#for fuck’s sake there’s so many incredible other games on the market

[ahalliance]

bro no way i just saw a trans person say theyre gonna play the harry potter game. she quite literally admitted that the money she gets from stuff like this goes to fund her anti-trans charities. incredible self-own

[rawliverandcigarettes]

Our discussion on turians made me wonder: how do you imagine the culture of the Salarian Union? (I'm sorry, you probably talked about this elsewhere, but I was too lazy to look for that, if so feel free to refer me to that post.) I find that there are surprisingly little elements about it in canon, though there are a few hints, like the fact that the planets in the Pranas system all have modern names, the previous names having been discarded, presumably, because they evoke "bygone superstition"?

Hello! Sorry I took some time. I actually rarely packaged my thoughts on salarian culture in a digestible way, so you gave me a great opportunity to give it a recap! I will go more indepth in the future for sure, but I might do a lil' overarching presentation of my general thoughts.

First, I have written an exploration/explanation of some of my headcanons regarding salarian reproduction, and it can be found here on Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18872515

It is sliightly out of date and I need to do a pass to adjust some of my thoughts, but I still go by the general idea.

I also agree that there is very little things in the OT canon. I think there might be slightly more in Andromeda maybe, but I still haven't played the game so who knows!

I even believe the games kind of give up on salarian culture past ME1, where they are arguably given the most importance; we get more depth to it in ME2 through the sole and lonely perspective of Mordin; and in ME3 they are barely worth more than somewhat cheap antagonism and a couple of questionable jokes. Even right now during the promo of MELE, I felt like salarians keep being characterized as weird-cute-gross, and more like the butt of a joke than people. Even the promo for Director Tann in MEA had this "haha you get a role for a mass effect character and you thought you'd be sexy and cool TOO BAD" vibe to it, which makes me think part of the devteam (or at least the marketing side of it) don't think too highly of their very own space frogs :'(((

But to get on my actual thoughts (under the cut and the nice gif, because it won't be as long as it could be, but it's still somewhat long):

So first off, I'm trying to keep in mind how indescribably huge the Salarian Union is: we're talking about a conglomerate of planet-sized communities, moons, artificial stations, plus appendages in every large-scaled, cosmopolitan communities in Council space and possibly beyond. Just like it would be hard to talk about any united "human culture", I think the same could be true for any Mass Effect species --even though, for the sake of both narrative convenience and the tendency for globalization once communities get connected and break down communication barriers, shortcuts have to be made (and that helps make Points, and I like stories to have Points so yee).

For this reason, I have identified organizational tendencies within these communities, based both on baseline of natural grouping emerging off salarian biology (clan-based structures with matriarchal figures) and where I speculated breakdowns would happen in the modern, multicultural setting of the ME universe. To brutally over-simplify: there would be the "traditional" political organization of Sur'kesh (that I will briefly cover later), the "colonial" style (a derivation of the Sur'kesh style with more centralization), and the growing influence of ultraliberalism creeping from Council space back unto these communities, creating a myriad of variations depending on how much the communities are willing to adapt to production being controlled by corporations.

I headcanon the culture, however, to be at once: very collectivist yet an oligarchy (because dalatrasses have a right to power by virtue of existence basically), extremely eugenist to the point of having created literal, biological races that are genetically distinct from each other and cultivated to remain as such by some clans (and therefore can be very cruel towards the disabled/the imperfect at birth too), misandrist (I believe being a male salarian from a shitty clan/baronny is one of the lower forms of political existence that can be in this universe, hence why their lives in the working force are so goddamn disposable), but also designed to protect its members and have the community take care of their basic needs (so homelessness is almost not a thing, or at least used to not be a thing). I also believe the culture to be consistently young and vibrant, with lots of energy (for better and for worse). And during the time of ME, to be under economical and social duress (even gender duress!) as it sits at a crossroad regarding its future, and everyone has a lots of ideas on what this future should look like, including people gawking the outside with economical or political interests in the outcome (this basically the plot of The Empire of Preys, which is technically a prequel to Halfway Home but will be written after HH because I love chronologies that make sense and are easy to understand :) :) ).

So concerning the OG, Sur'kesh style: I have contorted a weird economical/diplomatic/land planning system into quasi-existence, that is based around a unit called the "symposium". This is a *relatively* young system in their history (still milleniums old, it really solidified in the middle of the Rachni Wars as a reaction/adaptation after several waves of imperialism that didn't really look like ours but had the same effect of flattening local cultures into a more aggressive semi-ethnostate), but central into dividing resources, workers, affect. I will not go into too much details because this is quite complicated, but these are basically commitees that will take democratic decisions among its members, based on how many clan members are appointed in both this symposium and and adjacent symposiums that might be helpful to this one --it's a system explicitely based on bribes and social influence, and getting the partial control of key symposiums is absolutely essential for Dalatrasses to maintain the influence and relevance of their respective clans. It's also a system that has, traditionally, very little use for money (it exists, but as a token of exchange that doesn't carry inherent value --if you have only access to money as a clan, you are basically worthless and won't get access to good matches or good symposium seats, or at least you used to until capitalism knocked at the doooooor and that kinda fucked things uppppppp and the society is not recovering and the gaps are getting extreeeeeme this is the plot of TEOP basically).

Oh and on the subject of the transition to more capitalist values and the decay of clans that cannot keep up, I wrote The Leftovers a couple of years ago, which talks about a young dalatrass-to-be discovering she might be sterile, right here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15854244

I have a ton more things to say on the subject (and salarian culture as a whole), buuut this is getting quite long already haha.

And in regards to your question: I headcanon that salarians from one specific continent -that then became the "cultural norm" over imperialism and complications- were confronted, in a continental way, to a huge hurricane that led to incredible floods and then stagnant water and diseases, which really soured their relationship to water that was previously quite holy. This led to a very bitter enlightenment; their "Renaissance" came out of spite against nature rather than anything else, and a lot of previous ideas were abandoned for a time -then reclaimed, then abandoned again, then warped... It's complicated. :D

[nellie-elizabeth]

The Handmaid's Tale: Chicago (4x05)

Oh, for fuck's sake. If Janine's dead, I'm gonna rage quit watching this show. I mean, not really, but come on. She'd better be okay.

Cons:

This is a small thing but I thought I'd mention it: they've spent a lot of time in Canada this season, and yet didn't bother to set up why Moira would be in Chicago there at the end - I guess we'll find out later? That just seemed like an odd decision structure-wise.

I wish we understood why Janine changed her mind there at the end. See, this is part of why I'm really worried Janine is dead, because it seems like just the sort of thing this show would do. Make Janine come with June, just to die immediately so that June can feel super guilty for bringing her along. I think she's got the market cornered on survivor's guilt at this point. And it was really sweet when Janine showed up to go with her after all, but I don't get what changed her mind. Janine is her own person with her own motivations, and it would have made sense for her to stay somewhere she felt more or less secure. She made that choice, there was a sweet goodbye, and then an immediate reversal on her decision? I wanted a bit more to flesh that out.

Logistically, maybe I just missed something, but it seemed like June and Janine were running through a ghost town when those aerial bombs went off. And then there was a rescue team coming around, and people screaming for help all over the place? Were those people just in the buildings? I was a little confused about what we were meant to believe. The plan from the Commanders was to bomb them just before the cease-fire, right? So if the cease-fire hadn't been called, where were all the people, and how did they know about the bombing? Had they been tipped off? Maybe we'll get more info on this later.

Pros:

I find Aunt Lydia to be very interesting and compelling. Her desire for power over her "girls" is chilling because it comes from a real zealotry that I can't quite understand. She "cares about them" but it's so deeply on her own terms that it's warped beyond anything you would call actual care and affection. Seeing her use her soft power, the power of information collecting, to get back into a position of power and get what she wanted, was chilling, as is everything she does. This show has always been good at the stark imagery that pushes things maybe a bit too far, but is undeniably memorable. Seeing Lydia surrounded by Handmaid duos as they form a perfect circle from above, really emphasizes the way this whole system is designed to keep moving on, no matter what disruption comes its way. Creepy.

We've also got poor Nick, completely losing his mind about trying to be a Commander while also protecting June, and then Commander Lawrence, who I can't quite figure out, but in a good way. At this point, with his wife dead, it seems that Lawrence is just after self-preservation, but also after minimizing damage. Maybe? I mean, he pushes for a cease-fire, but he's willing to support a bombing. What is his actual game here? Is he trying to help June by dropping bombs on her head? It's intense, whatever it is he's doing, and I'm ready to find out more about his specific goals and motivations.

Nick's motivations are a lot clearer, and I think we're seeing him start to lose his cool in a serious way. So many close calls for June. All he wants to do is keep her safe. He can't keep his composure in Commander meetings, but I think he's still managing to avoid suspicion because most of the others know he's young and still new at this. It's impossible that he's the only Commander who has been rattled by the extremity of their situation. And yet there at the end, as June is lying in the rubble in the streets, and we the audience know that Nick is technically the one who ordered the attack... big yikes! Super intense!

So, despite my slight frustration with Janine changing her mind so quickly, I did find the Janine and June content in this episode to be incredibly moving. Last episode focused on Janine a bit more, and how she can chafe under June's assumption of authority. This week we get a bit more of that, as Janine starts a relationship with the guy in charge of this rebel outpost, and June disapproves. Janine is firm that she's making her own choices, that it's consensual, etc. But at the same time, there is this undeniable bond between Janine and June, and both women know it. Nobody could really come close to understanding everything that they've been through together. So when Janine gives June the hat she traded their Handmaid cloaks for, it's her way of saying that June will always be a priority for her. Beyond any man, beyond the desire to be a mother again.

Their goodbye exchange was so cute, with June saying to Janine: "that baby's going to be really lucky to have you" and Janine replying: "those rebels are so lucky to have you." It's awkward but heartfelt and I almost felt like Janine following her afterwards undercut how powerful that moment should have been. Again, I restate, if Janine is dead, I'm going to flip my shit.

I'll stop there for now. It's going to be so intense to see Moira and June onscreen together again. I'm beyond hyped for next week!

8/10

[tortoisenottortoise]

Am I the only one who likes seeing muscular women in media more than muscular men?

Alright so, this one will probably end up much shorter and a little more ranty than I'd like, but this is kind of personal so be fairly warned. 

 Recently I've seen a few complaints about the new He-Man show and honestly, I fully understand and empathize with them. Whilst I haven't fully seen the show, from what I've viewed I can personally speaking agree (or at the very least understand) where most criticisms come from. I think it's incredibly shitty that the writer basically lied to his audience about how the show would run. Now normally I'd be fine with a twist such as He-man dying, but he's an important part of the show and the way the marketing & merchandising for it was running kind of comes across as him basically using He-Man's name to get people into the show. I also feel like it's fine to view Teela as obnoxious and annoying, nothing about her personality-wise seems likable to me. I also heard a few complaints about Orko's (I think that's his name, don't crucify me) backstory and how his character was handled.Yet as the title suggests one that didn't stick with me was the criticism of Teela and a general trend towards the criticism of women in media as being "masculine". 

I've heard over and over that Hollywood representing strong women by giving them masculine traits is a bad thing and yet... I kind of don't get it? It feels odd to say, almost like I'm the dumbest man alive for admitting something which most people on the internet seem to be so sure about, yet I just don't understand where this is coming from. I've seen this thrown at She-hulk, Wonder Woman, Abby, and many other characters, yet when inquired it usually loops back around to, "Yeah they have muscles", and that's about it. This type of criticism in specific seems to overly focus on the appearance of said characters. It's the one critique I just can't get behind and it feels like at best it's a shallow criticism that fails to get its point across, and at worst it's actively demeaning to women who desire to or show masculine traits. But first, let me break this down into sections.

Section 1: Muscles =/= Masculinity (In my opinion at least)

Oh boy, I feel like this is a section that might rustle some feathers, but I'm going to try and explain myself best as possible. I simply do not view muscularity as a feature that is inherent to or should be inherent to men. I'm not going to pretend as if muscular men aren't more saturated in media and art, nor as if they're societally treated as masculine, but one of the reasons I fail to understand this criticism is that I see muscles beyond the horizons as being just a masculine trait. 

I believe that muscles should instead be seen as a sign of hard work and determination. As someone who's currently trying (and struggling) to stay healthy and fit, it's much harder than a lot of media portrays it to be. It's a test where you push yourself to the limits, not just for the sake of doing it, but so you can improve as a person. Whenever I go to the gym and see a muscular gal or guy walk by, my immediate thought isn't, "how masculine" or anything like that my thought is, "wow! They worked hard to get like that, I should work hard as well!". 

This interpretation tends to feel like it's just simply taking a piss on people who actively work hard to achieve higher levels of strength. Especially when society places and enforces these unrealistic standards onto people. If you don't have a six-quintillion pack nor can bench press a fucking house then you're worthless, of course, that is unless you actually attempt to pursue said standards which in that case you're automatically dismissed as cheating your way to gaining your muscles instead of putting any work in. And that's just for men who often don't have to deal with traditional idiots who are stuck in the year 1950 where I can't walk on the same street as them. My skin crawls when reading tweets from older men talking about how weightlifting women are "ruining their fertility" and I absolutely hate it when people in my life treat these women as if they're mythical creatures from a fairy tale, or when females who have trained to such a degree are simply dismissed as being inferior. 

Obviously, I don't think the people who say this are like that, but whenever I hear this type of critique I can't help but think of the culmination of all these experiences I've gone through. But then again, this might honestly just be because I'm personally attracted to muscular women.

  Section 2: Body type diversity

  Another reason that I tend to like muscular women in media over muscular men is simply due to the sheer oversaturation of muscular men. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem if anybody likes muscular men. I totally get wanting to shove your face in between some man titties or get inspired by their physiques. In all honesty, almost everything I said earlier can directly apply to men, but one of the reasons I bring up body type diversity is that there tend to be much less muscular women than men. I

f anything, I'd have to say that muscular men are almost treated as the default when it comes to things like superhero comics, movies, video games, anime, etc. In a similar vein, the default for women tends to be slim and curvaceous, you get the drill. Whenever someone who doesn't fit into either body type shows up and isn't treated like a joke/gag or a character to rip on, I can't help but be happy about it. As much as I have no clue wtf is going on with TLOU2, I can appreciate that Abby's portrayal doesn't seem to exist solely as a joke meant to demean women for working out. I'm excited when an anime protagonist is a fat character who can go beyond just being a "fat guy" and is treated the same way a normal person would be.

 Regardless of what you think about whatever trait you're criticizing, there's probably someone out there who fits it. If you're not into it or dislike it, then that's fine, but I'd rather have that expressed than it being actively made out as a harmful trope as opposed to just literally another body type that some women have.

  Section 3: Muscular women inspire me more

Ok so, we've now blown into a full-on personal experience, buckle up boys, girls, NBs, anything in between, and I feel like I'm forgetting someone so apologies! But yeah, muscular women in media tend to be a lot more inspiring than people seem to give them credit for. This comes down to a mix of both the qualities I outlined earlier in what makes the characters inspiring but also plays into the idea of body diversity. 

One of the traits that make amazons seem more inspiring is their inherent rarity/lack of screentime. As I stated earlier, whilst I do enjoy my fair share of man-titties, it kind of gets to a point where it's more depressing than inspiring when all you see is just super-models shoved in your face whenever you walk into a theater. If for every Goku I could find ten other guys who were on the chubbier side then I'd be able to take more from when I see Goku and other characters with his body type, yet it's so saturated that it no longer becomes something to aspire to, but simply the norm.  It's not that you can work to become muscular or skinny with hard work and effort, you have to be muscular or skinny unless you want to be deemed a failure. Being chubby often isn't presented as a starting point but just treated as a defect. As someone who spent years battling with my own self-perception, that's just not a good message to get across.

Now, this obviously isn't to say that people can never make muscular characters. After all, it's their story so they can put whatever they want in it. The aim of the game isn't to stop people from making a specific type of character, but to encourage a diverse set of people to make a diverse set of characters. This is the reason why I view muscular women as so inspiring. Instead of coming across as just "the norm" or "the standard" they stand out from the crowd and despite knowing what they have to deal with, are still ready and willing to work out and improve their bodies. They had a goal in mind and set time aside to achieve said goal, that's something I can get behind.

  Conclusion:

This will be another short section, but I just wanted to mention it because it caps off my thoughts on this post in general. What originally started as me just not getting the reason why people disliked Teela's design somehow turned into a passionate rant and I'm A) not sure if it fits on this particular subsection of the community, B) scared I'm going to get ripped to pieces, and C) somewhat unsatisfied with all that I said. At the end of the day, this probably won't be seen by too many people, but to those who do see it, I hope you have a wonderful day. I just wanted to talk about something that was near and dear to my heart and hoped that I made it clear why I view things the way I do. 

P.S: Can we stop having this double standard where we act like women whose arms show the slightest hint of definition are "unrealistic" whilst men can look like tree trunks and be considered normal and healthy? please and thank you!

[whistlewhileiblogit]

Thoughts on TLoU Part 2....Again

Yeah, I am back with another vent, rant, thoughts on...thing. I wanted to wait a long time after writing my initial reaction to the game, because I figured I’d get more clarity or something. Anyway, so here are my unedited and unfiltered thoughts...8 months later. So as always, this is going to be rambly, and I’ll probably just bold parts of note in case anyone wants to jump around. So here we go!

Oh and, SPOILERS AHEAD

Things I liked: These pretty much haven’t changed. The game is obviously beautiful, the gameplay itself I enjoyed immensely (when mentally separating it from the plot), the Joel and Ellie flashbacks. They were fantastic, and made me feel very reminiscent of the first game. Jesse and Dina were cool, but I found them underutilised, which is a massive shame because they were cool characters.

Yara and Lev were also great, and again, Yara was another completely wasted character potential. But love them nonetheless.

So yeah...that’s pretty much it, I think?

Now for the things I didn’t like...

The writing is the biggest sin in the game to me, as it creates so many structural issues. The pacing is wild and jarring, we aren’t given enough time to bond with certain characters before they are killed off, the narrative itself manages to be incredible simple yet complex simultaneously, but it is a total mess.

Let me explain. The end of the game essentially comes down to “revenge bad”, no matter how you look at it. Sure, you can also include other aspects like, “do good deeds”, but they seem sort of tacked on, considering what happens throughout the game. Ellie goes through the entire story with vengeance for Joel being basically the only thing on her mind (or at least, at the forefront of it), and then just...doesn’t go through with it at the end.

Honestly, the game felt by that point that she HAD to go through with it, after all, how would she learn her lesson? Yet she learns her lesson, without actually getting revenge? So what was the point? Some have said that she learnt in that final fight with Abby to forgive Joel, but this makes no sense. Ellie had already started to forgive Joel before his death. Obviously, she wasn’t over it yet, but she clearly wanted to make amends with her father figure. Besides, she’s fighting Abby, after all. And she certainly didn’t forgive her.

I think a lot of people took Ellie letting Abby go as forgiveness, but in reality, it was in complete grief. There was no point in killing her anymore.

But again, THIS MAKES NO SENSE. Given every. Single. Thing Ellie went through the game, all to find and kill Abby. Losing others she loved and cared for, her family, her fingers (and her ability to play guitar which was the only thing she had left connecting her to Joel)...all of that and she just let Abby go?

It would have made so much more sense had she gone through with killing Abby, only THEN to realise it didn’t make her feel better in the long run. That she was still conflicted in her feelings for Joel. Why bother having Ellie go through every point in the game, only to have her back out at the last second and STILL lose everything? What is that saying? If you do the “right” thing, you’ll still get shit anyway? Ugh.

So speaking of Abby...I thought hey, maybe after all this time, I’ll be able to grow to like her! Yeah, nope. She is just as unlikable as always. Abby is a deuteragonist that we are meant to grow to care for, like we do Ellie. But here’s the thing; Ellie has an ENTIRE GAME beforehand PLUS a freaking DLC game that gives us so much time to love her. So you would think that the writers must think, we’ll make Abby super likeable! NOPE.

Throughout the game, Abby is stoic (which isn’t a bad thing on its own), serious, and just flat-out boring. Sorry Naughty Dog, but I don’t find a character who collects coins as her biggest personality trait interesting. She isn’t funny, or kind or particularly clever. She has her strength, and that doesn’t count as a personality. She’s also a shitty friend, and person, and gets called out for that in the game by Dr Preggers (still don’t remember her name).

Even Abby’s flashbacks do little to make me like her. Oh wow, she has a magical, amazing, super perfect animal-helping papa? And? I just can’t latch onto her character and story. Even if she were really well written and interesting, I wonder if I could have after the game presents her as a total fucking barbaric monster in the first two hours of gameplay.

No, I’m still not over Joel’s death. And despite what some people try and say, it isn’t BECAUSE he died. I went into the game fully expecting Joel to die (I was lucky enough to see no spoilers prior to playing), because I felt like that would be the next step narratively that ND would go. This was a terrible decision on ND’s behalf, but I’ll get into that later.

Joel’s death as the way it plays out, does not only Joel a great disservice- but Abby as well. If ND wanted us all to like Abby so much, they easily could have just made her show some remorse, or conflict, or even just a quick, somewhat merciful death to Joel. But instead, we get ~torture porn~, which becomes the first scene of many of these in the game. This scene is so fucking brutal and sickening, I personally cannot watch it. I have seen it ONCE, and after that I have avoided having to watch it again. And I am not a person with a weak stomach.

Instead of having a death scene worthy of Joel’s character, like having him save Ellie somehow or going out in a blaze of glory, as many have suggested...we got an incredibly beloved character being treated as merely a plot device.

Imagine if the roles were reversed, and Ellie had been killed in Part 2, not Joel. I doubt those saying they’d be cool with it really would be. Especially in such a disgusting, horrific manner.

And one of my biggest grievances with the game- the retconning. I’ve had some people argue with me, that the game doesn’t retcon anything. Those people are fooling themselves or just being wilfully ignorant. Part 2 completely contradicts facts from Part 1. Including:

- Joel didn’t completely lie to Ellie. He half lied. If Joel finds all of the recorders in the hospital, it is revealed that the fireflies DID find dozens of immune people. And killed all of them trying to make a cure...and it didn’t work. This is literal in-game proof that the fireflies never would have succeeded in their quest, had Joel let them kill Ellie.

- Part 2 would have you believe that the fireflies were doing well with their groups and their research. Part 2 shows a beautiful, modern-day looking hospital. But the fact is, as shown in Part 1, the fireflies were on their last legs, and killing Ellie to try and find a cure was their last-ditch attempt to find meaning in their cause. It never was going to work. The hospital is shown to be filthy, and barely up to scratch by all standards. The fireflies were struggling, despite what part 2 tells us.

- The character design changes. We have all seen the comparison pictures of the doctor in part 1 vs part 2. They tried to make Jerry (?) look so wholesome and kind, begging for humanities sake. That isn’t how it went down, and he isn’t the same person. They just wanted Joel to look like a total villain.

I also want to mention what a disservice the marketing was to this game. I know Naughty Dog is very anti-spoiler, for obvious reasons, but they went above and beyond hiding spoilers that they straight up falsely advertised the game. And no, I will not forgive them for that.

The game completely undoes what made the first game special. It was a story about two people, struggling to survive, and somehow through it all, finding a familial love and trust within each other, and fighting to keep it, no matter what.

Ellie and Joel ARE The Last of Us, and Part 2 literally kills of half of what made the first game so incredibly special. As soon as Joel was killed, I wondered how the game would remedy those moments, and aside from the few Joel flashbacks, there really isn’t anything comparable to these scenes. Ellie is alone, so she doesn’t get to develop, or show her personality. And even when she is partnered up for short periods of time, she is too miserable (for good reason), to be the joking, lovable character we knew from the first game.

Final thoughts...

All in all, I would say my opinions have stayed pretty much the same for Part 2. I will forever love Part 1 (played it not long ago for the millionth time), and it is always going to be special to me.

But part 2, as it is, is nonredeemable to me. It really could have been something truly special, like part 1, but I guess that’s just what made The Last of Us so special.

[frozensriracha]

Can i have a lian

headcanons if thats ok(also merry christmas Sri)♥️

Merry (belated) Christmas to you too~

Lian is the ship between my friend Julie’s (@theguardianoftheangels’) OC Lisa (info about her can be found here -> x,) and Hoodie

I can imagine their relationship being not love at first sight, per se, but they fell in love pretty soon after meeting

According to Julie, Lisa and Hoodie met in Slender Forest, after Hoodie saved Lisa from a monster

I feel like that makes sense; Lisa, having never been in Slender Woods before, wasn’t incredibly familiar with the many unsavory creatures that roam the woods.  More specifically, she wasn’t familiar with the malicious, doglike creature affectionately dubbed Jerry by the mansion’s inhabitants, who had a nasty habit of attacking anything remotely resembling a human and Lisa had the misfortune of running across

Hoodie happened across Lisa and Jerry, and admittedly, he didn’t see Lisa until he’d fired a warning shot and Jerry had run off

He approached under the assumption that Jerry had been harassing another resident of the mansion, and was surprised to see a chick he didn’t recognize with cat ears.

Hoodie took Lisa back to the mansion, where she received medical treatment and Slender--who was understandably a little suspicious at first--questioned her.

Lisa and Hoodie did most of their bonding during Lisa’s recovery, and they hit it off and fell in love pretty quickly

Lisa was the first to confess (sort of.)  After receiving a pep talk from @idrawstuffidk’s Rose and my Deerhead, when Hoodie came to the medbay next, Lisa was all set to confess before getting tongue-tied

Rose, fed up, jumped out of nowhere and screamed “OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE JUST ADMIT YOU LOVE EACH OTHER”

And they did

Date options are surprisingly abundant for these two!  Hoodie can just take off his mask and Lisa can hide her ears and tail, so I imagine they could do pretty much whatever they want

But usually, they like to do simple things like getting ice cream, going to a drive-in movie, going for a walk in the woods, going to L.J.’s carnival (and Hoodie winning Lisa a teddy bear,) or even just having a night in listening to music and enjoying each other’s company

Once, Masky let Hoodie borrow his pickup truck, and he spread out a blanket in the back and he and Lisa stargazed with thermoses of hot chocolate

I imagine Lisa to be very cuddly when she wants, and sometimes she likes to lay on top of Hoodie or cling onto his side like a koala while he holds her to his chest

I also envision her to be a caring and somewhat nurturing person like @idrawstuffidk’s Alice the Kidnapper, so she’s usually the one to take care of Hoodie after missions.  Usually, E.J. and Masky do the medical stuff, but proxy missions can be very emotionally taxing, so she’s always there waiting with a warm blanket, a snack, a listening ear, and a shoulder to cry on if need be

Hoodie plays guitar on both of our blogs, and sometimes, he’ll play songs for Lisa

They refer to Hoodie’s feral cat colony as their children.  No, I do not take criticism.

They sometimes go on double dates with E.J. and the Bloody Rose

Lisa is a bit of a clean freak and Hoodie is the only one who cleans the proxy cabin, so I can see them playing some music and making a game out of making the proxy cabin look semi-presentable

I feel like they’d date for a pretty long time--like 5-6, maybe 7 years--before getting married

Hoodie would go for a more traditional and romantic route with the proposal and take Lisa to a fancy restaurant and pop the question after dessert

The wedding would be a cute garden wedding (at which Alice would very likely cry,) and they’d go to Paris and later drive down to the south of France for their honeymoon

Also, I feel like this would be Lisa’s wedding dress -> x

Immediately upon returning from their honeymoon, Slender would ask about children.  And honestly, they’d like the idea!  I don’t think they’d necessarily approve of Slender trying to train them as proxies from birth (Lisa more so than Hoodie,) but they’d love the idea of moving into a little cabin away from the mansion and raising 2 or 3, maximum 4, kids.

Something tells me Lisa would be that mom that all her kids’ friends have crushes on

One day, they’ll probably be that cute old couple who are still madly in love after being married for 50 years, dote on their cats and grandchildren, and sell homemade baked goods and jams and homegrown produce at a farmer’s market

They’re already practicing their recipes-

[rotzaprachim]

in secret, between the shadow and the soul 1/2

Kanej, Inej-centric. Teen ish, marriage of convenience, 3000 words 

(About 6 years post Crooked Kingdom) 

Read here on ao3

The apothecary asks her how long it’s been since she’s been intimate with her husband, and Inej almost chokes, says no, she hasn’t been in a very long time. Honesty is always difficult in her carse- dealing with her own past, own demons is hard enough without having to watch other people attempt proper emotional responses on her behalf, and maybe the apothecary senses that because she doesn’t ask more.

----

“It’s legal more than anything. A question of economics,” Kaz said, and Inej nodded, because it's kerch and how could it be anything but? Certainly nothing as tawdry as emotion or desire, let alone love, could interfere with so large a life decision.

Only Kerch citizens can hold berths in the water, and its significantly easier to manage bank accounts and conduct major financial decisions of the kind Inej needs to make on the near daily when restocking her ships. There's one route faster than all the others to becoming a Kerch citizen.

Inej suggested it before Kaz did.

She isn’t ready for marriage, she said. She isn’t ready to be tied to a man, to be anything more or less than herself alone. The Kerch made the whole business easy by never referring to this thing they’re doing as a marriage, all the paperwork is about Economic Units, Civil Unions. There’s so many pages of jargon it made Inej’s eyes bleed. Future children held less inches of fine grey type than agreements on pigs and shipping company stocks, and were described in the same economic language.

Kaz went through the whole thing line by line until the shore she was going to call for an annulment before they’d even gotten the damned thing notarized, or else make herself a tastefully rich and very young widow.

“It’s a contract,” he said. “You should know all the details before you sign your life away.”

“For heaven’s sake,” Inej said, irritated by the last several pages about Property Division in the Event of Medium Sized or Larger Storms, Grisha Attacks, and General Flooding, “I’m not signing my life away.”

“When you get married, it might be difficult to annul if you’ve still got a legal Kerch-”

“When I get married?” she shoots back challengingly. “To who?”

“I don’t know. That fire-tongued revolutionary who writes you poetry and will make you a new world. The Kaelish tavern maid who always pours you a free beer in her bar while you sing about the plight of the repressed. Someone hopelessly moon-eyed and optimistic, who thinks the world shits rainbows and knows what you’re worth.”

“You, Kaz Brekker,” she finally sighed, “are a hell of a lot dumber than they say you are.”

---

She doesn’t tell her parents. She’s not ready for that conversation.

---

She doesn’t tell Nina. She’s not ready for that conversation either.

---

The whole thing was finished in a notary’s office in ten minutes.

Kaz’s gloves were off, more because they both need to be fingerprinted than anything else.

He swore a short, official oath of his loyalty to both her and the Kerch market, promising not to cheat in foreign ports and to provide for and any hypothetical children. She thought of the paid-off indenture and the ship and the found parents and berth twenty-two and and her room in the house in bought on the Zelverstraat and thought that maybe he’s better at doing that than he thinks he is.

She swore a shorter official oath about fidelity and staying true and all her children being her husband’s, because to do otherwise would be bad economics and make her a poor investment, a value-destroyer, on the family line. Because it’s Kerch and of course it is.

---

“What are you thinking about?” he asked her afterward in an attempt at being casual. They’d been sipping at warm lukewarm flagons of beer in one of the harbour’s more reputable establishments and looking out at the water for twenty minutes.

“I’m thinking,” she said slowly, tasting her words, “that Alys Van Eyck is a very, very lucky woman that we came around when we did.” She’s still thinking about the various punishments for women who pollute the family line, which even if motivated by economics over faith as such things would be in Fjerda, are not dissimilar in practice. She’s realising more and more the Kerch neuroticism over bastardry probably comes from having so many of the young men gone for half the year at sea.

Kaz guffawed, which was not a sound she was really used to him making. “You never fail to surprise me, Wraith.”

“How is the Vrouw Dazi”

Kaz shrugged. “Not useful to my purposes anymore. Wylan’s got her an Bajan set up in a little cottage outside Pijl with a tidy sum tied to not making too much noise.”

Sometimes she fantasized about breaking into that cottage and putting on a performance similar to the one that sent Pekka Rollins screaming from Ketterdam. She didn’t, because she didn’t subscribe to the idea of the sins of the father and thought Saartje Kazanja deserved a da with his mental pieces mostly intact. But saints take all, she wanted too.

“How’s Saartje?”

“I don’t know. Kid? Looks more like she could be ours than Jan Van Eyck’s, that’s for sure.

The tips of Kaz’s ears went red before he finished that sentence and he stared into the foam at the bottom of his glass, head turned decisively away from her.

“Fine, I think. In school now. No reason to keep tabs.”

They toasted her new Kerch citizenship. Inej swore she saw his hand shaking.

----

Her citizenship documents, stamped with a wax seal of three flying fish and a small Kerch flag came three days later, expedited by Kaz in ways she cannot begin to fathom. It’s only then she realised that they’re for the new Vrouw Rietveld, that she made her vows to Kasper Rietveld. It’s only logical- Rietveld can be the upstanding businessman who only exists on paper in a way Kaz Brekker cannot, all the better for her dowings, but it still feels like a piece of himself gifted to her.

She could forge Rietveld’s name for her own purposes too; they practiced on old betting slips that she then threw into the fire. Kerch women can legally make almost every kind of financial decision and dealing, less due to the Merchers’ Council’s upstanding opinion of the female gender than the portion of the year the men are at sea, the incredible odds they won’t come back.

(They’ve rather flipped that scenario.

“How much cross-stitch will you do do fill up the void of my absences, she chided him. “They say the old sailor’s wives used to knit lace from the white froth of the sea.” Nowadays Wealthy Kerch women waiting for their husbands to come home tended to stick to knitting hats and scarves for orphans. So saints-damned many hats and socks, and yet you could still scarcely move for the number of bare-headed, barefoot orphans come winter. It was one of Ketterdam’s greatest mysteries.

“Inej,” Kaz sayid, eyes closed, genuine concern cutting his voice. Ever more she was picking up a sailor’s sense of gallows humour.)

---

They exchanged rings at the registry. Inej’s was a simple band, no gemstones but she suspected it was solid gold. Inside was etched a wave pattern, an endless strip of open sea.

Wearing it on her finger meant something, soo she looped it onto a sturdy chain that she hid between her shirt and her beating heart. That seemed appropriate, doable. Young sailors often took the bracelets and handkerchiefs of their sweethearts out to sea as good luck tokens; Inej had a gold wedding band.

Kaz’s fingers brushed the chain in the warm dip between neck and collar as he said goodbye to her on the docks, and after she nodded infinitesimally, telling him to go on, finish this chapter of the story, he slowly pulled up the rest of the chain and found the band.

“I thought-” he said, but she looked him in the eyes, square as she could, and he halted. She doesn’t know what he thought.

“There was not and is not and will probably me a different man for me than you, Kaz Brekker.

He swallowed thickly and then slowly lifted her skin-warmed band to his lips, even though he did not believe in luck, had said he believed in nothing but her.

---

The Kerch don’t have seperate words for “husband’ and “man.”

---

“Mijn mann,” she says in response to the curious looks her crew gives her after the band slips free during repair work, and it doesn’t feel like anything more or less than the truth.

“Mijn mann,” she says tacitly when border authorities raise their eyebrows in suspicion at her Kerch passport.

“Mijn mann,” she begins her letters back to him. “Dearest Inej,” his come back, sometimes even “Loveliest Inej,” but he never uses a possessive pronoun form.

---

Having any kind of passport, official documentation, feels alien and strange. She comes from a people without a land, and for her entire childhood they Suli were denied any official documentation of Ravkan citizenship. That’s changing now, but many are still wary, and with very good reason to be.

---

The quick bureaucratic sketch to mark Vrouw Inej Rietveld as a Seetsen Van Det Kerchrepublik, looked absolutely nothing like the drawings on the three individual sets of national wanted posters that keep cropping up in seedy port cities. Absolutely none of the above get her nose right.

“I look white in this one,” she said, holding a particularly egregious example up to Aigerim, who commiserate mightily. “Look how fucking straight this nose is. No eyebrows.”

Hitting the nose furnishes very fun target practice for when her fingers itch to throw knives.

Inej wins a lot of games of darts in a lot of seamy seaside pubs tucked into a lot of different gritty port cities.

---

They dock in Pijl before Ketterdam to catch their breath and do repairs. Ketterdam’s a good place for business and to look for secrets and plan strategy but a shite location to re-sew a sail or patch up a wall, unless you like replacing your supplies every time they’re stolen. The prices of grain and barrels of water and apples are lower are lower closer to the fields as well, even if that involves bartering loudly in a Centraalmarket that smells like spilled cider and pig shit, straw crunching underfoot, rather than the hallowed halls of the Exchange.

It takes her three days to come down with the evil hybrid chest cold-stomache flu of her fucking life. Ameera shoves her back into bed with ginger tea and another blanket. The thing they don’t tell you about awesome pirate ships with awesome international crews is that you also get the full spectrum of awesome international germs.

By the fourth day, she’s putting on all three of her coats and stuffing a wad of kruge and her passport into a pocket to visit the clinic in town.

---

Other people seem to register this whole being-married business than Inej ever does. She just prefers the expedited customs lines.

The splotchy faced, matronly woman at the clinic sits her on a paper-covered table and reads through a list of questions on a clipboard. Nian loves the lab smell of pure alcohol, would probably dab it on as perfume if she could, but Inej only associates it with injury, with being patched and stitched up after a bad scrape, with the white-coated doctor who came in every two weeks to swab Tante Heleen’s girls for disease, with the brown bottle of the stuff she uses to clean blood and worse off of her knives.

“Family history of pulmonary infections?” the woman asks her. “Smoking, alcohol, jurda use?” Every question makes her squirm slightly, as if in the historyof her wheezing lunghs is some sin she’s committed and will only now find out about. Nejn, nejn, nejn. Inej forgot how much she hated being looked at.

No grisha in her family that she knows of- scribble scribble scribble- but a lot of bad eyesight.

“When was the last time you had intimate relations with your husband?” the woman asks bluntly, and that’s the question that knocks the air out from her. The woman’s thin yellow eyebrow quirks up, but Inej manages to disguise her gasp as a particularly bad fit of hacking. She knows its nothing but a bit of intrusive medical questioning, but words can have many meanings and the answers to questions can be both yes and no at the same time and a certain turn of phrase can punch like a fist and cut like a knife. So she just says “six months ago,” and gives the woman her answer for the write-up.

“Long time.”

“He’s a sailor. I cry as I wait for him to return to me.”

“Ghezen’s speed that he does.”

---

She isn’t quite sure the Kerch even believe in Ghezen as anything beyond a bit of window-dressing to their financial affairs and the punchlien to jokes. Not like she honours her saints, the small painted icon of Sankta Inej she also keeps next to her heart, her daily prayers in the dark comfort her her room. She stands with Merjan, one of her crewmates, at the grave of Sankta Mahari, Queen of Mercy and Patroness of the Lost as they read the ancient prayers together, their voices settling into the steadiness of bees. Our queen, protector of our people, give us mercy, pray for peace, pray for us, pray to bring light to the shadows of the things we have done.

Sankta Anastasia, Sankt Dmitri, Sankta Mahari, she whispers into her knuckles, her fingers moving along the prayer rope with the decisive snapping of wooden beats, pray for our safety in the storm and bring us to the shore.

---

If Inej has found her own name, written with a familar jagged hand, among the prayer-knots tied to the Zentzbridge in a plea of mercy from the sea, she will not mention it.

---

Ketterdam is ugly and bright and familiear. You can smell the rotting flesh and beer smell before you see the smoky smudge of the city on the horizon. The crew makes quick work of unfolding the grishaworked official three-flying-fish flag that gives them clearance to enter the harbour without having their decks searched by the council of tides and carefully docks at Berth 22. Considering that the berths are now being numbered out into the two-hundereds, its a plum location, but its also damn close to the action, meaning that she can already see the glimmer of plastic beads floating on the water, the dark smudges of drunkards bobbing along. A few of the crew memebrs are going to get their pockets picked right off the bat. Inej already has a slush fund tucked away for precisily this reason. She’s getting better at this, she hopes, being a leader. Predicting what will happena dn why and when. Being someone that other people- many younger and more vulnerable than her- can rely on.

“AIGERIM,” she screams as she buttons up her city coat, “only two of thsoe pink trinks with the paper umbrellas MAXIMUM. You hear me?”

“Yeah, boss.”

She sighs. She doesn’t want to be anyone’s boss. “If there’s anything like what happened with the canal and the Stadwatch last time happens again, I think I’ll find the decks need a good scrubbing.”

Aigerim gestures wildly. “Course, boss..”

She tries to take deep rbeaths to calm her nerves. Maybe she’s becoming a worried old crone forty years early, but she’s the one who survived this hellhole of a city. She’s the one who survived this far. In this world, twenty-three is a badge of honour.

---

He cuts a familar figure on the docks. THey each have their own webs now, know of each other’s doings three or four times removed, like recognising a faovrite drinking song on it’s third round of translation. The recognition of a familiar trick, hand, murder method. Kaz will read in a news paper of a mysterious storm that’s tripled the price of indigo and sweet-wood fans after a whole line of ships went missing off the Southern Pelagic Reefs and Inej will hear in a greasy Kaelish bar about the shocking downfall of an old Kerch trading family and they will each smile, privately, and admire the other’s handiwork.

But seeing him in person is something altogether different, and she still rushes over the slats of the quay, coat streaming behind her, stopping abruptly when she comes to him. They pause there for a second and then he lifts his arms and they wrap themselves together around each other, hesitantly but then warmly, firmly, sturdy as a sailor’s knot and with all the inevitability of the sea wearing stone to sand.

“I’ve missed you, Wraith,” he says into her hair and she shrugs into him, her head level with his chest. His chin rests neatly on her head now, if he leans down slighlty, and she swears that wasnt the case the first time they embraced, the first time she left Ketterdam. He denies that the Ice Court, Van Eyck, all that happened while he was a boy not finished with growing. Yet she herself’s tried on that first Wraith outfit- a costume of sorts, really, how different was it from the Scarab Queen’s glass-bead veil in the third act of the Komedie Brute- to find it no longer fit, that she couldn’t easily do up the buttons on the front. She has more of a woman’s set of curves to her hips and long, hard-earned muscles on her legs and thighs, and even if she is creating some new kind of legend it is under her own name now.

Sometimes, Ketterdam feels like that too-small jacket; it cannot fit the woman she’s becoming. So she sews herself a new coat from the fabric of the world.

“Mijn mann,” she says, because she likes the way his body flinches and then stills under her fingers with those words, sharp and unexpected as any knife. “I’ve missed you too.”

[overgosh]

So it’s after BlizzCon.

Some thoughts, because there are some posts that have popped up on my dash that make my blood boil:

On the Hearthstone Tournament Situation:

For its treatment of Blitzchung and the twitch casters, Activision Blizzard was completely in the wrong.

It was inappropriate for Blitzchung and the twitch casters to use the platform that way, as it would be if any other political statement was announced (whether divisive or not). It is completely reasonable for a penalty to be given, but not in the manner that it was.

Activision Blizzard’s corporate executives royally fucked up, and will continue to not serve the best interest of its userbase when it comes to making money and continuing to be a behemoth corporation. All statements have been strictly based on PR and have not been suitable apologies or plans of action for improvement.

On Fake Diversity Which Has Somehow Become The New “Forced Diversity”:

While it is great for marketing and for shitty apologies to fall back on their ideals using Overwatch’s diversity and Blizzard’s tenets, AND that certainly is a selling point that they will, of course, use to sell their game to people:

The idea that Activision Blizzard’s corporate executives are trying to bait LGBT people and POC into forgetting their misdeeds by adding LGBT people and POC into the game is totally bizarre... For so many reasons. For so long there hasn’t been representation because it “doesn’t sell” or “appeal to the masses”, especially for the types of games that Blizzard produces. The implication that Tracer having a picture of Emily on the dashboard and Sojourn arriving were solely added to soothe the controversy are so wildly absurd in terms of the timeline of reality itself and straight up common sense. 

Overwatch specifically has admirable goals of diversity. Sometimes the team does a damn good job, and sometimes (often) they mess up. If there’s an actual solid foundation and evidence about how the exec’s insidious use of “diversity points” are being used to manipulate the public while not contributing anything meaningful to the landscape of video games, I’d love to hear it. There is a LOT to unpack here, but that’s my brief point on it.

Oh also, for fuck’s sake - of course China has censored the LGBT content in Overwatch. That’s not an Evil Blizzard Machination -- China pushes through censorship for all kinds of media content that’s not considered “decent”, which as you may remember as an example included the LGBT relationships in Steven Universe (namely, Ruby and Sapphire). Using the same logic, that would imply that Steven Universe’s LGBT themes were included for diversity points. It’s.... There’s lots of problems with Blizzard, y’all, that one doesn’t quite hold up.

On “People Are So Quick To Forgive Blizzard”:

Some people are, yes. There are folks who fully believe J Allen Brack’s statement(s) in their entirety.

Other people didn’t really care either way in the first place, and just want content.

Some have decided that based the actions after the initial incident (the penalty reduction, as well as not stifling or turning away hosts that spoke out against the incident, and also not interfering or silencing the protests at BlizzCon) that they are taking a stance anywhere in the middle of this situation. They may be excited for game content created by incredible people, including diversity that they have been asking for for literal years.

People are not so simple as to be put into one bucket. This is a huge leap of logic I keep seeing pop up on social media. Being excited about a revelation from Blizzcon doesn’t equate to forgiving the company.

On “How can people support an evil company?”:

We have to deal with late stage capitalism, so unfortunately we can’t avoid supporting corporations while living in society. This one sucks ass, guys. We live in a time where global superpowers are so interconnected that foreign influence affects everything we do, and the simple act of impulse buying a candy bar from the grocery store check-out may have just been a teeny contribution to slave labor (hi, Nestle). It’s positively overwhelming. On that note:

Other behemoth companies such as Apple and Google are also causing significant damage to the same freedoms, many related to the same Hong Kong issues and much more. SO:

Use your voice to do good, and use this revelation about the actions of a small group of people at the very top of this video game company to make a difference. Screaming at tumblr users for being “sheeple” for being enthusiastic about dark-skinned and lesbian heroes as though shutting that down will solve the problem is a really horrendous missing of the point. There is still good that can (and does!!) come out of Blizzard, like the realization of the success of a diverse cast of human characters. As we all say time and time again: representation is important. We fight for the message that Blizzard champions to not ring hollow, so use your voice. The employees at Blizzard sure did. And speaking of:

The devs and artists working at Blizzard are not Activision Blizzard’s corporate executives. In an industry as unforgiving and volatile as games (Remember when Activision laid off 800 people after a record-breaking, successful financial year?), they’ve worked their asses off for years for this. They’re regular-ass working people who actually have a say in the story and how the game is developed. You can love the story. You can love the characters, love the games, and STILL hate the corporation. You are a complex individual, just like this world we live in. You are welcome to find where the scale for you tips. If it’s not worth it for you to support Activision Blizzard, then that’s a battle that you are fighting. If you choose to be an activist like many hosts, casters and content creators who speak up while still covering Blizzard content, great. If you choose to boycott, great. If you choose to share information to others about the issues, great. The world is far too complicated to judge on a “GOOD” and “BAD” polarity, unlike the method of thought this site (and yes, others as well) tends to proliferate. So if anyone tries to put you into a black and white box, know that there is no such thing.

Finally:

On “I feel so helpless about Hong Kong. How can I help?”

https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/cv0ws4/how_can_you_help_hong_kong_protests_from_abroad/

This Reddit user has compiled a list of Hong Kong protest resources. This includes a Blacklist and Whitelist if you are someone who is interested in cutting ties or supporting companies based on their reaction to the HK protests.

[vroenis]

When The Best You Can Do Is Shoot A Gun

The Animal Crossing / Doom Eternal Covid19 launch coincidentally seems to be related to this discussion, even tho I’d say Doom Eternal has an excellent combat system and isn’t really relevant to what I’m going to bring up. I don’t have a problem with shooty-shooty, I have purchased, played and will continue to purchase and play plenty of video games that engage with firearm violence. There are plenty of discussions about how intelligent, consenting adults can do this without any problems and I won’t retread them here. Doom is simple game themed vaguely around demons; demons bad, player protagonist good, good player shoot bad demons - OK you got it, apply an incredible movement system into that and enjoy.

What I want to discuss involves of-course that pesky word and idea nuance, which annoys the shit out of more people these days, for its applications and misapplications - fingers-crossed I don’t fuck it up, but first I want to bring up Ubisoft and systems, so now’s as good a place as any for a stolen picture from the internet.

As far as concept art goes, that’s actually very representative of the final product in-game.

Ubisoft appear to have a long-term open-world tech development objective. I believe at some point very soon, these individual objectives will converge into one single middleware product with a mandate to producce retail licenses that combine what each of these individual franchises have been testing and achieving in isolation, those being;

Ghost Recon Wildlands and Breakpoint: 3rd person Load-On-Demand

The Division: 3rd Person Cover and interactivity

Assassin’s Creed: Environmental mapping and interactivity

Starlink: Scaling Load-On-Demand

Far Cry: First Person implementation of various combinations of above

I’ll put it another way;

Ghost Recon: Load everything

The Division: stick to everything

Assassin’s Creed: climb everything

Starlink: scale everything

Far Cry: do it in first person perspective

It looks like all of these games are running in Ubisoft in-house proprietary engines. Ghost Recon and Assassin’s Creed are running in Anvil, developed for the very first Assassin’s game and in which the Prince of Persia 2008 and Forgotten Sands also ran in. Oddly, (Rainbow Six) Seige, Steep (lol) and For Honor are also running in Anvil.

Both Division games and Starlink are running in Snowdrop and this appears to be due to The Division having come from Massive Entertainment. I’ll be honest, from the perspective of a consumer (read: punter) and someone with extremely minimal 3rd-hand development experience, The Division looks far more impressive than both the Ghost Recon and Assasin’s games, and former Massive brand and art director Rodrigo Cortes has said of the engine that it was design to “do things  better not bigger” and I think it shows. Anyway, it was still developed with Ubisoft so as I understand it, they own it. Massive is a Ubisoft subsidiary, their studio based in Sweden.

Far Cry is going to be a little different, being a little older and having its roots slightly before... what shall we call this mess... the cynical age? The microtransaciton age? Anyway. The first game used the CryEngine developed by Crytek. At some point, Ubisoft seemed to develop an offshoot of the engine called Dunia because the CryEngine was licensed and clearly lucrative, I think. I’m not entirely sure, but Dunia does appear to remain in-house and under the auspices of Ubisoft Montreal. Where am I going with all this?

Starlink was “toys to life” a-la Skylanders but way too late, combined with No Man’s Sky-lite, but the game itself other than being overstuffed with Ubisoft copy-and-paste template-quests is an excellent proof of concept.

I do need to say that in general, I don’t have any particular affinity for Ubisoft. So I am yes, absolutely fascinated with something I do think is happening as far as tech goes and now I’m writing about it in this piece, and yes you can tell I’ve played and even enjoyed some of the games they’ve produced and published, but there’s a lot not to like about many of their practices, the least of which is the overbearing sense of cynicism pervasive in many of their games.

I played Far Cry 3 long after it released and got perhaps 20% thru the campaign before giving up entirely. For starters, nothing about how it controlled felt right and I appreciate that’s purely a personal preference. Being a Battlefield player, there’s something about DICE’s sense of locomotion that is perfect to me, even tho it varies from title to title from Bad Company 2 all the way to V most recently. Other things about Far Cry bother me tho - if there’s wildlife around, it always attacks the player, guaranteed. Everything about this game seems to be designed to force the player into engagement, to provide you with materials to collect, craft or sell, but also to run you short of ammunition to either scrounge for more or have to buy it because *surprise* - it prompts you to purchase ammunition for real-world money. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? Fuck off. I uninstalled the game immediately. I can deal with ridiculous AI with magical aim and irrational scripting. I can deal with absurd narrative for the sake of reading (and roasting later), but the entire package culminating in purchasing more ammunition was otherworldly, it was truly bizarre. To this day, I don’t understand what world Ubisoft inhabits that this is something that makes sense to anyone in management or marketing, and yet there it is and there are consumers that not only accept it but embrace it. No doubt there are metrics from the mobile industry that support it and dear lord the capitalist apocalypse is upon us.

What will Ubisoft do when they can merge these technologies? They definitely want to and likely already have in-house, they just need the engine to run client-side for the Consumer. You and I and Inside Gaming are all laughing it up at Stadia right now, but we’re at the wrong end of the business. For Ubisoft, they can ignore the faltering at the start, it’s the long-term they focus on. The pittance Google are losing now, even if they end-up shuttering the project will be meaningless if they end-up getting the hardware to work, even if the end-result is the hardware sitting in a box in the consumer’s home in 10 years. Sure, that’s a long loop, but the journey still doesn’t matter, only the eventual ROI.

If this piece hasn’t gotten boring for you yet, it’s about to because you’re probably excited for what Ubisoft will do with this impending technological power and development and I rally am not. What will Ubisoft do with it? Probably just more Assassin’s Creed, except you’ll be able to snap to cover and have a fully mapped country. Probably more The Division, but you’ll have a fully mapped city that you can also climb on the outside of buildings and then enter them without any loading. Probably more Far Cry but with bigger maps and more interactivity and less loading. The next generation of consumer hardware consoles from Microsoft and Sony are upon us and as much as PC enthusiasts hate to admit it, the consumer market is largely gated by the generational hardware stepping of these platforms. That may change after this era depending on how Google, Amazon and indeed Microsoft and Sony go with cloud computing, but for the moment the status-quo will remain as alternative products develop. Bear in mind with Covid19, climate change and the general sustainability and ethical standards of working and living being under growing scrutiny the world over, things are changing more each day, our technology development may change in ways we don’t expect so who even knows what’s in store for the future.

So What Do I Actually Want?

Good question. NB: before you ask, Animal Crossing isn’t my thing. I played it years ago on Gamecube. It’s cute, it’s fine. I’ve no interest in it. I’m writing this note in retrospect because I realise you may say “Just play Animal Crossing or The Sims but hopefully I can illustrate by neither of those games is what I’m after, nor do I just want to build a house in something like No Man’s Sky and fill it with crap. Let’s see if I get there... A few weeks ago I wrote about how the best thing Naughty Dog did with Uncharted 4 was Elena and Nathan’s domestic spaces. I did purchase The Division 2 on the cheap a couple of weeks ago and I’ll be honest, there’s a lot about it that I’m enjoying quite a bit. For a start, visually it’s stunning. The art team have done an excellent job of both filling the world with immense detail, but also making every area of Washington unique and distinct which is a huge feat given the total space covered. Thus far, I’ve spent a whole lot of time just walking around and gathering resources, in part just to sightsee and explore without any particular objective in mind. After a while, I got the impression that the map was a bit flat, but the more you explore, the more you find places where you get verticality, and then doing missions always adds verticality and variety in environmental and art design, it’s a marvel to see.

Apologies to James and Thomas (above) for ripping these images, but I’m glad your names are in frame so you have direct credit - outstanding work. The art in this game is without question its strongest element.

And that’s just the thing - The Division is an interesting game in that what I enjoy most is the sense of walking around exploring, gather resources and helping people. I’m not here on an anti-violence kick - I play Battlefield, I actually don’t mind the shooting in The Division, it’s fine, whatever, I’m not going to justify that. What I’m saying is that it gets boring.

THERE ARE A LOT OF GAMES ABOUT SHOOTING.

Like... a lot. More than enough. There will always be a lot of games about shooting and that’s fine. I think I’ll always play them. Hey, I even play games about shooting *in very specific ways* - it’s not like I don’t care about the shooting, I’m playing The Division with only a bullpup DMR and shotgun combo, plus I’m trying to use my sidearm when traversing the streets as much as possible so don’t at me, I’m in the game.

But we seem to mostly get high detail assets in games with guns because shooty games get all the money. I get it - shooty games get all the sales because we as gamers like to play them - sure, I’m one of them, but I didn’t buy The Division until it was under AUD$30 because gotdam the shooting is so boring and even now yes, it really do be just more boring shooting, just like it’s boring in Uncharted, just like it’s boring in Ghost Recon (my goooooood so boring), just like it is in Destiny, and the umpteenth shooty mcshooty game. I’m getting too old for this.

Uncharted 4 had an opportunity to do something more and it almost did. For many players, it probably achieved enough of what I was after by those two visits to the Fisher and North residences but I wanted so much more of that. I want to see Sully’s house or houses, more of his life. I want to know where Chloe’s life is at. I want to know of their lives and emotional engagements outside of the frankly stupid narrative I have no interest in because it’s clearly stupid and an excuse for running and jumping that other games have since done better. If Uncharted as a whole was a subtext for character, then by the fourth game, the focus should have been the characters that carried the series thru to the end - no disrespect to Tom Baker - not the heretofore unrevealed older brother.

For Years I Didn’t Know “Walking Simulator” Was A Pejorative

I think this is why I replayed and continue to replay Dear Ester so much. I remember laughing my ass off at YouTubers making videos about how it wasn’t a game and that it didn’t have objectives. Yet there were still threads and might still be on reddit or Discord wherever gamers congregate these days - about “virtual tourism” and “just chillin’ in place x because it’s so awesome” etc. It’s fine, each generation will rediscover virtual tourism again and again and we can’t denigrate anyone for doing so, it’s certainly nothing we invented given it comes from literature and oral tradition before that, but it’s remarkable that there’s this resistance to experiences crafted purely for the purposes of being immersed in them.

I adore Dear Ester and Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture. Absolutely loved What Remains Of Edith Finch and only if you have already played Edith Finch, because it’s full of spoilers but also its own spoiler warnings, I heartily recommend Joseph Anderson’s outstanding video The Villain of Edith Finch. It’s a 53 minute watch so I won’t embed it, and he has a certain style of presentation that won’t gel with everyone, nor do I always agree with everything he says which should go without saying but at some point folks, you have to stop pursuing art, criticism and media that just wholly aligns with your own views. That said, I generally do find most of what he says agreeable, innit. Anyway he’s great and the video is great.

While Dear Esther is more surreal and Rapture and Edith Finch are in part slightly more fantastical than the real-life settings of Uncharted 4′s home and Division’s post-apocalyptic cities, they all visually represent dense, very human object-rich spaces that to me are quite interesting to explore. Dear Esther might be a little more rooted in nature but its human elements tie-in to its narrative in an extremely interesting way. Each game offers different levels of interaction, some that serve the narrative directly, some as subtexts and others quite mildly in the periphery.

I’m sorry if I’m repeating myself but I remember seeing a promo for Battlefield Hardline coming off the back of Battlefield 4 and the ridiculous marketing phrase “levolution” - the term they coined for large-scale environmental destruction (please take the keys away from the marketing department). I remember seeing video footage of a large construction crane falling in a level and thinking

“All this intelligence, all this tech, and this is what we do with it? Is this all we can achieve? This is it?”

That’s how I feel about this emerging technology. Somewhere out there (on YouTube, to be fair), there’s all this footage buried of the Beyond Good And Evil sequel that to everyone’s knowledge is still in development. I’d put my money on that being the first project built in Ubisoft’s convergence engine that they hope successfully implements everything that each of these games executes individually. I know the BG&E fans are frothing for it and when I saw those early demos, what I interpret of the tech did blow me away, but from an experience perspective, I did still think the same thing...

“Is this it?”

Because of-course, a huge part of the new game is going to be combat. I just - don’t - care. When I think about what was lacking in Uncharted 4, what I wanted more of, it was intimacy. What didn’t I like about the conversation and resolution between Elena and Nathan? About the tours of their homes, the little time spent playing as Cassie, the few insights into Sully as a character, the absence of Chloe who was such a great contrast to Nathan, Elena and Sully all-together... it was intimacy. Yea oroight, so I don’t exactly mean the type of real-life intimacy between lovers, do I - that much is clear. But if I don’t mean shooty because there’s enough of that, and I’m leaning into domestic detail and emotional exploration and reflections of that in objects, spaces and interactivity, then that’s what I mean.

Tho I’m loath to bring it up, I feel like in the worst possible way, David Cage is right on the periphery of this discussion (and for that reason, I ain’t tagging him or his games in this entry, get fucked). He has the most vague notion of trying to ground his games in the intimacy of human experience, so he tries to tie human locomotion and objects to the digital representations of interactivity. If we take those as perhaps the worst possible examples and then come back to some really good examples in Uncharted 4 so I can stop whipping it - I maintain that the house tours are strengths and the high-points of the game, and then look at something like The Division and consider opportunities for more complex interactivity centred around helping people and emotional engagement, I feel like that’s what I’m after.

Which is impossible, right? No-one’s going to make a game even a quarter of the scope of The Division, with all that amazing dynamic lighting, with all those awesome textures and mapped objects, animations, rigged character models, complex scripting and AI, interactivity, load-on-demand tech and full voice-talented support, just to be a game about exploring, sightseeing, meeting and learning about people and helping them? Because who would play that?

I would, for a start.

[arcticdementor]

Ok, I'll do my best to try, because reading some of the galaxy brained takes about China and the Chinese government have cemented in my head the agonizing fact that most people prefer simple narratives and have little understanding of history, let alone an understanding of how history affects the present.

This will be long and requires some groundwork on explaining the modern Chinese mindset as a whole. Disclaimer: I am currently in Hong Kong, I hold British citizenship by birth and frequently do business with Chinese companies.

1) Big China and Collective Society.

This is something most people really don't grasp the scale of. To assign shared characteristics to fully one quarter of the human race would be broad enough to make those descriptors basically meaningless. Dividing sections of China along any non-geographical lines, economic lines, socio-political lines, this is all incredibly difficult. Despite a massively homogenous Han Chinese population, just looking at Chinese food culture would tell you just how freakishly diverse and different each section is. There are different dialects, accents, lifestyles all across China. When people say "China" it is often completely unhelpful when it comes to pinning down what they mean. For the sake of this discussion, we're assuming that we're talking about the type of Chinese person that the central government has taken pains to portray to the world. Which is, the middle class, consumerist, worldly and tech-savvy Han Chinese. Native of a Tier 1 city (e.g. Shanghai or Beijing).

Most Chinese people are aware of just how big the country is and how difficult a task it is keeping it all together, on a scale I've seen very few people outside of China appreciate. There is a real ethos of "tianxia", or the concept depicted in the Jet Li movie Hero (criticized for being state propaganda at the time, it was largely missed that most Chinese understand, if not support, this thesis). Chinese see themselves as sharing in a common destiny and collective group ethos. This can be traced back to Confucianism - a young person can have said to have "come of age" when they have fully adapted to and understood their role within a harmonious society. This both gives the common Chinese a shared purpose and skin in the game. They literally feel a stake in the collective power and status of their own country. This is not the flag-waving nationalism that the western nations consider passe, but a belief that China must hold together as a shared country and people.

…

Chinese pride is young, and very damaged. There is a sense of grievance and hurt pride that has never been resolved, and this is occasionally glimpsed in everything from their foreign policy to their mass market serialized literature. The reasons behind this can be traced back to a century of colonialism and rampant opportunism by the world powers during the 19th and 20th centuries. Chinese histories and memories are very long, and despite happening a few centuries ago this is very fresh in people's minds. An old joke about China's view of history has the Chinese waiting to see if the French Revolution is still a good idea. China has never forgotten that despite a massive population and huge amounts of territory it fell from being one of the world's oldest civilizations to becoming the "weak man of Asia", and their modern politics has mostly been about resolving this pride. There is a shared belief, or a hidden form of mass psychosis, that China has been denied its destiny as the foremost world power, either through treachery, the work of foreign powers, or other means. Even worse is the proof that the old rival Japan, a similarly impoverished nation, had managed to drag itself onto the stage of the world powers in the late 19th/early 20th century. This has caused some real complexes in the Chinese psyche.

Adding to this is the understanding of recent history. Coupled with historical understanding that ruling China is an incredibly difficult job and only people like the legendary Emperor Qin were able to unify the country in the first place, China collectively remembers the much more recent history of the Communist revolution, the Great Famine, the Cultural Revolution, and more. The fact that China's current financial power and global status is largely a result of Deng Xiaoping's market reforms and liberalism is besides the point - the defining thing that most Chinese in the older generation take away is that revolution led to some truly fucking heinous shit and a death toll enacted on its population greater than any ever seen in the history of mankind, and as a result they have no taste for another revolution. The government stays in power largely because the older generation are aware of just how much death is involved with a changing of the guard. There is also no promise that whatever comes to replace the government will be in any way better than what came before it. Sure, the kuomintang government were corrupt as sin, but was that really preferable to having everyone starve because nobody knew how to farm land for years?

…

It is no surprise that the most radical nationalist pro-Chinese are the young students sent overseas to study in western universities. The Chinese attitude towards these western academies is not great; they attend for credentials and status, but these places of study have become cultural battlegrounds and ground zero for showing Chinese students that the Western societies and arguments are fractured and impotent. Students are given courses and humanities curriculum that demonize western civilization and its achievements, and emphasize the breaking down of existing power structures. Of course this would lead to nationalist students violently attacking pro-Hong Kong protesters and demonstrations, as both sides consider each other indoctrinated suckers (and one sees the other as trying to destroy the power structure of the country). An attack on China and Chinese identity is both a dangerous attack on national and societal cohesion and stinging Chinese pride. They have been handed something that can be easily interpreted as an attempt by foreign powers to fracture the unity of Chinese society, cause chaos in their country, and stop China from achieving its destiny of world #1 power and subjugator of other nations.

…

Many people have asked me why Chinese people put up with their government being totalitarian, so many human rights abuses, this and that. Social credit system, organ harvesting. No end of horrible things we hear about Chinese government. The corruption. The dark things the CCP has done to consolidate its power. Tiananmen.

Well, the unfortunate answer is that China, as a collectivized group, wants to fuck over people who looked down on them, even if it means causing itself grievous injuries in the process. It's painful to admit, but the regular Chinese is perfectly okay with the Uighur death camps, even if the government goes to some length to pretend they don't exist. After all, surely they must be doing something to destabilize and weaken Chinese society if the government is putting them in death camps. Don't you know Uighurs can be unpredictable, barbaric, and violent? And if Chinese society is destabilized and weak, the Chinese people won't achieve our common destiny of being the #1 world power.

Chinese people don't care that there is anti-Chinese sentiment internationally. In fact, it even helps. It plays into the narrative that people hate China now because China is strong.

Privately, Chinese people will celebrate the NBA and Blizzard backing down in fear, because they equate this with power and respect. It is perfectly natural for the NBA to apologize for offending the Chinese government, because this is a display of strength. How will you be able to tell that you are stronger than someone, if they are not underneath your boot heel?

…

China has gone from largely a nation of rice farmers to modern state with terrifying speed. They are now the world leader in 5G communications technology, technological integration into daily life, the world's biggest consumer market. By every single metric, logistics, travel, entertainment, living standards, Chinese life has gotten better. And they are completely aware of this. Twenty years. Thirty years?

…

So there is an unspoken pact between the government and the people. In exchange for getting rich, the people have willingly given up their freedoms. Because you can't eat freedom. Many of the social problems in China are rooted in this short-term manner of business thinking; tomorrow, there may be trouble. Maybe the country would be in trouble. I'll never see this customer or client again. Why bother maintaining anything? If I can get a benefit out of cheating, why wouldn't I do it?

Chinese, especially the older generation, understand existential failure on a level the western nations don't. They don't take anything for granted, including the attitude of the government (and this has in fact driven a lot of asset flow out of China into other nations). They remember the Cultural Revolution, the societal madness that took hold when roving gangs of diehard Communists went around lynching people who wore glasses or owned books. They understand that the possibility of that shit happening again, or coming for them, is non-zero. So the attitude is to use every trick in the book to make sure that they come out on top.

…

There is a recurring belief from Americans that most Chinese are brainwashed by their authoritarian government, and if they only understood democracy, knew about the atrocities of the CCP, or were exposed to the taste of an All-American cheeseburger, there would be a great awakening and China would truly "become free". While certain elements of brainwashing and information control are most certainly true, there is a certain level of arrogance in this method of thinking.

For one, this viewpoint has completely ignored the possibility that China already knows exactly how cheeseburgers taste, all about the atrocities of its own government, and about democracy.

…

China's political and social state project has openly stated its intent to utilize and take advantage of what worked before, while adapting it to fit their own situation. Throwing away what doesn't work, surgically excising elements they consider dangerous or don't like. 'Socialism with Chinese characteristics'. 'China Dream'. These are adapted policies, methods, and ideals, refocused through the lens of the Party. Yes, they are stealing. They are also adapting.

Any good propagandist will tell you that the ideological battle is the first battle that must be won, and on this note America has failed utterly at defending democracy and personal freedom. This is not by Chinese design; rather, a combination of factors including financial inequality, changing demographics, chaotic governance, political point-scoring and media clickbait have done their best to demonstrate that American government is both unstable and spectacularly inept, and no longer believes in the values set down in the Declaration of Independence. America has considered the argument for democracy so thoroughly won that it has forgotten to defend it, or even the value of it. Into this void steps the Chinese government.

…

It is impossible not to watch. The US is the world's only really global power, and the current measuring stick by which all global powers are compared against. China wants what the US has, but is going to attempt to do so without the mistakes the Americans have made. After all, American empire is ending, or so everyone says. The bars are equalizing. America was a leader in space travel, so China will become a leader in space travel. America was a leader in world culture and entertainment, so China will become a leader in world culture and entertainment. America has a strong military, so China will have a strong military.

…

To leave with one last note, in the online kerfluffle surrounding Hong Kong's current situation, Chinese netizens think it's fair play to "support 9-11" and advocate for California seceding from the United States, as payback for a mistaken belief that the fight in Hong Kong is over independence. When confronted with the fact that edgy teenagers in America have been making 9-11 jokes barely a week after the tragedy and a non-zero amount of non-Californians in the US would also prefer it if California sunk into the ocean, they are legitimately surprised. The idea that this kind of independence would be preferred by both parties is almost completely alien to the Chinese, who wonder and are surprised at the fact that Americans apparently wish their country to be weaker.

[letstalksymphogear]

Symphogear, Ep. 6 (Cont.)

Hibiki, having seen a horror upon horrors, immediately asks Tsubasa if she’s okay. Tsubasa points out she’s a hospital patient, why would you ask this question, you insensitive prick. Hibiki points to the following scene:

Now, you may be asking yourself. “How does a formerly comatose person who is now bedridden on an IV drip manage to do this much damage?” Simply put, Tsubasa has a very chaotic aura. She doesn’t even have to take stuff out of her room; the places she goes to just naturally wind up like this. It’s a metaphor for how much of an absolute mess this person is simply by existing.

“l-look i just- its hard to organize things and- im more of a visual person and-”

“BITCH YOU LIVE LIKE THIS?”

Hibiki unwittingly gets her revenge on Tsubasa. She doesn’t realize it, but her lecturing Tsubasa on what an absolute mess every facet of her life is could possibly be heralded as her lowest point in the entire series.

No, wait. Thinking about it now, this is her second lowest. We won’t see her lowest until GX comes along.

“hibiki, every single bone in my body is broken, you dont have to break my pride too”

Hibiki, being an absolute darling, actually picks up Tsubasa’s mess. This is more than she can say about her own messes.

“haha, miku usually does this for me! wait- wait a minute.”

“i dont get it. i tried to kill you. i tormented and ignored you. i refused to help you for months. i failed to train you on any facet of combat as your senior. i nearly let you get kidnapped and, failing that, nearly killed myself while making you watch, which ALSO didnt help you not get kidnapped aside from scaring the shit out of that weird lady. why are you... helping me?”

“because either we’re going to be very good friends or im going to toss you out the window personally!”

“oh god, that aggression screams kanade. i cant not like her.”

Absolutely annihilated. Just kick her while she’s down in her Taco Bell spiral of humiliation and self-discovery, Hibiki.

“it’s okay, tsubasa! you may be a terminal dumbass, but im sure if we all work together, we can share our braincells and become collectively smarter, for each other!”

“interesting theory. how many ya got?”

“ZERO!”

They trade the kind of banter two people with 0 brain cells would have and then Tsubasa points out Hibiki is doing a great job in her place.

“hey hey HEY HOLD THE PHONE IVE LEARNED MY LESSON IM NOT TRYING TO REPLACE YOU OKAY IM NOT YOU, IM JUST HIBIKI, DOING HER JOB, ALRIGHT”

Meanwhile, in the library, Miku is looking at books, as she does what she says she’s gonna do, unlike a certain other person cavorting with cute idols.

“The Gay Way: How to Get Your Same Sex Relationship Back On Track, by Dr. Lesbe Honest. wow, this one is right up my alley.”

Okay, I’m gonna be honest with you. I literally forgot they show you the title in this. Imagine my face when I made up that title on the spot only to be hit with this little number. Holy shit, Symphogear. There’s this thing called subtlety. I’m begging you. We get it.

OH, AND IT GETS BETTER, BECAUSE

THE AUTHOR OF THE BOOK IS THE WRITER OF THE SHOW

IT’S LITERALLY GOT HIS NAME ON IT

THIS IS THE EQUIVALENT OF WRITING A STORY AND THEN INSERTING A BOOK CALLED “LEARN THE PLOT” WRITTEN BY YOU, IN UNIVERSE

KANEKO STOP THIS BALONEY, PLEASE

AND LIKE FUCKING CLOCKWORK SHE JUST- SHE TURNS HER HEAD AWAY FROM THE BOOK TITLED “THIS IS THE PLOT MOTIF” BY “AUTHOR” AND THEN FUCKING

SHE CONVENIENTLY LOOKS OVER TO THE DISTANCE

AND SHE SEES HIBIKI WITH THE HOT IDOL MIKU WAS INTO, THAT THEY WERE BOTH A FAN ON, AND SHE’S JUST CHILLING THERE AND MIKU WAS TOLD HIBIKI’S ON SERIOUS BUSINESS

AND THE HOSPITAL QUARTERS ARE SOMEHOW CONVENIENTLY CONNECTED TO THE FUCKING LIBRARY ON FULL DISPLAY BECAUSE GOD KNOWS EVERYONE IN A LIBRARY HAS TO WATCH SICK PEOPLE DIE IN REAL TIME

AND NOW MIKU IS THINKING “OH MY FUCKING GOD IM BEING CHEATED ON” AND HER FEELINGS ARE HURT FOR THIS TOTALLY CONTRIVED FUCKING COINCIDENCE

AND SHE’S ALL “BOO HOO HOO I’VE BEEN NTR’D! THIS WAS A CUCKING PLOT THIS WHOLE TIME! WOE IS ME!” FUCK YOU. THIS IS THE WORST. THIS IS ABSOLUTE GARBAGE WHY WOULD YOU- WHY DO YOU EVEN NEED TO SET THIS UP? THERE’S SO MANY BETTER WAYS TO DO THIS!

AND SHE’S JUST STARING BACK AT THE BOOK WRITTEN BY THE SAME ASSHOLE WHO WROTE THIS ENTIRE DAMN SCENARIO IN THE FIRST PLACE, AN EVIL GOD MOCKING HIS SUBJECTS IN THE FACE OF SCRUTINY FOR DRAMA WITH THE MOST CLICHE LOVE NOTES IN A GODDAMNED SOAP OPERA

AND HIBIKI IS NONE

THE

FUCKING

WISER

SYMPHOGEAR SURE IS GREAT, HUH? I SURE DO LOVE SYMPHOGEAR WITH ALLLLLL MY HEART. WHAT A WELL WRITTEN MASTERPIECE! FUCKING BELONGS IN THE FUCKING MOMA!!!!!

Okay. Okay. Let’s get that out of our system. The worst is over. This is the, uh, crescendo of the bad side plot as it inevitably sets itself on the road to resolution. I’m not going to have an aneurysm. My brain is not going to split itself in half. We’re good. I swear, we’re good.

Tsubasa, meanwhile, wants to understand why Hibiki fights, wrestling with the Da Vinci code that is her own emotions. She points out the fight against the Noise isn’t a game, and it ain’t no comic book bullshit either. It’s real, it’s out there, and it’s not pretty yet easily marketable as cute mascots. And what does our protagonist say? No making it up, she literally says:

“i dunno”

Not a damn brain cell in her body, but props for keeping it real. I’d likely say the same thing.

This is the face of someone currently sucking air through their teeth at the raw frustration that someone would be dumb enough to risk their life for the sake of only helping others.

“listen. im gonna keep it real here. i suck at literally everything. math. social studies. writing. helping people is all i have, because its not a competition. you just... you do it. you dont get better at helping people, you just help. like, thats it. i dunno what else to tell you.”

Then Hibiki points out that she feels it all started with Kanade saving her, and the speech implies its a ‘pay it forward’ sort of affair. She was saved, and so she should save others. Unfortunately, it comes off more as a guilt complex. “I lived, and I feel bad about that, so I gotta save everyone else” kind of stuff.

“its my coping mechanism for my countless traumas!”

“i get it now. you’re just as much of a mess as i am. you just dont show it as much. that kinda thinking’s gonna get you killed.”

Tsubasa then correctly points out that it is a kind of survivor’s guilt, where she wants to be released from the pain of old wounds, completely unaware of the irony of her statement.

“yeah. i get ya. we’re both wrecks. but... we can be wrecks working together.”

This would be the part where she says I’M SORRY but apparently we just don’t fucking do apologies in Symphogear, huh? Too good for ‘em, eh?! God.

Then they go outside and talk more about stuff and Durandal. The summation:

“do you have the capacity to live a life forever kicking ass?”

“yeah”

Hibiki, coming to terms with how she wants to deal with shit, manages to sharpen (haw) her resolve as to who she is and how she uses her abilities.

Meanwhile...

“i cant believe hibiki is having an affair with an attractive idol popstar. especially my favorite one from their old band. not only is she cheating on me, but she’s cheating on me from one of the five people on my lists id immediately get with if i had the chance. it feels like a double betrayal. a real life one, and a fantasy one... why do i find this weirdly hot...?”

“HEY NEWCOMER WELCOME TO THE CUCK AND BUCK WHERE WE SELL FRESHLY FRIED CUCKS FOR ONE BUCK, REAL EASY, REAL CHEAP, GOOD OL’ FASHIONED JAPANESE SOULFOOD”

“ive come to take my throne. i’ll take the ‘one flew over the cuckoo’s nest” and have the three eggs over easy with the ‘easy sleazy pancakes’”

“make it an extra lonely helping. this is gonna be a long afternoon.”

“ahhh. a freshly cucked newcomer coming to the cuck and buck to duck amongst their bad luck run amok, huh?”

“listen dont sass me about my busy girlfriend with your dr. seuss antics just gimmie the food and lets get this over with”

“no problem! sorry, they just come easy. it’s hard to buck at the cuck and buck when rhymes you huck make you wanna fu-”

“FOOD. NOW.”

Miku then ponders about how her feelings may have spiraled from a process of over thinking, or possibly hunger. Maybe both. Maybe Hibiki isn’t cheating on her. Maybe the reasons are more complicated than she knows. She briefly contemplates communication; a futile gesture when it is Hibiki safeguarding a secret she is forced to keep for incredibly stupid reasons.

“thanks for the food, miss. it really helped sort my feelings out.”

“no probs, kid. here at the cuck and buck, the only thing we cuck here is... our hearts.”

Meanwhile, Hibiki is still hanging with Tsubasa. Hey, if you’re gonna hang out with a critically acclaimed popstar, might as well squeeze every minute out of it, right?

“so... taco bell, huh? im surprised you actually like taco bell now. maybe you just like fast food styled psuedo-mexican restraunts? have you tried chipotle?”

“i... maybe you’re right, actually. i’ve grown to love taco bell, but... maybe i should expand my horizons. kanade did say... singing makes you hungry. maybe thats what she meant. i should take to new life experiences...”

“yeah! i can take you to all the good fast food places i know!”

“dont you have a girlfriend?”

“she can join us! she’s a big fan of you after all!”

“hey- hey wait! m- more friends? more... more friends... more friends.....”

“more friends...”

Meanwhile, a crisis develops.

Chris, having heard the f-word (friendship), is heading immediately to do the exact opposite of this.

She’s taken some pointers from Tsubasa, t-posing to assert dominance.

“how the fuck is she even flying”

“i cant wait to tell hibiki how much i love and appreciate her despite the weird NTR aura surrounding this whole situation”

“yeah, that’s right! i’m meeting the Gremlin in the park for an asskicking, don’t worry!”

“oh, speak of the devil! hibiki! i love and appreciate you despite the weird ntr auras!”

“miku- wait. oh no. i saw this happen in sam reimi’s spiderman 3. im fucked.”

“YOU GUESSED CORRECTLY, PIDGEON BANGS”

I know I’ve joked about homewrecking, but this is ridiculous.

Chris realizes there’s someone else around she may have potentially hurt. This is surprising, given murder is not something she has shyed away from, but she’s slowly climbing that ladder of morality, so cut her some slack for taking it one rung at a time.

“im losing my girl. losing my grip. now im about to lose my life. this NTR business truly is the worst.”

Chris has accidentally employed the Dio Brando style of disposing of people, which consists of throwing a vehicle and smashing them until dead.

“you’ve taken one step too close to my heartstrings, Gremlin, and for that you’re about to understand the full definition of an ass kicking.”

Hibiki fucking punches the car. Everything is forgiven in this episode for now.

“i... hibiki... are you... a street fighter character? holy shit. oh my god. hibiki oh my god you’re a street fighter character. thats been the true problem here. you’re a street fighter character now. oh my god. cheating? how could i have thought cheating was involved? you were literally just becoming a straight up superhero! oh my god. the abs! the washboard abs! the signs were all around me! the only thing you went to do behind my back was kick ass!”

“i’m sorry. i need to go kick ass now.”

The good news is all that tension just got evaporated. Miku sorta gets the truth now: her girlfriend hasn’t been cheating on her, she’s just been trying to save the local tri-county area from the grips of inter-dimensional alien eldritch entities controlled by a Gremlin and her Mistress. It’s a lot to take in, though.

These two are about to fight head to head. Last time, Hibiki was but the pupil. Now, she is the Master.

“can’t touch me, goldie locks. lemme do you a favor and CRACK THAT WHIP!”

“oh my god hibiki’s gonna fight that weird looking person”

“naruto running deeper into the woods isn’t gonna stop me from beating your ass senseless, fists for brains”

“thats because i wanna talk, asshole”

“wait. wait, what? you... you want to talk? to me?”

Hibiki proceeds to aggressively describe herself to her. Name, identity, blood type, age, the works. This is because she’s trying to befriend her, because Hibiki feels fighting people is bad, and that talking is more useful than fighting. This is a recipe for suicide, normally, but in this instance...

“what in the goddamn hell... i... um... nice.. to meet you...?”

Hibiki deploys a counter-T-Pose to show kinship, feeling that they don’t have to fight like this since they’re not Noise.

“talk may be cheap but it’ll make kicking your ass all the more easier, nerd”

Chris learns this, in fact, does not make the ass kicking all the more easier. Hibiki’s fresh new moves manage to dodge whip after whip of Chris’s attacks, and it’s really starting to annoy her a lot.

“pain in the ass. so you learned how to fight, huh? fine. you’ll tire out eventually.”

“let’s just talk, seriously! or maybe we can bond over board games-”

“i FUCKING hate board games. the fuck are you, a grandma? just fight already! people cant understand each other anyway!”

“JUST DIE ALREADY!”

“i was told to kidnap you. but im exerting a loophole today; no one told me to do it alive”

“the only kidnapping going down is me, sleeping in on a thursday afternoon forgetting class exists, you neon porcupine. so come at me. can’t kick me ass if you dont come any closer, right?”

“WITH PLEASURE!”

“ive watched the entirety of dragonball z, i know exactly how this fight’s gonna go down”

“finally. looks like i got y- hey, wait, what?”

“ARE YOU ABSOLUTELY JANKING MY LEG? THIS BITCH IS LITERALLY GOKU? PULLING KAMEHAMEHAS AND SHIT? WHY? god. its me. yukine chris. why do you hate me. why do you drag me through all this shit only to be hit in the head with some real anime baloney. why. please. have some mercy.”

“i dont know what a goku is but sure, yeah, why not”

“im going to kill her. oh my god. she doesnt even know who goku is.”

“get that tentacle shit away from me. im not fucking around anymore. we’re going to have a heart to heart whether you like it or not!”

“oh shit she found my weakness. really close melee combat.”

“MADE A FRIENDSHIP GIFT FOR YA. IT’S A FRESHLY MADE KNUCKLE SANDWICH, STRAIGHT FROM THE DELI”

“OH GOD, PLEASE, NOT MY FACE”

“REQUEST ACCEPTED, PAL”

Hibiki punched her so hard that she physically destroyed the entire armor Chris was wearing in a single blow.

“she... she doesnt punch ME like that... i mean, probably because she loves me, but..”

“did... did she just kill that person...? hibiki...? you, uh... you alright...?”

[theexistentiallyqueer]

Okay so I’ve been thinking about that really bad Hot Take that’s been circulating about fanfiction. And it’s been kind of simmering in me. The root of the problem with it isn’t so much that it diminishes the quality of fanfiction so much as the way it characterizes two completely different genres of media.

Preface: at no point is this ever, ever, ever a diatribe or condemnation against fanart or the work fanartists put into their work. This is about the value that is ascribed to visual art vs the value ascribed to literary art. I am trying to talk specifically about the denigration of literary art in fandom spaces and the way it’s been recently, in a very popular tumblr post, martyred at the expense of queer and disabled writers and writers of color.

Fanart (as a collective genre, according to that post) - Good, artistically-driven, pure, wholesome. Fanartists draw for the sake of becoming better artists, and every work a fanartist draws or creates is made with the goal of becoming a better artist. Fanartists never draw anything that is base, silly, shippy, or smutty; if there is pornographic art, it isn’t pornographic but Erotica. There is no such thing as low- or middling-quality art, because all artists are striving to sharpen their skills and become better artists, and there are no fanartists who draw just for fun or shits and giggles. Fanartists achieve fame purely on the merit of their own artistic ability. There’s no room to criticize fanartists who attempt to cis-wash trans (or trans pesenting) characters, or fanartists who blatantly, frequently, and with frankly no impunity (as their art is reblogged, and reblogged, and reblogged) whitewash characters of color.

Fanfiction (as a collective genre, according to that post) - Smutty, ship-fodder, audience-pleasing trash. Fanfic writers write for the sake of expressing their inner boners or enacting their internal fantasies. No fanfic writers seek a sense of growth in their writing or work to improve their writing in any way. The only reason any works of fanfiction are popular is because they cater to the readership’s base instincts, and the True Authors, the Really Daring authors who write Real Literary Content, are cast the wayside.

It’s such a two-dimensional view of the situation--and it doesn’t even take into account edited content, such as gifsets, which makes up a huge portion of fandom content and has been a type of content, along with fanart, that fanfic writers have long voiced their (our) upset about getting more active & polarized attention than written works. It presents this dichotic view of fanart good/fanfiction bad. Which is also incredibly ugly and disturbing when you consider the fact that fanfiction is the earliest form of curated fan content, and fanfiction itself is inherently transformative in a way that fanart and edits are not, because fanwork in general, and and fanfiction in particular, is inherently in and of itself the public (fans) themselves overriding the corporate-owned landscape with their subversive interpretations.

Like, I have seen not-good fanart. I have seen bland, unimpressive, generic fanart. There is fanart from artists who don’t have their own unique sense of style. Fanart from artists who are just starting out and haven’t developed their skills yet. Fanart from artists who draw as a hobby, and damn they may be good, but they don’t give a fuck about contributing to The Body of Artistry because they have bills to pay and career interests outside of art, and damn, they’d really rather draw these two characters making out, or blushing at each other, or straight-up fucking, than they would create something of Great Artistic Importance. That art gets so many notes. It is liked and reblogged and shared.

And that’s all valid, because art ISN’T A COMPETITIVE SPORT. I embrace fanartists who draw just because they want to, because they don’t care about quality or artistic ideals or whatever, and just want to draw someone being happy, or sad, or angry, or getting dicked down, or whatever!!! It doesn’t matter. Draw because you want to draw. Because your art is an expression of yourself that speaks of your experiences and transgresses the definitions of the world you’ve been told to adhere to. You make art for yourself, to say fuck the system!!!! We’re just the lucky souls who get to appreciate it afterwards.

The complaints that come from fanfic writers--and yes!!! I am one, so proceed with the accusations of butthurt--are that fanart and edits get more social media attention (in the forms of likes, reblogs, retweets, shares, etc.) than fanfic does.

And it’s a valid complaint! It isn’t rooted in some alien reality that fanfiction is inherently more base and less artistic than fanart. I’ve seen some pretty aesthetically displeasing fanart get a high reblog count. And I’ve seen some incredible works of literary attention get no recs, no likes, no comments. I’ve seen works of middling writers who have a lot of fucking talent and show it in their work, and yeah maybe they write porn, but their prose SINGS, and no one comments, no one shares it, no one makes their love of it public the same way they do the fanart, the same way they do the edits and the gifsets.

It’s rooted in two things:

1. Literature (which fanfiction is a subgenre of) takes time to appreciate. You can look at a piece of art and reblog it without thinking about it. It could be a work on par with the Mona Lisa, and you could still look at it without any aesthetic or artistic sense and say, “Hey, that looks pretty.” But you can’t read without thinking; reading is an active mental pursuit you have to engage with. (If you try to pull out Twilight on this point to fight me, I’ll fight you back. I’ve actively read Twilight. Even reading awful literature takes effort; arguably it takes more effort than reading something good).

2. Literature is hard to market with words, because when you’re trying to encourage other people to read it, you have to use even more words. You have to use words to convince someone to read even more words! Some fanartists draw comics or fanart inspired by fanfiction--I love those artists and they do more for us than they could possibly know--but for the most part, you can’t use visuals to show someone why they should invest their time in reading a thing. And unlike fanart--when it’s a tribute, when it’s a showcase of the character’s or characters’ canonical attributes--fanfiction can’t be green-stamped by creators, because fanfiction is inherently built in narrative, and canon-compliant or not, that opens the legal owners of the property up to legal disputes.

So much easier, then, to focus on fanart, which distribution and publishing companies love because they see free advertising in sharing it, to complain that fanfiction is a dispirited genre of unartistic creators who just want to read the queer version of a bodice-ripper.

And then we get to the question of: why is the bodice ripper so bad? Are you willing to critique Jack Kerouac and Charles Bukowski with the same derision you have for queer writers? Are you going to hold the wish-fulfillment fantasies and introspective examinations of sexuality in relation to gender, race, class, and physical ability written by writers expressing their own experiences as inherently debauched and debased because pornographic fanfiction is popular, but not hold George R R Martin to the same standard? Are you going to criticize the prejudices and disparities and biases in publishing that prevent marginalized writers from being able to break into the industry? 

Are you ready to combat the enduring popularity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which is overwhelmingly a series of heroism tales about shitty and mediocre white men?

Are you going to take aim at HBO for taking a fantasy series that, while still written by a sexist author who has a disturbing fixation on female sexuality has uplifted its female characters as heroes in their own right, and then drove it into the dirt to end on a note with the male “hero” murdering his female lover, an abuse survivor, after engaging her in an intimate kiss?

Did you take issue with the streaming blockbuster Stranger Things only confirming a character as canonically gay--after planning to have her be a straight romantic option for a major character--because the actress is the one who repeatedly badgered the showrunners about how she didn’t feel her character fit that role?

Are you invested in the fact that video games continue to be majority white, majority male, majority able-bodied, and majority inaccessible to disabled gamers?

You want to complain about fanfiction having too much porn and somehow that deligitimizes fanfiction as a genre as a whole?

Fuck off. There are hundreds, thousands even more likely, of other authors of equal skill to you or greater, who are struggling to have their works recognized in fandoms that don’t want to put the effort in to reading them, the effort into sharing and appreciating them. It’s harder to make someone care about a fanfic. You can reblog a fanart, and your followers will see the art itself right away. If you reblog fanfic, they have to make the conscious choice to engage with it. And none of that is your fault, because you can’t control how other people engage with fan content, but you can advocate, vocally, for the fair and equal respect for fanfiction and fan-written content. You can remind people, again and again, how fanfic writers do so much for so little.

But you want to come into my house and compare fanart to fanficton and claim one is inherently better? You’re the Banksy to my Catherynne L Valente, to my N.K. Jemisin, to my Seanan McGuire.

Start understanding the system is built against us all and start understanding why your battle is uphill. What’s oppressing your creative success is a white, straight, cis monopoly on what the good story, what the correct story is, limiting your options, tying you to a narrative you don’t belong to. Queerness and marginalization exist beyond what’s depicted in mainstream media, and fans expressing that through their own written content?

That’s us taking back the corporate-owned narrative for ourselves. It’s self-liberation through the written word. And yeah, some of it is porn.

It’s porn when it’s a drawing too.

[chongoblog]

The Big Personal Post Where I Talk About How August 2018 Was A Fucking Great Month

Over the last couple days, I’ve made reference to some big changes I’d made to my life around the tail end of 2018 and said I’d probably talk about them, so here’s that post. I don’t know how long this post is gonna end up, and it’s a lot more on the personal front than my usual content, so I’m gonna put down a quick Read More. If you’re interested, feel free to read more.

So the FIRST thing I’m going to say is that in previous posts referencing this, I mentioned it had to do with my “identity”, and I realize that phrasing sort of hints towards me finding myself to be transgender/nb or something of the like. If you thought that was what the implication was, I apologize for leading you on in that way! My gender identity is still cis male.

Also as a disclaimer, I obviously won’t go into many details, as real people are going to be brought up, and their privacy is important.

Now as for how things have changed for me. First let’s talk about what my life was like before this big shift in my mindset. 

In early 2018 I had gotten a job at a consulting firm. It was my first full-time job, outside of a paid summer internship. The job was well-paying, but there were a WHOLE lot of factors working against me. A majority of training was done lecture style (which I’m terrible with), with strict deadlines on difficult projects, I was kept in an isolated cubicle with no one nearby, the commute from North Georgia to Downtown Atlanta was a nightmare, and due to unfortunate circumstance, I was the only new trainee in the Atlanta location.

A few months into the job, right at the tail end of training, they let me go from the job, leaving me unemployed. I was fortunate that my parents were still willing to let me stay at their house (and even moreso I got let go two days before I was going to sign a rather expensive lease).

There was also my relationship. I was with a girl who we’ll name “X” for the sake of privacy. I want to make it entirely clear that X isn’t, like, a bad person or anything. There are parts of our relationship that I look back far from fondly, but I would be absolutely hard-pressed to say that there was any malice from X. However, the relationship was both long-distance for a VERY long time, and we weren’t compatible for a few reasons. I wanted to try to stay around GA for a while, and she wanted me to leave GA, Most notably, she really didn’t express much interest in the stuff I created. It wasn’t going to work. At the time I got fired though, I thought it was, which was unfortunate because we started to grow pretty distant around that time.

Finally, there was a sort of mindset I’d had for a while. A mindset where I felt like I had to completely divide the life I live online and the life I live in reality, being completely unable to share what I do for fun with the people around me. It probably sort of stemmed from a few things. I’d probably go with my dad’s take on how companies can run background checks on your social media when hiring you for a position. That is a true statement, and I’m glad that my dad taught me that, but if I were to critique him, I’d say that he laid it on too thick, since he gave me the idea that saying “fuck” one time online would get me blacklisted. Another reason this mindset probably came about was that I was bullied in middle/early high school, and those guys found my channel, which ended poorly. I think this sort of mindset left me really guarded towards showing people what I did, and it sort of split who I was between who I was in real life and who I was online, which led to a lot of problems down the line.

So spring/summer of 2018 wasn’t a great one. I was unemployed, living off of a few thousand in savings from three months salary. The relationship was fading, and my mind just wasn’t in the right place. I’d broken down crying multiple times, including once at a party and even once or twice on the phone with friends (if you’re reading this, you know who you are, and it cannot be understated how grateful I am). I hunted down jobs, believing I could get one with ease, but I couldn’t. I faced rejection after rejection, I almost fell for multiple scams, for some reason, I couldn’t will myself to go to the career group meetings that could seriously help me. I never wanted to say that I was depressed, because I felt that it was just a rough patch and there were so many people who had it worse. But I was depressed.

Then everything came to a head in August.

It started when my dad looked over my resume and suggested that I put Go! Child as more than just something in the “Fun Facts” section to catch the eye. He told me that what I do in G!C really is something more than that, and I put a whole lot of work into it with some hashtag marketable skills for businesses. I guess hearing that kind of flipped the switch in my brain.

That day, I willed myself to go into my church’s career group. I may have cried there too, but the people there were incredibly helpful, telling me that adding G!C was a good idea and doing what they could to give me solid advice. A lot of it I’d heard before, but I felt more motivated to follow up on it. One of them (shoutouts to Steve) invited me to a follow-up meeting a few days later. Between that time I’d spruced up my resume a little more and I’d even made business cards. Steve even said that I was carrying myself much more confidently than the Monday before, so it did help to hear a validation of sorts that I really was in a bad place, along with knowing I was already improving.

Meanwhile, with X, I had showed her the new resume, and she stayed sort of adamant that I should keep Go! Child listed as a hobby. Afterward we had a rough conversation that led to her giving me an overbearing amount of pressure to get a job. A few days later, I had to break it off with her, and then some time later, I decided to ask someone else on a date. Her name’s Amanda and I love her. I told her about EVERYTHING I did online before anything else, and she seemed to like that.

The day after I did that, I was on a call with a staffing firm who was taking a look over my resume. I’d had conversations with these firms before, but this time I did something different. Right at the end they asked if I have any other preferences. I originally never answered that because I thought my answer would make me seem childish or unprofessional, but this time I just straight up said that I wanted to work with video games. And what do you know? They had a position open with a company that makes slot machines. And now here I am.

I feel a lot more “true to myself” now because of this whole mess. I don’t really hide the stuff I do online anymore, even taking pride in it since it’s a culmination of my hard work. I guess it makes me feel less fragmented. Along with all that, I came to the whole bi conclusion too, so I figure that was part of that too.

So moral of the story? I guess be proud of what you do, and be all of who you are whenever you can. I dunno. This post has gone on forever.

Thanks for reading. Peace.

[tearasshouse]

Attack on Backlog 2017 - No. 9 

Final Fantasy XV

Breakdown: PS4 version at 80ish hrs for the Platinum. Plenty of post-game content left undone; plenty of pre-timeskip content left untouched; figure I’ll go back to the game someday (ha ha, not likely) and be like, oh wow, this single-player MMO still has a lot of questing left for me to do, cool (but that won’t happen).

Final Fantasy 15 is a big, beautiful, incomplete, incoherent but ultimately fulfilling and worthwhile experience that won’t disappoint if you have realistic expectations. So, it’s kind of like being in a relationship! Hah. Speaking of relationships, like the ones depicted in this game, and also like my own with the FF series...

TL;DR time! So far I’ve gotten as far as: 

Sephiroth’s fight in FF7 where I parked my characters outside of the crater and went, Nah, putting a stop to that glorious (ly pathetic) summer where I spent my 13th or 14th birthday leveling up Materia or something. Whew. Somehow I just lost the nerve to continue despite grinding for hours upon hours. I didn’t even have KotR, so naturally I skipped Ruby Weapon and that just made defeating Sephiroth kind of... pointless?

disc 3 in FF9, but because I’d neglected and refused to learn Tetra Master up to that point, I pretty much hit a roadblock and could not progress. Thanks a lot! Thanks a fucking lot. I really liked this FF. The soft limits on class specialization, with the way weapons conferred different skills to different party members, but everyone could use pretty much anything, the soundtrack, the characters; a lot of it was great. Ditto about the story tho, wasn’t paying attention ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

fhe first 5 minutes of FFIV on the NDS.

almost 50 hours into Bravely Default, but put it down because the storybeats were just too inconsistently delivered, the grinding, though greatly alleviated with some QoL features, was still a huge grind, and something about the game just... never clicked.

taking a glancing look at copy of FFX/X-2 HD and putting the thing down because I have commitment issues.  

the first 15 minutes of FF Type-0 HD.

and whoa, before I forget, Steam says I have 13.2 hours in FF13. So there’s that. Great music though! Paradigm Shifting is cool in theory too, I guess. But this game is just awful. And now I want to go back and play it. Why do I do this?

All in all a very poor showing from me. FFXV was, comparatively speaking, way easier to dig in. “A Final Fantasy for fans and first-timers” they say. Well, I’m not sure if I fall into either of those camps. I guess I am a fan? Sorta? I couldn’t tell you about the lore, plot or characters of many of the games, but I do own one of these. And I used to listen non-stop to shitty low-bitrate .mp3s of Nobuo Uematsu’s soundtracks on my Walkman. And I had wallpapers of Rinoa and Yuna, and still own a really embarrassing FF8 wallscroll that was gifted to me?

So! As a casual fan then, I found this one... pretty good. I mean, there’s elements of every past Final Fantasy in its DNA. It feels like a Final Fantasy game, which is to say it feels like the ones which came after 12, which did the most to change up the ATB/turn based combat, and perhaps the composition/interaction of the characters, outside of maybe Tactics or 11. 

There’s so much to like here that I’m willing to forgive its shortcomings and missed potential, even if, by the end, the things it gets right is in equal measure to the things it misses the mark on or flat out lacks. It has so much charm and warmth that I’m willing to forgive Square’s misguided reach for critical mass market appeal what with its numerous marketing tie-ins and cross-promotions, or its divvying up of exposition to tie-in films and DLC. At least it gave us that ridiculous Cup Noodle quest line. At least it gave us that. I’m even willing to forgive Chapter 13, and I didn’t even play Verse 2.

I’ve not followed the game at all, so its understandable the ones who clamoured for something like Versus XIII would be a bit irked. All those amazing tech demos and trailers they’ve released over the years? I understand the pain, but ya’ll only have yourself to blame for buying into the pre-release footage. 

Yes, the Insomnia chapter was wholly underwhelming. Yes the pacing is weirdly rushed after you’ve hit Altissia onwards and becomes hyper linear. Yes Lestallum and Altissia are in general hilariously undercooked, non-interactive, tiny and I haven’t encountered something this disappointing since maybe hitting Markarth in Skyrim, where the magic of Skyrim’s first 50 hours really started to wear thin. We’ve truly hit a point where graphics tech has outpaced the ability and feasibility to render more organic, more reactive and believable AI simulation in towns and cities. Maybe all this increased fidelity strikes a dissonance with how we think worlds should be populated and behave? I don’t know. Witcher 3 looks incredible though, and perhaps that’s the game that shows you can have your cake and eat it too. Meaty, meaningful content that isn’t just throwaway Hunt quests, or helping some asshole with his car troubles for the umpteenth time. I’m of the opinion that all sidequests in RPGs devolve into kill or fetch quests, and the rare exception requires you to talk your way to success or solve some kind of puzzle and mechanically speaking there isn’t a whole lot you can do. So, that’s where good writing comes in. Fallout New Vegas, if I recall had fantastic writing in this regard. More recently NieR Automata had really rudimentary sidequests that were carried along with quirky written snippets that expanded upon the world. Then there’s the Witcher games and to a lesser extent the Yakuza series that construct entire stories around side content. Yes FFXV’s sidequests are... uniformly underwhelming. They’re all more or less MMO-like filler content for the sake of inflating the completion time and giving you some kind of incentive for exploring the world. And yes, Luna and Noct’s relationship is hilariously undercooked; she does her Aerith moment and it’s tits up from that point on. It’s a shame you can’t be with Iris though the game teases this; Aranea only shows up to do her thing and disappears; Cor straight up disappears; Gentiana does her thing and disappears, etc. People just disappear, for no apparent reason other than selling you DLC, or they didn’t know what to do with these characters because they are plot movers, nothing more. Sigh.

But you know what? It’s been awhile since I’ve played something like the first half of the game so yeah, sure, whatever. Throw on a podcast and go about overleveling past the main campaign. Go ahead and throw on that FF13 soundtrack and go pick up nutmeg (such a great soundtrack). 

Speaking of which, I loved the music. I might even call it majestic. I loved oddball world design of mashing what seems to be not-Southwestern & not-Pacific Northwestern USA with not-Venice, briefly not-Rivendell (Tenebrae?) & not-Tokyo. I loved playing grab ass with my boys after camping out in the mornings. I loved Ignis being the mom friend and the my headcanon where the guys store all their cooking and crafting ingredients in the same astral plane where Noctis keeps his weapons. I loved the photography feature and Prompto’s arc. I fucking loved fishing more than I thought would. I loved that there’d always be some kind of incidental dialogue when you’d go exploring or take up a quest. I loved that Bahamut had a creepy human face. I loved how dangerous and crappy the Reglia Type-F is to handle. I loved that Gladio would give Noct shit, even undeservedly at times. I loved that Regis and his crew went on a similar journey all those years ago. I loved that there’d be super high level mobs just chilling in the overworld and that level scaling isn’t a thing, but there would still be things that could one-shot you. I can appreciate a game that helps me with completing its campaign, even if it does so kind of forcibly, since open worlds tend to induce some kind of completion anxiety in me. Will you please go and fucking fight Ardyn already? 

About that fighting: I like it? I briefly tried Kingdom Hearts on 3DS and it was... It was not great. But I like the automation in this that allows for just enough player input where positioning and timing is more important than anything else. It’s not very strategic, and you don’t have much in the way of tactical forethought, but it looks cool! Props to Square’s animation team for blending all of it together into a somewhat coherent whole. It’s mostly flash, with just enough engagement to not be a entirely mindless affair. 

I think at the end of the day we all have some kind of preconception of what we wanted FFXV to be, and we were all left somewhat disappointed that it didn’t turn out to be that figment of our fancy. But it exists, its more than playable, there’s a lot to do and soak in and those post-credits scenes with Noct and the lads, and Noct and Luna with the photo you chose were enough to wash away the cynicism and disappointment. 

It feels like, with the completion of the Episode Ignis campaign and the successful rebirth of A Realm Reborn, Square might finally close the chapter on 13/Versus 13/15 and do things a bit better and more efficiently. Or maybe we’ll be subjected to a mobile hell and more games in 15′s mould, the latter of which wouldn’t be the worst thing? I keep saying it but I never follow through with going back to play the older mainline FF games. Now’s the time! Maybe.

[thoughts-of-loyalty]

Personal Opinion Piece on Joke in Echoes Trailer

Note: This is a somewhat negative opinion piece about something from the most recent “Two Armies” Fire Emblem Echoes trailer.  Obviously, this will be negative, so fair warning.  I’ll put it below a Read More, for everyone’s sake.

So, we’re presumably all familiar with the recent “Two Armies” trailer, which gives us an idea of what we’re in for when jumping into Echoes.  Gameplay, mechanics, etc etc.  Overall, a very good trailer, and enjoyable to watch.

But one part of that trailer in particular stood out to me, and not in a good way.  It was a single jest: the line “Pillars of modern warfare such as paired units and predictable archers have no place on Valentia.”  For some, it has become a meme of sorts.

And that is exactly what I was afraid would happen the moment I heard that joke.  It became a vehicle for expressing hatred toward newer fans and/or mechanics.

I wasn’t fond of that comment when I heard it the first time around.  Many claimed it to be Nintendo/IS poking fun at their fandom, but to me, it came off as mean-spirited.  I admit pair-up has it’s issues, and I personally feel that I don’t want it brought into the remake, it’s not necessary; overall, however, I did like pair-up as a mechanic and found it fun.

I’ve always been rather open about my dislike concerning the vitriol of the veteran/newbie split, and that even though I entered with Awakening and consider the newer games my favorites, I equally love all of them and acknowledge that all have their flaws.

There are rather vocal members on both sides that can be very harsh towards each other.  Modern players can be rather aggressive in dismissing the older games, and can be rather dogmatic about their love for the newer games.  I know a few people who can get very spiteful towards the older games and wish poorly on their fans.

In much the same way, however, the veteran fans can be just as bad.  They dismiss anyone who likes the newer games as being “Weebs who want to fuck their waifus” or “mental degenerates who would never know a good game if it danced naked it front of them.”  They can be just as bad, if not worse, than those they look down on.

So, how does this tie into the “Pillars of Modern Warfare” joke from the trailer?

When I first learned about the Gaiden remake, I was incredibly ecstatic, and was just as ecstatic to see other people be hyped for it.  I hadn’t expected a remake for Gaiden, of all games.

I’d given it a try some time ago and thought it was fun, but I wasn’t interested because it was just too slow a game; picked it up again, but didn’t get all that far.  And then Nintendo announces a remake for it, completely out of the blue, and I was super excited: I could see Gaiden in a new way, enjoy it in a way I couldn’t really in a ROM.

But also there was an optimism of sorts.  Like I expressed above, Gaiden was in that pre-modern period of Fire Emblem - the Kaga Era, if you will.  Newer fans often didn’t seek out the older games, but I tried them and found them fun, if a bit dated.  Older fans, however, were dismissive of the new - the most extreme, even, had dismissed anything not made by Kaga.  But I saw Echoes as an opportunity for fans to unite on a common ground.  There was a rift that I doubted would vanish, but part of me hoped that Echoes would be a step to bringing people together, shortening that rift to a degree.

That optimism soured somewhat when I took a look through the Echoes tags.  A lot of older fans held fast to their dismissiveness.  People would express worries that it wouldn’t sell well due to not being “Waifu Emblem 3,″ or that people shouldn’t be excited because they expected a 1 to 1 remake (never mind that Shadow Dragon showed that would be doomed to failure).  A lot of older fans had held firm to the idea that newer fans were just unable to accept anything that wasn’t Awakening 3.0 or Fates 2.0, in short, idiots who just played for the waifus.

But I did my best to hold firm.  I told myself IS knew what they were doing here.  This game would be a game that would unify the fanbase.  They wouldn’t alienate any part of the fanbase intentionally.  This game would be marketed and appeal to both sides, and my optimism would be vindicated.

But the joke ruined that optimism more.

See, there were many different ways they could have communicated it was a “lacking modern developments” gameplay experience.  But they made it into a joke that was done in a mean-spirited way.  It didn’t say pair-up was gone; no, it said that pair-up “had no place in Valentia.”  It was said in such a way that it sounded like it didn’t mind alienating newer fans just to make the veteran appeal.

And that’s why my disappointment grew even more when seeing it become a meme among certain people in the fandom.  It just infuriated me, because this is exactly what I hate and what I feared: they gave the haters validation.  They essentially said, “Hey, it’s okay to hate the new guys.  In fact, here, use this to mock them more.”

I’m not trying to say you can’t express dislike or disappointment in the games or mechanics.  But I feel there comes a point when it crosses the line from expressing your opinion to bullying or needless cruelty.  And from what I’ve seen, this trailer joke only helped to encourage that divide, that cruelty, that mocking.  It’s disappointing.

[cookinguptales]

It was so hard to pick out of 75 questions so I hope this is ok 😬💦 2, 13, 18, 19, 25, 28, 29, 30, 33, 39, 42, 46, 47, 54, 58, 67, 71 (Doesn't have to be the romantic kind), 73, and 75

Oh wow, jeez. haha. OKAY I’mma do it, but I’mma put it under a cut bc this can only be long.

2. Who is your hero?

You know, I feel like I learn about amazing people all the time?? There are so many people in history who have done so many cool things. I love the information age we live in where we can here about heroes every damn day. But if I had to pick one that means a lot to me specifically, possibly Helen Keller. Like sure she did the whole learning to talk while blind/deaf thing, but she also became a hardcore social activist! If you read her writings, she was not even in the vicinity of fucking around, and I’m here for that.

13. What is your favorite book to read?

Hmm. My comfort read used to be Howl’s Moving Castle, but I haven’t read it in years. That’s...a bummer... Maybe I should reread it soon.

18. If you could choose to do anything for a day, what would it be?

Hmm... I mean, if we’re talking on like a magical level, then a pain-free, exhaustion-free day would be swell. I’d be happy doing just about anything. If you mean in a more normal way, then I think I’d be happiest traveling somewhere really cool with a friend and having a nice meal and seeing beautiful sights.

19. What is your favorite game or sport to watch and play?

Hmm. I mean, I don’t play/watch sports that often. Disability and all. But I used to do tae kwon do and karate fairly regularly, and I really enjoyed that. I usually really only watch games/sports during the Olympics, but I enjoy speed skating, figure skating, gymnastics, archery, women’s weight lifting... Um... I watch the Super Bowl for the commercials? lol. Honestly, my favorite part of watching sports is watching the winners cry haha. That’s why I like the Olympics best.

25. Who is your favorite author?

Probably either Diana Wynne Jones or Neil Gaiman. I’ve read a lot of books by a lot of authors that I’ve liked (and admittedly both of them have some stuff in their work that makes me raise my eyebrows now) but I feel like both of them really shaped me from a young age. I was devastated when DWJ died.

28. In the evening, would you rather play a game, visit a relative, watch a movie, or read?

Most of my reading energy is taken up by school stuff now, but hopefully I’ll start to get to read again come graduation. In the meantime, I like to watch movies best. I livetweet them a lot haha.

29. Would you rather vacation in Hawaii or Alaska, and why?

WELL I have actually gone to Alaska before! I really liked it, honestly. It was beautiful up there. And nice and cold! Which is good for the POTS, haha. But I think if I had to choose a future vacation I’d choose Hawaii just because I’ve never been there! And there are some shrines I’d love to visit.

30. Would you rather win the lottery or work at the perfect job? And why?I mean... The job I’d really like to do now certainly wouldn’t pay as much as the lottery, but it’d keep me comfortable. I mean. I guess it’d be great to win the lottery so I wouldn’t have to worry about working (which, as a PWD, can be...stressful) but not to put too fine a point on it, my current living situation is one where I don’t need to worry too much about money. I’m incredibly lucky on that front, I know. If I were as poor as I was about ten years ago, this would be a much easier choice. XD Though research does show that a lot of people who win the lottery end up getting fucked over by taxes, friends, etc. so. maybe not.

33. If you could go back in time, what year would you travel to?

I MEAN... I’m a gay, disabled woman. Going back in time probably wouldn’t be great for me, haha. But I guess I’d love to hear some of the old jazz musicians I love play live...

39. List two pet peeves.

Motherfucking DISCREET and DISCRETE which are TWO DISCRETE WORDS. There was a moment once when someone tried to assure me that “discrete” was just the British spelling and I just. I JUST!! Like if I were in the Cell Block Tango, that would probably be my prison origin story. I also hate it when strangers ask about my cane/disability.

42. If you were a super-hero, what powers would you have?

uhhhhhHHHhhhh teleportation powers which I would mostly use to get to class on time but also maybe catching babies when they fall out windows or whatever. That happens, right?

46. If you could go back in time to change one thing, what would it be?

Geez. I mean, on a big scale? Like Hitler? Bro, don’t put that much pressure on me!!! If you just mean in my own life, I’d probably just tell little!me what POTS is haha. If I have to change like. A personal decision?? I might have decided to do a different program while I was in Japan. It was very expensive (through my school) and I didn’t get to do a lot of the things I really wanted to do.

47. If you could share a meal with any 4 individuals, living or dead, who would they be?

HONESTLY, a lot of the major heads of religion. Like. I just think it’d be so interesting to talk to them about philosophy and what they’d think about where their religions are at now. Like even if you don’t believe in the religions, people generally believe that people like Jesus, Mohammad, Siddhartha Gautama, etc. lived.

54. What's your favorite holiday?

HALLOWEEN, BY A COUNTRY MILE!!! I love Halloween! Lots of great spooky stuff and yummy treats and fun parties. I love Halloween SO MUCH.

58. What's your favorite type of foreign food?

I LIKE A LOT OF THINGS... In Japan, I think I loved curry and takoyaki and onigiri best. Some of the octopus and lemon chicken/soup/etc. in Greece was delicious. I loved like ALL the food I had in Barcelona. Tomato bread and jamon iberico and olives and everything was just high quality and delicious?? We just ate our way around La Boqueria (a giant market) one day and I loved it. I like poutine from Canada and pasties from the UK and basically anything cooked in red wine from France. haha. I’ve only had Thai food and Moroccan food in the US (so who knows if it’s accurate) but I love massaman curry and bastilla and Moroccan lemon chicken. I am a big fan of sweet and savory meat dishes, haha. Oh, and Afghan Palow!! Delicious.

I PROMISE I ALSO EAT FRUITS AND VEGGIES... I also like lots of international alcohols haha. Ouzo and absinthe (taste similar), champagne/prosecco/cava (cava was SO CHEAP in barcelona, rip), sake (especially nigori sake)...

67. What is your favorite childhood memory?

Jeez, that’s a hard one. I feel a certain nostalgia for the natural vibe from where I lived as a kid. (In other words, the people and buildings and stuff were fine, but I feel nostalgic for the natural phenomena.) Like the smell of fresh soil and the sound of the woods and rustling fields of corn. But like a specific memory... Long before we moved to FL, my parents did surprise us with a trip to Disney World when I was about 8! We were visiting a Floridian friend (who we later moved in with when we lost our house) and driving down and thennnn my dad “made a wrong turn” and checked us into the Wilderness Lodge just outside the Magic Kingdom. We drove up like RIGHT as the fireworks started over at MK so my sister and I were kind of in shock haha. It was really fun.

71. What's the craziest thing you’ve done in the name of love?

I WENT TO THE MUSICAL CATS. I kid, Loo. (Mostly.) I’m not really the kind to do big OTT things for love, but I think I am the kind to hurt myself for it, unfortunately. I loved a girl for a long, long time, and in retrospect, I realize that I allowed her to devalue me in ways that I’m still trying to undo. We were never together or anything -- I have a habit of falling for straight girls -- but boy did I get fucked up. Like...viewing this through my current lens, I can’t believe I let that go on for so long. It was crazy. There are a lot of reasons why I believed I was lesser and unlovable because of my disability, and I realize now that some of that started with her and another friend of mine. I just kind of wished that I’d figured that out before they ditched me for good and told me it was because I always “made everything complicated”. (I’d been late to a get-together because I was at the doctor...) I...cried a lot. haha. But I ended up becoming closer to my best friends today as a result, and learning a lot about myself. So I guess maybe it was for the best, even if it hurt at the time.

OH I’VE ALSO GOTTEN IN FIGHTS FOR LOVE but that was more for friends. I’d kick anyone’s ass in high school, or if we weren’t in an avenue where I could do that, I’d yell a lot or say stuff that was just, ah, really cutting. haha. I have...a protective streak. And I was frustrated about a lot in high school. Our school had martial arts classes, which was a good outlet. I was known as someone who could, uh, get things done. Um.

73. What was your favorite subject in school?

Uhhh. If we’re just talking high school, maybe math?? English if I had a really good English teacher. I love reading/writing. But math was comforting, in a way. Math is very solid. I also enjoyed French. And I enjoyed a lot of fibercraft techniques in that class, but hated the teacher. Womp womp. I liked making things with my hands. I found batik particularly comforting.

75. Do you collect anything?

I collect tarot decks! I’ve studied the history of tarot before, and I’m always really fascinated with the way that people attach meaning to mundane objects. I kind of love how tarot was basically just playing cards for rich people until a series of weird events and people started using them for divination. Now people rarely use them for anything else. That kind of applied religious/personal meaning is super interesting to me. PLUS a lot of them are very pretty. Haha.