expecting you 
- These ones don't look as cartoonishly ridiculous as the ones in DMBJ 1, I'm sad 
- OMFG, it's eating the shovel/pick/thing 
- Okay, this is a good effort at cartoonish ridiculousness
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- It's a lovely day in the tomb, and these are horrible shibie 
- Poor Wu Xie, so shocked at getting slapped
- And yeah. Yeah, that's about the only thing you can do there. 
- Only way to save the guy is to just give him a quick death so he doesn't suffer from being eaten alive
- They're lucky these shibie move so slowly. It gives them plenty of time to climb up onto those frames 
- lol, weird bendy sword again 
- Wow, good catch, Wu Xie 
- Y'know, Wu Xie, it might have been more useful to give the knife to Da Kui 
- And ofc Wu Xie falls down
- What is a DMBJ adaptation without Wu Xie getting himself into danger like this?
- That was so much wtf all at once 
- First, an unbroken flute just, like, laying there on the ground 
- Then, Wu Xie somehow thinking that playing it would save him from the bugs 
- Then that WORKED 
- He's like the fucking Pied Piper of the shibie 
- What even is this movie
- Haha, the little OK sign he flashes at Xiaoge 
- The wtf look on Xiaoge's face 
- Same, Xiaoge. Same 
- I love how everyone just. Accepts it & congratulates Wu Xie on being an awesome flute player 
- But then ig what else are you gonna do? 
- It's like, well, this may as well happen
- Sanshu's team really likes using grenades, huh? 
- Well, it does work pretty well! 
- See, Wu Xie, this is when you need to summon your bugs back
- On a completely different tangent, I cannot get over how weirdly the subs translate men you ping. I had to look up wtf shtum was. I've never come across it before. Is it something more commonly used in the US or something?
- Xiaoge, when you said you had a better way than digging under the door, I didn't think you meant just BATTERING THE FUCKING DOOR WITH THE SHOVEL 
- Oh, no, it's with your sword
- Because the best way to look after a sharp blade and keep it in good condition and keep a good edge is to...hack at rocks with it 
- Ofc 
- Why didn't I think of that? 
-  OK, ig fucking up your sword's edge did actually work, there's now a giant-ass hole in the door
- This is serious Day After Tomorrow vibes here
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- Ah, yes, giant lightning strikes that cause so much force to travel through the earth that they can semi-collapse a tunnel deep underneath a mountain 
- Just your usual tomb robbing dangers 
- Physicists and meteorologists would have a fucking field day here
- Ah, I see we're at this level of the platform game 
- With the collapsing floor you need to get across without falling
- Okay, that's really kinda sweet of Wu Xie here. He thinks he's likely to die, and the most important thing to him is giving Xiaoge the pictures he took of him so that he doesn't lose all his memories 
- And aww, Xiaoge's so worried about him
- Like, I'm totally understanding why the transmigrated Wu Xie in that fic looked at these two and went "wow, we're so gay in this timeline" 
- Even the music in this scene is shipping it 
- Romantic line, and dramatic fall through the floor. Yep.
- I'm amazed he survived that fall, but it's Wu Xie, and he can't die 
- ...yes, ancient Persian architecture totally had anachronistic technology. Sure. This is definitely like that 
- omfg, they're statis chambers 
- 2000 year old stasis chambers
- Guess they're not worried about catching Sanshu and his team to get the key anymore. They've been kinda sidetracked 
- Side quests will do that 
- ...plant golems 
- "Don't shoot the thing that's in the process of murdering your friend! You might damage my research project!"
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- Ew, that's not a nice death 
- Yes, good girl, A-Ning 
- That thing was just gonna kill your whole team otherwise 
- ...how did that laptop survive the blast enough for Wu Xie to be using it with no problem 
- That's one tough laptop 
- Where do I get one?
- And hey, I guess the one Chinese guy with A-Ning isn't actually one of her people, since she just, like, left him there 🤣 In the room with a plant golem 🤣 That she then threw a grenade into 🤣
 - ...omg, that's meant to be Pangzi?
- I was wondering why no Pangzi in the movie. I guess 3/4 of the way through isn't too late to properly intro him 
 - Ahahaha, Wu Xie actually thinks his bluff was super successful when there's a plant golem behind him 
- Xiaoge to the rescue again XD
- lol @ both Pangzi and Wu Xie using Xiaoge's sword as a restraint 
- ...surprise A-Ning! I wasn't expecting her to actually come back 
- And she's somehow lost all of her guys
- That's a lot of snakes, but I'm more interested in where all the water is coming from and why you can see the sun behind those shelves 
- Given how deep under a mountain they're supposed to be 
- I do love competent, pretty girls wielding huge fuckoff guns
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- This door mechanism is so intricate (like the key/timer). So ofc I'm sure they're going to destroy it all 
 - Because that's how tomb raiding movies go
- Introduce a tomb with intricate and complex mechanisms far in advance of anything else known to that time period and civilisation, and then destroy them in dramatic fight and escape scenes 
- OMG the floor is lava 
 - Of course there's lava as well
- Oh, and it seems it's now all open to the sky 
- Ig the lightning which could mysteriously exert high levels of force must have smashed through the mountain and very neatly cleared it all way so that this part of the tomb and only this part of the tomb is now open air
- Wang Zanghai wishes he could go this extra with tomb building 
- And now Xiaoge being super extra to get across the destroyed section of the bridge 
- So this dude is gonna wake up just before Xiaoge gets there, isn't he? 
- And we're going to get an epic swordfight between them
- At least, it better be an epic swordfight 
- Otherwise this buildup will be very disappointing 
- Ah, yes, good, there we go 
- And all the plant golems are also waking up 
- ...along with a shitton of snakes 
- OMG the snakes have arms 
- The snakes 
- have arms
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- OMG Xiaoge's sword is doing what now? 
- That's almost as ridiculous as the snakes with arms 
- It's like a sword designed by a 13 year old weeaboo boy
"it's gonna be ancient, and super strong, and nothing will ever make it blunt" 
"okay, seems like a typical magic sword so far, that's fair" 
"and you can bend it at right angles" 
"...you can what"
"and when it's bent at right angles, you can make it spin really fast and still use it like a proper sword" 
"...it what"
- ...the Snake Empress is reforming in her armour as thousands of little vines all coming together 
- k 
- Sure 
- This may as well happen 
- And her armour has boobplate, because ofc it does 
- Oh, she ain’t happy that Xiaoge just killed her plant golem boyfriend
- Her aesthetics are hilarious 
- It's part Queen of the Damned, part Little Shop of Horrors 
- Okay, snake lady, your worms might change the world but honestly I think that lightning would be more effective if you could control it
- Sanshu and co just randomly walk in through another entrance 
- Oh, and there's the rest of A-Ning's team
- I want the story behind this A-Ning and her team. The way they all call her captain, and follow her without a second word, and are so genuinely happy to see her. This isn't just a throw-together team, or a team that Hendrix put together and put her in charge of. This is her team, and there's an obvious history between them
- And snake lady is suddenly not looking as pretty as she was, for no discernible reason 
- One minute she's jumping around, the next she's all pale and falling apart. At least her face is 
- It's like she's decomposing throughout the fight
- And here come the snakes with arms 
- They move just as slowly as the shibie in here do 
- They jump pretty fast, though 
- RIP the next member of Sanshu's team 
- Yeah, machine guns aren't that effective against regular snakes, let alone magic snakes
- And the plant golems are here 
- RIP more of Sanshu's team 
- Ah, the little snakes with arms are all grown up and off to conquer the world
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- ...omfg Pangzi 
- And this time it's A-Ning to the rescue 
- I love how quickly Wu Xie and Pangzi fall into the dynamic of a pair of clowns, regardless of adaptation
- RIP Harry. You went out like a badass 
- Oh wow, both teams are having some fucking epic sacrificial deaths in this fight scene 
- I like 
- And more cute pingxie, this time in flashbacks 
- lol, clearing out plant golem conversion by pure force of will
- ...and channeling blood down the grooves in the sword blade apparently...makes it sharper? 
- At least, it couldn't cut through the vines before, and now it can 
- That's not how magnetic fields work
- Ahahaha, Wu Xie pulling out his flute 
- He's gonna pull that Pied Piper shit again, isn't he? 
- Here come the shibie, come to nom on plant-snake-lady flesh! 
- She's having just as much trouble with them as everyone else does
- Because it's a lovely day in the tomb, and they are horrible shibie 
- Wow, she hits hard, she knocked Xiaoge like halfway across the chasm 
- Good thing there was a random broken pillar there
- Are they getting obliterated? 
- Ah, no, they're getting sucked up by the wind 
- Shibie-nado! 
- You know, I kinda like how bad Wu Xie's English is compared to everyone else who's spoken English so far 
- It nicely demonstrates who speaks it a lot and who doesn't
- Aw, Wu Xie, you're always so optimistic when you're baby 
- And it actually worked. I'm impressed. 
- Oh wow, A-Ning, that's some character development right there, caring about right or wrong instead of money
- Nice Pangi & A-Ning dynamic in this movie, given how they usually hate each other 
- This is definitely the final level of a platform game 
- Hahah, the two teams now 
- Awwwwwwww 😭
 - I think this is the first time I've seen Wu Xie rescue Xiaoge rather than vice versa 
- "I regret not locking you in the truck myself" 
 - Sorry, Xiaoge, I don't think you'd actually have much more luck with that than Sanshu did 
- Xiaoge, you really should have been more careful there, you almost did low Wu Xie 
- Good thing A-Ning was close by!
- ....the sword...is being used...as a boomerang 
- wtaf 
- Hahahah, the snakes' death throes, omg 
- lol what even was that ending
Overall: This movie was just one long DMBJ PingXie AU crackfic, and the author didn't know how to end it so just...didn't write an actual ending. That's the only way I can explain it. 
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tanadrin · 4 years
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How /did/ things change after 2001? I was born in that year and everyone says it was different before, but I've never really gotten a sense of how.
It is difficult for me to emphasize just how different the world you see on the evening news is now, from what it was like before 2001, at least as I remember it. There’s a scene in Farscape, where after years of trying to get home, the astronaut protagonist John Crichton finally makes it back to Earth with his alien friends in tow, and when he’s reunited with his father, he’s shocked to discover his dad has gone from this optimistic, forward-looking, hopeful dreamer to a nervous, jingoistic conservative. His attitude is basically, “yes, there’s dangerous aliens out there who may or may not be trying to kill us--but the galaxy is a place full of wonders you’ve never dreamed of.” His father, in the meantime, has retreated from his hopes for a science-fiction future, and views his new alien friends with suspicion.
It’s not a subtle metaphor, but it’s true. The 90s--at least in the US, at least as I remember them--were a relentlessly optimistic period. Even if things were not yet at their ideal state, there was very much a sense they were heading there; politics was mostly down to what exact flavor of the neoliberal consensus you preferred, Clinton or Bush, and the international triumph of liberal democracy was either a fait accompli (cf. the erstwhile USSR), or just around the corner (cf. hopes for China’s liberalization in the wake of market reforms). Yes, in retrospect, this was kind of a dumb world view. If you actually lived in Russia in the 90s--to say nothing of the Balkans--it was a rough decade, and a lot of the relentless optimism of the period in the United States was down to the privileged position we viewed the world from.
The blunting of that optimism--the reminder that we were still embedded in history, and the final triumph of everything good and just was not foreordained--would not in itself have been a catastrophe. Terrorism was not a strange concept in the 90s, and even Al-Qaeda-style terrorism had its predecessors in attacks on American ships and embassies. 9/11 itself was confusing and chaotic and sad, but 9/11 wasn’t the catastrophe. The catastrophe came after, in how we responded.
I think something broke in America between 1945 and 1991. Something shifted, in a nasty way we didn't realize while we were occupied with communism and stagflation and the civil rights movement. I don't mean to say that America before 1945 was the Good Guys. But the American state and the American political class viewed the world with... humility? Like, sure, the can-do Yankee spirit before 1945 had its own special kind of arrogance (and greed, and hideous bigotry), but it still thought of the world in terms of obligations we owed other countries. By the time the Cold War ended, and the US was the sole remaining superpower, that wasn't how we viewed the world. It was still sort of how we told each other, and our children, what the world was like. We certainly talked a big game about democracy and human rights. But as soon as that principled stance was tested, we folded like a cheap suit. What we should have done after 9/11 was what we had done after every terrorist incident in or against the United States before then: treated it like the major crime it was, sent a civilian agency like the FBI in to investigate, and pursue the perpetrators diplomatically. What we did instead was treat it like the opening salvo of a war--in fact, invented a war to embed it within, to give ourselves narrative justification for that stance--and crank every element of paranoid jingoism instantly up to 11. It has never abated since.
Some of this is the little things. The TSA and the Department of Homeland Security--a name I thought was creepy Orwellian shit right from the get-go. The terror alert levels. (God! remember those?) The fact that airport security--despite being just as ineffective today as it was on September 12--is still routinely humiliating and invasive and just a total waste of everybody’s time. Some of it is the big things. The way security, and the need for security, trumps all other demands including the state’s obligation to protect civil rights. And the fact that this just isn’t even up for debate anymore. 9/11, as Chomsky presciently observed, was a boon for authoritarians everywhere. Suddenly, “counterterrorism” was the magic word that let you get away with anything, like “anti-communism” twenty years prior. At the most extreme end, this led to things like anti-atheism laws being promulgated in Saudi Arabia in the name of “counterterrorism,” but you don’t have to go that absurd to find ways in which the security state has fostered authoritarianism. In every aspect of our lives, this new, fearful outlook on the world justified a gradual ratcheting down of freedom, the gradual empowerment of petty tyrants everywhere, and the weak protests, fading into silence, of people who still believed in liberty as an important organizing principle for modern society. It wasn’t even that you’d get called a terrorist-sympathizer or anything that blatant. It just ceased to be regarded as important. It wasn’t that you were wrong, or misguided, or evil. You were just a non-serious person, someone whose opinion was clearly irrelevant, whose head was permanently in the clouds, if you thought that stuff still mattered. And that never went away.
And I think a big part of what changed between 1945 and 1991 was that the US started to believe its own jingoism. When did this start? Vietnam? Earlier? Korea? I don’t know. It’s hard to pinpoint, given that my understanding of the cultural zeitgeist of the decades before I was born mostly came from my dad’s old Doonesbury collections. I don’t know how to describe what we became--what we, hideously, revealed ourselves to be--except as a kind of machismo. A kind of ruthless, General Ripper-esque us-versus-them psychosis that gripped us where the Soviets were concerned, and never let up. And we still believe it. It still infects every atom of our political discourse. We don’t question the necessity of drone strikes, only who to drone strike and how much. We don’t really question the massive powers we’ve afforded the executive branch to wage war and conduct espionage--including kidnappings and torture--and we’ve kind of forgotten that we still have a prison camp in Cuba full of people who have never been convincted of any crime. In a way, we lost faith in law entirely: by God, we couldn’t try terrorists in American courts! (Why not? What’s wrong with American courts? Don’t we have faith in our own laws, at least?) No, justice wasn’t a matter for the law to decide anymore. Justice was a matter for the military only: justice came in the form of strength of arms. Ergo, shooting Bin Laden in the head and calling that justice; ergo, Jack Bauer; ergo, blowing up Yemeni weddings. Keep America Safe. I can’t begin to tell you how alienating and horrifying so much of the last 20 years has been, if the most consequential news stories of your childhood were the OJ Simpson murders and a discussion of the President’s cum stain.
In my opinion, the seminal text of the post-9/11 world was released in the year 2000. In the original Deus Ex video game, the year is 2150, and the world is a dark, depressing place. You, the game’s hero, work (initally) for a UN counterterrorism agency while a plague ravages the world. You hunt terrorists whose existence has provided the justification for an authoritarian crackdown on dissidents everywhere. You visit a Hong Kong firmly under the control of the CCP, you fight genetically engineered mutants created by huge businesses run amok, FEMA (no DHS then) controls the federal government, and, it turns out later in the game, the bombing of the Statue of Liberty that precipitated the creation of your organization was a false-flag attack used to justify its existence in the first place. Drones patrol the streets of NYC, and the whole thing is steeped in late-90s militia movement-style conspiracy theories about the Illuminati and the New World Order, that look weirdly out of place now that these things are more clearly aligned in the popular consciousness with right wing extremism, when back then they were just seen as kooky weirdos in Montana--but every year since then, we’ve been inching closer and closer to that world, and you know what? It wigs me out a little.
In 2000, Deus Ex was an absurdity, a fever dream of cyberpunk and early-internet conspiracism. It’s a shame that tonally speaking it’s been dead on for the two decades after. But honestly, I think the biggest thing that’s changed about the world since 2001 is our cultural capacity for optimism. I don’t mean in a sentimental way--although if you compare other texts heavily influenced by the post-2001 political milieu, you definitely see a sharp contrast with the optimism of cultural artifacts from earlier eras; science fiction was hit especially hard in this area (cf. RDM’s version of Battlestar Galactica). But I also mean this in a political/ideological sense. We cease to imagine that the world can be made better. We cease to imagine the possibilities that are afforded to us if we are willing to strive for our ideal society, even if we, personally, may never reach it. We make deals with the devil, we let the CIA violate the constitution and federal law six ways from Sunday, we don’t question the prevailing political-economic consensus even if it’s setting the planet on fire and pitching us headlong toward social disaster, because we forgot what it was to feel like those sunlit uplands we’ve been hoping for were just around the corner.
In the same way that my Catholic faith was eventually done in because the ethical principles I was taught were at odds with the manifest monstrosity of the organization that taught them to me and the metaphysics it espoused, my patriotism and my faith in America was done in because when I was a schoolkid, I really did believe that democracy and human rights and equality under the law were important. Some people probably had their illusions--if they ever had any--about the US government stripped away long ago, but I was a white kid from a reasonably prosperous part of town, so it took until the 2000s and my growing political awareness to realize just how flimsy these principles were when they were put to any kind of test. It made me angry; it still makes me angry. I was raised to believe there are some principles that are important enough that you don’t compromise them ever, no matter how scared or worried you are. Just as I was old enough to understand what was going on on the evening news, the United States betrayed everything I had been taught the United States stood for. And as a nation, we never turned back; we never apologized; we never repented. America, as an abstract entity, never was what I thought it was as a kid. But I think it could still become that, if it tried. Alas, very few people seem to believe such a thing is possible anymore. Most days, I’m not sure I do, either.
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aion-rsa · 3 years
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Mortal Kombat: 15 Most Powerful Characters
https://ift.tt/2RLKtZ8
At the end of the day, Mortal Kombat is about a bunch of characters beating the crap out of each other for supremacy. Sure, they toss in stories about tournaments to protect Earth and wars against invading realms, but it all boils down to martial artists brutally punching the hell out of each other until one explodes into a pile of viscera and five ribcages.
Being a fighting game, you expect all the fighters to be on the same level. Even forgettable losers like Hsu Hao and Kai should stand a chance against gods and otherworldly overlords. A nigh-invincible megalomaniac villain can lose to one of their bumbling underlings just as easily as they can lose to the game’s main hero. At least, that’s ideally how fighting games should be balanced.
Storywise, it’s different. Certain characters are straight-up in their own leagues compared to others. Does Jarek really stand a chance against Shinnok? Would Li Mei last five seconds against Blaze? Does Kobra have what it takes to take down Raiden? Not on paper, no.
So here’s a list of the top 15 most powerful characters in the Mortal Kombat series. With this list, there are two main rules:
1) I’m going with the characters at their most powerful, not how powerful they are most of the time.
2) I’m going with the canon storyline. Otherwise, the list would just be made up of Mortal Kombat: Armageddon endings. No DC Universe crossover stuff and no guest characters in general. Sorry, Spawn.
Now let’s see who has the most juice in all the realms.
15. GERAS
This guy is so frightening that his power is more of a curse than a blessing. Geras has near endless experience, having lived through countless timelines over and over again, and is skilled enough to fight off Liu Kang and Kung Lao at the same time. He is also be completely unkillable, as his mastery over time reversal will undo whatever wounds befall him. Granted, Shao Kahn beat him into a blob of red pulp and Geras hasn’t been heard from since, but I’m sure he’ll be back to his old self soon enough.
The rough truth regarding Geras is that being unkillable doesn’t mean he’s unstoppable. In the initial Mortal Kombat 11 timeline, Raiden knocked Geras into an endless ocean of blood in which where Geras was doomed to sink for eternity. Yeah, I’ll be fine over here with my mortality.
14. SINDEL
In the early days, Sindel didn’t seem so tough. She was just a plot device in desperate need of pants. Then Mortal Kombat 9 happened and we got that scene where Shao Kahn empowered her with Shang Tsung’s soul and set her loose. Suddenly, Sindel turned into an Edenian John Cena and cut through most of the heroes like a hot knife through butter. Sub-Zero, Jax, Smoke, Kabal, Stryker, Jade, and Kitana all died by her hand in mere moments while Nightwolf had to sacrifice himself to take her off the board.
This is why Shang Tsung aimed to resurrect her in Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath. Who else was going to help him get past Cetrion? And while Sindel did win one-on-one against Cetrion, the scene itself looked more like she stunned Cetrion enough for Fujin and Shang Tsung to capitalize and put her on the shelf. Had they not been there, I feel like Sindel would have eventually been overwhelmed. At least, that’s my interpretation.
13. CETRION
Cetrion is Mother Nature. That alone tells you what you need to know. Shinnok’s virtuous (yet still kind of evil) sister would be considered his equal if only she had a final form like him. Regardless, Cetrion is such a threat that Jax and Jacqui Briggs can only stand up to her for a limited time by wearing Kronika’s crown at a detriment to their own health. She also wiped out the rest of the Elder Gods, although that happened completely off-screen.
12. SHINNOK
Here we have Mortal Kombat’s version of Satan. Shao Kahn would later talk shit about Shinnok’s fighting skills, but he’s an Elder God and rules this reality’s version of Hell. He’s an absolute heavy hitter.
He also looks like a total dork when he’s in his base form, but thankfully his Corrupted Shinnok form makes up for that. Corrupted Shinnok is no joke, especially in Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero, where you’re better off cheesing it back to Earthrealm than fighting him head-on.
11. RAIDEN
Raiden was the guy so jacked up that they had to make up a reason for why he couldn’t take part in the first couple games’ tournaments. He was just there to give advice and moral support. What else would you expect from a god among men? He also thwarted Shinnok back in the day to save Earthrealm, meaning he was already a major piece of work by the start of the first game.
Raiden’s apex form is triggered whenever he wields Shinnok’s amulet. It doesn’t make him unbeatable, but it does put an extra pep in his step. The drawback is that it turns his eyes red and he becomes a total dick. Still a step up from him constantly tripping over his own feet on his way to consult the Elder Gods.
10. CASSIE CAGE
Cassie’s is one of the most powerful Mortal Kombat characters but there’s an asterisk. Seemingly more competent and driven than her father, Cassie is so skilled at using her green glow to the point that she was able to defeat Corrupted Shinnok. That’s because the Cage bloodline was bred and trained for the sole purpose of creating mortals who could slay gods. Her DNA is like kryptonite to the likes of Shinnok.
She does have some other impressive wins, like taking down revenant versions of Sindel and Liu Kang. Her Mortal Kombat X ending (which isn’t explicitly canon, but I have no reason to think it isn’t) has her kill Shujinko. Many fans consider that to be a bit on the bullshit side, but this Shujinko would have been 20 years older than the one from the previous continuity and wouldn’t have been powered up by the events of Mortal Kombat: Deception, so it’s not a big stretch (or a big enough deal) that Cassie could take out a martial artist Mr. Burns.
9. QUAN CHI
This sorcerer doesn’t have the raw power of the other main villains, and he gets completely clowned in Mortal Kombat X, but he is smart and sneaky enough to get what he wants most of the time. While overshadowed by Onaga, you also can’t forget that in the conclusion of Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, Quan Chi and Shang Tsung took down a handful of Earthrealm’s strongest warriors, defeated Raiden, then turned on each other with Quan claiming ultimate victory.
Various endings show that while he is working under Shinnok, he has the means to overthrow him if need be. This is especially apparent in Mortal Kombat 9, where Quan Chi has the rights to use necromancy on all of those slain during Shao Kahn’s invasion. He has a whole army of revenants at his disposal, and there are some serious heavy hitters mixed in there.
8. ONAGA
The Dragon King’s introduction came with so much hype that you could almost hear the other characters soil themselves in unison when he stomped onto the scene. On his own, Onaga was a wrecking machine, but in Mortal Kombat: Deception, he had the Kamidogu pieces, which made him completely unstoppable. Unstoppable enough that he shrugged off attacks from the united forces of Raiden, Shang Tsung, and Quan Chi. Add to that his ability to resurrect the dead and mind-control them and you had the ultimate threat.
EXCEPT…those Kamidogu pieces weren’t exactly unbreakable. I don’t know how hard those things are supposed to be, but in-game they would shatter just by walking into them. Either way, Shujinko was able to shatter them all himself and that depleted Onaga’s power enough to to end him. Being a reptilian juggernaut means only so much when you have such an overt off switch.
7. SHUJINKO
The most gullible hero of the Mortal Kombat franchise spent his entire life questing and fighting for what ended up being Onaga’s resurrection. In return, Onaga blessed him with Taskmaster powers. Shujinko can copy fighting styles from other warriors and has been doing so for decades.
That ended up being Onaga’s undoing, as Shujinko absorbed the abilities and fighting skills of just about every playable character in Mortal Kombat: Deception. After shattering the Kamidogu artifacts and removing Onaga’s invulnerability, Shujinko had no problem thrashing him. While experience was his ultimate weapon, the only thing really weighing him down was his aging and human mortality.
6. BLAZE
Blaze, by design, is a top tier beast. He’s the final boss in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, a game that brings back every Mortal Kombat character in one massive roster. When guys like Onaga and Goro are playable and they’re working their way up to take on Blaze, it really says something about what this guy’s about. Not to mention he’s the catalyst for ultimate power, turning whoever can slay him into an enhanced, godly version of his or herself.
Read more
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While it seemed at first that new hero character Taven would be the one to end Blaze, Taven was instead slayed and the real winner was Shao Kahn. Unfortunately, this is where things get a little hairy because we don’t know if Kahn would have truly been able to defeat Blaze one-on-one or if, say, Taven wounded Blaze and Kahn took advantage. Either way, it looks like Blaze straight-up took the L and wasn’t the be-all/end-all after all.
5. SHAO KAHN
Shao Kahn has always been the go-to villain of Mortal Kombat, and as the recurring villain, he’s taken his lumps. He’s suffered defeats at the hands of Liu Kang, Raiden, and Kitana. When he took over Outworld, he killed Onaga by poisoning him because battle was too risky. So yes, Base Shao Kahn may be tougher than most, but he’s not invincible.
But then you have Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, which was Kahn’s real showcase. After dominating the free-for-all, Kahn was grabbed and taken away by Onaga. As foreboding as that would seem for Kahn, he not only bounded back from that, but he also ended up being the last man standing after slaying Blaze. That enhanced Shao Kahn’s strength even more and turned him into a multiversal threat, thwarted only because of Raiden’s desperate use of time travel.
4. KRONIKA
After years of telling us that Elder Gods were the ultimate beings, NetherRealm decided to reveal another tier of beings called Titans who rank even higher. So far we only know Kronika, the Keeper of Time, who is so overpowered that nearly everyone on the roster should have absolutely zero shot against her. She controls time like it’s nothing. Overcoming that isn’t like dodging a fireball.
Thankfully, Kronika has one major weakness: while she can rewrite history, she can’t omit the gods. She can’t create a world without Raiden. Raiden still can’t beat her one-on-one, but it’s through that loophole that Kronika ultimately meets her downfall.
2. LIU KANG (TIE)
The series’ initial protagonist was always fighting above his weight class. He spent the first four games taking down Goro, Shang Tsung, Shao Kahn, and Shinnok. His canon deaths came in the form of an ambush perpetrated by Shang Tsung and Quan Chi, and later an accidental frying from Raiden’s hand. In fact, he spent multiple continuities clashing with Raiden.
That was nothing compared to what he became at the end of Mortal Kombat 11. Two Liu Kangs from different parts of history merged together into one being, with Raiden handing over his godly power, giving us an incarnation of Liu Kang that was not only a god but had control over both electricity and fire. This was the upgrade needed to destroy Kronika and put Liu Kang in control of time itself.
2. SHANG TSUNG (TIE)
As it turned out, Fire God Liu Kang wasn’t equipped to wield Kronika’s magical hourglass for long without her crown, or else time would eventually collapse. Shang Tsung popped in to explain all this, making it clear that he was reality’s only choice. Liu Kang and Fujin realized that they had to give into Shang’s obvious trickery to save everyone.
By the end of his adventure, Shang Tsung had re-killed Kronika and wore her crown while empowered by the souls of Kronika, Raiden, Fujin, Shao Kahn, and Sindel.
Then Fire God Liu Kang popped in to take over. The two rivals faced off and the player was given the choice of which character they wanted to play as. As it is right now, we don’t know who won the epic battle in official canon, so consider Liu Kang and Shang Tsung to be tied until further notice.
1. THE ONE BEING
The most powerful being in Mortal Kombat is not playable in any of the games, nor has it appeared as a boss. In fact, the One Being is presumably too powerful to be portrayed in humanoid form at all. It’s the Galactus of the Mortal Kombat universe, though honestly even more threatening.
The One Being existed at the beginning of time, along with the Elder Gods, and initially fed off of them. The Elder Gods struck back and were able to break the One Being apart into the various realms. If the realms were to be merged back together, it would awaken the One Being once more and destroy all of existence. Despite their desire to be top dog, guys like Shao Kahn, Onaga, Shinnok, and Shang Tsung are unknowingly being influenced by this ominous force.
cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });
The post Mortal Kombat: 15 Most Powerful Characters appeared first on Den of Geek.
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crystalmaeson · 3 years
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Official Readme by Maeson
Pokemon Crystal Maeson - Public Version 1.0 - Internal Version 15.0.3
IT IS RECOMMENDED TO READ THIS WITH NOTEPAD++, BUT YOU DO YOU.
o--------o |Sections| o--------o
[1]  Installation [2]  Introduction [3]  General List of Changes [4]  Patch Differences [5]  Pokémon Changes [6]  Type Changes [7]  Move Changes [8]  Stat Experience, Vitamins and Fruits [9]  Mechanic & Gameplay Changes [10] New Kurt Balls, new ways to obtain Apricorns [11] The New and Improved Battle Tower and Trainer House [12] Visual Changes [13] Credits
o-----------------o |[1]  Installation| o-----------------o
Patching a game is usually a very easy process, specially with IPS Patches.
There's a variety of programs that work with IPS files, but the most famous one is named Lunar IPS, also called LIPS.
This hack is to be patched on a Pokémon Crystal 1.1 ROM file.
More specifically, this rom: Pokemon - Crystal Version (UE) (V1.1) [C][!].gbc CRC-32 : 3358E30A
You open your patcher, and then point to it to the IPS patch and the original, unmodded ROM. It will apply it and inform you when it's finished, it should be quick.
Now, there's two versions of this hack, and each one has also two varieties.
CHOOSE ONLY ONE. To know which version you want, check the details at the not-surprisingly-named "Patch Differences" section.
And yes, the patch weights almost 75% of the original game.
o-----------------o |[2]  Introduction| o-----------------o
Hola, welcome to another ridiculously long readme of mine.
I go by the name Maeson and I made other hacks for a handful of other RPGs. For the most part what I usually aim for with these hacks is to create a different experience, tweaking what I can to give games that I've played time and time again a gameplay facelift to keep them fresh for me, sometimes also trying to improve aspects of a game that I think could make it more fun, varied, better paced or just more challenging after many playthroughs and knowing stuff by hand.
These hacks are made for me in first place, so they're shaped in a very personal manner and of course through my own tastes and ideas, but it should goewithout saying, I hope.
But anyway... What can I say about Pokémon?
My feelings toward the main series of Pokémon have changed a lot since its inception. Just like millions of other fans of video games, I lived the Pokémon craze back in the day, and I grew playing most of those games. I was there without fail up until the fifth Generation, then I started to get tired of the series gradually, and I sort of stop caring with time.
Thing is, I really didn't stop liking the Pokémon themselves, and I still enjoy spin-offs like the Trading Card Games or Mystery Dungeon games, and some like Pokémon Conquest and Pokken are quite cool crossovers, so there's still some appeal to me, even if it's waning with each day.
And hey, then you get things like Pokémon Snap, which it's one unique and very memorable game, one of the very, very few games about photography. it's a really chill, fun time overall.
...What it does not appeal to me all that much since a long time, though, is Game Freak and The Pokémon Company. The choices and "philosofies" they've been doing and following for several years now have been some of the most frustrating ones I've seen besides Square Enix, and their interviews equally leave some wonderfully baffling pearls of "wisdom".
They've done a remarkable job at making me wanting to distance myself more and more throughout this last decade, to the point that I lost pretty much all my appreciation for the franchise.
And it's not just with the main games, their choice of pushing aside console spin-offs for more and more mobile based Games As A Service (that usually failed and died quickly) also left us without many interesting games that could at least keep us somewhat happy.
And the less we talk about the lies, misinformation and the worrying use of younger audiences as a shield to deflect criticism from their business decisions, the better.
I... Just can't support or stand that anymore. I feel drained.
And I would have been completely away from this franchise, barring some old games, if not for one day finding that a collective of people were working on disassembly projects of older games.
I found them to be really interesting, and my mind kinda played with the idea of having a version of one of those old games with changes that I've been wanting and waiting to happen for many years. Who knows, I could even *attempt* to improve what was already there and even add more stuff to it.
Checking the available games with disassembly, I chose Pokémon Crystal, as it seemed the most complete and evolved project of all, in combination with also being one of the longer games thanks to the large post-game it originally had, plus being an earlier Generation game also gave me more room to do changes and improvements.
So little by little, with no idea of assembly, I kept hitting walls and messing around for a time, and what you downloaded is the result of spending the free time I had working in it... For quite some time. In fact it has been over 2 years of constant work, this started in 2018.
The aim of this hack is simple:
Create a new "balance", make the game more challenging, and iron out stuff I find could be improved, or I have the ability and knowledge to do while I add more value to certain aspects of the game. Make a version of Pokémon that I'd like to replay and have every monster be a fun addition to the team and a foe I just can't roll over with little to no thought, so I want to try all of them.
If you were expecting a new story, or a new region, or whatever pipe dream that most probably would end up incompleted and not stable, sorry to disappoint, but you won't find it here.
And no, I don't really care if this hack doesn't have an "epic" name. There's so many other more important things to care than that...
o----------------------------o |[3]  General List of Changes| o----------------------------o
Here you have a quick list with some of the biggest changes all around, but there are sections for most of them to talk more in detail.
· Attempt to reach a new balance. This has been said above, but what   it actually means is that elements as Types, Moves, Pokémon Stats and   such have been changed deeply to move away from the conventions of the   original games, making many species feel entirely different gameplay-wise.
  Among other things, this means no more disappointing creatures with bad   typing and many weaknesses, or low Base Stats filler. It also means parity   between the Types, with each one having the same number of Weaknesses and   Resistances. The intent is for every Fully Evolved Pokémon to feel useful   or, at the very, very least, usable in a way where you don't feel handicapping   yourself to the point you ask yourself if it is even worth doing it.
· Moves and TMS have been changed a lot in order to accomodate the Physical & Special Split,   each Type now has both Physical and Special moves of different Power tiers.
  Many old attacks have been removed and many others have been added. What moves each   evolutionary line learns also has been changed, in order to make all Pokémon have   decent movesets depending on what their archtype is.
· DVs (IVs on later generations) No longer matter on Stat Calculations. This means that   every member of the same species will have the same potential. This also means you can   have female Pokémon with good Attack, and Shiny Pokémon with good stats, what a novel concept.
  This way any monster you come across will be equal, so you can focus on having   fun, while still having to care of it by training, feeding him vitamins and fruits,   choosing the best moves for it in a given situation, making a balanced team, and   you know, the actual RPG bits instead of the RNG ones.
  If you liked the eugenics experiment experience the original games give you,   sorry but that's not here. I apologize for nothing.
· Trainers changed all around. Better AI than in the original game, more varied teams,     their Pokémon have Stat Exp, meaning that the further you go, the better trained their   Pokémon are, and better trained your own monsters should be. I also removed several   limitations imposed on NPC trainers to make them factually inferior to you. This is   made trying to make the game more challenging instead of the usual cake-walk.
  There's no ridiculous stuff like giving Hyper Beam to everything or illegal moves   for NPC trainer's Pokémon (although bear in mind, many Pokémon have changed types,   and many have changed movesets so their moves are the new "legal" moves, but   again, nothing impossible for you to have or to add fake difficulty).
  If you're asking yourself this, no, in this hack NPCs do not change Pokémon constantly,   that tends to drag the game too much. They still do it occasionally, but not at every   time Type matchups that go against them.
· Quite a few changes related to Items, from how strong some Healing Items are, to changing   Kurt Balls, changing the effect (or power of the effect) on several Held Items, new   types of berries, and others.
  Healing items are no longer useable in battle, neither for you or the NPC Trainers.   Battles must be won only with your Pokémon, their held items, and strategy.
  ...Or well, over-levelling through mind-numbing grinding.   We can't exactly get rid of that.
· Added a whole LOT of improvements here and there to make the game flow, feel and   play better.
  Things like changing how Item Storage works to have more space overall, much faster   egg hatching speeds, making every monster available in this hack, having the Pokédex   show you a bit of meaningful game information, as now it shows a species Base Stats   and also the Shiny variations, make saving a faster process, making TMs infinite   (but not abusable), improving the scrolling while moving around making the game   feel and look much better, large improvements on the Battle Tower, expanding the   Trainer House to be more interesting end-game stuff, adding Rematches, making   PokeGear rematches better, a way to change PC Boxes remotely, move tutors and   quite a few others.
There's many things more, but that's what the individual sections are for.
o-----------------------o |[4]  Patch Differences | o-----------------------o
Now, there are four patches, so let's explain this quickly.
First, we have the Original versions, and the Alternative versions, these last ones offer a tweaked experience in case you want to play this hack again with some differences.
In which ways it is different?
Well, the Starters have been swapped, so when you begin a new game, you get to choose between Bulbasaur, Charmander and Squirtle.
MUCH bigger difference, though, is that all the Gym trainers, the Leaders, other important NPCS and the Elite Four no longer have their teams limited to following the thematic "Type" standards.
Other trainers such as the Rival also have different teams, (and like the original patch, he develops a different team depending on the starter they steal).
Without that restriction each of those trainers have way more varied teams, making the game less predicable because you can no longer coast on the Type disadvantages most of the Pokémon of a Gym Leader share.
This of course changes how you make your teams. You no longer "have" to bring "this or that Type" because later on the road there's a Gym weak to it. It's more about making a team that you feel it can withstand anything it may come.
The order of certain Ingame Trades have also been changed.
There's other smaller changes to make the bigger ones sit well, such as small text edits or change the order of the Pokédex.
But Original and Alternative are divided in two too, one that I'll call "Intended Versions" and the other two are "Items in Battle" variations.
The "Intended Versions" disables healing Items in battle and it forces Set options, meaning you don't get free switches after knocking out a foe Pokémon. You can't change the option, because it's not even there anymore.
That's how I'd like people to play my hack, but knowing how some people can be, there's an extra patch, "Items in Battle", that gives you the possibility of using Items and to change the battle option, but there's a price to pay.
If you choose to play with enabled Items/Switch in battle, a few Items will be unavailable to you, the price of several Items will increase, and the HP they restore will be lowered. Also, NPC Trainers will also use Items.
That's simply because Items can be easily abused, and that is the opposite of what I wanted in this hack. If you choose the "right" to abuse Items during battle, then I have the right to make adjustments to annoy you with your choice.
It's not like Hyper Potions will heal 1 HP or anything crazy like that, but because in my hack you can't use Items in battles, they're more powerful than the usual vanilla items so you could recover better between battles.
The items you lose access to are all new, by the way. A set of consumable Held Items that raise a stat whenever the holder is attacked or under other circustances, similar to the berries in the Third Generation, albeit they're activated differently.
Another change is limited access to a team-healing item that I made, and restores all your Pokémon to perfect shape. Intended to be used in a pinch, like being lost in a cave, or between hard fights, but you can only have in small amounts. In the Original patch, you can carry 3 of them, but only 1 on the "Items in Battle" versions.
You're free to choose how to play. Of course, you only apply one patch.
If for some reason you started a game with one version, for example, with the patch for Items in Battle, and you later on want to go to the No Items in Battle version, you can actually use that save file and not start again.
But I recommend you to save first in a Pokémon Center before doing so. Once you did that, patch a clean ROM and rename the .SAV file into whatever the new patched rom is. Now you can continue with your game. Remember to always make backups before doing anything of this sort.
I do not recommend changing between the Original and Alternate versions.
Lastly, trading and battling with vanilla Pokémon Crystal is not going to work. Not only many of the fixes made already impossible to be compatible with Vanilla Pokémon Crystal, but the gigantic load of changes I made to the game would render any attempt become a glitchy mess.
But you can trade and battle with other copies of this hack, and the four versions of the patches should be compatible with each other for both trading and battling. I'd recommend using the No Items versions because it gives you access to those extra Held Items, though.
o--------------------o |[5]  Pokémon Changes| o--------------------o
Probably the most obvious and central change, these creatures are the core of the franchise after all.
As you may imagine, there have been changes to most aspects of them. While some of those have their sections to talk about, Base Stats are probably the most important one here.
That is because for the most part there is parity in Base Stat Total for all evolutionary lines in this game.
Pokémon to me has become a rather painful series of games to look back, because there has never been that much of an interest to improve or balance out their creations to make a more varied, balanced and fun experience, and when they try to do something is more on the lines of "adding" to fix instead of improving what's there already.
And don't get me wrong, trying to get "perfect balance" is impossible with such a large amount of creatures, but at the same time, Game Freak has done very, very little in this regard, most other developers would at least try something, specially if they had the decades of game releases Game Freak has had.  
But back on track. This is why in this hack, almost every non-Starter, non-Legendary fully evolved monster has a Base Stat Total of 650, making each all of them feel have the same potential overall.
This means there will be no "early useless Pokémon", nor so called "Filler".
And yes, this means your beloved Tyranitar, Dragonite, and such have the same potential as a Raticate or a Wigglytuff. On the other hand, this also means you don't need to train a Pupitar or Dragonair to ridiculous levels to have them evolve into their final forms.
If you ask yourself "why such high Base Stat Total", well, its simple: The higher the roof, the more space you have to scale stats. The more space you have to scale stats, the better you can "personalize" stats for the different species.
Besides, the Base Stat Total stops being important when everybody is at the same "level".
Now, that's for "normal Pokémon". The first two Generations had two trios of "pseudo-legendary" monsters, those being Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres, and Raikou, Entei and Suicune. These critters have 660 Base Stat Total.
Starters also have a total of 660. This is mainly because starters are usually the back bone of most player's teams (although I usually roll without them), and I saw fitting for them to be slightly stronger. But fear not, because those extra points don't really make much difference, as they're used to make them more well rounded instead of just dumping them on their highest stats.
Finally, true Legendary Pokémon keep their 700 Base Stat Total of the original games. To this day I never used legendaries beyond wanting to see their back sprites, never cared about them, so they have the least number of changes, really.
Some other changes are:
·Many Pokémon had their overall archetypes changed besides their Stats improved.  Furret is now a Fast Special Attacker, for example.
·Almost every Pokémon now has a 50% Male/Female Ratio, except for the Nidorans,  Tauros and Miltank. Pokémon like Blissey, Chansey, or the Hitmon-family  now can be both male and female. Magnemite, Voltorb and such are still genderless.
·The two Legendary Trios have genders and can in fact breed, thus they can be  seen almost as normal Pokémon.
·The Pokédex had the entries for each Pokémon modified. This is because now it shows  actually useful information instead of the continuously repeated "scientific" info  that usually is full of lies and ridiculous stuff that could make an Indian Elephant  have a headache, but hey, it may not be the Pokédex info, it may just be a bit too  close to a Magcargo and it's experiencing how one feels being next to the Sun.
 Happens to us all sometimes.
 Now, the first page of each species shows its Weaknesses and Resistances while  the second page of each one now points out the Base Stat spreads it has,  which is a much, much more useful ingame data, specially when this hacks  aims to change heavily most things related to battling and "the RPG elements".
 Oh, and by the way, if you press Select while looking at a Pokémon's Data,  you'll activate "Shiny Mode", and every Pokémon shown will be seen with their  Shiny Colors!
·Talking about Shiny Pokémon, those are far more common. While I personally don't care  too much about them, specially nowadays when they've become so... Uneventful and common,  not to mention how much they've been related with hacking and cheating, Pokémon being  shiny lost appeal to me, yet they're still a big thing for many players, so why not make  them easier to obtain?
 The means for finding a Shiny Pokémon in Generation II were rough. REALLY rough. With  the way it works now, you should find quite a few of them throughout your adventure, and  also finding female shiny Pokémon should also be a more common occurrence than before.
 You're bound to find a fair share of them. This being a modded game, it doesn't really  matter if they're not as rare or hard to find.
 NPC trainers will have Shiny monsters here and there, so you should also have the chance!
·As you already know, wild Pokémon may be holding items. In the original game,  many species had nothing with them. Now, most species have them, and the variety  is much, much bigger. Not only that, the chances for finding Pokémon with items  has increased.
 Now there's a 50% of not having an item, 40% of having a "common" item, and  10% of holding a "rare" item. Better than the 2% on the original.
 Lastly, I've made another improvement in held items. Now, whenever you battle  with a wild monster that has an Item, an little icon (similar to the one in the party menu)  will appear on the enemy's HUD. Specifically between the Pokeball icon that appears  when you fight a monster that you already have in your Pokédex, and the Gender icon.
 Again, only for WILD creatures.  If monsters have items in trainer battles is a secret to everybody!
·A big one, already mentioned in the introduction:  DVs (or IVs, if you rather call them that) NO LONGER FACTOR INTO STAT CALCULATIONS!!
 This means that now only Base Stats and Stat Exp matter in each Pokémon statistics.  Oh, and by the way, the formula to calculate stats has changed very slightly.  Remember that +5 bonus at the end of the calculations? Now it's a 6.  That means that a 100 Base stat (Not HP) of a fully trained monster is 300 and not 299.
 This also means you can now have Female Pokémon with good Attack power, and Shiny  Pokémon no longer are weak, two rather big things for me at least.
 No more you will have to waste hours of your life breeding and abandoning  dozens if not hundreds of Pokémon for good DVs (what a great lesson!).  NPC Trainers also get good Pokémon too, making things better for everybody.
·Evolution has been streamlined and homogenized. This means that Pokémon that  evolved by trades, special events, and such have simpler, more direct ways  to do so now. But also, all Pokémon evolver on similar levels.
 After all, if they are supposed on equal footing in Power, they should  also be on the same level on this matter too.
 Here's a few examples:
 Pokémon with three stages evolve at levels 20 and 32.
 Pidgey evolves to Pidgeotto at level 20, and to Pidgeot at level 32.  Chikorita evolves to Bayleef at level 20, and to Meganium at level 32.  Dratini evolves to Dragonair at level 20, and to Dragonite at level 32.
 Pokémon with two stages evolve between levels 22 and 24.
 Rattata evolves into Raticate at level 23.  Venonat evolves into Venomoth at level 24.  Rhyhorn evolves into Rhydon at level 24.  Hoothoot evolves into Noctowl at level 22.
 Of course, there are a couple of exceptions. Caterpie and Weedle  are still the fastest evolving lines, and of course Pokémon that  evolve through stones can do so anytime you want.
 Oh, and by the way, in this hack, you WANT to evolve when Pokémon want to.  You won't get much from stopping an evolution, and with Pokémon that evolve  through stones and such, you should do it before too late.
 This is because many species learn better techniques at the same level they evolve,  and it would be a waste to not learn them.
 You can find at which levels are recommended Pokémon to evolve through stones in  the specific Pokémon Stat list txt. But if you want to make it easy:
 If the Pokémon has two evolutionary stages > Use the stone at Level 22 or 23.  If the Pokémon has three evolutionary stages > use the stone at level 30 or 32 (to reach the last stage).
 That said, if you feel like not evolving for whatever reason, you've not lost everything.  The game has a Move Reminder, and you'll be able to remember freely any move from a species  learnset.
 Oh, and the Time Capsule seems to work as long as you of course follow the rules.  But a few notes:
 Any Pokémon you bring from Generation 1 may have their moves changed upon  arriving your game. The moves may turn into a very uncharacteristic one for  the Pokémon, because I repurposed many moves into new ones.
 The stats of the Pokémon will change from Gen 1 to Gen 2, and most notably,  the HP of any Pokémon that reaches Gen 2 will not be fully healed, because  of the change in stats, but there's no problem at all as far as functionality,  just heal.  
 That said, have in mind there's NO NEED to use the Time Machine.  You do so under your responsibility.
o-----------------o |[6]  Type Changes| o-----------------o
Yet another big shake to the, in my personal point of view, rather badly balanced formula.
I'm not going to discuss or waste time with this. This is how it works here:
Defensive wise, each type now is weak to two other types, while resistant to three, one of them being itself. There are NO immunities. Every type is equal as far as weaknesses and resistances, except for Normal.
Normal has no weaknesses or resistances, period.
Offensive wise, each Type is effective against two Types, and is resisted by three, one it being itself. Normal does not hit for Super Effective damage nor does it get resisted.
So, among other things, Ghost will get hurt by Normal and Fighting moves, Normal will get hit by Ghost, Dragon is no longer weak to itself, and Ice is not such an awful and pathetic defensive Type that exists to be mocked.
Oh, the Fairy Type has been added too, but how it works doesn't exactly resemble the original game, just like the other Types.
Now, because I know how certain part of the community can act (and let's not kid ourselves pretending it doesn't happen), to make myself clear and blunt:
 I don't care if you think Type X should be weak/resistant to type Y.  I don't care if you don't want to learn new Type Matchups.  I don't care what Game Freak does with types now or in the future.
I'm not Game Freak and I have made this wanting to break away from their norm, I don't have to follow any rules, not theirs, not yours.
Making a more even ground for all types, trying to make each monster good, so I could play with all of them and have fun was one of the important things for me, and to reach that goal I made as many changes as I saw fit.
You're free to stop reading and go look for another hack if this will bother you that much.
End of the "serious" moment. Good? Great, let's continue!
With this change, every Pokémon will always have more good points than bad points, not to mention that the maximum number of weaknesses a Pokémon can have is 4, and if it has 4 weaknesses, to compensate it will have 6 resistances.
Another thing I want to point out is that the number of Normal Type Pokémon has been lowered. While there are still a bunch of them, it's a way lower number, making many of these previously Normal Pokémon have completely different Type Combinations. I mean, I'm sure you won't miss all the Normal/Flying types. I hope so at least.
If you think Normal Type not having weaknesses could be "broken", far from it, specially since, as I said, in this hack having *more good points* is a given for any non-Normal Pokémon. But of course that's just talking. They can make for great members, in one of my several test-playthroughs, a Furret was one of my best Pokémon all thoughout the game.
There is an image in the RAR file with a Type Table to show you how Types work now, but beyond that, in Violet City's Pokémon Academy, there are two books that teach you the differen Types and their strong and weak points.
And then, if you're so lazy to figure it out, the weaknesses and resistances for each individual species is listed on the Stats text file.
And theeen, if you're even lazier than that, you can also check the Pokedex Entry of a given *captured* Pokémon, as it gives you useful info such as this.
Basically what I'm trying to say is that you have a number of ways to find out how types work. Use them to your advantage.
Oh, lastly, in this hack there are NO Pokémon with double weaknesses. I've never liked them to be honest, and to me just show how unappealing some types were designed to be that they make such awful combinations.
I still remember how excited people were for Aurorus until they saw its typing, and then it all turned into either jokes at its weaknesses or pure disapppointment.
No fun.
o-----------------o |[7]  Move Changes| o-----------------o
Alongside the previous two changes, the Moves have been changed A LOT too.
Instead of just "copying" what Game Freak has done in later generations, this hack had in mind to actually modify moves in ways to make them more interesting based on the limitations of the GBC games, and also another little thing:
There is a Physical/Special Split in this hack, so one of the big changes of this hack was to give each Type a number of both, Physical and Special moves to cover different Power levels so Pokémon can have good STAB moves that go along with their stats.
After all, that was probably the best thing Generation IV did for me. While it took some toys from some Pokémon (like Elemental Punches from Alakazam), it really was a big change for the better for most species.
So for example, we have Rock Slide for Rock Pokémon with high Attack, and Rock Launch for Rock Pokémon with high Special Attack. For this, many old moves were removed and reworked into new moves, mostly moves that were redundant and exactly the same as other moves (Like Whirlwind and Roar, or Wrap and Bind, they're the exact same thing).
While this gives every type and every Pokémon solid Stab moves, the limitation of 254 moves makes it so I can't add many "wild" and unique moves, but oh well, it's already much, much better than what it was originally on Generation II.
...No, really, I forgot how rough and unfair the move list was in old Generations, with some Types having almost no good moves at all, or moves that Pokémon couldn't take advantage of because their Stats and their Types didn't match. Hoo boy...  
Another big change is that most attacks now have secondary effects, and very often, the lower the Power of a move, the higher is the chance to inflict those secondary effects.
For example, Fire Breath (New move) has a 15% Chance of causing Burn and 70 Power, but Flamethrower only has 10% chance of causing burn and 95 Power. This makes moves with lower Power a bit more useful.
As you may imagine, Pokémon Movesets have been changed tremendously, not only for those critters that had their Types and Stat distributions changed, but also to accomodate all the modifications related to Moves.
Movesets in this hack are in no way attempting to copy later generations of official games, specially since Generation 2 Movesets were incredibly sad to look back.
Instead, they're focused on attempting to give what that certain species needs. So no Pokémon will be let without good STAB moves, and you also won't see Pokémon that are obviously Physical attackers getting Special moves or viceversa.
A handful of moves also got their priority changed.
Safeguard, Haze, Mist, Transformation and Bide now go before other moves. This change actually shakes up battles a bit, it was fun to see the AI read my moves from time to time and prevent Status, and hey, with Transform having priority now Ditto is more usable too!
A list of the moves, what they do, and their other data is in its own TXT file, although with ingame descriptions, it is not necessary.
As far as TMs and HMs, things also have changed.
TMs no longer get consumed when used, so they have infinite uses. The Moves they teach have also changed for the majority of TMS, with most of them teaching both Physical and Special "end-game" moves. There's also a total of 55 TMS now.
None of them can be found in shops, you must find them by exploring or obtained from an NPC.
HMs have also changed a bit, making them more useful. Cut now is a 70 Power Normal move with a High Critical Ratio, and Fly is a strong move with 110 Power that causes Recoil damage. Flash causes damage and can lower Accuracy. Strength is now is Fighting type and causes Flinch. And Whirlpool is a bit more powerful and now takes more HP at the end of turns, so its a rather cool combo alongside Toxic on bulky Pokémon.
Also, HMs can be forgotten like normal attacks, so you can swap attacks easily in case you want, and unlike in Gen. 1, because you can't drop them, you can't get stuck.
Or rather, you wouldn't get stuck, because there's another change. These moves:
Headbutt Rock Smash Cut         Surf Strength Waterfall Whirlpool
Don't need to be known by a Pokémon to be used in the overworld! You only need a Pokémon capable of learning such move, and the needed Medal in the case of the HMs.
That only leaves Flash and Fly out of that list, right?
About Flash:
I also added an item that will let you light dark caves so you don't need to have a Pokémon with Flash, but you get it quite a bit later than the HM. Just look around Mahogany after things calmed down.
It can be assigned to Select for quick use, too!
About Fly:
There's a small sidequest you can do later in the game that will net you a special object. This item will let you use a different version of Fly. Mechanically, it's the same, you can fly to places you've explored. Animation-wise is different, though.
Because all of this, you no longer need to have any HM on any Pokémon unless you want it (because most of them are actually respectable attacking moves), which gives much more freedom to parties and movesets!
o----------------------------------------o |[8] Stat Experience, Vitamins and Fruits| o----------------------------------------o
TLDR VERSION: Use Vitamins, use Fruits. They improve your Pokemon's stats, and          you need to take care of your team to withstand other trainers          which have properly trained monsters. Use them intelligently,          don't waste them with Pokémon you don't want to have in your team,      at least early on when you have limited resources.
         Vitamins are no longer as limited in effect, or as expensive.          Fruits are new, and are twice as good as Vitamins.
Pokémon games have a system in which, through adquiring certain points through different means, a creature can improve its Stats. In Generations 1 and 2, these are called Stat Experience. This is a system Game Freak has never informed the players about at all, and the games never came even close to mention it in any trully useful detail, so bare with me if this is your first time with this stuff, although I doubt you found this hack knowing nothing about it.
Stat Experience points can range from 0 (Empty) to 65535 (Maximized). Unlike later generations, In Gen. I and II, you can maximize the experience of all the stats.
Stat Experience points are divided and exclusive for each stat. HP, Attack, Defense and Speed have their own Stat Exp Table. Special Attack and Special Defense share the same Stat Exp Table. So reaching 65535 Stat Exp in each Stat will make your Pokémon perfect stat-wise. Even Pokémon at Level 100 can get Stat Experience, but to gain the effects, they need to be stored on the PC so their real Stats can get updated with the current Stat Exp. they have at that moment.
The ways you get Stat Exp are these:
By battling -Each time one of your Pokémon defeats another, the Base Stats of the enemy's species          is added to your Stat Exp in each stat. This is the slowest way, but it's also free,          and will raise your stats by just playing through the game.
     If you defeat, let's say, a Caterpie, it has these Base Stats:
HP 75, Attack 60, Defense 70, Speed 95, Special Attack 90, Special Defense 70.      As I said, Special Attack and Defense use the same Stat Exp Table. The game takes      the Base Stat related to Special Attack, so in this case, your Pokémon will be      awarded 90 Special Stat Exp Points, alongside the rest.      Training only through battles is not only pointless when you have other means,      but also incredibly tedious. While in my hack Pokémon have higher stats that make      training this way faster, battling for Stat Exp should only be relied on when      you've already fed your Pokémon Vitamin and Fruits, to get those last Stat Exp Points      needed for a Perfect Stat.
     But of course, any Stat Exp gained through battles is benefitial, just don't battle      *only* for the Stat Exp unless, as I said it's to finish Stat Exp training!      By the way, there's a special condition named Pokerús, which is a benefitial virus      that will double the amount of Stat Exp you get from battles. This is very rare      to get, and you will be noticed by a PKMN Center Nurse. The games don't tell you  what it does exactly either...
     It can be very useful, and it propagates through your Pokémon team, and disappears      after some time. If you ever get Pokerús, try to keep a Pokémon with active Pokerús      on your PC so you can pass it to other Pokémon. But as I said, it's very rare!
By Vitamins -Vitamins in the original game were pretty useless. They raised very little, and they      could only be used up to some point, which is less than half way the Stat Exp total.
     In this hack, though, they're much better, and even necessary, as the people living      in Johto and Kanto have *actually* trained their Pokémon properly and they have Stat      Exp, so they'll be stronger and more challenging, and after a certain point, all      trainers you'll find will have maximized Pokémon, like any trainer worth their salt      would be doing.
     Each Vitamin gives 10.240 Stat Exp Points per use, and they can be used until the      Stat Exp of the Stat that you want to raise reaches 51.456, at which point, the      Pokémon wont get any benefit from it (it won't be wasted, so don't worry).
     To make it easier to understand, let's put it this way:
     An untrained (either just catched, or just hatched) Pokémon will have 0 Stat Exp on      everything. If you feed it HP UPs, it will be able to eat 6:
     10.240 1 HP Up      20.480 2 HP Up      30.720 3 HP Up      40.960 4 HP Up      51.200 5 HP Up > Doesn't go pass the limit so you can eat another one.      61.440 6 HP Up > Passed the limit, so you can't feed more, but it's almost Maximized!               You can get the rest by battling.
     If you're used to Effort Values from Gen 3 onwards, let's make it even easier:
     The way it works, each modern EV means 256 Stat Exp, so if it's easier for you, just      divide Stat Exp by 256:
     Each Vitamin gives 10.240 Stat Exp, that means 40 EV.      The limit of Stat Exp is 51.456, that means 201 EV.
     So with a Pokémon without EVs, you can go from 0 to 240 EV through vitamins.
     You can obviously give Vitamins to a Pokémon you've been battling with no problem,      but an untrained Pokémon is better to use as an example.
     Their price is much lower so you can keep up with enemy trainers, although they      cost enough to make each purchase a bit of an investment early into the game.
By Fruits   - Fruits are almost exactly the same as Vitamins, but they give twice the Stat Exp.
     Each one gives 20.480 Stat Exp (Or 80 EV if you want it that way), and the limit      is 41.216 Stat Points (or 161 EV). This means that your Pokémon can eat up to      three Fruits in a stat to jump for 0 Stat Exp to 61.440 (or 0 to 240 EV) and      almost maximize it. Let's again use an example of raising HP with Fruit now:
     20.480 1 Salty Fruit      40.960 2 Salty Fruit > Doesn't go pass the limit so you can eat another one      61.440 3 Salty Fruit > Passed the limit, so you can't feed more, but it's almost Maximized!
     Thus, fruits are much better overall than Vitamins, but they're scarce, and should      be better used for Pokémon you know they have little to no training in a certain Stat.
     You can combine Vitamins and Fruit without problem, but if you do, first use your      Fruits, then the Vitamins so you don't waste Fruits unnecessarily.
Why the limit - If you're asking why the limit is 51.456, or 240 EV for Vitamins, and 41.216 or 161 EVs for Fruits, it is simple to answer: If you feed a Vitamin/Fruit to a Pokémon in a way that would go over 65535, a bug would happen and the Stat Exp of that Pokémon would roll back to 0. I think it's obvious why that would suck. So, by putting these limits you're safe from that to happen, but you also get very close to maximize a stat. It's the best balance I could achieve.
o--------------------------------o |[9]  Mechanic & Gameplay Changes| o--------------------------------o
Already said that under the hood, there are many, many other changes. Some (not all of them, not by a long shot) changes are as follows:
· The Clock Reset function now has a much easier button combination to open it.  The combination is like this:
 1: Hold    Select + Down  2: Release Down while holding Reset.  3: With Reset Held, now hold Up too.  4: Release Select. The Reset Clock menu will open.
 It requires less buttons, making it easier to do, or able to do at all  depending where you are playing. You still need to input the password,  though, removing that would let you abuse certain things very easily.
· Prices for several things have been lowered on the "Intended" Versions of this hack.  Because you no longer can abuse Items to progress, I saw no real reason to  make you pay as much as usual. You're still going to need them, because the  need for healing between battles is still a thing.
 Another reason to do this is because you will also spend much more money than  usual on Vitamins and other stuff to properly train and prepare your team.  
· Catching Pokémon grants you Experience now! The Exp. is the same as if it was  defeated, and every Pokémon that fought in said battle will get a share of it.
· The Odd Egg will always give you a Shiny Pokémon between 7 ramdonly selected  species, and both genders. Each Species get a unique move, instead of all of  them getting the same (now non-existing) move.
· Talking about Eggs, Pokémon now hatch much, much faster, so there's less  walking up and down through Goldenrod. Not only that, but Egg Moves also  changed all around. Pokémon also lay Eggs faster, and Nidorina &  Nidoqueen can now breed, alongside both "legendary" trios.
 Now each basic species has between 3 or 4 Egg Moves for the most part  they are different from vanilla, and basic Starter Pokémon have 5 Egg Moves.
· Trainer AI has been much improved. Now they know much better what they do, and they  can priorize stuff like Status Effects, they take better advantage of weaknesses and  resistances.
 They also carry Items with them, if you play with the patch that lets you  items in Battle, of course.
 Trainers also have properly trained monsters, with Stat Exp increasing throughout  the game. Feeding your team vitamins and fruits is now important to stay on toes  with them. Of course, there is more variety in species of monsters used by NPCs,  their levels are higher, and team sizes have increased a bit.
 Making each trainer a full 6 Pokémon team would drag the game, though, and probably  couldn't fit, I already was suffering the lack of space with what I added, because  when adding Stat Exp, custom Movesets, and such the space gets used way too fast.
 Also, the game was very, very unfair to the NPC trainers.  Not only were they hard-coded to fail more often, have mediocre AI, and Low-Level Pokémon,  you also got your Stats and Types boosted as you got Badges, so they became completely  inferior and disappointing... At least, if you want to have any challenge.
 That's why any bonus that Badges give you was stripped down. No Stat Boost, no Type Boost.  This will make the game far more fair and chalenging, in turn making it more enjoyable if  you look for having to think and put a bit of effort, which is, you know, the point of  this entire hack.
 Another thing changed is the money that many types of trainers reward you by beating them.  In this hack you have many more things to buy as mentioned above, from Vitamins, to  Held Items, to Decorations, and more Healing Items because of the higher difficulty,  so a better income was needed.
 On the other hand, if you lose, which is much more plausible now, you won't get your money  halved. Instead, you lose money depending on the number of badges you have, like more recent  games. It's much more fair early on, specially in this hack since it is expected of you to  buy vitamins and held items for your monsters as you go through the game, besides all the  other items.
· Stat increase percentages have been changed.
 Stat-improving moves like Accelerate or Meditate, and Stat-decreasing moves like  Growl or Scary Face can go from Level 0 (normal stat), to Level +6 or -6,  depending if it increases or decreases a stat.
Before o-----------------------------------------------------------------------------o |Level -6   -5   -4   -3   -2   -1   0     1     2      3     4     5     6   | |Perc. 25%  28%  35%  45%  50%  66%  100%  150%  200%   250%  300%  350%  400%| o-----------------------------------------------------------------------------o Now o-----------------------------------------------------------------------------o |Level -6   -5   -4   -3   -2   -1   0     1     2      3     4     5     6   | |Perc. 25%  30%  35%  45%  60%  75%  100%  130%  160%   190%  220%  250%  300%| o-----------------------------------------------------------------------------o
 This has been changed for one main reason: to make better balance between critters,  Stats are now higher. With stats being higher, stat-increasing would get too broken,  specially with +1 bonus being a whole 50% increase. So bonuses are softer now, but  so is stat-reducing -1 Level, so it's not too harsh.
· Item Storing Changes
 For starters, there's two new pockets, one for Berries and Fruits in which 13 kinds of items go in it,  the already known berries, plus the new Fruits used for powering up your monsters. Fits all of them.
 The other new pocket is for Battle items, specifically Held Items. There are several dozen of them,  and having such type of items be mixed with consumable and healing items was a bit of a mess,  even more if you have an organization obsession and want everything neatly grouped.
 Every item of this type fits in this pocket, that's over 50 different types of Items!
 Apricorns are now stored in your Ball Pocket, and there's space to have every ball plus Apricorn,  so they will never become a nuissance to you by filling your bag like before.
 Item Pocket now can store 35 different objects instead of 20, and because Berries/Fruits, Apricorns,  and Held Items do not take space in this pocket anymore you have much more freedom.
 There's one catch, though, now you can only store 30 types of items in the PC, instead of 50.  It won't be much of a problem because you don't need to store any Berry, Fruit, Apricorn, Ball,  or Held Item, so I think it's a good compromise.
 Another change is, as mentioned above, about wild Pokémon. Now, many different species will  hold items. These range from Berries and Fruits, to sell-able Items, Apricorns and a few others.
 This not only will make getting new monsters more interesting, but will also make way, way  more useful the move Thief, and also the new Peck, which also has the effect of taking the  item the foe holds.
· The Pokegear Map has seen a huge facelift. Not only is a bit prettier to look at,  it's also more informative, with standout places or landmarks pointed out in the  map. I even added different little icons to quickly see which poblated areas are  Towns or Cities, just because why not.
· A new Building in Goldenrod has been opened. This place will sell to you all  the Decoration items you previously would get through Mystery Gift or through your Mom.
 Some of the dolls also have been changed, to offer something new, because the game  now is not limited to the original Pokémon icons for the Party Menu. This is also  true for the bigger dolls.
 Talking about that, your Mom will no longer buy you Decoration items, and the items  it buys are now much more useful and simply put, better than Super Potions and such.
· A Move Reminder has been added to the game, but unlike how Move Reminders work  in vanilla games, here it will let you remember moves from a species, as many times  as you want, for free.
 This is because this hack, having higher difficulty than your usual Pokémon game, may  require you to reshuffle your Movesets or try different strategies, and I WANT you to  do so, punishing you with constant farming of Items to change Movesets so you can try  different things sounds very counter-intuitive to me.
 To make this even more useful, each fully evolved creature can remember a number  of Moves from prior evolutionary forms too.
 The types of Moves they'll retain from earlier forms are usually moves related to  Stat changes, Status Effects, and Attacks that may have special traits or effects.
 Basically, Pidgeot won't be able to remember Wing Attack, which is a simple, straightforward  Attack move, but it will remember Quick Attack and Peck, the first one having Priority,  and the second one having the new effect of stealing Items from other Pokémon.
 You can find the Move Reminder in both Johto, and Kanto.  In Johto, he lives with the other useful NPCs, Name Rater and Move Deleter in Goldenrod.  In Kanto, you can find a similar group of NPCs in Lavender Town.
· Pokegear Rematches are now much stronger, they have more Pokémon and more varied,  and often enough their Pokémon have nicknames.
 To give you an idea, many Pokegear trainers will end up with teams of Lvl 80 Pokémon!  So be very careful when fighting again these trainers, they may surprise you!
 Also, a big change in how they work: Originally, if you didn't rematch a trainer  and you kept playing, when you came back to it, it would challenge you with a very  outdated team.
 This is because they only get better if you fight them earlier each time.  This is no how it works anymore. They upgrade their teams as you advance through  the game, and you could very well meet them for the first time after battling them  originally and find out they have a full team of very strong Pokémon.
 This makes Pokegear rematches far, far more interesting and better paced.
 Talking about rematches, I added end-game rematches to the game.    Once you beat Red for the first time, a whole bunch of new battles gets unlocked:  The Pokémon League levels get bumped, with some changes on their teams.  Counting your Rival's rematch, levels range from 80 to 85.
 All Gym Leaders end up their training, and they await you to fight in Lvl 100 Rematches.  If they didn't have originally, every Leader will have a full team, and all of them have  some changes to their teams.
 The default trainer in the Trainer's House in Viridian City also goes from Lvl 70, to Lvl 100.  And there's a few extra Lvl 100 battles that I'll let you discover, although they're  not precissely hidden!
 If you ask yourself why Lvl 100, well, that's to make sure you don't win by overlevelling them.  Once you beat Red, you also unlock a way to Level Up your Pokémon much faster.  Just check the Battle Tower once you do so, although be warned, it requires some effort!
· Buena's Password had its rewards changed, now it's more useful overall.
· Ingame Pokémon trades are different, and they ask for hard-to-get monsters, but give you  very nice ones in exchange, I hope you like them.
· Bill's grandfather has seen some neat changes. His time killer of seeing Pokémon you bring  to him stays, but not quite the same as it originally was. Now he'll tell you riddles that  talk about a certain Pokémon, and if you guess them correctly by showing him the right  species, he'll gift you some very neat Held Items for your pals!  He put quite of effort in those riddles, they even rhyme!
· Fishing has been tweaked a bit.
 Now the chances for Pokémon to bit are higher (who wants to press Select several times for nothing?)  and the Pokémon available by fishing are much more varied, yes, even the Old Rod.
 Levels are also higher. Old Rod ~10, Good Rod ~20, Super Rod ~40.  
 Talking about the Old Rod, now you can get it sooner, before even getting the first Medal.  The Fishing Guru has moved to the gate that connectes Route 31 with Violet City.  This expands which Pokémon you can get early on, and more options is better.
 ...Unless you're me, then it just makes it harder to choose which monsters you want to have.
· Fruit Trees now give 2 Berries/Fruits/Apricorns each day!
· On Violet, Azalea and Goldenrod cities you can find the new Berry Scouts.  These green-cladded folks will sell you the basic Status-Healing Berries,  in order to help accomodate you a bit on the higher difficulty of this hack  compared to the usual stuff.
 The price on the "Items in battle available" patches are a bit higher.
· While there's absolutely zero intention of creating a new "story" or "region", there  are new maps here and there. For Example, there's an actual Viridian Forest again,  with trainers, Items and such, even!
 Other maps got extended a bit here and there, maybe to hide something...!  Some areas also have changes made to look or feel better to explore.  Others have been extended to feel more like a full place.
 The Gyms also had changes. It's interesting how... "small", and simple most of them where.  I expanded most, give some light puzzles to most of the ones that didn't have anything  going on (I even rescued unused map movement for one of them!) to make them slightly  more interesting.
 Of course, please don't expect Zelda-level dungeons or anything like that.  ...Although that could be a pretty cool thing as its own game!
· Because I made quite a few changes in the Types of the Pokémon,  I reformatted Bill's PC a bit. Now when browsing around your monsters,  you can see their types on the upper left side of the screen.
· I changed a few textbox frames, some to fix them up a bit,  and two of them are entirely new. I like Frame 5 myself.
· The order of the Pockets in your Bag differs when youre outside  Battle and when you're in middle of one.
 This is to make the Poké Ball pocket right next to the default  Item pocket, instead of being 3 pushes away to the right.
· Status Effects no longer are shown with 3 letter "words".  Now they have their own little Icons, which make things cleaner  both in Battle and specially on the Party menu.
· Of course, I decapitalized all the text I found.  What a tedious thing...
· Smashable Rocks now can give stone-type Items alongside  being a way to find certain Pokémon.
· Once you heal Moo Moo, one of the twins opens up a  little shop!
 She'll be able to make Berry Juice for you, and  you have two ways of doing it, for convenience.
 Talking about Held-healing Items, RageCandyBar have  been also reworked to be eaten during battle.
 They're more powerful than Gold Berries, but less  than Berry Juice.
· Many things have been fixed. For example:
 Daisy's Haircut was buggy and could in fact reduce Happiness, has been fixed.  Magikarps in Lake of Rage were in fact smaller than normal and not bigger,  and other Magikarp related bugs also existed all around. Fixed.  A bug where Defense could be lowered by attacking a Substitute with a -Def move existed, now is fixed.  A bug where Mirror Coat and Counter would damage foe after they used an item existed, now is fixed.  A bug that made supposedly fleeing Pokémon not able to flee is fixed. Now Fast Balls are more useful.  A bug that made a foe under Nightmare's effect still be hurt if it was healed with items is fixed.  A bug where the HP Bar would deplete way slower than intended existed. Yes, you're reading right.  The speed at which the HP Bar emptied, specially at higher levels, was not intentional, making  high level battles way, way slower. This has been fixed and is much better, albeit not Gen. 3 "fast".
 Other bugs and stuff has been fixed too.
There's more things I could put here, but when you spend so long doing something you start to forget each individual thing...
o-------------------------------------------------o |[10] New Kurt Balls, new ways to obtain Apricorns| o-------------------------------------------------o
Yes, every Kurt Ball has been replaced. Why?
Well, actually, for the first year and a half of "development" of this hack, Kurt Balls were pretty much as they were originally, with exception of changing one for more utility, improving their effects to make them overall better and fixing the quite-a-few glitches related to them.
But during the many tests I (and a few friends) did, all the feedback I got is that they did not use them much, if at all, because how situational they are, and because you can only get them in limited amounts.
So I decided to create a new set of Balls with very simple yet very effective effects. Each of these new Poké Balls offer a x3 Catch Multiplier if used on a certain Type of Pokémon, with each new Ball being useful for 3 different Types each.
For example, the Poké Ball made with Red Apricorns (named Red Ball to simplify things), will work best while trying to catch Fire, Fighting or Ground Pokémon! Other example would be the Pink Ball will do so with Poison, Psychic, or Fairy ones.
There's no tricks, nor complexities. If the types match, you get a stronger effect than an Ultra Ball. This makes each one way more versatile, every Apricorn as useful as the rest.
Descriptions of each new Ball points to which types are most effective.
Now, because I want people to use these Balls more often, there are a few more ways to obtain these Items. The first and most simple is getting Apricorns from Trees, from which you get two for every one each day.
Pokémon themselves also carry Apricorns, as many species hold them randomly.
But I also added a new face to Johto, a traveling monk! He's easily recognizable thanks to his sandogasa (a traditional traveling hat). Because he travels around Johto, each day you'll find him in a different spot, and each day will offer to trade 5 Apricorn of a certain color for one specific Item. The Items he ask for can be obtained from wild Pokémon, and sometimes found somewhere lying on the floor.
For Red or Green Apricorns, he asks for a Tiny Mushroom. for Blue, Yellow or Pink Apricorns, he asks for a Pearl. For White or Black Apricorns, he asks for a Stardust.
Tiny Mushrooms can be held by Pokémon such as Paras, Ledyba, Oddish, Vulpix and others. Pearls can be held by Pokémon such as Shellder, Horsea, Seadra, Octillery and Corsola. Stardust can be held by Pokémon such as Geodude, Jigglypuff, Phanpy, Staryu and Tentacool.
Of course those are just a few examples, there are more. I hope with all this, Kurt's custom Poké Balls are more useful all around.
o--------------------------------------------------------o |[11] The New and Improved Battle Tower and Trainer House| o--------------------------------------------------------o
The Battle Tower was the first time Game Freak offered anything sort of similar to a Challenge Mode inside the main games. We got Pokémon Stadium 1 and 2, which were great little things, designed to be a battle simulator, with different rules and difficulties, among other things like mini-games.
But the Battle Tower was a bit... Lacking. And HARD.
This is because, for one, the trainers you met here had a quite low variety of Pokémon, so it kinda became a bit boring (I guess Game Freak knew most Pokémon had middling stats!).
On the other hand, the monsters here sported pretty much PERFECT stats, and with strong moves along with them.
This last sentence is worth noting because in older generations, training your Pokémon to their fullest potential, A.K.A. giving them the max Stat Exp. was a total pain and a ludicriously slow process. And trying to get good DVs (old IVs) was a much, much, much worse process than that.
You couldn't make use of ANY mechanic to get Pokémon with good DVs, they were random, and unlike more recent Generations, you could not improve a Pokémon DVs by using items or such. You had no control besides soft resetting ad nauseam. If it sounds bad it's because it is.
So to have a chance not only you needed High DV monsters (pretty much impossible by normal rules), but also fully trained and with the best moves possible.  And you only got ONE SINGLE TM for many moves, and Pokémon learnsets were for the most party pretty lacking if looking at them from a competitive point of view, so you were screwed there, as you may imagine.
All in all, it was often seen as unfair and just not very fun. And if you wanted to try it anyway, add to that that the rewards were laughable. Vitamins that you could buy, and didn't help you at all because they became useless quickly, they only helped for less than half of the Stat. Exp total!
But here's the thing: I love the concept! The idea of having 3 monsters each, with the same level, where only your strategy, knowdlege and adaptibility can take you out of trouble, sounds great!
Even more, maybe if you got something worth your time as a reward it could be even more fun!
That's why a good chunk of the effort of this hack was about trying to balance types, moves, Pokémon and such. And also why the Battle Tower got so many changes!
So let's list the changes:
For starters, each of the ten Levels of the Tower got their Pokémon changed, both to update the new stats, but also to give much, much needed variety to the types of monsters you would see, as originally the game sported just a small number of different species.
Instead of 7 battles per round, now you have quicker rounds of 3. This makes for a much more brisk pace, a far less frustrating event if you lose, and easier to pick up and play.
About difficulty, it should still be a good challenge, although this time, there is some balance, as now you can properly train your monsters through vitamins and fruits, TMs hold a good selection of high-Power moves and they're infinite and of course DVs/IVs are the same for everybody.
Oh, and you can remember old moves, too!
There's also two Shops available for players, in which you can buy a selection of Held Items so you can prepare yourself to challenge the Tower, or to progress through the game, as trainers will start using Held Items more and more once you reach this point in the game.
Up to that point is the basic stuff... But the Battle Tower has also opened several shops and services, and there's even a bit of a progression system built into it, too!
Whenever you participate in the Battle Tower and come out victorious, you'll be rewarded a new type of Item: Battle Medals!
You get three for each victiorous round (so each three battles).
These objects are, basically, the coin of exchange for almost any service inside the Battle Tower. They are stored in your Item Pocket and can be used in a variety of ways.
For one, they're pricey objects, each one sells for 12.000P, thus they can cover costs for training Pokémon. Selling all 3 you win nets you 36.000P, which is pretty good if you realize you can buy enough Vitamins to fully feed a Pokémon in three different Stats (or four if you use Special Atk/Def Vitamins!).
So two good rounds of Battle Tower lets you set up the Stat Exp. of a Pokémon really, really quickly! Or you can buy other stuff with it, too. But that's just a bonus compared to their real use!
In the Main Hall of the Battle Tower, a new Receptionist hangs out close to the Battle Tower's usual lady that takes you to the battles themselves. This new NPC can reward you with a Silver or Gold Trophy in exchange for a number of Battle Medals. They're shiny decorations for your room... And hold some use.
The Battle Tower has been expanded and now there are new rooms that host several services. One of them, and one I'm rather excited to manage to put in the game is a Reward Shop that exchanges Battle Medals for Special Eggs!
Do you remember the event Pokémon from the Stadium games?
They were gifted to you after accomplishing something, and in Stadium 2, they had moves they couldn't learn normally. It was a nice little thing, and always made me feel curious about Pokémon with Moves that couldn't learn normally. You know, what new strategies could I come up with and such.
This service is located in a room behind the Main Hall. There, a Receptionist will take one of your Battle Medals and will gift you an Egg with a special Pokémon that knows a unique move!
There's a total of 50 different species you can get through these Eggs, and the one you get for each medal is selected at random. And every species has the same chances, no dishonest stuff like 0.0001% to get a certain Pokémon, like a Gatcha game.
Oh, and if you're one of those, don't waste your time resetting trying to get Shiny Pokémon from these Eggs... Believe me, it won't work.
Another service is the inclusion of Move Tutors!
There are two Tutors and each one can teach 4 Moves each. Seven of those are unique to Tutors, with an Eighth Move being Toxic, a TM you get veeery late, so I added it for earlier access, as some Pokémon (like defensive ones) do benefit from it or need it to work well.
Tutor Moves can only be learnt by Fully Evolved Pokémon, and you can do so only in exchange for one Battle Medal.
The move selection is composed of Non-Damaging moves to give more utility and so they can be applied to all Pokémon in one way or another, unlike damaging moves, and I would have liked to have more, but I hit the limit before the entire game gets corrupt, so these will have to do!
Both of these features not only offer much, much better rewards for your victories in the Battle Tower, ones that not only can be enjoyed throughout the rest of the game making it more entertaining, but also give you a chance to get a few monsters earlier and gives new possibilites to make teams to challenge the Battle Tower too.
...And that's not all you can do here now!
Besides normal Move Tutors, the Battle Tower has also hired a very special NPC: The Egg Elder... Or in other words, an Egg Move Tutor!
Basically, in exchange for 3 Battle Medals, this old man can teach a Pokémon an Egg Move that its evolution line can learn through breeding with other Pokémon!
And yes, any member. Pidgeot and Pidgeotto can learn moves that a bred Pidgey could hinerit, so no worries on that front!
This way you won't longer feel like your early-game teammates (or any Pokémon for that matter) feel gimped or "lesser" because don't have this or that move only available through breeding.
In a way it's like every species has its own specific Tutor Moves!
But let's continue.
The receptionist in the main hall (the one who gives trophies) also offers a new Key Item: The Box Changer. It does what it says, it gives you the ability to switch the Box on Bill's PC anywhere you want. Just remember that you still save your game when changing boxes this way.
Once you reach the "endgame", meaning, after defeating Red, two other Receptionists will open up new services. And are neat ones!
The first one is a Rare Candy shop! You will be able to exchange one Battle Medal for 5 Rare Candies. This will let you manage the Levels of your Pokémon faster, either to battle the new Lvl 100 Rematches, or to Level up your monsters to reach the Levels required for Battle Tower Rooms.
The other, it's quite different but way more interesting too.
You see, a new group of candies capable of changing the Level of a Pokémon to a fixed one now exist! There's Candies for Levels 10, 30, 50 and 80!
No matter what Level the monster is, it will change into the Level of the Candy!
If you give a Level 30 Candy to a Level 4 Pokémon, it will become Level 30. And If you give a Level 30 Candy to a Level 82 Pokémon, it will also become Level 30!
This is mostly for a reason: To be able to use your favourite pals in any Level of the Battle Tower!
Once a Pokémon Level goes up, it no longer can access the Battle Rooms of lower Levels, and if you wanted to use a monster of a specific species you already raised, you were forced to train another one. But no longer you will need to do that!
Now any Pokémon can battle in any Battle Room by using these new Candies in combination with Rare Candies, and you can perfectly control the level of your team for this challenge while also needing a bit of a resource (Battle Medals) to make use of it.
Not to mention, Level 80 Candies can make HUGE time savers for training Pokémon for those Level 100 Rematches, specially if we're talking about bred Pokémon, or Pokémon from Battle Tower's Special Eggs!
Now, be warned, you CAN NOT make use of all these features from the beginning!
Remember those Trophies I talked about? Yeah, they do more than look nice in your room. Each one unlocks features of the Tower!
Once you win the Silver Trophy, you unlock: Move Tutors  (Accessible the moment you get the Trophy). Rare Candy Shop  (You need to beat Red too). Level 30 Candies (Accessible the moment you get the Trophy). Level 50 Candies (You need beat the Elite Four too).
Once you win the Gold Trophy, you unlock: Egg Move Tutor   (Accessible the moment you get the Trophy). Level 80 Candy   (You need to beat Red too).
So yeah, you must prove yourself and get the Trophies to use all the Battle Tower has to offer.
But don't fret! There's not really much grinding to do. You'll see that the number of Medals needed to obtain each is pretty reasonable for what they unlock.
The game does not ask for hundreds of them for each, not even close! I know how tedious is to collect Battle Points for an Item or one-time use TM back in Generation IV.
And hey, if for some reason you still need a bit of a push, you can win Battle Medals by participating on Buena's Password.
They cost 2 points, you can get one Medal every two days. It's a much slower pace than actually fighting, but it certainly adds up if you play often.
And you also get a handful of them in Kanto, a certain NPC will gift you a bunch if you manage to do something, and some Gym Leaders will gift you one too.
Lastly, also in Kanto, there's the Trainer House.
Originally it was a cool little feature in which you could battle the Pokémon Team that a friend had when you two did a Mistery Gift.
Because I don't expect people going around doing IR connections with a Romhack, the Trainer House has been changed around.
I really don't want to say much, but here's this:
Normally, you can battle a special Trainer daily in this building. But once you've beaten the strongest trainer in all the land, levels are raised, and you can take Lvl 100 battles... With the difference that the Pokémon used in these new battles change depending on the day of the week!
And if you win, you also obtain Battle Medals!
It's a little extra end-game thing alongside the other end-game additions.
o-------------------o |[12] Visual Changes| o-------------------o
Many, many visual changes have been made throughout the game to make the world a bit more cohesive, to make Pokémon look better, or to simple improve stuff here and there.
Pretty much every Pokémon not named Unown got their colors changed, for ones that look better, closer to the original colors of a particular species, and also got their sprites touched up and cleaned up.
Because the games were originally designed to be displayed on the tiny screen of a GB, the graphic artists would try and take advantage to use the 4 colors available to a Pokémon sprite to give it more details. With the advent of the GBC, now they could use colors too, and because the screen wasn't backlighted, they needed to use stronger, more saturated and often darker colors.
The issue is that nowadays these games are pretty much always played on backlighted screens that are also much, much bigger than the original Game Boy's screen, so these graphics that originally looked fine now I don't find they've aged as well with the ways we play them today.
Now, let's be fair here. This is not a criticism for the sprites or the artists. These sprites were made to be seen under a specific hardware, and they worked with what they had, and the gigantic jump in design quality from Generation 1 to Generation 2 is to be applauded.
But at the same time, I think it's fair to say that there's nothing that says they can not be revised and/or improved. That's why I took the horridly tedious job of cleaning up every single sprite (and each of their animated frames) to make them look more clean when played on bigger screens.
I also took the liberty to tweak many of the colors used for Shiny Pokémon. This is something I've seen many people point out throughout the years, and it's true that the use of color for Shiny palettes leaves quite a bit to be desired, with many Pokémon being painted with what I saw called "Puke Green", and others having really dark and simply not appealing combinations of colors that sometimes would make the sprites look worse.
Several of those examples could be Blastoise, Raichu, Aipom or Golbat, and this last one even gets its shading screwed up. Or something like Rhydon, that looks exactly like the official art, while its normal color is much darker; with Pokémon like Phanpy, Sunkern, Xatu, Scyther and others looking very similar to their default colors.
Just have in mind I'm working with the limitations of the GBC and 4 Colors per sprite, so I do what I can do, although it's surprising what nice colors the GBC can display compared to the ones they used, but of course, I'm not doing this to be seen on real hardware, so I do not have that limitation.
You can check a couple of examples in the pictures inside the RAR file for both, sprite improvements and Shiny changes.
I also improved all the Back Sprites too, to keep consistency. And some Pokémon got entirely different sprites, such as Mr. Mime, or Wigglytuff, as there was better designs elsewhere, like Mr. Mime's Silver sprite. It's so much better in my eyes. And yes, they have animations.
Oh, and a handful of Pokémon got redesigns here and there. Don't panic, the changes where made only to humanoid Pokémon to remove incoherent stuff like Machoke and Machamps' underwear or the boxing gear of Hitmonchan.
This is because as time has passed it "snowballed" into a gigantic ball of nonsense. Now, it's not that I hate Pokémon with human-made things on them, for example we could make logical arguments on why they have them in the first place.
Very early Pokémon (back when it was Capsule Monsters) had a lot of very... morally dubious stuff in it. Trainers had whips, the monsters were sold in cages and there was a pretty clear aura of animal abuse in it all. The artwork was intriguing... And a bit worrying.  
When you find out about that stuff it can make sense that humans would put things to restrict their Pokémon like the "strength-reducing" underwear for the Machop tree. Who knows, maybe that's why Pokémon such as Primeape have what looks like shackles on their limbs too.
And back in generation 1, there was only ONE Hitmonchan, given to you by a human. We can simply think the objects it wears are given to it by that person, and it would make sense. Jynx is also another Pokémon which can only be received once, also given by a human and looks like one, maybe there's something going on too.
And all those examples would be fine but then they're turned into nonsense when you can find these Pokémon living in nature with all that stuff on them, or they magically appear when evolving. It just feels... dumb to me, it is something that I could see other developers adress in different ways, but here they just where completely forgotten.
Because this thing is tailored-made for me, I decided to change it.  
And talking about Jynx, when the beta sprite leaked from Red & Green leaks among others, it was pretty exciting to see that this Pokémon once upon a time was very different, with more of a yeti-like design, which can be traced to  japanese Kaiju tv shows, like many early Pokémon designs such as Nidoking (look up Baragon). It apparently had a name that was a very easy to see nudge at Ultraman.
You can read about it here (and also see a bit of the darker Capsule Monsters stuff I mentioned above, but you can also search for early concept art):
https://helixchamber.com/2019/02/16/what-dreams-may-come/
During the development of the hack I went so far as to create sprites to change Jynx into this Yeti-thing, but as time went on I did not feel very satisfied, it felt like a random addition that felt out of place.
I thought of going back to the original Jynx, but I ended sending the entire evolutionary line away and substituting it with another Ice Pokémon from the third Generation.  
...Anyway, moving on from that, each species has its own unique icon on the menu and the overworld too, which is a great thing to give flavour to the game, and seems like a new standard for Pokémon Crystal hacks (with good reason).
The overworld also got some big changes to improve visually, and sometimes, gameplay wise. Besides visuals, some places also changed in design a bit, for a number of different reasons.
For example some Kanto cities had their design changed to look more on par with Johto, as if you compare maps between places, and Gen. 1 and 2, you'll see they kinda look off and weird, as if it didn't have the same time and effort put into it compared to Johto (they didn't).
Places like Celadon and Fuchsia City for example look rather different, although they keep their overall structure, they just got a bit more going for them.
Also there's a few improvements on sprites. For example, I drew new sprites for when you're surfing, similar to those in Gen 3 with your character over a undefined Pokémon. And yes, they're different for both the male and female player characters.
There's also HUGE CHANGES in how information is displayed in several points, with the biggest improvement being the Pokémon's Stats Page. It took me quite some time to get it to look nicer and more organized / easier to read, and I even expanded it by adding a fourth Stat Screen to show some extra "for fun" info.
The font was also changed for a thin yet wider one, to make it less empty between letters, and also more consistent with the different characters, like numbers.
Also, HUGE, HUGE thanks to HyperDriveGuy's amazing work and effort, a way of improving the scrolling and movement on the overworld to make it much more smooth and, to be blunt, less disgustingly choppy if you're used to smooth scrolls.
This change to me is like magic, it makes the game feel so much better! To be fair, finding this improvement refueled my interest in continuing this hack, so thanks again HyperDriveGuy, your work is not just great, it also really did drive this guy forward, pun no intended... Or maybe a bit.
That said, coding this introduced some bugs, some of them harmless, and others being progress-halting or even game-breaking. But fret not, as I managed to fix them all with a bit of work, some trial and error, an a lot of luck, but it was all worth it because the result is a much more fluid experience that translates into a more fun game.
Overall, the game uses much less aggressive colors too, because 99% of the people that may play this (which that would make a total of 4 to 5 individuals, probably) will do it on a lighted screen. Also there's little touches here and there.
Another tiny change that makes a bit of a difference in the long run is battle effects. Most of them on Gen 2 used the same palette: Gray tones! Well, that's not that way anymore.
Most of the effects now have color added to them, and make battles look a bit more fun. A few effects were changed visually, even. For example, Pokémon no longer see "chickens" when confused. Now Pidgeys fly around their poor heads!
The Trainer's card also got a bit prettier, specially the Badges section. Oh, I also added a third page to your Trainer's Card, showing your progress through Kanto's Gyms. You only need to press Right while on Johto's Badge screen when you get at least one Badge from Kanto!
Asymmetrical Badges also spin correctly. Funny enough, the game has coded that function in, but it is only assigned to a medal that was symetrical (Clair's badge). Sounds silly, but once you start seeing Game Freaks coding it's... Actually par for the course, in a way.
o-----------------------o |[13] Tips and Questions| o-----------------------o
Tips: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ What type of beginning you want? Each starter is going to change your early hours.
Taking in mind how things work in the Original version of this hack, Cyndaquil would make your first steps more easy than the other two, as his Fire/Rock typing would make him effective against the first two Gyms, while Chikorita's Grass/Ground typing would make it a bit harder than normal. Totodile, with its Water/Ice typing would be a medium difficulty.
But of course, the point of the game is to make more friends and balance your team! You could also ignore the starters and make your team without them. That's how I usually roll.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ You can get an Exp. Share very early on.
Once you brought the Egg to Prof. Elm, and you're ready to go away on your adventure, go back home and leave 2.000P with your mother. Once you battle once (With Youngster Joey on Route 30), she will call you, telling you she bought something for you. It can come in handy this early!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Talking about saving with your mother, she will buy many useful items, so it's in your best interest to send her money from the beginning!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ During your first few Gyms, look for people in green clothes near the towns and cities' main Sign. These people will sell to you Berries to heal Status Effects!
They will come in handy to prepare against the trainers and leaders there!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Don't waste your Fruits and Vitamins without having in mind what team you want! This becomes more important the further you go, because NPC trainers will have trained Pokémon either you've raised your own properly or not.
As you get more money, or get more fruits you'll be able to quickly prepare Pokémon, but early on you need to think ahead.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Talking about team, while I tried to make all Pokémon good and be on the same Level, that doesn't change the fact that having a balanced team can make things smoother.
Making a team of only slow, defensive Pokémon, or only quick but frail monsters can make things harder for you at certain points. Although, of course, you could just play with your favourites and tough it up. That's what I usually do.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Take advantage of Pokémon such as Meowth or Spearow, capable of learning stealing moves! They will help you to get ahold of many items, that you can either use or sell to make a profit.
Also, be aware of said Pokémon, as they may steal something you have!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Experiment! Because TMs are infinite, HM moves can be forgotten easily, and you have access to the Move Reminder freely, you're given the chance to try all sorts of combinations for a given species. Not to mention, the further you advance through the Battle Tower, the more options you'll have through Move Tutors and the Egg Elder to teach new moves, thus increasing the number of strategies for each species!
You'll only need to watch out for "Event" moves, such as the Odd Egg Pokémon, or the Special Eggs gifted in the Battle Tower, as each have a unique move and you cannot remind it if forgotten.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check the Game Corner on Goldenrod when you arrive!
They've expanded the number of prices you can get. For one, you can get HP restoring Berries there, with Golden Berries being really useful early on, and they're not that expensive.
Even more, new species of Pokémon have been added, and they're Pokémon hard to come by during the early parts of the adventure! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Can you get every single Pokémon in the game? How can I get Mew?
Yes, of course, what would be the point of a Pokémon Hack if you couldn't get every monster available in it by yourself?
There's a lot more variety early on, both so you can get your team-making juices boil sooner, and because different people like different monsters, and having a bigger variety helps with making more people happy.
Although for Mew, you'll have to buy my exclusive and new Park Ball Plus and send it to your game through my exclusive Park Ball Plus-To-GBC Link Cable(tm), or upload it to my exclusive service PokéMaeson Hostage Holdings, previous payment of course, and then you can connect your game magically to it through Infrared connection.
Really, it just works. Wait, are you going to play this on an emulator? Tough luck then, no Mew for you.
...Nah, it's somewhere in the game, you just have to find it, like the rest.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Are you going to do more Pokémon Hacks?
Niet. Nee. Ahneo. Tidak. Nej. Nope.
...What I mean is, don't count on that. The amount of time I put into this is so big that I could have made several other things, the testing has been killing me the most. I have   reached the point of burnout, I've been working on this almost on a daily basis for years. You can't imagine how many times this thing has been reworked and changed over time. Beyond that, my love for the franchise has pretty much being forced to disappear.
And even if I wanted to do more, I wouldn't be able to use any other disassembly project thanks to current DevkitPro versions being incompatible with 32 Bit systems; I'm not going to get a new computer only to do more of this, and going back to the older "Hacking Tools" is not a very welcoming idea, mostly because they're so much more limited and risky to use.  
So, sorry but no, I have no intention, I have no energy, I have no passion for it anymore. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
o------------o |[13] Credits| o------------o This wouldn't exist without a lot of people involved with the Pokémon Rom hacking community.  
Thanks and Credits to every single person on PRET, a community dealing with disassembly for many Pokémon games. These projects look like THE WAY going forward, how awesome they are.
Check it Here: https://github.com/pret -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks and Credits to Rangi42, and all people on places like the Skeetendo and Pokecommunity forums, and many others that shared their findings and information about ASM, going so far to make great tutorials to teach stupid people like me how to do do a whole lot of things, fix several of the bugs in the game, and many other things.
Check it here: https://github.com/pret/pokecrystal   https://hax.iimarckus.org ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Oh, and of course, credits and thanks to Rangi42 again for Polished Map, an amazing utility for map editing, very complete and absolutely essential.
Check it here: https://github.com/Rangi42/polished-map -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks and Credits to the TPP Anniversary Crystal 251 Project to create the code for the Move Reminder, which I adapted to my hack. I couldn't even have known where to start with it, and my hack is only better thanks to it. Also for giving me an idea of how to make Caught Data be shown in the Stats Page. My approach to how the information is displayed is different, but again, without TPP I couldn't have know where to start.
Check it Here: https://github.com/TwitchPlaysPokemon/tppcrystal251pub -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks and Credits to HyperDriveGuy for its example and implementation of "60 Frames per second" project, which created a new way of programming a Run Button, but even more incredible, it made the scrolling of the game as you walk, run, and ride so, so much more smooth. It's amazing.
Check it here: https://github.com/hyperdriveguy/pokecrystal-60fps-example -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks to Chamber, Soloo993, Blue Emerald, Lake, Neslug and Pikachu25 for their Pokemon Icons. While I did a number of them myself, I also used a good amount made by them, and also remade some of them from their initial work, so they deserve the credits!
You can see their work here: https://github.com/pret/pokecrystal/wiki/screenshots/minidex.gif https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wiki/pret/pokecrystal/screenshots/minidex.png
Also, if you play my hack and find any of the icons or tweaked sprites I made good enough to use it yourself, go right ahead. Just give credit and you're good to go, don't even ask. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Credits and Special thanks to Vice04 for helping me test my hack over the years. May you never be assaulted by Level 168 Slowbros ever again.  
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music Credits:
Credits to FroggestSpirit for "Hoenn Wild Battle" and  "Hoenn Trainer Battle" themes.
You can find FroggestSpirit music in this Soundcloud link, check it out: https://soundcloud.com/froggestspirit -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Credits to Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm for "Hoenn Rival Battle", "Route 101", "Cipher Peon Battle", "X/Y Rival", "Hoenn Champion Battle" and "Shoal Cave" themes.
You can find Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm music in this Soundcloud link, check it out: https://soundcloud.com/mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm-1 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Credits to TriteHexagon for his Night Theme music for cities and his tutorial on how to implement them in the game. His ASM files and his Soundcloud can be found here:
https://pastebin.com/u/TriteHexagon https://soundcloud.com/user-930339535 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I hope I'm not forgetting anyone, it's way too much people hacking around the world!
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The First Cut: Mother & Son
“[She] had always kept a special place in her heart reserved for her son... And so now, as it seemed the end of her life was imminent, [her] thoughts focused on those memories she had of [him], while at the same time, she reached out to him with her heart. He was always different with such feelings, always so attuned to that mysterious Force... Perhaps, then, [he] would feel her love for him now. She needed that, needed to complete the cycle, to let her son recognize that through it all, through the missing years and the great distances between them, she had loved him unconditionally and had thought of him constantly. ...her resilience was wrought of a mother's love.”  
“...because of what the journey is, he has to go through it by himself. And we’ve seen how attached he is to his mother in the films. If [she] was too much of a presence in it...his journey might not have gone the same way. ...there are a lot of things happening that are being specifically engineered to keep [her] away from [him].”
These quotes are about two completely different sets of people, yet, without the names, are absolutely interchangeable. Because all four people are part of the same straight bloodline, and living out versions of the same story. Like poetry...it rhymes. The first is Shmi thinking about Anakin as she's being held by the Tuskens in the Attack of the Clones novelization by R.A. Salvatore. I almost lost my mind when I first read it because, wow, it could literally be another draft of the Force connection scene between Leia and Ben in the Last Jedi novelization.
“She knew instantly that it was Ben Solo, her son. Leia tried to stop herself from being drawn into her memories, even as she knew she wouldn't be able to resist. [...] A boy who always seemed alone, a churning storm in the Force. [...] Ben, her son. Who'd been stolen from her....”
“His mother was indeed there. He could feel her familiar presence in the Force, and he could sense her determination and focus--along with a deep wearines. And sorrow. And worry. [...] Her anxiety pulsed in the Force, in this last moment before her death...but she wasn't afraid. She was worried for him, he realized. And she wasn't angry. She ached for him to come back to her.”
The second quote is Charles Soule speaking with StarWars.com about The Rise of Kylo Ren. I almost lost my mind reading that, too. Mostly because it significantly furthers the sequel trilogy canon's thematic meta-narrative that Ben Solo is re-treading his grandfather's prequel trilogy arc. For one thing, it verbalizes and basically confirms my steadfast assertion that Ben is a huge mama's boy--like Anakin. And because of that attachment, Charles posits that--just like Anakin--had he not been separated from his mother or if she had continued to have a significant physical presence in his life, the tragedy of his fall would probably not have happened. In the rest of that reply, he clearly likens what happened to Ben to what happened to Anakin:
“Just as there is a long game being played with Anakin, I think there is a long game being played with Ben Solo as well.”
All this to say, the root cause of the Skywalkers' epically dramatic generational trauma, is not, as many tend to interpret, Anakin and Padmé's star-crossed demise and Padmé's death. The core, ground zero reason the Skywalker Saga exists as it does, is the narrative that it is, is because a young boy was taken away from his mother. That was the very first cut in the Skywalker family wound. The decades-spanning fall the Skywalker line needs to rise from began with the original parent/child split of Anakin and Shmi.
The Separation
In The Phantom Menace, Anakin wasn't made as young as he was--even amidst objections and skepticism from Lucasfilm personnel--because TPM is the most “kid-friendly” of the prequels, or to emphasize the relative innocence of the galaxy before things begin to go terribly wrong (although it does help those aspects). His extreme youth was narratively important, for TPM, but even more so for the rest of the trilogy. George Lucas wanted to make Anakin leaving Shmi an impactful event that would significantly affect him for years to come. It may be a lot more subtle than what happens a decade later, but it was the first real emotional trauma Anakin experienced in the trilogy.
“I knew if I’d made Anakin fifteen instead of nine, then it would have been more marketable. [...] But that isn’t the story. It is important that he be young, that he be at an age where leaving his mother is more of a drama than it would have been at fifteen.”  --Empire Magazine (Sept. 1999)
(and if the Skywalker Saga thrives on anything, it's the Drama)
“Anakin was first written as a twelve-year-old, but Lucas reduced his age to nine because he felt that the lower age would better fit the plot point of Anakin being affected by his mother's separation from him.”  --The Making of Episode I: The Phantom Menace (via Wikipedia, ‘The Phantom Menace’)
“The relationship between Anakin and his mother is...crucial to what happens later on. And I wanted to give this moment of their parting sufficient emphasis. [...] In the beginning, thinking that his mother was going to come along with him, and then later realizing that she wasn't, and realizing that he was going to go off on his own...and making that as difficult as possible...”  --TPM commentary
“There's a fair amount of time spent here setting up his leaving. Which is important, really, to his character. Not necessarily in this picture, but in all the other pictures.”  --TPM commentary
So it's with very good reason that the scene of Anakin and Shmi saying goodbye to each other and Anakin leaving is one of the saddest in the movie, and in the saga, and a snippet of it was shown in the saga reel/The Rise of Skywalker teaser. It’s where the family's entire generational melodrama truly began (chronologically). And with the gut-punch context of what happens in the next movie, I think these are the most important lines of Anakin's:
“Will I ever see you again?" “I will come back and free you, mom. I promise.”
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But the most we see in TPM of the initial after-effects of the separation on Anakin--as well as slight hinting towards how it will affect his life down the road--is in the scene of him alone with the Jedi Council, and they can sense his emotional connection to her. This is also one of the most iconic scenes, because it's when Yoda tells him the fear-anger-hate-suffering mantra.
“Your thoughts dwell on your mother.”  --Ki Adi Mundi “I miss her.”  --Anakin “Afraid to lose her, I think, hmm?”  --Yoda “What has that got to do with anything?”  (only 9 and already exhibiting the signature Skywalker smartass gene) “Everything.” 
Anakin was already afraid of losing his mother permanently. As he would soon be taught, the standard Jedi method for “handling” loss was to simply not get attached to anyone or anything in the first place. But that was never an option for Anakin--especially when it came to Shmi--because he'd already been raised by and attached to his mother for the first several years of his life. There was no way to undo that.
“...that’s why they say he was too old to be a Jedi, because he made his emotional connections.”  --’George Lucas and the Cult of Darth Vader’, Rolling Stone (June 2005)
Of course, the Order eventually took him in anyway. Because Chosen One, and Qui-Gon's dying wish. But narratively, the seeds for the trilogy's foregone trajectory were already sown.
“Shmi Skywalker’s purity and love leaves its mark, a scar as Anakin is torn from her...”  (twice)  --’The importance and absence of mothers in Star Wars’ (raisingarebel.com)
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The Death
And really, it could be seen as worse than a scar--even as the exact the opposite. More like an ever-expanding, never-healing wound--on Anakin's sense of Self, and on his still-developing psyche.
“...Joseph L. Henderson notes in his essay Ancient Myths and Modern Man how ‘Dr. Jung has suggested that each human being has originally a feeling of wholeness, a powerful and complete sense of the Self.’ In the prequels this can be seen as Anakin's state as a young boy with his mother on Tatooine. Jung felt the transition from infancy on through childhood could not be made without injury to this original wholeness, as is dramatized by Anakin's separation from Shmi up until their tragic reunion in the second film. ...Evoking the rites and rituals of primitive societies, Henderson writes of mythic initiations 'whereby young men and women are weaned away from their parents and forcibly made members of their clan or tribe. [...] But in making this break with the childhood world, the original parent archetype will be injured, and the damage must be made good by a healing process of assimilation into the life of the group. ...the assimilation process into the tribe of the Jedi never really takes place for Anakin, at least not on a level that heals the original wound.”  --Paul. F McDonald, The Star Wars Heresies: Interpreting the Themes, Symbols and Philosophies of Episodes I, II, and III
“All he has to hold onto are his memories. Which are soon fading. So...he wants to make that re-embracement with his mom before he loses that part of himself, which is the strong part of himself.”  --Hayden Christensen, Attack of the Clones commentary
“I left Tatooine so long ago. My memory of her is fading. I don't want to lose that memory. I don't want to stop seeing her face.”  --AOTC novelization
Also haunting Anakin throughout AOTC--and throughout the prior decade--was his guilt at leaving her a slave on Tatooine. Probably especially because he'd promised he'd come back for her. But as he'd soon learn, reconnecting with family was not “the Jedi way.” Which was actually something Obi-Wan came to feel guilty about with regard to his and the Order's culpability in Anakin's fall:
“He’d gone to Shmi Skywalker’s grave to apologize for losing her son. ...Qui-Gon had made her a promise and Obi-Wan hadn’t been able to keep it. As he stood there, looking at the stone, he felt an even deeper shame. Qui-Gon had left her there a slave, and Obi-Wan had done everything in his power to prevent Anakin’s return.”  --Ahsoka novel
Which gives me Charles Soule, “things happening that are being specifically engineered to keep Leia away from Ben” vibes. Most likely different intentions, but still a similar outcome. Anyway, back to AOTC and Anakin's semi-”survivor's guilt”:
“I worry about her.” “I'd be disappointed in you if you didn't,” Padmé answered him, her voice soft and full of sympathy. “You didn't leave her in the best of circumstances.” Anakin winced, as if those words had hurt him. “But it was right that you left,” Padmé reminded him... “Your leaving was what your mother wanted for you.” [...] “But the dreams--” “You can't help but feel a little guilty about leaving, I suppose,” Padmé answered, but Anakin was shaking his head as if she was missing the point.  --AOTC novelization
Anakin's sense of a missing part of himself, as well as his latent yearning for a true family unit, become even more evident when he goes with Padmé to visit her family on Naboo--and witnesses what he misses, what he never had, and what he still wants (and ultimately, almost got):
“It was all so comfortable to Anakin, so natural and so...so much like what he had always wanted in his life, though perhaps he had not known it. This would be perfect, absolutely perfect, except that his mother wasn't there.”
“I've never had a real home,” he said, speaking more to himself than to Padmé. “Home was always where my mom was.”  --AOTC novelization
And it's his mother's final home (and his future son's first) that he soon goes to once the vivid, harrowing nightmares become too much to bear. But once he sees that the Larses, particularly Cliegg, have already given up on ever seeing Shmi again, Anakin is just not having that:
“There's little hope she's lasted this long.” The words hit Anakin like a stinging slap, and he retreated from them, back into himself, back into the Force. He reached out, using his bond with his mother to try to somehow feel her presence in the Force. [in case you thought sequel trilogy canon invented the Skywalker mother-son Force bond :)] [...] Anakin glowered at him, at all of them. “I can feel her pain,” he said, his jaw clenched, teeth gritted. “Continuing pain. And I will find her.”  --AOTC novelization
And find her, he did. But we all know how that went. And if Shmi's initial separation from Anakin was a more subtle, latent kind of trauma, then her death--right in front of him, in his arms--was a full-bore traumatic blow that irreparably bruised his heart and which, frankly, the entire bloodline has still not recovered from. It's where they first had their maternal/divine feminine ripped away from them.
“He should have never left her here in the first place, he realized, should never have let Qui-Gon take him away from Tatooine without bringing his mother along, as well. She said she was proud of him, but how could he deserve her pride when he could not even save her?”  --AOTC novelization
It's ironic that one of the last things Shmi ever says to Anakin is, “Now, I am complete.” Because her death ensures that he never feels complete again (until right before his own).
“...Anakin just sat there, immobilized by his confusion, by a budding rage and the most profound sense of emptiness he had ever known.”  --AOTC novelization
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Then that “budding rage” grew into something so fierce, primal, and destructive that it jettisoned through the Force and reached Yoda worlds away on Coruscant (similar to Leia feeling Han's death and her son's regret)--
“...overwhelmed again by the surge of rage and pain and...power.”  --AOTC novelization
“Pain. Suffering. Death, I feel. Something terrible has happened. Young Skywalker is in pain. Terrible pain.”
--and prompted a decade-dead Qui-Gon to shout a desperate plea to Anakin to not go that way:
“...somehow Anakin's rush of agony manifesting in the Force had tapped into the spirit of the dead Jedi Master who had discovered him.”  --AOTC novelization
So it's canon that the reason “Force ghosts” came to exist as we know them (via Gui-Gon learning how to do it and then teaching the others) is because Anakin's agony at Shmi's death was so intense and star-shaking that it jolted Qui-Gon out of his eternal rest within the Force. When Skywalkers suffer or rage, when tragedy befalls them, their turmoil ripples throughout the Force at a catastrophic level, the same as if entire planets had been destroyed (they're a bit eldritch). If the Chosen, “favored instruments” aren't happy, the Cosmic Force isn't happy (same with balance). And Shmi's brutal, unfair death was the first family tragedy of the Skywalkler Saga. And it was doubly tragic, in that it caused Anakin to allow himself to act through the dark side--through his rage and vengeance born of grief and guilt. It was the first truly “dark deed” he ever committed, and the first time he opened himself up to the darkness that would loom over himself and his progeny for decades to come.
“Seeing his dead mother as he carries her off of the speeder bike, seeing the look on his face... It's not that the mother dies and then we just sort of go on to something else. The mother dies and I have 4 scenes--a great deal of the movie actually centers around him dealing with this death, and his anger about it, and his sadness.”  --G. Lucas, AOTC commentary
Upon their initial parting, Shmi had told Anakin that he “can't stop the change” and “don't look back”. But there's a sad dramatic irony in these, as Anakin's tragic hero's path would be defined by his difficulty accepting change--particularly, change involving loss--and, like one of his mythical inspirations, Orpheus, his nearly pathological inability to not look back, or let go.
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“I will even learn to stop people from dying!”
“I wasn't strong enough to save you, Mom. I wasn't strong enough. But I promise, I won't fail again.”
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“The key part of this scene [Shmi's funeral], ultimately, is Anakin saying, I'm not going to let this happen again.”  --G. Lucas, AOTC commentary
The Transference
It was no narrative coincidence that Padmé went with Anakin to Tatooine to find his mother, was there when she died, emphasis placed on her witnessing Anakin carrying Shmi's body to the homestead--
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--and then present at the funeral--wrapped in bridal, but also in some cultures, burial white--as Anakin made his fateful promise to a grave. There's a line from Shmi's death to Padme's, and it's as straight and direct as can be. Ultimately, Padmé was the victim of her husband's promise to his departed mother. Once those eerily similar nightmares started, Anakin became determined to “course-correct”: 
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“It was only a dream.” “I won't let this one become real.”
“I won't lose you, Padmé. ...I promise you.”
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The very reason he became so intensely desperate and obsessive about Padmé's apparently impending death is because he had already experienced Shmi's.
“Time had done nothing to ease Anakin's pain, and his memories of losing Shmi would make him doubly determined to prevent the death of his wife...a fear the Sith Lord Darth Sidious would exploit.”  --Star Wars Databank, ‘Shmi Skywalker Lars’
Even before that, during the Mortis arc of The Clone Wars, in the episode “Overlords”, The Son needled at Anakin's emotional wounds by appearing to him as a cruelly in-character vision of Shmi (voiced by Pernilla August and everything). Anakin so bought into the apparition of his mother that he succinctly (and rather poetically) verbalized to her his tragic flaw that would soon bring him and all he cared about to ruin.
“The only love I feel in my heart is haunted by what would happen should I let go.”
The presence of Shmi on Anakin's rapidly crumbling psyche is even more evident in the ROTS novelization:
“The dragon whispers of what Anakin has lost. And what he will lose. The dragon reminds him, every night, of how he held his dying mother in his arms, of how she had spent her last strength to say I knew you would come back for me, Anakin...”
At one point, as he walks into the Council Chamber, he recalls that meeting with them from thirteen years prior:
“He remembered too well the first time he had entered this Chamber... He remembered how Yoda's green stare had seen into his heart, had seen the cold worm of dread eating away at him, no matter how hard he'd tried to deny it: the awful fear he'd felt that he might never see his mother again.”
Soon after this, during their argument about the Council asking Anakin to spy for them, he blows up at Obi-Wan about what “family” actually means to him:
“The Jedi are your family--” “No.” Anakin turned on his former Master. "No, the Jedi are your family. The only one you've ever known. But I'm not like you--I had a mother who loved me--” [...] “Do you remember my mother? Do you remember what happened to her--?” --because you didn't let me go to save her? he finished silently. And the same will happen to Padmé, and the same will happen to our child.
This exchange harkens perfectly to both George Lucas”s reiteration that the main reason Anakin was initially rejected by the Council was because he was attached to his mother--”he made his emotional connections”--and to P.F. McDonald's observation that “the assimilation process into the tribe of the Jedi”--which was smooth sailing for the younglings who entered as infants or toddlers--”never really takes place for Anakin, at least not on a level that heals the original wound” of being without his mother. That was a hole that nothing else could truly fill. Not even Padmé.
“That's when I lost him...”
Which is why Ben and Rey as “reverse Anidala” won't cut it. That's not the whole deal. The culmination of Anakin's fall was the last act of ROTS, and Padmé's death in particular. But without Shmi's death, Padmé's most likely wouldn't have happened. The root cause of Anakin's downfall--and therefor, of the Skywalker family's generational trauma--was being taken away from his mother in Episode I.
“So many translucent strands of the saga are based around the great importance of the love of a mother, and the tragedy of characters who don’t, or won’t, receive that love. The Force Awakens renewed that tragedy with Kylo Ren, and The Last Jedi pushed down on that lacking until it cracked down the middle.”  --’The importance and absence of mothers in Star Wars’ (raisingarebel.com)
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So, in order for Episode IX to bring the story full circle, and fully heal the family's core, original wound--traumatic separation from the feminine--Ben's redemption and reconciliation with his family and its history can only be completed by reuniting him with his mother in some form. That will symbolically repair the original mother-son split of Shmi and Anakin, and redeem the Skywalker family tragedies in full.
I believe this is why The Rise of Skywalker--the last of the trilogy, of the Saga, of the inverted prequel trilogy arc, and the bookend to TPM--is intended to be “Leia's movie.” Why her theme music was featured in the first TROS teaser. And why, after Carrie Fisher's passing, writing Leia out or lessening her overall importance to the last chapter of the story--even while having to lessen her screen time and dialogue--was simply not an option. It was impossible at a narrative level.
“Finding a truly satisfying conclusion to the Skywalker Saga without her eluded us.”  --J.J. Abrams, ‘Star Wars Episode IX Cast Announced’ (starwars.com, July 2018)
“The idea of continuing the story without Leia was an impossibility.”  --J.J. Abrams, ‘The Battle for Star Wars’ (NY Times, Dec. 2019)
Leia's presence and incorporation into TROS is integral to concluding the Skywalkers’ story. The main endgame of the movie is to heal and redeem Ben, and through him, the entire Skywalker legacy. And to achieve this completely, Ben and Leia have to act as the spiritual and thematic avatars for Anakin and Shmi.
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latin-dr-robotnik · 4 years
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What went wrong with Classic Sonic’s music in Sonic Forces? (ft. beevean)
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The following is a project I’ve been cooking for some weeks, trying to find out some reasons behind the general lackluster feeling that surrounds Classic Sonic’s music in Sonic Forces. As you may have spotted already, this is not a solo project, since I’ve had the opportunity to talk about this very same topic with @beevean and she raised quite a couple of interesting points that I’m going to bring up as we go through. 
Also, Spanish speakers: you can catch the Spanish version of this post here, it’s probably a more polished experience with additional text.
Long post below, so, bring up a ladder and a boombox, I’ll explain along the way. (there’s also a tl;dr at the bottom if you are that type of person)
Sonic Forces stands as a divisive point in the Sonic fandom, that much we all know, and we are not going to discuss the game’s general quality at all on this post. But we are going to take a solid look at Classic Sonic and, most importantly, its music, since I consider that’s the most clear symptom of a bigger problem with Classic Sonic in general, in this post-Generations Modern Sonic world.
A quick look at Classic Sonic
When Classic Sonic debuted in Sonic Generations (2011) as this new-but-also-old Sonic, gaming as a whole was still being bombarded with this “retro-revival movement” that brought back many classic franchises (like classic Mega Man with MM9 and 10 after a decade since MM8), and SEGA itself was in the middle of that train with the recently released Sonic 4: Episode 1 (2010). While Sonic 4 tried to marry Sonic’s current style with classic level tropes and even Genesis-inspired music in a seamless way (showing Sonic’s physical transition from his Sonic 3 days to Sonic Adventure as a smooth one), this new “Classic Sonic” guy in Generations suffered from a mixed message about his origins: is he Sonic from the past, from an alternate universe, or both? Is his music supposed to sound like arrangements of his classic 16-bits tunes or just modern-sounding remixes like the rest of the soundtrack? The fandom still debates about it to this day.
This all led to the introduction of a character that, although considered a “Sonic” like the other “Modern” one, could not establish his own identity beyond Generations’ anniversary-title plot threads. No unique music style, no unique traits, he was just a simpler Sonic.
Major manifestation of the Classic problem.
Fast-forward some years to November 2017, Sonic Forces’ release date. Besides gameplay, story and character criticisms, the music of Forces turned out to be quite controversial for a part of the fandom. Although I personally consider the Avatar songs as top-tier Sonic music, I share similar concerns as the rest about the rest of the game’s music, specially the Classic Sonic level themes. 
With Forces, it seems the composers managed to solve some of Gens’ Classic Sonic music problems, as this time there was a better and more consistent attempt at making Classic’s music sound more at home with the “Genesis days” tunes, but even then the composers fell into other traps that ended up being more damaging to the final product.
Years later after the game’s release, I finally brought up this very same topic during a conversation with beevean (I encourage you that, if you find the following snippets interesting, read the entire conversation), and she had the following thoughts to share as to why Classic Sonic’s music was so... underwhelming:
the classic music in forces is the weakest part of the ost, some tracks are okay while others suck, and the main reason for this is that they hired the wrong people for the job
Okay, that wasn’t a fair cut on my part. She talks a lot more about each and every aspect behind the music, and about the people that composed it, she had the following to say:
Okay, about Forces’ music. First of all, the Classic tracks were handled by two people: Tomoya Ohtani, who also composed pretty much 90% of the OST and has been working solo since 2013 (relevant later), and Naofumi Hataya, one of the two geniuses behind Sonic 2 8-bit’s and Sonic CD’s OSTs (plus some miscellaneous work in Heroes, Colors, Generations, etc.). If you loved tracks like Sky High, Palmtree Panic or Stardust Speedway, you have to thank him.
This is already a reason as to why the Classic music in Forces doesn’t resemble the music in the Genesis games. While I can understand that it would have been impossible to hire Masato Nakamura again, Jun Senoue would have been good for the job, having composed music for Sonic 3 and most importantly Sonic 3D Blast. But apparently Senoue was MIA until 2019, so who knows.
I’d like to point out that Naofumi Hataya’s involvement will play a bigger role later in this post, as we keep searching for what went wrong and we look for a potential solution when adressing Classic Sonic.
Beevean continued with:
There are mainly two problems here:
1) some of the tracks just don’t fit their stage. I already mentioned that Ghost Town sounds way too happy for a city under attack by giant robots. Death Prison sounds vaguely Egyptian and the difference with the original, bass-heavy composition is staggering. Chemical Flow is the most generic thing and would fit everything and nothing, and again comparing it with the original iconic track is just sad. I think the reason Casino Forest and Iron Fortress are my favorite Classic tracks is that they go very well with their respective stages. This is a problem Adventure 2 had as well, associating a particular style to a particular character, and while I think Forces did it better, for me the priority should be fitting a level.
2) Ohtani was once a very versatile composer (the guy could go in one game from Wave Ocean to Crisis City, for example), but since Lost World, the first game in which he had the responsibility of an entire soundtrack, his style quickly became “anime”. Runners’ tracks? “This sounds like an anime opening!”. How do you recognize his only track in TSR? It’s the one that sounds like an anime opening and uses a synth.
And look, I love Ohtani, he has nothing but my respect, and he made some of my absolute favorite tracks in the series. But I do think they’re making him work too much - he’s the best when he can work with at least another person, and has the chance to span a little. I also think his style is incompatible with the Classic music, which was never anime: even at its mellowest in Sonic 1 it always had a little jazzy/new jack swing touch. Basically the only thing they got right in this game is having a wicked bassline :P
It ain’t *only* the composers’ fault
Following beevean’s words, I’d like to add my own take on the problem. You see, I do agree that the composers maybe weren’t up to the task of nailing the classic Genesis tunes’ vibe (Hataya got real close, though), but at the same time I do think they weren’t properly oriented or didn’t have enough time to keep reiterating on the frameworks they were working with. Like beevean said, some of the tracks improve quite a bit after leaving behind that mixed as hell “almost Genesis but not quite” soundfont.
The composers will work on what they were told to make and I have a strong, albeith unconfirmed, feeling that the Classic Sonic composers where asked to “make it sound retro” by someone higher up on the project management chain, and after checking on their progress, simply said “meh, it’s retro enough, no one will notice”.
The “make it sound retro” argument, in my opinion, opens up a big discussion about Sonic music, because there is no easy way to make it “retro” with Sonic. You just can’t pump out a few nostalgic chiptunes and call it a day. Sonic music may have originated back in the 16-bit days of the Sega Genesis, but his identity is so much more than just that Genesis FM sound. I personally believe, similar to another thing beevean point out, that Forces focused too much on sounding “retro enough” instead of fitting each track better to each level theme or even tap into what really made Sonic appealing on the classic days. 
This last point is something that SEGA struggled a lot during the past decade, they introduced Classic Sonic as an entity separated from the current Sonic, yet they simply don’t give Classic Sonic enough development as it’s own character. He’s there because he’s there and we don’t know what to expect from him beyond “he represents the good old days”. But not even SEGA itself knows what that means.
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So, what really makes up Classic Sonic’s identity?
For me this is the true heart of the post. Knowing full well what makes Classic Sonic should be the key to every project that features him. 
There are lots of points to make about Classic Sonic’s identity and how to establish him should he return once again on a 3D Sonic title (not even using the “modern” anymore, and I personally wouldn’t like to see him again on a 3D title for another decade, if ever), but seeing as the main topic of this post has been music, I’m going to focus on what music style makes Classic Sonic shine.
I already said that throwing some generic chiptunes won’t work, but I DO think that Genesis-inspired tunes can still work, should they stick to what made the classics so great.
And what is that? Well, you have several options here: you can choose from more J-Pop and jazzy tunes to some sick R&B and New Jack Swing beats, all the way through to late 80′s Acid House and wacky 90′s Dance music, even cinematic-like scores and ambient sounds.
Personally, I think the heavy R&B (with its fair share of New Jack Swing) influences are a constant throughout Sonic’s first years, and that kind of sound is one that goes well with his cool attitude™. Spring Yard Zone has always been referred to as “16-bit Every Little Step”, while Sonic CD... well, and Sonic 3... well... JAM. Even Masa’s demos of Sonic 2 feature some sick basses that aren’t all that different from what I was thinking (Chemical Plant and Metropolis come to mind). Sonic CD (JP, also the work of Naofumi Hataya and Masafumi Ogata) in particular springs up to my mind as the purest representation on everything that Sonic was about on his old days, but “pure” doesn’t necessarily mean “refined”, so I think the Sonic CD style coupled with some more smooth Pop for emotional moments (straight from Nakamura’s school of smoothness) and harder 90′s raves for boss fights (think how iconic Stardust Speedway Bad Future has become) could make up the perfect blend for Classic Sonic to follow in terms of style points, but also considering the general themes of each zone (Wacky Workbench being this Dance-heavy zone was a stroke of genius if you ask me, the same with Spring Yard being a jazzy urbanscape.)
Sonic is a product of the late 80′s and 90′s pop culture, he has the moves of MC Hammer, Bobby Brown, and of course, Michael Jackson (also his shoes). As such, no generic “retro nostalgic” tune will fit with him, unlike many other gaming franchises. By embracing Classic Sonic’s wacky nature gems like Sonic Mania happened, and just like I pointed it out to beevean, if you were there the week that game was first announced, you probably saw how much people were gushing about Studiopolis Act 1 sounding so much like Sonic CD with that funky beat. People instantly knew that was the Classic Sonic music they wanted to hear.
And just to make this section even better, I recently asked beevean about her thoughts on what makes Classic Sonic’s music identity. I now urge you to go and read her full analysis because it’s so deep yet very accessible, as I’ll be collecting just a few parts of her response for this post. Trust me, that post is so useful, go and reblog it now, I’ll wait here.
About Classic Sonic’s music styles, beevean says:
So… which is the style that fits Classic Sonic better?
The big love letter to the Classic series that is Mania used CD as an inspiration, and while Mania’s OST is excellent and one of my favorites… I don’t automatically associate New Jazz Swing with Classic Sonic. Before Mania, it was only in one game, the odd one in the bunch too.
3D Blast is my favorite Genesis soundtrack, and as I said it combines the best of two worlds (plus it’s just full of bangers), but it influenced the next era more than the Classic one. The same could be said for the American OST of CD - and besides, tracks like this are nothing like Sonic anyway.
Sonic 1 is the first one and all, but that mellow style fits that particular game more than Classic as a whole, I think the closest OST to this style was Advance 1, actually - another slow-paced, simple game.
So the choice is narrowed down to the ultra-popular Sonic 2 and the refined Sonic 3 & Knuckles. And I’ll be honest, while I think S3&K has higher “highs” compared to S2… my brain immediately jumps to the latter. When I think of Classic Sonic, I think of Genesis brass (the real deal, not that fake synth they used in Forces), twang basses, a swingy rhythm (too many to choose lol), and tons of energy.
Only one Classic track in Forces came close to this description. The others sound more like either a pale imitation of Sonic 1 or modern tracks with a bad soundfont, and that’s when they’re not a complete insult (no i won’t link to it you know what i’m talking about :V).
Author’s note: it’s been, like, two months and she still refuses to talk about Faded Hills, lol
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Author’s note: sorry, beev.
(TL;DR) Closing thoughts.
So, what did go wrong with Classic Sonic’s music in Sonic Forces?
A lack of definition on what Classic Sonic even is about, carried from Generations, made the task of defining his style more difficult.
The composers weren’t up to the task, or they were simply asked to make Classic Sonic “sound retro”, generic sound be damned. 
This also means management of the project wasn’t that interested in the Classic portion, or they ran out of time to make it better. This is something that the entire game seemed to have a problem with as well.
The music didn’t fit the stages, and even if it did, Classic’s identity was all over the place. He was there just to be there, and his music suffered from that (compare it to Mania).
Tomoya Ohtani (often credited as the maker of the arguably worst tracks of Classic Sonic in the game) has experienced a shift on his musical style over the last few years that led to his tracks start sounding very similar to each other, this, coupled with the fact he was working on the other 2/3rds of the game’s OST, caused his Classic tracks in particular to suffer.
Classic Sonic’s tracks didn’t take from the 90′s Pop and R&B influences that plagued the old games, and as such, the current Classic Sonic doesn’t have an identity as strong as the original 90′s Sonic. Beevean’s take on this point involves Classic Sonic tracks that feature strong, legit Genesis brass, with twang basses, swingy rhythm and tons of energy.
Once again, I’d like to thank beevean for providing such insightful information and opinions (you can clearly see we both tend to have different takes on what made Sonic back in the 90′s, but in the end agreed to a similar set of requirements to make good Classic music, like basslines and lots of energy), which helped this post a lot more than you can imagine. I wanted to post this back in late January, but the extra time allowed me to keep thinking, searching and listening, while also opened the door to ask beev again about her opinions. This is probably the first “big” article I’ve written this year, and I hope to return soon enough with more. 
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sunshineandfangs · 4 years
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Saudade, Retrouvailles
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Day Seven (October 13th - Sunday): Canon-ish
Still annoyed by all the mess that was made in TVD/TO? Well, this is the day for you to write your own version of the events. TO’s ending fix-its, canon divergences throughout the show(s), future moments… It’s all fair game! So explore all the unexplored potential of Klaroline in this day and share the goodness with us all!
I didn’t manage trope x trope, but I finally decided to work on the canon fix-it I’ve been meaning to write for months...Although I guess one can argue there are at least two tropes in this.
The words are inspired by this post by @labime.
Saudade:
The feeling of longing for someone that you love and is lost.
“Vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist.”
Retrouvailles:
The happiness of meeting again after a long time.
“…in French, we say ‘les retrouvailles sont hors du temps’ which poorly translates to ‘there are moments that don’t fit time.’”
---
The Unmaking
She felt it.
Sitting in her car just outside the city limits of New Orleans, her head tipped back against the seat.
He was gone.
A tiny, hysterical giggle (sob) caught in her throat. Surely, it couldn’t just be her that felt the change of his absence? The most powerful creature in the world, as he once said.
And all those years and miles between them: twisting and turning and slowly, elegantly going to twine their lives together.
All of that, so it could end like this.
Her fingers curled, white-knuckled around the steering wheel, her head tilting forward.
No.
She wouldn’t let it.
---
For a woman that planned out the vast majority of her life, there was a distinct lack of such as she rushed to fix this-this travesty. It was a desperate, selfish feeling that swelled and consumed her from the inside-out. A feeling she couldn’t call anything but love. Ironic considering how long she spent running from such a label.
But she knew with a deep, long buried instinct exactly what she could do, as though through a veil of dreams old knowledge and memories resurfaced. They had been lost to her for a long time. Not blackened and suppressed like compulsion, but rather dimmed to something forgettable and unimportant.
See, on her dresser there was a beautiful music box. She had carried it with her from her childhood home to her dorm and on and on to each place she lived. Subconsciously, she had held it close even when she had forgotten its meaning.
And while hers was white and gold and sleek lines, delicately painted and carved with flowers and butterflies, her father’s had been a small, intricate thing. Burnished gold filigree and encrusted with tiny emeralds. It had led his heart to Steven, granted courage when he would have been cowed by small town judgement. Granted knowledge of how to protect all that he held most precious to him.
A vague niggling in her brain reminded her too of her grandmother’s, her father’s mother. How Nana’s had been deceptively plain, though sturdily made of a handsome wood. Whatever gift it had granted to her, Caroline could not recall, but she knew each of the Forbes line, back and back across countless generations carried one with them until they needed it most.
Once more the irony was near overwhelming. It had not been the innumerable disasters and dramas of Mystic Falls that triggered her remembrance, but Klaus. Klaus and the wild, powerful emotions that dwelled in her heart.
The drive from NOLA back to Mystic Falls was a blur, a blitz down the highway that she could barely recall. And as if on autopilot, Caroline stepped purposefully toward her room once she arrived. To where the music box sat, as it always had.
With delicate fingers, she cracked open the lid and slowly wound its key. Listened to the clicks of the gears. And when she released it, magic sung through the air. It wound itself around her figure, the sheer force unmistakable for all that its touch was gentle. The world shuddered and shrunk around her. Time and space and reality itself unwoven. Threads pulled loose and returned to the ether, ready to be twined together once more.
---
The Reforging
When the world came back into focus, Caroline found herself stalking away from the school. The transition was extremely disorienting, expecting it or not, and she was thankful that the current (past?) version’s memories were at the forefront of her mind.
Her eyes widened as she processed them, her body blurring into motion, a thousand thoughts whirling in her head. The cancellation of the 1980s Decade Dance, for all that it vexed this Caroline, would have been a mere blip on her radar. However, there was a different set of events that happened today. Events that she recalled far, far move vividly.
As she raced across town toward the Gilbert’s house part of her was thankful for the essence of world altering magic that lingered within her. Not only did it grant her memories of The-Future-That-Never-Was (now at least, and hopefully never will be), but also her strength. And sure a decade or two extra meant little in the grand scheme of vampire strength, but right now any advantage helped.
Splitting her attention, Caroline fumbled for a moment to grab her phone as she ran, hesitated a split second before settling on texting Klaus. (Ignored what it meant that she had his old number memorized). She was fairly certain she could get the jump on her friends, considering this would be an utterly unexpected and seemingly out of character move. Still, it wouldn’t do to accidentally alert more people’s suspicions than she had to with a call. Klaus would certainly be challenge enough.
---
Said Hybrid was fuming in the cellar of the Salvatore’s basement, only a fraction of his attention paid to snark at the elder Salvatore of all people. He was far more restless than he let on, sensing something was wrong, but not knowing what. Having long learned to trust his instincts, it was frustrating to be uncertain where to point them.
When his phone vibrated in his hand, he looked down eager for news, and saw the last person he expected to be texting him.
[Caroline Forbes] 4:12 PM: klaus this is caroline
[Caroline Forbes] 4:12 PM: get to the gilberts house
[Caroline Forbes] 4:12 PM: NOW
[Caroline Forbes] 4:12 PM: trust me pls!
He abruptly stopped talking as he peered down at his phone, wondering when Caroline learned his number, wondering if he could trust her as she requested. As she near begged him to really. And it was that note of pleading, present even through the pixels of his phone that settled the matter for him. Without so much as an acknowledgement or good-bye, unless one counted snapped necks, Klaus sped up the stairs.
---
Halfway to his destination, Klaus’ phone rang, Kol’s name on the caller ID. His eyes narrowed, instincts flaring, and he moved even faster as he answered the call.
“Well, if it isn’t the happy homicidal maniac,” he taunted, digging for the truth as he riled his brother.
His brother that was certainly not abiding by their normal script as he snarled back, “Did you know that your darling former blood bag and her brother are trying to kill me?”
“What?” He growled, the pieces easily falling into place with Caroline’s own texts from mere moments before.
“Don't pretend like you're not in on it. Your obsession to find the cure clearly trumps any sibling loyalty you once felt.”
There’s so much Klaus wished to say, most of which he swallowed to save for their upcoming confrontation.
“You are an utterly reckless fool, Kol, but you are my brother first.”
His words seemed to fall on deaf ears. “I'm going to rip off Jeremy's arm and kill Elena just for sport. Then I'm coming for you.”
The call ended before Klaus can retort. Though with the house mere streets away he could hear the fighting. Once this little problem was dealt with, he and his brother could have a proper chat.
---
Caroline came disastrously close to colliding into Bonnie in her rush. Though it took little time to turn it into something fortuitous, memories of a spelled cage and a furious Hybrid in her mind. Offering up a mental apology, Caroline gently knocked the witch out, setting her down swiftly, but carefully on the Gilbert’s front porch when she reached it.
Even from outside, Elena’s, Jeremey’s, and Kol’s fighting was glaringly obvious. Sounds of their shouts and the destruction of furniture carried down from the upstairs. Caroline rushed in, all but flying towards the sounds of their conflict.
It was sheer luck that had her appearing as Kol vanished to chase Jeremey, Elena’s head conveniently bowed as she struggled with the stake in her leg. Another mental apology and another unconscious friend later, and Caroline’s obstacles were dropping by the second.
Thankfully, her luck continued to hold as she flashed after Kol and Jeremey .And when she came upon them Jeremy was still dazed as he was dragged upright by Kol. Being a Hunter and in an Original’s grasp, Caroline couldn’t afford to be as delicate as she was with Bonnie. She slammed the poor boy out of Kol’s arms and used the momentum to smack his head onto the counter, being extremely careful not to kill him, though she feared he’d likely need some blood when he came to.
She then rapidly backpedaled as Kol snarled at her, confusion slightly softening his otherwise fierce expression.
“What is this?” He hissed. “Here to protect him? I’m afraid I can’t allow that, Darlin’.”
He took a menacing step towards her as she raised her arms in placation, even as she prepared to dodge his blow.
“Take another step and I’ll tear out your liver.”
Caroline didn’t allow the sound of Klaus’ voice to soften the wariness in her spine, no matter how much she longed to. She also didn’t take her eyes off Kol, even as he turned to sneer at his brother in the doorway.
“Don’t you have any original threats, brother. First daggers now my liver. Besides-” his slight pause was all the warning she had, and thankfully all the warning she needed. She just managed to dodge his blow, though he was uncomfortably close as he snarled, “you’re not invited in.”
Flashing closer to the entrance, she was able to hear every bit of menace in Klaus’ voice. (If both monster and woman were a bit flattered by his protectiveness... well she ignored that for now too).
“Do you think I’ve forgotten how to dismantle a house until ownership means nothing, because I assure you, Kol, I have not.”
Kol chuckled darkly. “And in the time it takes you to do so? What do you think shall happen to this tasty little thing, hm?”
Caroline still wasn’t looking at Klaus, but she felt the way the air shifted. Suspected that his eyes were burning Wolf gold behind her.
“Nothing,” he uttered with a frightening matter-of-factness, “if you don’t wish to be begging for a dagger by the time I am through with you.”
Something hateful shifted on Kol’s face and despite how all her instincts screamed at her to stay silent, Caroline knew she could not. Not when they were on the verge of dangerous escalation.
“Enough!” She yelled, startling both brothers, for all that they were partially arguing about her. Steadied herself as both their regard shifted. “There are far more important things we should be discussing.”
“Oh? And what things are those, Darlin’.”
It was obvious Kol wasn’t taking her seriously in the slightest. Irritating though unsurprising. That quickly changed when she uttered her next words.
“Things such as Silas.”
There was a moment of stunned silence before both Mikaelson’s spoke. Kol now serious and mildly suspicious. Klaus incredulous.
“However did a baby vampire from Mystic Falls learn anything of Silas?”
“Sweetheart, you can’t believe such utter rot.”
With both Originals now clearly hungry for answers and the mounting list of things Caroline knew she must do, she almost regretted stepping in to save Kol. 
Almost.
For all that she had never met the man prior, despite the apparent witchy shenanigans involved in his resurrection, most people agreed that he was a bit of a psycho. And this demonstration certainly did nothing to help his case. However, he was also Klaus’ brother, and Caroline well remembered the devastation on his face when Kol had died. How Klaus lashed out. How she was honestly stunned in retrospect that he hadn’t massacred the town in vengeance. And more than that it was the right thing to do. If not for Kol than for the thousands of uninvolved vampires that would have dropped dead with him.
Still, all that didn’t make what she needed to say, eventually needed believed any bit easier.
Caroline took a breath, dearly wishing to rub at the tension in her face, but knowing better than to drop her guard.
“Look, it’s a long story and I’d rather not be here when my friends wake up. There’ll be enough yelling as is, so if we could maybe move this little powwow elsewhere that would be great.”
---
So I still have more ideas for this, but my muse is flagging so I’m stopping here before it becomes crappy. May add more later
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sudoscience · 4 years
Text
New In Town: Background Info
Click here for a version with working hyperlinks.
Although it's never explicitly stated by the games, I'm going to assume the story is set in the US, or at least a country like it. The existence of monsters likely altered the course of several events in human history, so it's possible things are actually radically different. For the purposes of this story, I'll assume most things are still the same unless stated otherwise, (e.g. the American Revolution was still in 1776, and World War II was still in the early-middle of the 20th Century.).
Let's also just go ahead and say the story takes place in 201X for now.
[For the record, I pronounce 201X as "twenty-ex-teen". I guess you could say it "two-oh-one-ex", but why would you? I also assume it refers to the whole decade, so, for example, when I say "the early part of 201X", that could mean anywhere between 1 January 2010 and 31 December 2014.]
Navigation:
Humans and Monsters (Current headcanon)
Humans and Monsters (Old) (Preserved for posterity)
Footnotes
Master Post
Humans and Monsters
Humans and monsters have always coexisted relatively peacefully, at least as well as humans and humans. There have been some smaller wars over land and resources, but nothing like the war in Undertale (hereinafter "The War").
Someone still remembers that other universe, though. The universe where monsters freely used magic. The universe where a monster could absorb a human SOUL. The universe where the monsters were sealed underground and later systematically slaughtered by a human child. Perhaps that someone is W. D. Gaster. Perhaps it is Chara. I haven't decided yet. Until that time comes, I'll call that person Individual 1.
Individual 1 remembers the world of Undertale, but the version they remember is the one in which the genocide route takes place. After that world is destroyed, Individual 1 uses their DETERMINATION to bring the world back. They restore the world to long before The War takes place. Individual 1 convinces the King of All Monsters (who is probably someone other than Asgore) to strictly curtail the use of magic. It is Individual 1's belief that the only way to prevent The War from occurring is if humans never learn that monsters can absorb their souls. This is why we don't see evidence of magic in Deltarune.1
Sometime in 1965, a man in Twin Falls (Bill Hammond) learns of the monsters' hidden power. He attempts to alert the government, but it's years before anyone in power takes him seriously. Most people view him as a crackpot; he's this universe's Alex Jones. However, he begins to gain a following among the commoners, who take to calling themselves the Arcane Enforcement Unit. Hate crimes against monsters become more frequent, and the government establishes the Directorate of Inter-Species Relations to combat this.
Hammond's influence grows, and he runs for president multiple times, though he rarely gets more than 2% of the vote. In 1996, his campaign performs surprisingly well, but he is assassinated. His following was strongest in Twin Falls, and it once again becomes a hot spot for anti-monster sentiment, only this time it extends to humans who are considered "monster sympathizers", including Kris's birth parents and eventually Rudy, who is born around this time.
Paul and Judy Harper are DISR employees in Twin Falls. In 2003, the year Asriel is born,2 the DISR begins a joint operation with DHS and FBI to infiltrate the AEU, which is now suspected as a terrorist organization. The Harpers are assigned to the team, Operation Golden Flower, as undercover agents in 2005. In 2007, Judy becomes pregnant. Later that year, their cover is nearly blown. In order to keep their child safe, they begin making arrangements with some old friends of theirs, the Dreemurr family in Hometown. Their son is born in December,​3 and adopted by the Dreemurrs immediately. A few months later, Paul and Judy are killed; their death is not publicized classified in order to avoid jeopardizing the operation.
In the early part of 201X, an AEU supporter named Noah Trey Ullman is elected mayor of Twin Falls. This is when things really start to go south. Ullman incites violence against monsters and monster sympathizers. They usually stay out of the majority monster neighborhoods, but they tend to target monsters who are known to affiliate with humans. This is what prompts Rudy to move to Hometown.
Humans and Monsters (OLD)
Humans and monsters have always coexisted, but there's always been a lot of tension between them. For most of their history, they've lived more or less independently of each other. As humans began to industrialize, they began to expand and encroach on monster territory.1 Interactions with monsters became more frequent, as did altercations. While there hasn't been an outright war between humans and monsters, there have been frequent skirmishes, akin to the US and the Native Americans. There was a period where humans sought to make use of magic, primarily by employing the monsters. The monsters were often subjected to inhumane conditions, and uprisings, while infrequent, were not unheard of.
Knowing that a monster with one or more human souls could become a being of great power, this practice was eventually outlawed. Humans became reluctant to hire monsters at all, and most monsters eventually relocated to their own settlements. These are similar to Indian reservations, with the distinction that they are not considered sovereign. In order to keep things under control, the government created the Directorate of Inter-species Relations in the mid-19th Century. Under the pretense of fairness, the DISR banned the use of magic about 100 years ago;2 this would theoretically allow more monsters to be hired, so long as they weren't being exploited for their magical abilities. In practice, because magic is so central to a monster's existence, this drastically changed the monsters' way of life. Initially, smaller acts of magic were allowed, but as more monsters moved into settlements, their interactions with humans became less frequent, and the humans became more fearful, having only the legends and rumors to inform them rather than their own experiences. Eventually, all magic was banned, and the Arcane Enforcement Unit was created in 1956 to enforce said ban.
Of course, some monsters remained in the human cities. They felt they still had ties there, and refused to move. They are largely relegated to their own neighborhoods, and the AEU does its best to "gently encourage" them to relocate. Other than the AEU, very few humans interact with monsters.3
What happened five years ago?
There was a change in leadership at the AEU, and they became much more aggressive in their policing.
[I think this was a separate subsection because I originally planned on writing more, but now it seems pretty silly to have a subsection with just one sentence.]
Footnotes
Notes for New Info
There are several reasons I decided to scrap the old backstory, but this was probably the main one. I really liked the theory that Deltarune takes place after the Genocide Route, and I wanted to expand on that. I'm no longer sure I buy that theory, but I still think it's a cool idea. ↑
As noted in the "Headcanon for Existing Characters", I originally planned for Asriel to have started college early, which would further demonstrate how exceptional he is, and also factor into the resentment Kris wishes they didn't have of him. This is also his first semester of college, which is why Kris is so worried he'll have changed. I think I'll keep him a freshman, but increase the age gap between them. When Asriel gets back from college, he'll have just turned 19, while Kris will be turning 14 very soon. I'm assuming he's returning for Thanksgiving Break (and also that Thanksgiving still exists in this world), and this is the first time he's been back home since he left for college. ↑
Yes, Kris's full name is Krismas (no, not really). Their birthday is 22 December, and Asriel's is 15 September (unless there's an official birthday listed somewhere, in which case it's that). I hope it's okay if I write that Kris is biologically male, even though they identify as non-binary. Since I've already changed their pronouns in the main story, this is probably the only time it will ever be mentioned, unless maybe they go swimming or something. I got the idea from @caretaker-au and how they represent Chara as male non-binary (is that the right way to say that?); I know some people find that blog to be problematic, but I think that was more to do with them drawing porn of Chara and Asriel, not because they drew Chara as biologically male. (For the record, I was not aware of that when I started following them, especially since Tumblr banned porn a year before I even bought Undertale.) ↑
Notes for Old Info
Another reason I dropped this: I'm pretty sure this was inspired by @wolven0ne-universe's "Long Road" AU. Actually, there's a lot that was inspired by Long Road, even in the new backstory: the decision to have multiple OCs, the way magic supposedly works, humans exploting monsters for their magic, a shadowy organization that abducts monsters because of their magical abilities, etc. Some of this is attributable to the fact that I never read fanfics prior to playing Undertale, so some of these were "inspired" by Long Road simply by virtue of it being, like, the second fanfic I ever read, ever. (The first was "Flowey is Not A Good Life Coach".) Anyway, my point here is that I dropped this backstory in part because I didn't want it to be too similar to Long Road, not because I suddenly stopped liking Long Road. ↑
Here's an additional reason I changed the backstory: I wasn't sure if this was a believable timeline. I feel like it's plausible that human society would forget that monster magic involves a lot more than just a monster's ability to abosrb a human soul in just 100 years, but that doesn't seem like nearly enough time for monster society to forget that monsters can use magic. Plus, if monsters and humans have coexisted for all of human history, and monsters have been using magic for like 99% of said history, that seems like it could have created a lot of ripple effects that I would spend way too much time thinking about. Like, what if the existence of magic resulted in the first Industrial Revolution happening in the 15th Century? What would Earth look like in 201X if that were the case? I just didn't want to deal with all of that. ↑
Other than wanting to believe that Deltarune takes place after the Genocide Route, the next most important factor in my decision to scrap this backstory is that it's just really dark. The story has enough potentially depressing shit that I didn't need to add a monster Trail of Tears on top of it all. Plus, I was worried it might come across as racially insensitive. ↑
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popscenery · 4 years
Audio
LMFAO, »Party Rock Anthem«
by Jake Cleland
‘Party Rock Anthem’ isn’t the best song of the decade, it is the song of this decade. The rotten nucleotides that comprise its DNA and its video’s captured everything that would define the 2010s even before the decade had properly started. JJ Abrams’ franchise dominance, cinema’s sequelitis, Malcolm Goodwin’s role in iZombie — seen in retrospect, ‘Party Rock Anthem’ makes LMFAO seem downright prescient. But as an early decade phenomenon, it’s also an epitaph to a brutally missed 2000s. The Cobrasnake-via-Dim Mak-via-Ed Banger-via-Mad Decent street party fashion makes the post-#mensfashionadvice 2010s look hopelessly conservative. 
So much of art and politics was deastheticised by the project of fundamentally reorganising how art and politics meet and whether that casualty was necessary has yet to be reckoned, although it was probably inevitable. But ‘Party Rock Anthem’ came out when hipster irony (a phrase, kids, that folks used to use with a straight face) was only uncertainly dead, with poptimism still holding the gun cautiously to its chest. The ensuing cultural/political schism ultimately wasn’t drawn on the line between left and right, but overwrought exegeses on the meme of any given week (sup) vs. pleading to just like what you like (aka Like Everything). Two fronts battling basically for the same humiliated cause of pop supremacy made the previously delicious sport of music snobbery just not very fun. The only available rebellion was to [extremely Big Sean voice] go stupid.
(This also meant the only space left for sincere irony was, like, /mu/ and /r/indieheads and Fantano’s comments section. (Pass.))
If ‘Party Rock Anthem’ came out a few years later, it might’ve been wilfully embraced, although its pariah status also left the life in it, so we take small blessings with gratitude. After all, it’s a safe song to like: it is exclusively about the unifying force of The Party. Lyrically it even reifies the previous paragraph: “Stop: hatin’ is bad.” Where it missed a trick was not predicting the trickle down stanonomics of K-Pop’s influence, but it was a utopian vision. Superficially, it’s apocalypse-pop but if so, it’s the only example that doesn’t sound hopeless or lifeless (James Murphy arrived five years late to this, but succinctly, at least, with LCD Soundsystem’s ‘tonite’.) You watch Redfoo - convincingly scared while two-stepping through a sea of Air Jordans and lame - finally succumb to The Party and tell me that the alleged zombies aren’t the good guys. NB: the only other guy afraid of them is wearing a shirt and tie. 
He’s also the only one pushing a product in the whole clip. For all the zombies-as-consumerism metaphors, who’s really a conformist consumer here? Let’s not stretch this too far, but hand-on-heart finger-tapping-forehead: makes you think.
A month before ‘Party Rock Anthem’, Tom Ewing wrote a piece for The Guardian I still think about a lot. Riffing on Girl Talk’s pointillistic reference dropping, Ewing laments the deficiency of celebrating Moments in songs/albums/patchwork sample monster mixtapes which get lost in the holistic approach. In that spirit, the Beats product placement in the ‘Party Rock Anthem’ clip created a Moment which gummed up my brain creases all through this decade almost more than the song itself. The lone survivor tells LMFAO to use their earbuds. “You got ‘em in?” he says. And Skyblu says:
“What? Vitamins?” 
No matter which way you interrogate this moment, it is downright hilarious. To research for this piece, I watched over 100 music videos. I watch a lot of music videos, so the research for this piece consisted of a lot + 100 music videos. That’s more than a lot of music videos. I also watched the ‘Party Rock Anthem’ video more than 100 times, just to make sure I was awarding this Moment the appropriate gravity. So I can say with scientific credibility that not only is ‘Party Rock Anthem’ the song of this decade, but that this moment is the Moment of every decade. It is a non-sequitur nonpareil. Was this scripted or improvised? And either way, in that moment, why would someone say to them, “Vitamins”?
The story of LMFAO concluded in another particularly 2010s way. Another victim of the neverending Scam Season, Redfoo allegedly ripped Skyblu off of all LMFAO royalties. Karma rewarded Redfoo a couple years later when he was hit with a glass in Sydney. In this, we may see ourselves, inevitably disgraced by time.
There are ways ‘Party Rock Anthem’ predicted the zeitgeist and ways ‘Party Rock Anthem’ created the zeitgeist and I was present for plenty of the latter. At least in Melbourne, LMFAO’s recycling of the Melbourne Shuffle filtered back to nightclubs in a way Klein et al. warned was already happening generally. Happy to have our culture regifted if it was also represented, it was less impossible than you might imagine to find yourself inside your own LMFAO music video. But it’s what I came home to after those nights that makes ‘Party Rock Anthem’ the song of the decade, which was: inbox notifications, gchat alerts, dashboards full of posts and replies wringing meaning from meaninglessness in the most seriously unserious way. Epitaphed plenty elsewhere, Music Tumblr doesn’t need another bouquet laid here, but ‘Party Rock Anthem’ is prominent on the playlist of associations I have with the first definitive part of the decade (other triggers: ‘Video Games’, ‘Gucci Gucci’, ‘Bangarang’, ‘What Makes You Beautiful’, ‘Furisodeshon’, ‘Hey QT’, SSSSSSSSOME NIGHTS I STAYYYYYYYY UP...)  
Coming from the Gawker/Defamer/Idolator readership to find a group of mostly-communal-but-sometimes-adversarial-but-for-the-better (via “Iron sharpens iron” - Coach Wade) weirdoes eager to unwrap celebrity looms large, I have no doubt, in the definitions of this decade for the people involved. Most have since left music writing or been pushed out and found fulfilling lives elsewhere, but although the pop of the era trended towards the annhilistic, let’s not cave. When I first started writing about music on Tumblr, old heads were quick to say the jobs were gone. Defiant and determined to prove them wrong, I made a pretty good go of it, and others are still doing as much. All the pieces are there for anyone with a willingness to be wrong to pick up. 
That’s enough navel gazing for a time long ago. Put it to bed. The revelation of ‘Party Rock Anthem’ isn’t that you should never leave The Party, it’s that the whole world is The Party. “Dancing all night isn’t legendary, only dancing all night is.” The only thing to do in the decade ahead is to keep listening attentively. Let music fill you up. It’ll get in your bones.
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