#i want to take away their trauma but for the sake of lore they must keep it

[castleaudios]

CastleAudios FAQ!

Commonly asked questions about the channel and its characters

⚜️I want to listen to the channel but I don't know where to start?

I always recommend starting with Beth's playlist, then Claire, Genevieve, Rachelle, Celine then anyone else that catches your eye! Of course, if you want to hear everybody in order so you get the whole plot, check out my Glenwood playlist!

⚜️All your audios are labeled F4A, will you ever make F4M/F4F content?

I want my content to be enjoyed by any and everyone! Making F4A content is the easiest way for me to do that.

⚜️The trauma... The drama... The conflict... Why must you do this?

What good is a story without conflict? I do promise that I'm not just some angst train, I'll always strive to balance out the bad with the good. I'm a sucker for happy endings!

⚜️Who is CW?

CW (Or Camille W. as she is credited in my video descriptions) is my partner and the visual director for the channel! Almost all the character icons were created by her and she frequently does mini channel takeovers in order to share lore and (affectionately) bully me. We've also begun sharing her live reactions to my audios, so you can enjoy some content from her on the channel at well!

⚜️A lot of your listener characters have more than one name, why?

Listeners usually have about two names, one for their romantic partners and the name that others call or refer to them by

Claire's listener: Ranger / Hotshot

Beth's listener: Seer / Beautiful

Genevieve's listener: Knight / Sweetheart

Abby and Rose's shared listener: Open Wielder / Bud / Dear

Rachelle's listener: Mage / Doll

⚜️What does __Insert Listener Character__ look like/dress like/do/ and what's their backstory?

Unless specifically referenced to in the audios for the sake of plot, any information about any listener character is strictly up to your interpretation! I love hearing what you guys think for each of the listeners and all your theories so I wouldn't want to hinder that with one "right" interpretation. I won't be answering any submissions along the lines of this question.

⚜️I've seen you on Twitter/Tumblr/Tik Tok and now I'm scared to post...

Don't be! I made these social media pages so that I could interact and engage with my audience, so please don't be worried if I see your posts about the channel! I love all of it, truly. And don't worry, I wouldn't have come onto the internet if I wasn't fully prepared for what might be waiting there. (I know you have drafts. Post them, cowards (with love))

⚜️Can I make fanart/fanfiction/fanedits of your channel?

I'm gonna be honest, I cried when I first got this question. YES!! Please make whatever you like and please share it with me! You are all so creative and wonderful, I want to see your work! If you make any content that is inspired by my work or make anything within the Glenwood universe, I only ask that you credit me in the description.

⚜️Will Celine get her own listener/romantic route?

Celine will not be getting her own listener. She pops up sporadically in other character's playlists as well as the mega episodes where all the characters are bunched up into one audio. She will be interacting with multiple characters and listeners so she'll never be away for too long. She is a married woman and has a loving wife, so there won't be any romancing on Celine's part. That being said, she has two hands, so go wild.

⚜️Where is Glenwood located?

Glenwood is located on the Southern East coast. Not too specific, since I don’t wanna base it off of any real towns!

⚜️I've noticed hints to Abby/Rose/Wielder becoming a canon poly couple, is this true or should I not get my hopes up?

It is canon that the Library Trio will be endgame, we just need to be patient while we get there!

⚜️What is the Endax Chronicles?

The Endax Chronicles will be a prequel series to Glenwood starting in March 2023! It takes place nearly 600 years in the past and will deal with the war between Vampires and Blood Mages. It will be more of a High Fantasy series compared to Glenwood's contemporary style. We've been given hints to this conflict in Rachelle and Celine's audios, but this will reveal the truth.

⚜️Do I need to listen to Endax Chronicles to understand Glenwood or vice versa?

Nope! You can listen to one without needing the other, they should be able to be enjoyed separately.

⚜️Exactly how big do shifters get in their wolf form?

They're considerably bigger than normal wolves, thought not exactly as big as horses. When a shifter is fully transformed, they stand at about the same height as an average person. Certainly not something you want to be on the biting end of, but just about the best cuddle buddy you would ask for.

⚜️Will we ever get Claire/Celine or any other pairing aside from the endgame couples?

Unfortunately not in the canon storyline! But who knows? Some non-canon audios could always be a possibility!

⚜️Will you ever make merch?

Honestly, we haven't seriously considered making merch for the channel since we're still pretty new to the whole content creation business, but if that's something people would want, we can make it a reality!

⚜️Where else can I get your content?

As of right now, I am only on YouTube, Tumblr, Twitter, and Tik Tok with various degrees of activity on each platform. However, later this year we will be launching the CastleAudios Discord server as well as a Patreon!

[hayleysayshay]

Okay what r ur thoughts on Percy and vexs kids i must know

Omg anon thanxxxx I have many thoughts. I don't know why i gave a few sentences for the de rolo siblings but for the kids you're getting a good chunky boi lol.

One thing is that I keep flip flopping whether or not they’re half-elves or quarter elves (as Vex has the blood of a full elf in her, they could be half elves in an interpretation of lore). I tend to just prefer half-elves so I know they’ll outlive Vex tbh though I am not wedded to the idea.

Vesper: She is the oldest child and acts like the oldest child. She loves Whitestone and as soon as she turns into a teenager she wants to rule. She feels a bond with Pelor as she's plane touched, and will often pray for her family's sake when they're going through difficult times, especially when her parents and aunt seem sad, lost, stuck in grief and trauma. She differs with Percy on this a lot, but she gets along well with both her parents, other than matters of Whitestone. She gets along well with Cassandra, who does eventually cut through to Vesper that she can't just give her whole life up to Whitestone at a young age, so I like to think she agrees and Vesper spends time in other cities learning and studying for a year or so, keeping close to Pelor's temples, but just feels homesick for Whitestone so would never leave long-term. Enjoys riding but doesn't enjoy the outdoors much and never liked hunting or anything to do with the grey hunt as a special force, and isn't physically inclined and only knows 'a few' offensive cleric spells. Men and women throw themselves at her feet with marriage proposals, not sure if she'd ever accept any.

Wolfe: Slightly older than Leona and proud of it. He is a smarmy lil boy who think he's the absolute shit, and think he's more charismatic than he actually is. Of all the siblings he wants the glory of being a hero like Vox Machina the most, and becomes a fairly good all-rounded fighter. However, despite being a bit of an apparent fuck-boi, he has a childhood sweetheart he marries early on.

Leona: More level-headed than her brother. She's less of adventurer and has Percy's tinkering spirit. Unlike Percy, she sits and talks his ear off when she's tinkering. She is very chatty and friendly. She loves building things mechanically but doesn't have the aversion to magic her father does. Bit more of a flirt than Wolfe, string of broken hearts behind her. I could see her moving away to help continue with the rebuilding of Emon when she's in her twenties.

Wolfe and Leona: Vex notes how as the pair are twins they're close, but they don't have that intense, dependent bond that she and Vax had, which is probably a good thing becaue these two grew up not needing to depend on each other. Unlike Vesper, both enjoyed the outdoors, exploring, the grey hunt. Both are far more extraverted. When they're adults, they decide to travel, and Leona keeps Wolfe in check. They join an adventuring party and do some good deeds (far more minor) EDIT AS I AM WRITING THIS WHAT IF THEY JOINED THE DARRINGTON BRIGADE??? like they become loyal members throughout their lives, they sometimes just join an adventure as a twin bonding exercise despite living apart.

Vax'ildan: They call him 'Dan.' A mumma's boy when he's young. Good with animals, the grey hunt makes him cry, and he becomes a vegetarian (at least for a period of time). Close with Auntie Keyleth and enjoys Zeprah a lot, I could see him joining the Ashari as a druidy boy. I think when he's young, because he's so close with Vex he just doesn't see much of his father. But as he gets older, he likes taking his textbooks on animals and nature into his father's workshop and quietly reading whilst his father works, enjoying the background noise his father makes whilst he creates. Both get that the other needs space (this quiet time is sometimes ruined by Leona, who eventually realises that she should maybe leave them alone), and Dan is close with both.

Gwendolyn: A little angel girl who just happens to look like a devil. When she's a baby she cries a lot and Percy soothes her better, I think because he had the pact with Ipkesh. Vex and Percy are honest with Gwen and the children (as their other kids could have a tiefling because of Percy) that Percy is the reason they have a tiefling BUT with the rest of Whitestone and visiting parties Vex is like 'yeah?? maybe it was me??? what of it??'. Whitestone accepts Gwendolyn as she is (said before but I think after everything that happened in whitestone, the people of whitestone would be quick to realise that tieflings are not a cause of evil or pain) and Gwen has a very peaceful, loving childhood. Still daddy's little girl growing up, but as she get's older she enjoys the grey hunt with her mother, and I just picture Gwen with a full body camoflage outfit on with only her eyes visible to give her the ability to blend in. She does enjoy combat sports a little, but is mostly 'dainty' and charming and friendly, Whitestone adore her. People start proposing marriage to her as well. Maybe she's a little chaotic and accepts a few, before ending them shortly after, but she would settle down and be adored by a loving partner. I think she could rule Whitestone in Cassandra's place on the council with Vesper--- I think Gwen would be a little naïve/easily swayed on her own, but would be a very dedicated ruler for the people and adored.

[ayamturd]

trapped│bench trio hc

warnings: mentions of imprisonment, exhaustion, ranboo lore, angst

prompt: (requested) “can i request a platonic!bench trio x teen!reader (individually) where they find out you got trapped in the prison with dream?”

pairings: in-game platonic! tubbo, tommyinnit, ranboo

a/n: i tried to experiment with writing more dialogue for this hc, pls feel free to always give feedback!

wc: (1.6k) - m.list

tubbo - 

“No.”

“Tubbo, I’m so sorry but i-”

“You’re wrong,” Tubbo cuts Sam off, shaking his head widely in refusal to the news. He slowly backs away as Sam tries to approach him. “They’re not- no. They can’t be, Sam, there must be some mistake.”

Sam is at a loss, his concern for the boy present, and attempts to raise his hands cautiously out with soft eyes; Tubbo is in panic, and he needs him to calm down.

“Tubbo…”

“I just saw them yesterday, surely-”

“Tubbo, please.”

Tubbo would refuse to accept that fact for what it was

can’t stand to look at the prison, the sight of it haunting him

will ignore the topic altogether and try to change the conversation if someone mentioned you

if they were persistent and didn’t pick up on the fact that he didn’t want to think about it, he’d snap

people always assume that Tubbo is a happy, emotionally driven person; while they’re not completely wrong, he’s extremely closed off to his trauma and knows how to put up a convincing front

that being said, the idea of you trapped with someone who is at the core of his past pain is unsettling to him

he’s trying but failing to pretend like everything’s okay, because everything’s not okay and he feels helpless to the idea that he might be at fault for it all again

make no mistake, he does care for you, but the fact that he cares so much makes it where he doesn’t want to believe something so awful can be true

Ranboo will quickly pick up on what he’s trying to do, and will go along with it for his sake; everyone deals with their trauma and hard news differently, Tubbo especially

Tommy, however, is too upset to notice and reacts impulsively to Tubbo’s reaction

they both clash: Tubbo refusing to address what happen, and Tommy emotionally sensitive when believing Tubbo doesn’t care

his anxieties would build up until one day he just falls apart

“Tubbo?”

They had been walking and collecting more material for their most recent build when Tubbo stopped, Ranboo pausing once realizing he had fallen behind. 

“Tubbo, what’s wrong?” Following his line of sight, Ranboo sighed once seeing your house; despite looking untouched in the time you’ve been gone, something just felt off when knowing you weren’t there. Ranboo patted his shoulder gently before tugging him away.

“Let’s go, man. They’re probably out right now.” There was a beat of silence, and Tubbo eventually responded in a weak voice. 

“No.” Ranboo picked up on the hostility in his tone and spoke with caution to his obvious upset.

“...Tubbo?”

“They’re gone,” Tubbo croaked, tears leaking from the corner of his eyes as he bit his lip roughly. Ranboo tried to console him, but it didn’t help stop the pain. “They’re trapped and I- I just can’t…”

Ranboo was at a loss for words, for Tubbo couldn’t hold it in any longer. 

he misses you, and doesn’t want to accept that there’s a reason he should miss you

tommy - 

“You’re lying.” Ranboo glanced down, his fingers fidgeting together harshly as he struggled to come to terms with the news himself.

“I’m not,” he mumbled, his voice weak in comparison to Tommy’s usual blunt tone. “I’m sorry but it’s the truth.”

Tommy’s breathing hitched from Ranboo’s words, the truth quite evident in his wavering tone and the fact that this was no joking manner. 

Eyes wide, Tommy was frozen to the truth and fear that slowly washed over him, life practically spitting in his face for how cruel the world could truly be to those young on the smp. 

“I know this is really hard to process but we have to be hopeful that everything will turn out okay-” With a shove to Ranboo’s outreached hand, Tommy turned and bolted away, his emotions running high and the situation too painful to admit. There was no ‘okay’ in this reality, you were stuck with Dream and they couldn’t do anything about it. 

Tommy was angry to say the least

he channeled his fear into his drive, but knowing you were trapped with the manic that broke him down and manipulated him for weeks on end completely offset his focus

he didn’t want sympathy, he wanted to get you out of the damn prison

while he’s usually caring to how others may feel and adjust his attitude to them, he couldn’t care much besides the amount of anger he manifested

he’d snap at anyone that tried to console him, yell at others that seemed like they showed no real concern over your absence, and most of all, he’d blame those that tried to downplay the situation

Sam was the center of his rage; Tommy couldn’t stand the thought that Sam sat there and possibly did nothing to prevent your current state

Tommy would close himself off and push everyone away; it felt wrong to act like nothing was wrong when you weren’t there

he can’t stand the idea that everyone’s okay when you’re not, and it follows him to the point where he wishes he was in your place instead 

“Tommy.” Puffy’s stern voice startled him, and he flinched with tired eyes from his spot above on the small hill. 

“You shouldn’t torture yourself like this.” 

Tommy clenched his jaw from her words, her concern valid but useless to his main reason standing watch over the prison. With a shake to his head, he tried to wave her off. 

“I’m not,” he mumbled, “I need to be here.” With a sigh, Puffy crouched down next to him and moved his chin towards her, eyebrows furrowed as she took in his tired eyes and the bags that hung beneath them. He was pushing himself too much. 

“But you don’t, Tommy. You shouldn’t be the one to burden yourself like this.” Trembling lips and narrowed eyes, Tommy broke down. Puffy was quick to grab hold of him, trying to steady his distraught state when he lost his footing. 

“Why couldn’t it have been me?” he cried, his eyes squeezed shut as he dug his head deeper into Puffy’s arms. “Why isn’t it me?”

Puffy couldn’t do anything but squeeze the boy tighter. 

Tommy was a force to be reckoned with when things involve his friends, and the fact that he couldn’t help you essentially tore him to bits

ranboo - 

“Are you alright, Ranboo?” 

Ranboo looks ahead, but avoids Sam’s wavering eyes as indelicately as he can. He doesn’t want to show his real emotions to the news; he doesn’t want Sam to feel worse for the situation as is. 

“Y-yeah, yeah, I’ll be alright. Mhm.” Nodding stiffly, Ranboo’s voice pitches higher than what it usually is, but he pretends it doesn’t faze him while rubbing his hands anxiously together. 

His head snaps up when Sam speaks, his ears twitching once recognizing the painful guilt in the creeper hybrid’s voice. 

“I’m sorry, I’m really sorry I let this happen.”

“It’s okay, Sam. I don’t blame you.”

While Ranboo chose not to look directly at Sam, he emphasized his point a final time, his thoughts lost in thought of the real guilty party.

“I don’t blame you at all.”

oh Ranboo

he would be concerned for other’s reactions to the news, first and foremost

he’s the type of person to put people above his own needs, he puts other’s take on the news before his own

will comfort Tubbo to the best of his abilities by distracting him

though Tommy tries to push everyone away, Ranboo will find ways to help, whether that be letting him yell his heart out when he’s upset or putting a blanket over him when he passes out after watching the prison overnight

you were one of the few people that understood his main values and always treated him well; he’s close to you, and would have probably told you about Dream’s internal torment over him

because of this, knowing that you were trapped with Dream made him feel like he had some involvement with it, that he’s at fault somehow

he puts others before him because he feels guilty, like he needs to redeem others for something he possibly did

no one knows of your status, of how you’re doing in there alone with Dream, but he fears the worst and rattles himself down to the bone

when he’s with Tubbo, he’s able to play along and put up a front too: pretend nothing is wrong and not be faulted for it

but when he’s alone, he’s spiraling and has no one there to wake him up

“I let this happen.” Ranboo was pacing, his voice echoing in the dimly light room while his thoughts rang loudly in his head. He could stand still, for he was too anxious and unnerved by the recent events.

“I’m the reason, I’m the reason they’re trapped. I did this.” 

Lifting his hands to his head, Ranboo began to pull at his hair, pushing pressure to the stress he had created upon himself. Before he could demean himself further, however, another voice spoke up. One familiar and one thought gone.

“You’re right Ranboo.”

Pausing, Ranboo froze in horror to Dream’s taunting statement. He pushed his hands against his ears, desperate for the voice to go away.

“No…”

“You did this to them, and they’re stuck with me now.”

“N⍜”

“Can you hear their screams?”

“⌇⏁⍜⌿ ⟟⏁.”

“They’re mine to play with. Because of you.”

“⏚⟒☊⏃⎍⌇⟒ ⍜⎎ ⋔⟒. ⟟⏁'⌇ ⋔⊬ ⎎⏃⎍⌰⏁, ⟟⏁'⌇ ⋔⊬ ⎎⏃⎍⌰⏁, ⟟⏁'⌇ ⋔⊬ ⎎⏃⎍⌰⏁ ⟟⏁'⌇ ⋔⊬ ⎎⏃⎍⌰⏁-”

people are more important than any goal or belief, and Ranboo stands by this when he vows to end Dream himself

[persephoneiah]

Sylvanas the Sister Courage and her Shattered Legacies

"Time is short, Ranger General. Make your choice."

And here we are with Sylvanas haters' shit show all over again... With the new cinematic out, I think there was a lot of confusion, misconceptions and misinterpretations of narratives and angles. Or just blind stubbornness with no other motivation than hate for the sake of hate. Life must be so simple and boring when everything is so unidimensional... No nuances, no depth, no background. Anyway...

Let's start with the split itself and whether or not Ranger General Windrunner was aware of her Banshee's counterpart actions. My opinion is loosely based on the "Sister is Another Word for Always" tale, and it's gonna show as well later on in this text. Yes, I know it isn't fair of Blizzard that we need to buy a book to complete missing pieces of lore, but the truth is, no matter how it much sucks, we need to take this tale into consideration since it is, after all, canon.

It seems unmistakable on my end that Generał Sylvanas wasn't aware of the Dark Lady's actions. According to the tale, when Sylvanas died, Vereesa tried to get her back by going to the Shadowlands. That one piece of her soul, which the youngest Windrunner refers to as "Sister Courage", went DIRECTLY to the Maw, even if Sylvanas died valiantly against Arthas. The Jailer literally played with Vereesa, letting her reach her sister's soul piece before taking it away again. "I wanted to watch you fail", were his words before he snatched the soul back.

Meanwhile, the other part of her soul was trapped in Azeroth, dominated by Arthas, forced to kill her own people. He locked away her corpse, torturing her with that knowledge. When Uther's soul was shattered, he died right away. He was not raised by Arthas. The 2 pieces of his soul, while separated, were in the same realm. That's one of the many reasons their situation is similar but significantly different. That is why her wound runs deeper.

As for Sylvanas herself… When the "good" realizes what the "bad" did, she must accept that a part of her had the POTENTIAL to commit war crimes. I think it also implies that every character has that potential, and losing a part of their soul can hinder decision-making and morality when a goal becomes more important than the journey to achieve it. It also implies that the "bad" part of Sylvanas also had the potential for good actions, but she chose not to. Why? Trauma is one reason, obviously, but it also comes back to the Folks and Fairytales of Azeroth book; she lacked COURAGE! It makes her accountable for her deeds while also giving her, in my opinion, a CHANCE at atonement.

Now, for the "redemption" arc… The haters need to stop saying that she is being redeemed... For it is NOT redemption! Not yet, and not even close!

First, Uther is VERY clear when General Sylvanas says: "Her crimes are unforgivable… And I must face the consequences". "We cannot change the past", the paladin replies, "and we may never find forgiveness in the future, but inaction damns us all". She is not redeemed, and she acknowledges that. The General suffers intolerable torment as she takes in the Banshee's crimes. She realizes that the Dark Lady IS, indeed, her! She KNOWS she must pay for her many offences. That's the WHOLE point of the cinematic. Moreover, she could have avoided the judgment by fading away and never waking up. She chose to come back, with the consequences that entail. This is COURAGE.

Second, this self-accountability is a different path from what we ever had before in World of Warcraft, WHICH IS GOOD! The General and the Banshee, now reunited, are willingly admitting their evil deeds and willing to face the ire... And take action to fix what they did. It is NOT redemption! It's an ATTEMPT at one, and should she survive this expansion, it's still gonna be a long road ahead. They already hinted that it wouldn't be easy or even doable. And that is the beauty of it. Recognizing one's own atrocities and working to fix them regardless of the victims' forgiveness is selfless and... well, again, an act of bravery.

Talking about justice... Many haters have an ignorant and completely biased conception of what it actually means. Do they even know how it works? How it's being served? They try to apply (inaccurately) real-life concepts such as genocides to a fictional world named "World of WARcraft", yet they want to punish her without using real-life rules. Suppose they actually want to play that game; psychological dissociation (like psychosis or drugs, an equivalent of soul-split), past abuse, showing genuine remorse, and guilt admission are mitigating factors a judge needs to consider when deliberating. It doesn't justify what the accused did, but it might lighten the sentence (you know, like being a white male, but let's not trigger more people for now).

Since yesterday, creative ways of slaughtering Sylvanas (one involving Tyrande and a disgusting rape scene with her glaives, another with Genn parading her dismantled corpse in Stormwind, and so on) keep appearing on social media... And these haters can't even admit they are not better than her. Those "punishments" are many things: inhumane execution, degradation, assault, public humiliation... Most of all, this is NOT justice; it's irrational, violent and greedy revenge. This perpetuates an endless, old, overused and unoriginal storytelling cycle of crime/vengeance/bitterness/revenge/crime/vengeance… And so on.

The same folks also claim they are tired of Blizzard recycling old tropes, yet killing Sylvanas would precisely accomplish that. They blame lousy writing only when it suits them. I never heard anyone complain about Tyrande's Night Warrior arc, which, by the way, was never fully justified, explored or explained. I never faced any outrage about the fact that as we speak, traumatized night elves are mining relentlessly in Dark Shore to bolster Tyrande's Army of the Dark Moon. Everyone is chill having Jaina Proudmoore involved in every pourparler with the Horde after the purge of Dalaran and the ruthless attacks committed, ONCE MORE, against Sin'dorei. Suddenly, trauma and shock become justifiable reasons for forced labour and extremism when the story has hurt one's side. To be fair, I actually like both storylines (although Blizzard seems to love to give their women a bad time; it's not that different from reality, I guess). I DO blame how some of the anti-Sylvanas crew strangely displays different standards in moralities depending on the situation.

Blizzard's intention with Sylvanas seems to lean toward a well-known real-life concept called restorative justice. It's the idea that instead of punishing/killing people who did wrong, they have to work for the victims, for reparations, for healing. It's up to the victims to forgive their abuser, and they may well never will (as mentioned by Uther), but the wrongdoer's goal is to work to repay every bit of evil they did. It's something I hoped they would do, and I am glad they might go this way.

There is, however, one caveat. We will need more background on HOW and WHY the Banshee Queen aligned with the Jailer and what it meant to "rewrite" reality. What was the purpose, the intent, the finality? Because without it, the schemes of the "conniving" Zovaal we keep hearing about are just empty promises that Sylvanas, Devos, Denathrius and many others would never have believed in the first place. Along with Sylvanas's fate, that is the deal-breaking puzzle piece that will determine if Blizzard is worthy of my money in the future. If rewriting reality, for Sylvanas, meant she would be reborn in a new realm where Quel'Thalas remained untouched and all the lost souls restored, it might be worth a thought or two. Any undefined, vague and unjustified plan would be an insult to all the almighty characters who blindly followed the Jailer. We deserve to have the whole backstory, one that we must not need to buy at the bookstore.

[cayenne-twilight]

Professor Layton Iceberg Explanation

As I said in the tags of the original, the iceberg I made was a meme consisting of both real theories and satire/parodies/fandom memes. If anyone is interested, I can work on an unironic version that only has real theories.

Buckle in because this post is LONG and heavily saturated with lore and information.

Actual theories

Parallel universe 1960s where the world wars didn’t happen. There’s an unused file in Curious Village that shows the year as 1960 and the time machine from UF is set to 1973, ten years into the future. The series canonically takes place in an undefined time period (hence the technological inaccuracies and fantasy elements), but it’s based off the 60s. There’s more evidence but we don’t have time to go over every little thing. I linked my “no wars” theory below but TL;DR the outdated airplanes and underdeveloped medicine in the Layton series imply that the world wars may never have happened. https://cayenne-twilight.tumblr.com/post/632205992162099200/outofcontextdiscord-timegearremix-zonosils-war

The real meaning behind the statue in Future London. In UF, the purpose of the statue is to spark Layton and Luke’s conversation about their friendship. Luke is stressing out about moving overseas and sees himself and the professor in the story behind the statue, but in the bigger picture, Clive must have been the one to commission it. Some theorize that the little boy is Clive and the man is either his father or the professor. One idea I’ve seen is that Clive wishes he could be Luke for real, while another is that he wishes he died ten years ago, and another is that he’s literally terminally ill explaining why he doesn’t care about consequence. Personally, I think “the boy succumbed to his illness” refers to his mental illness seeing as he wanted the professor to save him from his madness as he saved him all those years ago.

True location of Monte D’Or. there are no deserts on the British isles to my knowledge, so it makes the most sense for Monte D’Or to be in Southwest USA where English is the default language, they have a desert, and there exists a city famous for flashy hotels, casinos, and entertainment. What makes it odd is that nobody ever mentions overseas travel, and all the major characters are from England.

Loosha’s origins are not explicitly explained if I remember correctly, but the implication was that her prehistoric (supposedly) species was sealed away along with the garden, allowing them to survive all the way to the time of LS until Loosha was the only one left. The garden provided a good habitat and protection from predators, and it’s logical that they’d slowly die out anyways, but there’s no explanation of any specific factors that led to Loosha being the last.

Beasley is not a bee I wrote a post about this one as well, but TL;DR Beasly lacks several defining bee traits whilst having several human ones. He is not human, yet, by definition, not a bee. It’s possible that he is the result of Dimitri’s testing, but whatever his untold story is, he remains an enigma of nature. https://cayenne-twilight.tumblr.com/post/632381715250282496/theory-beasly-isnt-a-bee

Subject 2’s identity is currently unknown. There is a subject one (parrot) and subject 3 (rabbit) so there has to be a second. For a long time, people suspected Beasly to be him seeing as he’s a bit of an amalgamation and definitely not a regular bee (see above). After the release of LMJ, though, people began to suspect Sherl, the intelligent hound who could speak to certain people but not others. That being said, it’s possible for one to be subject 4. Sherl’s memory of a bright flash matches up with subject 3’s memory of being electrocuted. They never explain why the animals were being experimented on, but it was probably Dimitri making sure the conditions of his machine were safe for humans before reliving the incident from ten years ago.

Lady Violet died from the plague from DB. There’s no evidence for this or anything, it’s just an idea. People say she died from the flu but I don’t remember them saying that in the game, at least the US version. Extending off my “no war” theory: it’s theorized that the Spanish Flu was spread by the travlelling soldiers, so if that’s true, it’s possible for the epidemic to have been averted for some decades. Maybe the Spanish Flu reached England later than in real life. The hole in this is that DB’s plague must’ve been close in time to 1918 while Violet’s death was much later, so it would’ve had to stick around.

Bill Hawks is working with Targent and Arthur Cantabella. There was a force in the shadows buying the time machine technology from Bill. Someone with a ton of money who helped him cover up a freak accident and get away with it completely, a feat that involved shady means like violence by hired thugs. Some theorize that it was Targent, seeking power over time in exchange for a little mafia magic. The Labarynthia project was sponsored by the UK government, so as the PM, Bill must’ve known about it. He probably supported dubiously ethical, high stakes (witch pun) psychological experiments like Cantabella’s and helped him stay in the shadows.

All the NPCs in St. Mystere and Folsense are dead. I make fun of this type of theory later, but they’re admittedly captivating. I’m pretty sure the canon in CV is that the villagers are Bruno and Augustus’s OCs that they made robots of and built a town around, but it’s more interesting to think that the village was there before, and the townspeople died of a plague and were replaced like Lady Violet. In Folsense, there really was a plague and they never explain the NPCs there. They’re either real people who appear way younger than they are due to hallucinations (even the ones who already look old ?), or they don’t exist at all, which is pretty spooky. This part of the story is a gaping plot hole. In a similar vein to CV, the edgy yet plausible theory is that they used to live in Folsense but died of the plague and now live on as hallucinations.

Hershel seeing everything as a puzzle is a coping mechanism for all his trauma. This was a joke but I thought about it for more than five seconds and it makes way too much sense.

Plot holes and unexplained questions that we like to overthink because it’s fun

The downfall of the Azran was vaguely explained in canon by people being so greedy that it lead to the civilization collapsing. It’s not a stretch to imagine that happening, but it would’ve been more interesting with a little more detail.

Layton and Luke are programmed to routinely forget how to walk. I didn’t know whether to list this in the joke section or not, but it’s odd that the characters actively participate in the walking tutorial (as opposed to showing a little memo to the player) as if they didn’t know how to before, especially when they go through this several times a year.

The truth behind Pavel. He’s simply a joke character who teleports, is a polyglot (sort of, at least he wants us to think he is) and is mega confused all the time. He’s a fun character to make crack theories about because of his cryptic nature that even he doesn’t seem to understand.

Miracle Mask deleted scenes. The first trailer for MM featured animations that were not in the final game. One was the Randall falling scene, except in a slightly different style than the one we know. Others were completely foreign, like Layton and Luke pacing across a theatre stage as if Layton’s about to expose someone with a dramatic point. Cut content and “could’ve beens” are always curious to think about.

Evan Barde: secret mastermind. Arianna and Tony’s dad is a mysterious character who died under mysterious circumstances. I think the canon is that his death was a genuine accident, but concept art of him making a creepy evil face suggests that maybe he originally had a larger role in the first drafts of LS than the finished game.

The secret to how Paul and Des pull off their disguises is unclear and will remain unclear. There is no plausible explanation for their shape shifting. Unless Paul is just a little dude wearing a human suit like that one Wizard of Oz species and Des is the best quick-changer ever and hides his naturally feminine legs under his cloak.

Alfendi’s mom. When LBMR came out people scrambled to piece together who Hershel had a kid with, but there’s no way alfendi is his biological son. This happened with Kat as well and her biological parents turned out to be brand new characters, so I’m sure Al will get an adoption backstory if his arc continues, be his parents old major characters or nameless, faceless NPCs.

Granny Riddleton and Stachenscarfen are omnipotent deities. Idk which section this fits best under, but these two characters have some serious power. At first introduction, they’re implied to be robots, but they appear everywhere in later games. They follow the Professor wherever he goes and assist him on his adventures, GR collecting puzzles and housing them by some odd magic, and Stachen teaches you how to walk. They both introduce and supervise the gameplay. By extension, I guess this idea could apply to Albus as well in the prequels. GR and Stachen even had the power to appear in LMJ, something no major character could do. I consider them akin to the velvet room attendants from the Persona games.

Clive’s kill count is a vague subject in the game for the sake of keeping it PG. I don’t know if anyone’s ever mathematically estimated the damage he caused, and I sure don’t want to try, but the game appears to push the idea that he didn’t kill anyone at all, saying they stopped him in the nick of time and things like that, even though we watch him raze the city. If they ever want to bring him back post-time skip, I can see them twisting it so that the mobile fortress cutscene wasn’t a linear sequence of events, but instead a compilation of scenes over the course of hours so that London neighborhoods around him could be evacuated and have it make sense. Knowing Level-5, it’s more likely that they wouldn’t think this deep and do something more lazy, though.

Memes and references

Post-time skip Flora is real references the famous L is real theory from Super Mario 64. Like Luigi in SM64, Flora was also a highly anticipated character who didn’t appear in a new game, in this case LMJ or LMDA. In the end, Luigi did become real in the DS port so hopefully Flora is real will be realized as well.

Hershel can’t read is a veteran fandom meme referring to how in the first few games, especially Curious Village, Layton asks Luke to read every document out loud for him. Perhaps this was an exercise to improve Luke’s reading skills and independent thinking, or perhaps he was just too lazy or preoccupied to do it himself, but this grew into the joke that our genius Professor was actually illiterate this whole time.

Layton’s smash invitation is hidden in PLvsAA. It’s no secret that the fandom would kill a man to get the Professor into the smash brothers franchise. In PLvsAA one of the puzzle artworks features a goat eating a familiar white envelope with a red stamp, sparking the joke that either Layton or Wright got the invitation their respective fans desired, but it got lost along the way.

The science board is the mysteriously vague organization Don Paolo got kicked out of for the crime of being evil. It’s the epitome of liberal arts majors and art school graduates trying to bs their way around not knowing any science and failing miserably. “He was very good at all the sciences, but then the CEO of science told him to stop because he was using the power of science for evil science”. They do this again when “Dr. Stahngun” describes his time machine what with the soolha coils and whatnot.

Hoogland is death cult initiation is a parody of “Mario 64 is Freemason initiation” which is ridiculous, just like the creepy human sacrifice subplot of AL.

You can see the reflection of someone watching you in Aurora’s eye references the famous, creepy Talking Angela theory. In retrospect it would’ve been funnier if I said Angela instead of Aurora.

Every copy of Professor Layton is personalized references the famous “every copy of Super Mario 64 is personalized”

Clive’s fat ass in HD is a meme that originated from the announcement of UFHD, saying that half of the excited fans wanted to cry again while the other half were simply attracted to Clive. If we want to enter real bottom-section-of-the-iceberg-chart territory then let’s say Clive’s character has some sort of psychological siren properties that draw people to him like a magnet and/or Harry Styles.

Things I pulled out of my ass for shits and giggles

Infinite hint coin hack: I’m sure a tech savvy cheater could hack the game for infinite hint coins, but there’s no easy or interesting way. I don’t know why someone would do that though, considering a lot of the hints suck and there are puzzle guides on the internet.

Cringy, unused Randall villain monologue. This joke is derived from the actual scrapped MM content as well as deleted content being a popular element of iceberg charts, but it’s sadly not real. Would’ve been hilarious, though.

Last Specter Puzzle 031: Light Height tracks and records children’s intelligence level. It doesn’t, but it’s always fun to make fun of arguably THE most ridiculously difficult puzzle in the franchise. (Seriously, do they expect 7+ year olds to know trigonometry???)

Hershel struggles with tea addiction. Hershel from the games drinks tea in moderation, but the manga begs to differ. He has a tea set in the Laytonmobile, and an attempt at teatime while driving causes him to crash.

Folsense is a metaphor for Alzheimer’s. This is inspired by those edgy kids’ show theories where everyone’s in hell or something, but nobody has ever said this.

London Life is reality and the plot of the games is all in Luke’s head. That’s one way to fill every plot hole. How funny would it be if Luke made up crazy characters and stories based off his fellow townspeople Sharkboy and Lavagirl style. “This dude who lives in a castle and asks people to give him all their money for nothing in return is a vampire from 50 years ago involved in a tragic love story”.

Secret ending encoded into Tago’s Head Gymnastics. It’d be crazy if there was, and Dimitri would hound Tago for the secret to time travel. If you didn’t know, the Layton games started as an adaption of Akira Tago’s puzzle series, except they decided to add a story to make it more interesting and marketable.

Daily puzzles datamine your DS. I’m bad with technology but is it even possible to datamine a DS??? Idk, but I think my DS lite from 2008 is safe.

[shingogf]

And in celebration of my newfound drive to suddenly post and expand upon my (superb) opinions on my fav pieces of media, i must also say this: i dont rlly agree with the "hehe but its fun to imagine william had 0 motive to murder cuz hes just built diff lol!" affirmation like...yea ok but do u realize how dull and utterly boring that is from a writing pov. Scott cant fuckin write a linear story nor can he model humans to save his own life and has to pull 1000 books out of his ass to fill in the gaps and even THEN it still aint enough. So i can take the liberty to think about the what ifs.

Not negating the existence of serial killers that had a seemingly normal and uneventful upbringing doing what they did later in life at all, that IS a possibility. Theoretically the likes of dahmer and bundy could be put into that category (tho we'll never know for sure but i digress) so yes people who weren't abused or didnt go through major trauma can STILL commit heinous acts.

BUT i still think, for the sake of storytelling and character flavour, that it is infinitely better to say (this is fuckin fnaf lore we STILL dont have a clear answer of who was first nd i've seen many ppl who have diff interpretations when it comes to details cuz duh😑) that evan died FIRST and that was the beginning of william's downward spiral. Just imagine, an already unhealthy mind having to process such immense amounts of agony and grief. It's only logical he'll eventually snap and do something awful. And that only makes his folllowing actions all the more impactful and infinitely more fucked up.

I wont dive rn into the backstory of william that i made and how everything clicks into place when adding up the already known fnaf lore, but just the mere fact that he already by no means was a "good" person and suffered from untreated mental illness and then one of his OWN kids kills ANOTHER ONE OF HIS OWN like. USING HIS OWN CREATION. Can you imagine. That ultimately would make his already egotistical ass think "wow! life fucking sucks and if i cant have shit then no one will!" and thats precisely why he kills charlie afterwards, making her his first victim ever. And that was the only non premeditated murder bc it was done completely on impulse, he saw a chance and took it after henry berated him for his erratic behavior that resulted from evan's death bc it was causing up trouble at work and in their business relationship, so mans simply drove away angrily, saw charlie conveniently locked out of the restaurant and did it in a sick act of revenge that held nothing but pure pent up rage. And after he saw that he could even get away with killing his best friend's kid, he wanted to see just how much he could push it. This also makes sense when u think of when henry says "a wound first inflicted on me" at the end of fnaf 6 bc it implies charlie really being william's first murder and a personal one at that.

AND i have to say i also completely disagree with the whole william offed his wife and yeeted her into ballora theory. Not only would it throw more suspicion on william cuz at this point he had 6 victims and ppl deadass KNEW it was him, but i firmly believe mrs afton skeddadled sometime before elizabeth died. His fuckin marriage fell apart alongside everything else following evan's death in 1983. I believe ballora (just like how circus baby was modeled after elizabeth) was made as an homage to his wife and because it was clear the only family member he felt badly about was michael for obvious reasons. In my mind william always goes for victims he isn't emotionally involved with and actively avoids killing close ones (the only exception to the rule being charlie bc 1. it was done entirely on impulse and i believe its the only crime he regretted at least in the moment and 2. i dont think he was necessarily emotionally involved w charlie despite obvs knowing her, if anything i'd argue HENRY is more emotionally involved w william's kids bc he's a much more mentally healthy person than he is) a.k.a the double life serial killer if u will (think keith jesperson) like he literally cared abt his family in his own weird ass ways, he never wanted evan or ELIZABETH to die.

[tenebrisxarmatus]

Halo Infinite

Alright now that I’m not away from home I think I can finally put into words why the campaign hits all the right notes with most people I know. Obviously there’s going to be spoilers, so read ahead at your own risk:

So after getting 4 (decent campaign, great story but hindered by usual ‘new studio’ growing pains) where the dynamic in the galaxy had shifted, and then getting the absolute DUMPSTER FIRE that was 5, Infinite’s main draw, at least to me, is a return to form by embracing Halo CE all over again.

Your ship is downed after being forced to flee a fallen human stronghold by a superior enemy, landing on a mysterious ring world where you must gather survivors, mount a resistance, and unlock the secrets of this alien structure, and put a stop to an existential threat to the galaxy. 

Sound familiar? Exactly. They pulled a “Force Awakens” but instead of just rehashing the first game and calling it a day, and then calling all of their fans racist, they used it as a foundation and built up from there after taking valid criticism to heart. For anyone who read The Flood way back when, it’s like we get to be Silva and McKay this time around whenever you’re not dealing with the Harbinger or John’s trauma regarding Cortana/The Weapon.

This brings me to the sandbox, and I know that the grapple and other equipment are controversial to some, but we’ve had equipment since Halo 3, it’s just how the game evolved. We have all the tools we want and the game doesn’t hold your hand about it. It gives you a toolbox, gives you an objective, gives you the option to upgrade your gear, and then just lets you have at it. I’ve heard people call this the best Far Cry in years and despite it being a joke, I agree. Without being kidnapped by the protagonist every 5 minutes and rescued by THE TOKEN RESISTANCE FIGUREHEAD right afterwards, it actually feels like you’re fighting an uphill battle instead of being toyed with by a cult or a dictator for the sake of the plot. The simplest way I can put it is; you’re playing Halo Wars 3 from the perspective of a Hero Unit.

As for the story; 343i is back to doing what they started in 4 and dropped the ball with in 5, exploring the Master Chief as a human in comparison to normal people, and in this case a “normal” AI. This sort of thing is a gold mine for lore fans, for people with S-II/III OCs, and just about anyone who reads the books. That subtle detail of Chief using Samuel and his ID number (034) as his deletion code for the Weapon actually choked me up, after so many decades he still remembers and mourns his first real friend in the Spartan program. Additionally, there’s consistency between all three games, even though what consistency we got in 5 lasted all of 5 seconds. John is still dealing with Cortana asking him to figure out which of them is the machine, and it’s still up for debate when John refers to his will to fight as his programming.

Speaking of AIs, let’s talk about The Weapon. Pure cinnamon roll who needs to be protected at all costs. She’s peppy, happy, and has a great rapport with John even when they go through their conflict after he tried to delete her. It brings back the feeling of “DILF must protect daughter/son/child while finishing his mission” but with just enough of a twist that it doesn’t feel recycled, and we don’t have to worry about any incoming golf clubs in the next game. Her interactions with the Fernando Esparza (The Pilot) are also fun to work with, and this might sound insane to some, but none of it felt forced or unnatural to me, even with the occasional timing issue.

When it comes to how things were handled with Cortana, I’m actually happy with how things turned out. 343i realized that they fumbled things with 5, and while not just retconning the last game, they did the best with what they had and brought in their strongest narrative left to fix things; the Halo Wars story. Cortana has been handled, Atriox is still available for future outings as a primary antagonist, and with the fate of the rest of the Created up in the air, we’ll see what the Endless have in store for us.

All this being said, there is one elephant in the room that is thankfully, easy to avoid. Fucking Escharum. They push him too hard on the player, but at the very least there’s a Skip button or you can just walk past his hologram and ignore it. He’s no Atriox, he’s no Prophet of Truth, and he’s definitely no Gravemind, but at the very least his boss fight matched the hype he put into the campaign, so he has that going for him.

All around, a return to form by listening to fans has restored my faith (and that of many others) into a franchise that I had feared was dead. In regard to the campaign and only the campaign (I’ll bitch forever about the Multiplayer monetization), it feels nice to see the Halo community active again, and I’m hopeful that this is the start of a trend of excellent campaigns.

[fuckyouquiznak]

Jschlatt's Return

= Future developments in the Dream SMP plot (theories)

How does resurrection work?

• According to Philza and Eret to revive someone his ghost must be killed in the same way he lost his last canon life (that would also explain why Glatt and Ghostbur came back online recently).

• We also know they may need a totem and the knowledge of the resurrection book, which is now kept somewhere out there in the server, considering Dream said he didn't have it physically in prison with him. (He also said he destroyed it, but do we trust him? Absolutely not)

• We didn't see Tommy's revival from Dream's point of view, so it could be that Phantommy actually appeared and Dream easily killed him on the same spot of Tommy (maybe using the clock or his mask as a totem idk), but we still don't know what kind of information the book provides and how resurrection really works.

What is going to happen?

1. Quackity and Sam

• Quackity's last stream made pretty clear Big Q's intention of taking the book from Dream using all the means possible.

• However, despite the torture, Dream won't give any information. First of all he doesn't like Jschlatt, because he finds him annoying and boring (not like Wilbur) and second, of course, he knows the book's knowledge is the only thing that prevents other people from killing him. And then again, why should he give away the same power that made him a god? Quackity won't kill him without the book, and he is used to pain. Moreover he'll have some company at least.

• Quackity won't give up. He will keep visiting Dream everyday and will eventually start to like making him suffer.

• Sam instead will feel more and more guilty for what he made possible and for the person he became. He has changed since Tommy's death. He had promise to protect him and then he failed him. And then everything went wrong. He likes to believe that Dream deserves this for what he did to Tommy, but he is not sure that's the right way. Sometimes he even feels sorry for him, especially after Quackity's visits. After all Dream is just a broken person. Isn't he?

2. Tommy and the boys

• Meanwhile Tommy goes to Puffy's therapy sessions and opens up about his traumas and fears. It's hard, but it really helps having someone to talk to. Especially now.

• Since he returned to the server he has felt so lonely.

• Everyone treats him differently. Some people see him as miracle and keep asking inappropriate questions. Some others pretend nothing happened. For few of them the server just moved on; for others he is still dead.

• Even so he can't focus too much on himself right now. Stopping Dream is much more important. If Wilbur comes back... he doesn't even want to think about what he is capable of.

• They need to kill Dream, but Tommy is still too scared to come back to prison or to even touch a sword. Every time he suffers a damage he can't breathe: it's like it's happening all over again.

• He can't stay at his house anymore, on the ashes of L'Manburg, nor at his hotel, which is in Jack's hands, and he doesn't want to be alone (it reminds him of exile).

• He'll pass the time at Ranboo and Tubbo's, meeting Michael and working out a plan to kill Dream.

• In Tommy's stream Tubbo showed him his investigation report, pointing out that both Foolish and Ranboo were online when someone damaged the prison (before Tommy's dead).

• Tubbo obviously blames Foolish, nonetheless Tommy understands that something in Ranboo is corrupted.

• He tries to warn Tubbo, who underestimates his friend's words, thinking he might just be jealous of their relationship. They fight. It's a huge argument.

• "It's like you don't want me to be happy" Tubbo screams, shaking his head.

• "I don't want you to be happy without me" as soon as these words leave Tommy's mouth he immediately regrets it.

• Tubbo stays silent for a while. He seems disappointed: "You've changed".

• Tommy tighten a fist. "That's what death does to people, Tubbo, it changes them".

3. Kinoko Kingdom

• At the end Tommy will leave Snowchester and will move into Kinoko Kingdom (he liked the sign of the "free stuff", so why not?). Tommy there is welcome.

• He explains the Wilbur situation to the others, but then something bad happens.

• Hanging out with Sapnap, they talk about Ranboo and Dream's friendship and about how he acted when he received the ":)" message.

• It turns out Ranboo is guilty for the explosions in the prison that kept Sam busy during Tommy's visit to Dream.

• Tommy shows Tubbo the evidences.

4. Platonic Divorce

• After that, the platonic husbands will go through a "divorce arc".

• "How could you?" Tubbo can't help crying and screaming. "I trusted you".

• Ranboo wishes he could do something. But he is scared. He doesn't remember any of that. Did he really help Dream? Why? He doesn't...

• "I kicked out Tommy, my best friend, when he most needed me because of you! I think you should leave".

• Tubbo goes back to Tommy, apologizing. "You were right". And as much as he hates Ranboo, Tommy is broken-hearted seeing his best friend that hurt.

• However he can't help smiling when Tubbo says: "Guess it's just you and me against Dream like it has always been". It's selfish, but he really missed his best friend.

5. Connor's betrayal

• Sam talks with Connor about his doubts related to the all 'torture thing'.

• Connor tries to comfort him and decides to visit Dream with Quackity.

• Dream is relentless: "That villain arc you sewed for yourself is nice. But I won't tell you anything. And the book doesn't exist anymore, now. You can control every book in the server. It will not bring it back" saying these words Dream keeps his eyes on Connor. "The only way to find it should be... be able to travel in time"

• Connor freezes.

6. Karl's arrest

• Karl finds the resurrection book during one of his travels.

• He immediately plans to give it to Tommy, but when he comes back, someone is waiting for him in the library.

• "Well, look what the cat dragged in" Quackity stays still, his arms crossed, next to Connor and Sam. They all wear armours. "So it is true. That's a huge secret you have, Karl"

• The library behind them is destroyed. Books lie on floor ripped. They were looking for it.

• Karl puts the book of Necromancy back, his voice shaking as he realises Sapnap and George aren't there. "What are you doing here?" He asks, making eye contact with Connor, who quickly looks away, ashamed.

• "I'm sorry, Karl" he whispers "But Jschlatt is my friend"

• Quackity walks slowly towards him. "Give me the book, Karl". He has a creepy smile on his face. Is that even the same Quackity? This one looks different.

• "Quackity, you don't have to-"

• "Don't tell what I have to do. If you refuse, I might have to declare you under arrest"

• Karl holds the book tighter. If he gave him the book... no, he can't do that. For Tommy's sake, and for the rest of the server. If the book has the power to revive Wilbur... it must be destroyed. He grabs his sword, ready to fight.

• Quackity looks disappointed "You didn't give me another choice, man" he says, before killing him and taking the book from his inventory.

7. Dream and Karl

• Karl is later taken to the prison and put in Dream's cell.

• "Well, green boy, seems like you service is no longer required. However, I want to keep having fun with you. I'll revive Jschlatt, and then I'll execute you publicly. Enjoy your last hours: I got you company" Quackity leaves with a victory smile on his face.

• Dream looks horrible. He is covered in blood, his body painted by new scars. Karl has never seen him like this. His hearts are low and he hasn't eaten in days.

• Dream is the first one who speaks: "You found it".

• Karl freezes. What does that mean? "I though I had hidden it too well" he keeps saying, washing his blood away. "Maybe I should have really destroyed it"

• How cool would it be if Dream actually hid the book in the timeline? He couldn't burn it. Otherwise if he died no one would have revived him. So he just hid it where only Karl could find it.

• So yes, Dream knows Karl's power because he has a similar one. And yes, the prison was actually built for Karl (that's the only theory I care about).

• "We are not that different, Karl. Forgetting the people you love.. I know what it feels. I can help you controlling it. Have you reached the In between yet?"

• What if Dream is the one leaving Karl books and suggestions about his travels?

• They spend some time together and they surprisingly get along well. It's like someone finally understands.

8. Sapnap's lore

• Sapnap finds out Karl has been arrested, but he doesn't know why. He is angry.

• He faces Quackity who giggles. "Apparently there are a lot of things we don't know about Karl" but he doesn't tell him Karl's secret.

• Quackity and Sapnap break up (I won't ever be over Quackity's stream with El Rapid)

• Sapnap joins the children group. They are breaking into prison, right? He needs to save Karl.

9. Escape from Pandora's Vault

• Tommy, Tubbo, Ghostbur and Sapnap manage to break into Pandora's Vault when Sam and Quackity aren't online.

• When they arrive in Dream's cell, he is talking with Karl.

• Sapnap, horrified, takes Karl away from him. He doesn't trust Dream anymore, not after what he did to Tommy. He is sure it's his fault if Karl is here now.

• Dream can't help smiling when he sees the little party there. Especially when he sees his best friend Tommy. He tries to get closer.

• "I'm gonna kill you man. What the hell-" Sapnap punches Dream away. The anger and the resentment spread all over his body. They didn't deserve so much pain. Maybe the server will be a peaceful place without him. "You killed Tommy and then you gave Quackity the book- you"

• Karl stops him, defending Dream. "Sapnap, please. He didn't give them the book. I was the one who did".

• Everyone hold their breathe. What? Why? Wasn't it burned? How did you...

• "We need to get him out"

• Tommy grifts his teeth: "No way he is coming with us". He tries to grab his sword trembling and gagging, but it's too much. He can't... that place...

• Dream steps away. "Oh, you came to kill me" he whispers. "Do it. I'll be dead by tomorrow anyway"

• "You can't die yet!" Karl screams.

• "C'mon, Karl-"

• Dream smiles. "Don't forget who you are, Karl. And don't stray from the path. The SMP needs you more than you know" (= Dream is the one who leaves Karl notes about time travelling in the In Between :])

• "We don't have much time, guys"

• "Yeah, Tommy you don't have much time. Are you going to kill me? Or are you too afraid?" Dream starts teasing Tommy. "I bet you can't do it, right? You're too weak. And down deep you know you love me. We are best friends after all, aren't we?"

• Tommy doesn't react. He is as pale as a ghost, his eyes wide open.

• Tubbo steps in. He can't look at Tommy like this. He hates Dream so much. "Stay away from him". Looking back at his life, Dream has always been responsible for the bad things happened to him. The discs, L'Manburg, Tommy's exile, his death...

• Dream raises his eyebrows. "Tubbo, how's Ranboo?"

• It happens in a moment. Tubbo just loses control and kills Dream. Don't worry Dream's stans he'll come back one day. Bigger plans for that greenboy.

10. Resurrection

• They all run away.

• That same night Jschlatt is publicly revived. "¿Por dónde empezamos?"

• Quackity, Sam and Connor stay behind him.

• "Tonight our country has faced a loss. Four intruders entered the Pandora's Vault, killed Dream and helped the prisoner Karl Jacobs escape. Sapnap, Tubbo, Tommy and Ghostbur are now officially wanted. Dead or alive."

End of the season? Maybe?

How does the server react?

• Tommy, Tubbo, Sapnap, Ghostbur and Karl are criminals. They become nomads for a while. Samnook gives them an hand.

• Tommy keeps thinking about what Tubbo did. They really didn't talk about it after the break-out. Tubbo just pretends nothing happened.

• Karl and Sapnap aren't talking neither. And when they do they fight.

• The only happy one seems to be Ghostbur, who is excited to be on a vacation with the boys.

• Dream's ghost (Specdream? Nightmare?) appears to Ranboo, who is alone in a self-exile because he doesn't want to hurt anyone. Dream's ghost would be much more like Clay, so he won't be that dangerous like c/Dream (cfr. Ghostbur and Wilbur). But still it would be insane to see those two hanging out.

• Jschlatt and Quackity open their Casino, helped by Jack, who sells the hotel.

• After Dream's death and the destruction of Kinoko Kingdom, George takes Quackity's side. He is sure Sapnap killed Dream and he doesn't know how to feel about it...

• Philza, Techno, Eret and Niki, wanting Wilbur's return, will do the same (they need Ghostbur btw). Techno in particular will hunt the fugitives.

• Puffy and Fundy, contrary to them, will try to find Ranboo and the others in order to stop Jschlatt and Quackity.

• Wilbur and Dream meanwhile are having so much fun in the afterlife.

Even if solitaire is not chess

[tanadrin]

So all the terrible retcons and geographic inconsistency (Kul Tiras wtf) and the time travel and the bullshit with the night elves is bad (Illidan is the worst character ever, don't @ me), but the most frustrating part of WoW lore to me is its failure to explore certain complex emotional themes in a really satisfying way--like, the people who expound and expand on Warcraft lore are canny enough to notice that these emotional themes *exist*, but not clever enough to actually work with them or build them out, and so the whole thing collapses into rule-of-cool melodrama. There's nothing wrong with rule-of-cool melodrama; I love rule-of-cool melodrama. But Warcraft lore is *begging* to combine that rule of cool melodrama with some really rich and interesting emotions and character interpretations, it sets them up and is all ready to knock them down, and just... doesn't.

Take the conversation between Saurfang and Garrosh in the Borean Tundra, in WotLK, the one that ends with Saurfang saying "I don't eat pork." I think that's emblamatic of the big theme that unites the Horde, that makes it make sense as a faction. The Alliance, after all, started as a defensive association in the face of the Orc invasion; its renaissance after the creation of Durotar and the invasion of the Scourge is only natural. But what is the theme of the Horde? Is it honor? Strength? Sheer brutality? Well, none of those things. Orcs claim to value honor and strength; the Forsaken are certainly various shades of very dark gray at best, the Tauren and the Orcs *do* seem like natural allies of a sort, but all the races of the Horde have something even deeper in common: trauma. The Orcs are still (cf. Saurfang) dealing with the emotional turmoil of having been both forced and partially complicit in the atrocities of the First and Second War--after which their homeworld was destroyed, they were forced into concentration camps, and they had to rebuild their culture and their identity from the ground up. They have to find a new place in a new world, and there's this tension between the younger generation that doesn't have firsthand experience with any of this and just remembers that the Horde used to be a name that struck fear into the hearts of their enemies (Garrosh Hellscream, for instance) and the older generation that remembers how awful that time really was, and doesn't want to see the old ways revived because it might just destroy their people for good this time. Then there's the Darkspear Trolls and the Tauren, who were both driven out of their old homelands, and fell in with the Horde as natural allies with similar cultural points of reference; and the Blood Elves, whose suffering in the Third War was severe enough to radically alter their culture, coupled with being betrayed by their ruler who decided that joining the Burning Legion and abandoning them sounded like a better time than rebuilding Quel'Thalas.

And then there's the Forsaken. Oh, man, the Forsaken. The Forsaken and Sylvanas are some of my favorite characters in all of WoW, because sure, you could look at it and say, "okay, creepy undead who like green things that go plop and mad science = evil, bad guys." But you'd really be missing what makes the Forsaken interesting. They're not the Scourge--they explicitly broke away from the Scourge when Arthas left Lordaeron. They're not invaders, either. They're in fact mostly the human population of the destroyed kingdom of Lordaeron, the inheritors of that land, but who are treated by the Alliance as interlopers with no right to the very towns and villages they have *always* called home. They're treated as monsters by every living person who ever knew them, and they can't help but regard themselves that way, too. "What are we, if not slaves to this torment?" is one of the casual interaction lines you get when you click on Sylvanas: they do not *like* being dead. But Sylvanas is ruthless and cruel and after Arthas is killed, wins the Val'kyr over to her side so she can keep making more Forsaken. Why?

Simple. Let us imagine: you are an ordinary person, of no unusually great or poor moral virtue. You are hurt, badly. Grieviously. In a way you will never recover from. And everyone you love, all of your friends and your family, the whole society you come from, now sees you as an unredeemable monster that should, no, must be destroyed. How long must you be called a monster before you decide--fuck it, I *will* be the monster they call me. Because, at least that way, no one can ever hurt me again.

The overpowering motivation for the Forsaken is not power or bloodlust; it's not money, or forbidden knowledge. It's making sure no one in the whole world is ever able to make slaves of them again. To make sure they will not be hurt. And the biggest misstep the Alliance ever made was not reaching out to Sylvanas with overtures of friendship as soon as she established her kingdom--because like it or not, she has the support of the people of Lordaeron, and thus a damn good claim to her position. Maybe, if they had, they could have influenced the Forsaken, shown them that they had friends and didn't need to resort to amoral methods to defend themselves. But as it stands, they only have allies of convenience in the Horde (at least until Sylvanas becomes Warchief), and they know that no one in Azeroth is quite happy to see them continue to exist and be free. Everything else about the Forsaken--their use of dark magic, their development of a new, even more destructive plague, their recruiting former servants of the Lich King and raising new Forsaken from among the dead of the ongoing wars--makes perfect sense from the standpoint of a people that knows they are under threat from all sides, and will do anything to survive.

(The Draenei could have been something like this, too, FWIW. Like, a broken people, a people of exiles who are most comfortable in the shadows and with moral ambiguity. But then Metzen had to go make them Righteous Space Goats. I mean, come on. They're just boring now. They were never going to be Horde-aligned--there's too much history with the Orcs  there!--but having a group like that on the side of the Alliance, to help drive home the point that there is not a clear good guys/bad guys distinction here, would have been really nice.)

That actually makes them a pretty damn good fit for the Horde. Moreover, it creates an interesting point of tension with the Alliance, which is clearly *not* always the good guys. I mean, there's the matter of orc concentration camps, but also consider the refusal of leaders like Daelin Proudmoore to contemplate peace (and the subsequent, somewhat... forced turn of Jaina Proudmoore from dove to hawk) and the steadfast refusal of many on that side to deal fairly with the races of the Horde just because they appear monstrous. And arrogance, hoo boy. Dalaran, Gilneas, the Night Elves--huge swathes of the Alliance are characterized by being arrogant and not a little cruel.

And what of Sylvanas becoming Warchief? I don't know where the BFA lore is going (I'm not playing retail anyway), but right now it looks like they're setting up another Garrosh type situation, and preparing for Thrall to retake the Warchief-ship, but if they do that it would be a real pity. First of all, because, well, we saw that already in Mists of Pandaria! What, are we going to besiege Orgrimmar again? Second of all--Sylvanas and Garrosh are *very* different people. Garrosh was, well, Proud; hence the Sha of Pride. He wanted glory and power, he wanted war for war's sake, so he could live up to his father's reputation as a warrior. He was willing to sacrifice everything else that made the Horde the Horde for that. Sylvanas, though, has one overriding motivation: Keep Her People Safe. Punish the people who hurt her is a strong secondary motivation--but it's part of that first one, because if she can make her enemies' victories painful enough, she might discourage them from trying to press their advantage. And her people *trust* her on this: "Dark Lady watch over you," they say when you take your leave. She is not an autocrat--she is their beloved protector. So, she makes the ruins of Lordaeron uninhabitable. She annihilates Teldrassil. Does she spend very many Orc and Troll and Tauren lives doing so? Very well. They aren't *her* people.

I don't think this has to be a tragic flaw leading to her downfall. It sure doesn't make her a good leader for the rest of the Horde, though (even though, on an emotional and aesthetic level, I am 3000% here for Warchief Sylvanas, even more than Warchief Vol'jin, who also had a lot of the creepy threatening vibe that made him a much more interesting choice than either Thrall or Garrosh). But you could make it one, and you could do it very well--they've already mentioned in the tie-ins that Calia Menethil, Arthas's sister, teeeechnically has a claim to the throne of Lordaeron. And, even more interesting, is no longer quite among the living, even if the mechanism of that unlife is happy fun magic instead of evil death magic. Moreover, she has some sympathy for the Forsaken. You could have a squaring-off between them, and you could have a Queen Calia--maybe. If you could bridge that gap and make her understand that the Forsaken feel fundamentally apart from the other human kingdoms now, if she could come to understand just how much evil the Alliance has done to them, if she could really grok what it's like to be them. Then you could have a leader who understands their trauma--but also wants to heal it, rather than lash out at anyone and everyone that might conceivably be a threat. That, too, would be very interesting.

(There’s a reason that, while I loved the Alliance as a kid, I only play Horde toons as an adult. It’s not just that the Horde feel more interesting and vivid to me. It’s that the hypocrisy and the arrogance of the Alliance stands out in much greater relief now. The Horde aren’t good guys--nobody’s the good guys, here--but they don’t lie about their motivations, and they don’t act with cruelty and then play the victim in response. Jaina was an important exception, but they badly mishandled her character in the runup to MoP, which I find very hard to forgive.)

But knowing Blizz, even if they go vaguely that route, they won't stick the emotional landing. There is a very good, if very OTT and melodramatic (in the best possible way), series of fantasy novels or games lurking *behind*, or perhaps parallel, to Warcraft's lore. It is a shame that Blizzard has done so much to obscure it with obnoxious cruft, retcons and timeline compression, repetitive use of the same handful of characters, stupid-ass time-travel plots that create ten thousand plot holes and inconsistencies, shitty tie-in novels (cf. everything by Richard Knaak), and a total failure to make half the world's characters (i.e., everyone in the Alliance) at all interesting. I have a daydream of doing my own version of WoW lore and posting it somewhere like on AO3, but one of the things that makes WoW lore simultaneously so interesting and disappointing to me is that it's embedded in the explorable, realized space of video game worlds. Hard to reproduce that in print, I think. Might be worth it to try.

[swampgallows]

I've been rereading War Crimes and been wondering if Christie Golden had other hopes/plans for Sylv's character arc or if her current predicament just represents the logical conclusion of what we see of her in the novels and post-WoD WoW. What are your thoughts/care to reiterate current stance on Sylv as a fellow horde player?

This has been in my ask box a long time because I’ve wanted to reply to this properly and possibly reread War Crimes again in order to have a more fleshed-out answer, but as far as Golden’s characterization in War Crimes all I remember is the weird incest vibe going on with her sister. As a younger sister myself, I would balk out of my MIND if my sister started clutching my hands and “Little Moon”-ing me the way Sylvanas did to Vereesa. It’s like literally all I remember about her in that book, lmao. I’m also an older sister as well, but to a younger brother, and though he has many childhood nicknames there’s no way I’d be cooing at him with those as an adult, especially if I were trying to console him mourning over his murdered spouse. 

As far as Sylvanas’ current arc: I know Garrosh 2.0 is a tired argument, but both now suffer a drastic character shift with extremely flimsy or obfuscated motivation. When things were slowly percolating up to the Siege of Orgrimmar, the fanbase (allegedly, as I was not playing during MoP) was still left scratching their heads over Garrosh’s character shift. Even with all the books, comics, cinematics, and questlines, there was still no explicit cut-and-dry understanding of how Garrosh went from celebrated war hero to chaotic evil villain.

I haven’t conducted the same amount of research on Sylvanas that I have on Garrosh, but my point is that it really shouldn’t be required to understand why self-destruction is Sylvanas’ “logical conclusion”. If there’s any major gripe that I have with any of Blizzard’s writing, it’s the fact that, up until Legion, character—and even campaign—motivations have been extremely vague, sacrificed in favor of comic book action sequences or pulpy one-liners (”What a king must do.”). I’m not saying everything should be spelled out, but that basic questions of “What are we doing and why?” shouldn’t need to be hunted down through five different types of media (and even then, the source material is vague). 

Blizzard assured players that the burning of Teldrassil was not what it seemed, that Sylvanas would be cemented in a “morally gray” area, and that all of our questions would be answered with the Warbringers short. And what motives did we glean from that animatic?

“Can’t I?”

BUT GALLOWS, THE FLASHBACK— you know what’s not a reaction to trauma and feeling like you couldn’t save your own people? Killing them. You know what completely goes against all of Sylvanas’ legitimately morally gray actions—conscripting the val’kyr, using the blight, the search to preserve her people (even seeking the aid of Helya and attempting to enslave Eyir)? KILLING HER OWN PEOPLE. And to be perfectly clear, I am referring not to Teldrassil but to the Battle of Lordaeron where Sylvanas is using her people, the Forsaken, as ammo and meatshields. How is this her “logical conclusion”? Not pointing fingers at you, necessarily, but what is Sylvanas’ goal if not to save her people?

When someone asks the question, “Why did Sylvanas burn Teldrassil?” it shouldn’t require a Pepe Silvia paper trail to answer. It shouldn’t require a Bible-level citation of one line of a psalm in the seventh Book of Christie which says it was actually Saurfang’s idea. The real answer, which she reveals in a very-skippable dialog box of the time-sensitive War of Thorns event and also in the delayed-release online novellas Elegy / A Good War, is that she was cutting off the Alliance’s route to azerite. Darnassus and Teldrassil as a whole are the largest territories the Alliance has claimed on Kalimdor; with Theramore already rubble and Teldrassil in flames, the Alliance has virtually no way of getting azerite to their larger territories on the Eastern Kingdoms. 

Now, to me, a nuclear arms race like that is morally gray. There is no easy answer. But even a line like “now the azerite is ours”, or something to that effect, isn’t present in the more substantial media (like the short), which might make it a better standalone piece but suffers an actual connection to the events of the game. 

So how does stymieing the war for azerite translate into raising your already twice-dead people as skeletons to keep fighting? Using the Blight? Blighting your own capital, evacuated or not? Forcibly turning the deceased? When you create a new Forsaken, the val’kyr gives you the option to embrace your new life or to be returned to your grave. It it a heavy and intimate interaction that asks consent; raising your soldiers again as blighted skeletons mid-battle is not.

For where things are in the story now, I have absolutely NO idea what Sylvanas is thinking or what her motives are. I feel like a lot of this is intentionally (hopefully, hopefully) left up to speculation and possibly culminating later down the line as BFA unfolds. She did all of those questionable things in the past for the sake of going to great lengths to get her revenge on Arthas and end the Scourge while also avenging her people, the Forsaken, and ensuring that they do not die out. This is most certainly “morally gray”, and in my opinion one of the most stirring and provocative threads of controversy in Warcraft’s entire lore: is it ethical to perpetuate the Forsaken people?

I have mained a Forsaken since 2005, but even as a wee little Andorhal plaguelet neither me nor my character have ever trusted Sylvanas. I understood that she was among the more powerful of the Forsaken, and without her taking advantage of Arthas when he was weak and rallying us initially there may not have even been the Forsaken. However, I always found it unnerving that there was no once-human Lordaeronian representation for the Forsaken. Under Sylvanas and Varimathras it felt a lot like me and my fellow farmer peasant buddies were getting screwed out of something.

Enter Putress, who has a sick fucking plague doctor mask but materialized from nothing, and all of a sudden we were doing favors for this previously-unheard of Grand Apothecary. I was skeptical and so were many of my Forsaken peers, and it turns out our intuition hadn’t fully rotted away, as then the Wrathgate ensued. Lilian Voss seems somewhat promising as an actual Forsaken figurehead, but it’s taken her five expansions to steadily climb the ranks of importance. 

But why would anyone follow Sylvanas now? What’s in it for them? At least among the goblins and the orcs following Garrosh they gained an illusion of supremacy and a promise of conquest and power; what’s in it for Sylvanas’ followers? Just obeying orders? A slice of the azerite pie? Fear that there is no choice? Is it an honor to sacrifice our lives for the Dark Lady, as it was Ishi and the Kor’kron’s honor to allow Garrosh to experiment on them with the Divine Bell? 

Vol’jin had “never trusted” Sylvanas, and we still don’t know the loa that told him to name her his successor. Saurfang says that “There is no honor in this.” So… what is up? Why do we give Sylvanas or Nathanos the time of day? I don’t datamine and I’ve only completed up to the current war campaign once so maybe I’m missing something, but I seriously have no idea what Sylvanas’ plans are. 

Sayge’s Fortune #19: The Forsaken are up to something. 

This time, we Forsaken don’t even know what it is.

[whatisthisnonsense]

Okay you know what I am gonna talk shit in a proper well-thought-out manner because I’m salty and stressed and I may as well channel it into something fun like yelling about anime in an over the top display of angery as befitting this cesspool of a social media platform. This being said I’m gonna do it under a read-more ‘cause most of ya’ll ain’t got time for no negative nonsense and some of you genuinely enjoy Tri, and you know what, I respect you, you’re valid.

Okay so to explain how much I want to throw Bandai into a dumpster, we first need to go back and explain Adventure and the fiasco that was 02.

Digimon Adventure came out in 1999 (March 6th in japan and August 14th in the states, which coincidentally means this show came out exactly on my sixth birthday!) and lasted for about a year, with 54 episodes. The plot was simple; seven punkass grade schoolers turned out to have been chosen by fate to defend the Digital World, an alternate plane of reality created by various forms of digital information (the wee baby internet of the era, for example), mostly to kind of justify Bandai’s V-Pet (Tamogatchis but they’re gross and can FIGHT) and sell toys. So like, Transformers but with more human characters and kickass monsters and sometimes a lesson about the Power Of Friendship. Later, they find out they were chosen because they saw their neighborhood get wrecked by two monsters and Inexplicably Forgot This, as well as the fact there’s actually a missing member of their group (which less than surprisingly turned out to be the leader character’s little sister, who had already been seen in a prior episode and had also been involved in that early monster attack). It was hokey, the english dub generally bordered on that of a proto-abridged series if not aggressively sanitizing things (turning sake into green chili sauce, for example) and it was just good dumb fun and in the end everyone was crying anyway because dammit, while it was dumb fun you still cared about these characters and loved how they grew up. And then came 02.

Hoo boy. Digimon 02 came out in 2000 (April 2nd in japan and August 19th in the states) and lasted for another year or so. While sometimes listed as a second season, in truth it was a sequel series and it had...some interesting ideas, lets say. And I mean that sincerely! They did have some good ideas! But it was pretty clear from the lack of direction and the constant roller coaster of serious and stupid that it was being a sequel for the sake of being a sequel. For example, a whole new super secret crest turned up out of nowhere, which brings up a lot of questions in the lore but is mostly used to prove Ken isn’t irredeemable because he’s a Chosen Child ,as well as the questions about how this Crest is still present and useable and then literally gets no use. No Ultimate Form Wormmon for you, folks, NORMAL digivolution is out! I think I and @yunisverse have made our opinion on how to use that crest better clear while we’re being salty over Wizardmon, ha People have said that it’s big draw was that it had a heavier focus on character development and...yes and no? On the one hand, Ken and Cody’s arcs were genuinely enjoyable, Kindness shenanigans aside, as was occasionally exploring TK and Kari’s trauma, something often brushed over in the original series. On the other hand, more or less the whole of Adventure centered AROUND character growth where in 02 it’s...sporadic. Sometimes even random. However the main two reasons everyone was mad at 02 were these;

The original digidestined that were not Kari or TK got shunted onto the backburner, usually using excuses as they had given up their crest powers sometime between Our War Game and the present (despite that A) this is otherwise disregarding the fact they were supposedly not able to enter the digital world again until 02 and B) the power is literally inside them as part of their core, not something the digiworld actually gave to them, and while it could be diminished it could never actually be removed) or that it was the New Kids turn, often with wildly out of character personality developments. (Looking at you, Sora’s new docileness and Mimi’s lack of involvement in most of the plot period.)

The epilogue, which not only gave everyone really weird future jobs (why is Matt an astronaut?!) but also seemed pretty much out to be as aggressively Happily Ever After without actually stopping to think about any implications or actual lead-ups.

02 usually gets a pass from riding on the Adventure coattails, but everyone still tended to be at least disappointed in what had occurred. Also, more serious takes on Digimon, such as Tamers and some of the games, had been growing in popularity.

Thus Bandai, in it’s infinite wisdom, decided to cash back in on Nostalgia by focusing on the Adventure kids, making them closer to 02 so they’re older and they can therefore do more serious mature takes like Tamers, while also trying to rectify how they would even begin to come around to their epilogue jobs. They do this by killing the 02 cast in the first two minutes.

Welcome to Tri folks! Okay, so the 02 cast isn’t actually dead, but we don’t know where they are for six movies. Six movies!! The most we know for a few years is Ken, for some reason, has reverted to evil! And he has Imperialdramon, which implies Davis is brainwashed too!

He is basically doing this most of the series (which was initially going to be a mini-series before becoming a series of movies which then proceed to often be cut up into episodes, which that alone should tell you the problems BEHIND the scenes much less on screen) and we find out what he is (not actually Ken but an evil Gennai clone which is also out of nowhere) and what he’s doing (apparently bringing Yggdrasil, long time lore big bad of various digimon continuities and also god, into the Adventure storyline) not by efforts of the kids. Oh no. They’re too busy playing with their new friend Mei!

God I wish I was joking. The original squad literally shows no concern for where the 02 gang is until halfway through, and it’s a handwave at best and quickly moved on from. Hell, they barely react to “Ken” and CHEER on defeating Imperialdramon! More gravitas was given to having to kill the plot coupon of the day, Meicoonmon, than someone they actually know and should be upset about. Also making Tai NOT want to rush into a fight (what?), Turns Out Homeostatis Is Also Evil Or At Least Amoral (why), a reveal one of the backstory five original digidestined went mad with grief (no), and also I guess for some reason the kids and digimon were separated again given their reactions despite 02′s ending? That’s. That’s not even keeping your own continuity. Why are you like this. Also connecting to the epilogue just seem to be on a whim (not metaphor, Matt decides to be an astronaut on a whim), the general lack of gravitas in most moments followed by moments of SEVERE gravitas (which is the 02 problem but Worse), and bad jokes. I don’t mean Good Bad Jokes like Adventure, just really not funny jokes. And the real bitch of the matter? It had a few things that should’ve made it AWESOME! Like listen, I miss these idiot kids a lot, and the concept of a virus forcing a reboot on the digiworld and thus having to explore, finally, the digimon as characters and what they would be like without the kids? That’s cool! The idea of undoing all the Perma Digideaths (like WIZARDMON goddammit, and in this own show friggin’ Leomon again) with said reboot and thus having a pretty legitimate reason to allow it? Also cool! Worldbuilding about the previous five digidestined? Neat! And lets be real, you all cried at the cast version of Butter-Fly. You know you did. But the thing is they didn’t DO anything with most of this, or did it in a sloppy way. Example; the virus was basically a means to an end for waking up Yggdrasil (I’m not calling him King Drasil, that’s stupid), right? Why? When the Adventure-verse, often to it’s own detriment, is actively tied to the Milleniumon mythos, you could just pull in that eldritch horror and finally have Ryo make sense everywhere not japan. Or heck, the Dark Ocean! Remember the Dark Ocean? Where literally cthulu is and also Daemon now? Apparently neither do the script writers since that would’ve been a golden opportunity.  Of course, this would be asking for continuity, which Tri has issues with within its own narrative. Remember when I said the reboot should’ve undone all permadeaths? Yeah, Wizardmon still shows up as a ghost later to lead Kari out of trouble. No lines or anything, just pops up facing away from the audience and leads her out, and then vanishes, despite the fact that according to the rules they made up for the reboot, he should be a cute little Mokumon in Primary Village at the moment who remembers nothing. Also it kind of low-key has the vibe that growing up is terrible and results in having to make awful decisions? Which I’m not sure is what they meant to do, but it does pretty much have that end result. And that sucks! Even Tamers didn’t do that! Growing up is HARD, sure, but there are GOOD things about it too, and being Adventure one would think that would be the main focus! Nope. I just. This should have been good and when it was announced I was super excited and now I’m pretty much exasperated by its mere existence. And now we’re getting a sequel after ANOTHER timeskip.

Bandai if this is how you give us a nostalgia feels trip, do us a favor and let Adventure die. You’re just making the sugary memories of childhood have a bitter aftertaste. Or, if you must, just do a proper reboot. Tie up things that actually WERE wrong with the original series and do some clean ups but otherwise leave it untouched. We all know you’re trying to capture the magic twice, guys, you’re not even trying to hide it now. TL;DR, The only parts I like about Tri are Butter-Fly (cast version) and the fact Tai and Matt are gayer than ever

[icharchivist]

kay now i’m just huh bc of that post i reblogged so i’ll just add my two cents on d/a di/scourses and why i want nowhere near in it and feel free to ignore and even more to unfollow if it’s somewhat bad or anything but like,

(also please d/o/n’t re/b/log)

d/a di/scourse ultimately really fucks me up because 1) there’s a lot of it, especially in jokes that strench from far far away, I end up checking every blogs i reblog from bc i don’t want that near me 2) All side tends to have characters they like and dislike and be noisy about it and it’s very hard when down to it you just really love all the characters even when you don’t agree with them bc they’re fictional and i’m interested in the emotional reaction i get from them in game

but on a personal level it also fucks me up bc my mental health had been going bad and stuff are out of my controle, until i discovered D/A and the thing that had really, really helped me recover is that playing D/A asks me to use my skills i’ve learnt mostly to deal with my issues in a way i don’t find disagreeable (most precisely: how to weight what someone is telling you in order to not have it backfire at you) and stimulates my curiosity, passion and creativity in a way i hadn’t felt in forever. It makes me want to connect the dots, it makes me want to be involved, it makes me want to draw, to write again. (I started writting things again after 5 years and it’s so silly how it’s helping me out). Hell I started modding. I did an internship in a video game school on which I was actually pretty good and passionated bc just that had me make more research and understands more easily, so i started handling the logicials quickly for the timespawn and had a lot of cultural and technical knowledge backup just from swooping around trying to learn fun facts (and i would have got into this school easily bc i had a very good file but i lacked the money and my parents fucked it up, so i’m still extremely frustrated at that because I actually had really great chances to be taken in this school) It stimulates me in a way where I can healthily forget for two minutes that my world is crumbling, that for a moment it had me consider different future path, (see again up there), if there’s a path to recovery to be had it started with it.

I’ve known for years this fa/ndom was deemed toxic and I knew of the controversial characters by name before i started the game so i sillily paid more attention to them bc “how bad can they fuck up” only to realize then “oh no i love them” bc i paid attention to them. And i’m in circles where I see more hates than others and sometimes just hear of some hate by hearsay.

I’ve wanted to keep healthy distance as much as possible but once i got in d/a i noticed i already had d/iscourse on my dash from blogs i followed from others things and it was. Huh.

And I was thinking about not letting it get to me, or regularly take breaks, i blocked the d/iscourse tags, then the main tag to avoid it (doesn’t stop some posts to slide through though so that’s not helping), i don’t feel comfortable talking about it, and hey at least i owe to that that i’m less onto this website and i’m grateful at least for that

And it’s unhealthy to be this affected by f/andom stuff, i know that, god do i know that, but i’ve been in fandom for what, 11 years now, I’ve seen some fan wars, i’ve seen and participated in w/anks, but the whole holier-than-thou attitude in really insidious way is damaging, and i can’t recall a time i was this uncomfortable being part of something. (and i was in s/uperw/hol/ock at the fandom’s heigh and in the n/aruto’s fa.ndom when it ended for christ’s sake).

And idk how much is just current fa/ndom bc i know there’s far worse on this damn website, or really this game but this is. very damaging.

Anyway point is that my biggest problem is that i’ve seen some “Hot takes” that had been more damaging for my mental health bc i didn’t even know i could expect them (that’s a fun part of depression no one talks to you about, next i’m gonna tell you again that seeing one more posts about “how siblings are if you don’t see it like that you don’t have a real sibling” and variation sent me in some very bad mental spirals and i’m that close to unfollow anyone that posts those, so hey, that’s fun)

and some of them were 1) “Green!Ha/wke is a manipulator and it is far less sincere than Red or Purple” which really, really fucked me up not because I fancy Green this much but because saying being diplomatical in times stuff are going down is manipulative is super damaging and as someone who is always calculating how to be true to myself while also not triggering a fight around short tempered people, calling it “manipulation” had drove me to major anxiety thinking i was no better than my family, 2) the whole discourse about C/ullen which is the w o rs t bc i get where people come from when they dislike him and they have cause but i see a lot of my reactions to my own trauma and self-destructiong numbing addiction (i mean my self h//arm before anyone think anything) in his storyline in an unflattering way, and it’s something that really drove me to him in a way no other characters did (and i mean it especially bc, in term of experience? I relate to L/eliana more. But in term of reaction on a personal level on oneself? I couldn’t even start without getting uncomfortably personal about how dear C/ullen’s writting is to me. C/ullen’s reaction to trauma is extremely personal on the way also how he takes it on himself and it’s so, so important to me). and this one i kinda expected bc i love others characters that can follow this sort of patern and i know they have tons of w/anks about it but boy it is far less vicious than i’ve seen there (and i know others chara have tons of others d/iscourses but like i said i happen to be following people who will bring this one much more than any others)

Or maybe i’m just far more sensitive than i used to be, but therefore it triggers my fight or flight stuff and since i refuse to involve myself into fight it makes “flight and think about it for hours until it makes you feel terrible for liking it in the first place” so that’s fun.

And I know. I know it’s unhealthy to be this affected on f/andom stuff, and i’m not going to change anyone’s mind, nor do i want to. 

Bc in the end those games requires a lot of personal involvement and therefore our sensitivities to shine through, and i refuse to let my view affect others when the emotional journey is far, far more interesting when you take it with your own heart, even if it means i must fundamentally disagree with all of the experience others may feel,

But ye. I know. And i’m trying to work on that, it’s been a year i’m trying to work on that, and as i said earlier, i’m taking breaks from this website every once in a while lately, which is far more healthy anyway, and i think i’ll carry on doing that.

And I still will not posts d/iscoursy stuff of saying “this interpretation of the character is wrong here how you should interpret it” even if i agree bc i’m too tired for it, and anyway i don’t even want to learn what’s the fa/ndom’s opinions on the characters are at this point, i couldn’t care less, I care about how i feel for them and I don’t even want to hear how people discuss it.

(and tbh so i feel for the lore in general too bc i really like the lore of the game, sue me, and as much as i love to dig for details i’m too tired for opinions)

but that last post is the first time i see a post specifically written on the very topic that makes me anxious about C/ullen stuff, i didn’t feel like letting it past, i want to keep it on my blog.

Anyway also if you’ve stuck this far, i’m also going to be far more ready to unfollow stuff that really makes me spiral down now, the last few breaks i took from this website made me feel like i don’t want to deal with it anymore. I’m still anxious about what i post and i doubt i’ll still share a lot about it, bc at this point i don’t even feel like sharing this much either so there’s that, 

but therefore if you’ve stuck there you’re also welcomed to unfollow for whatever reason you feel like and especially if you don’t want to deal with my bullshit, bc god knows i don’t want to be dealing with it either. Don’t let things you can controle upset you, that’s not worth it.

Anyway, icha’s out, didn’t want to talk much about personal stuff more but here i am! and i’m taking my leave bye

[nitewrighter]

for the movie soundtracks thing: light of the seven from game of thrones season 6

You know I can’t say no to my boy Ramin Djawadi. I love this composition though! Kind of sinister Funeral-y vibes, am I right?

Note: We don’t actually know if Gabrielle Adawe is alive or not in the Overwatch Universe when Overwatch got shut down, so this fic might have to be edited in the future if/when we get more lore.

—-

The memorial service was held in the Court D’Honneur at the Palais des Nations, a fairly humble but dignified assembly with countless flags flying at half-mast. Gabrielle Adawe stood at a podium in front of a seated crowd, with Geneva’s Celestial Sphere a few yards behind her and her scarf wafting in the wind. She scanned the crowd and saw a few recognizable faces. Torbjörn Lindholme sat stone-faced, while Reinhardt was hunched over slightly next to him with people behind him still struggling to see past his shoulders. Angela Ziegler was there, looking on forlornly as Lena Oxton sobbed into the shoulder of Winston next to her. There were many international dignitaries, representatives of Numbani, Ministers of Oasis, and the families of those lost in the blast at Zurich making up for the bulk in the crowd, but the number of civilians at the margins was depressing. In many ways, they weren’t just commemorating those lost in the destruction of Zurich Headquarters—with the Petras Act now going into effect, this was a funeral for Overwatch the institution itself. And yet so few came. So few mourned. But who could blame them after Overwatch had lost the public’s trust? Gabrielle Adawe inhaled and folded her hands in front of herself on the podium.

“My appointment to the position of Under-Secretary of the UN was not what I had hoped it would be,” she said, speaking into the mic, “It was not an acknowledgment of my statesmanship, but rather, a gesture of necessity, with my predecessor having perished in the early omnic attacks on humanity. We were all terrified, desperate people in those days. In its conception, Overwatch was—, to use an American colloquialism, a Hail Mary pass. A pooling together of our best and brightest individuals and resources in our darkest hour. Even as I was picking out some of the most brilliant scientists and soldiers for Overwatch’s task force, my mind was filled with so many doubts as to the fate of humanity. Jack Morrison never had those doubts. For Jack Morrison, as long as Gabriel Reyes was by his side, there was no threat too great to face, no life too small to save. 

“With Overwatch at the forefront of the fight, humanity was able to turn the tide against the omnics and end the Crisis, and in rebuilding our world from the destruction of the Omnics, there was a dream that they would serve as champions of peace and progress for the benefit of all humanity. In the end though, they were all only human themselves. Just as capable of harm and corruption as you or I. We have been disappointed, heartbroken even, by the scandals that shook Overwatch in its later years, and we were right to feel so. But we also love to forget that our heroes are human. We make them far more than we could ever hope to be, and far more than they actually are. For all their flaws, Jack Morrison and Gabriel Reyes were two men who only wanted to build a better, safer world. And in many ways, they succeeded. In the 20 years since the Omnic Crisis, we enjoy a markedly improved quality of life and technology elevated to heights not previously thought possible. They have built a better world, and it’s our job to see that it keeps getting better.

“With the ending of Overwatch, we must not think of this day as an ending to heroes, but a calling. We must be our own heroes now. We must live out the dreams of peace and progress Overwatch wanted for humanity. We must maintain hope in the face of adversity. All of these were principles Overwatch stood for, and in spite of Overwatch’s ending, they are principles we must continue to stand for. For the sake of our heroes and the sake of ourselves. All we can ever give this world is our best.” 

A ripple of applause rose up from the crowd as the camera panned out and a newscaster spoke. “Speaking up next in the memorial ceremonies is acclaimed poet laureate and—”

“Turn it off,” a voice croaked across a dark room filled with the steady beeping of a heart rate monitor. Moira clicked the monitor off and walked over.

“The hell are you wearing on your face?” said the voice as Moira turned her head towards its source.

Moira touched her fingers over the metallic half-mask now extending from her forehead, over her blue eye, and ending past her cheekbone, “Souvenir from Zurich,” she said.

“Looks stupid,” muttered the voice.

“Could look worse,” said Moira with a shrug, before clearing her throat. “Well, lab results say you’re stabilized,” she said, flipping through some lab results on her tablet, “Structurally, at least.”

“It hurts,” said the voice.

“I got to you as quickly as I can, but your current pain level… it’s the best the other scientists and I can manage without knocking you out,” said Moira.

“What’s…what’s happening to me?” said the voice.

“Survival of an organism is contingent on two states: Homeostasis, the maintenance of an organism’s baseline equilibrium, and transistasis, the adaptation to one’s environment. I’m afraid these two states are far more… evident in you than in other organisms.”

“Mirror,” said the voice.

“I’m not sure that’s a good—” Moira started.

“Mirror,” the voice insisted.

Moira turned the camera on on her tablet and then stepped next to the bed the voice was coming from, and hesitantly held the tablet out. Two hands, grayed with death with black smoke streaming off of them extended and took the tablet.

“… I’m sorry, Gabriel,” Moira said as Gabriel Reyes looked at his own face in the tablet’s camera.

Gabriel’s breath shuddered and he ran a hand down the side of his face, chunks of it falling away into black smoke as one of his now-red eyes twitched. He looked like death. Blackened veins clawed up his grayed face, his scars were flaking away into smoke and ash,  “No…” he said quietly, “No–this isn’t…”

“My working theory is that the explosion catalyzed some kind of…. trauma reaction in your SEP serum that ended up targeting the nanites of my treatments, attacking tissues of your body, including your heart, and that Doctor Ziegler’s biotic resurrection ended up cementing your cells into a permanent state of… I’m not sure what to call the processes they’re going through—Necrosis? Apoptosis? It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen.”

“You have to fix it,” said Gabriel.

“I don’t know how to,” said Moira.

Moira was not a person who was in the habit of saying she was confused or that she didn’t know what to do. The sentence seemed unnatural coming out of her mouth and it made the world seem to crumble away from Gabriel. Moira herself was pacing, running her long fingernails through her short hair.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” muttered Gabriel.

“It was bound to all come crashing down sometime…” said Moira, “And now that it has…”

“There’s going to be a power vacuum,” said Gabriel, “Overwatch gone. Lots of little organizations scrambling to rule the rubble. Going to be a bloodbath.” 

“It’s all we can do to shut them down and keep them in line,” said Moira.

“’We?’” said Gabriel.

“Giorraíonn beirt bóthar, Gabriel,” said Moira, “I told you, I’m with you. But we’re both going to need all the help we can get.”

Gabriel huffed. 

“And I’ll find a way to improve your condition, I promise you. It’s just as important to me as it is to you.”

“Taking all this in stride, as usual,” said Gabriel. 

“Adaptation is key to survival,” said Moira, “We were never the people Overwatch wanted us to be. Not truly. Now’s our chance to be who we were meant to be,” she stuck her fingernail underneath the metallic half-mask on her face, peeling it off to reveal a crumbling lattice-like pattern of black and purple on her skin stretching over the portion of her face the mask previously covered, black smoke trailing off of her skin like the smoke trailing off of Gabriel’s own body, “Both of us,” she said with a smile.

[leam1983]

Middle-Earth: Shadow of War Review

Note as of June 1st, 2020 - This review predates Monolith’s removal of the game’s microtransactions and the restructuring of the Endgame content. Enemy level scaling has been marginally affected, but not enough to affect this review.

Back in 2014, I wrote of Middle-Earth : Shadow of Mordor that it perpetuates and perpetrates acts of loving perversion, that it twists Tolkien’s lore around its little finger for the sake of shoring up its tale of revenge. I didn’t exactly put that off as being bad or somehow reprehensible, and even actively enjoyed it. Notes have been left by Tolkien himself, in which he more than clearly stipulates that he’s fine with others traveling along Middle-Earth’s side-paths in his stead, but that a certain consistency must be maintained. His main cast has very specific roles and shares specific relationships – they enter and leave the scene in a specific order that must be maintained. Mordor had us traipse around with Gollum and Lady Marwen for a spell, and attached one of the Silmarilion’s key characters to our protagonist. Talion was our Discount Aragorn of the day, and he had the esteemed honor – or misfortune – of being paired with the wraith of Celebrimbor, the former Lord of Eregion and the doomed craftsman behind the Nine Rings.

Purists howled, gamers cheered. Udün and Nürn were on the smallish side, if open-world sandboxes are concerned, and largely contained the usual open-world trappings, such as towers to climb and various knickknacks to collect. At the end of the day, however, what allowed the game to please so many had to be its Nemesis System, a clever piece of tech that tracks players and generates bespoke Uruk-Hai; vat-born palookas that breathe, drink and sweat sheer violence and hatred and that incidentally come with a surprisingly developed palette of personalities. Whichever greenskin killed you the most became your Nemesis, a mixture of coding and player behavior resulting in violent, if intimate relationships between yourself and an ascended Peter Jackson extra packing disparate armor pads and a smattering of scars.

Shadow of War, for better or worse, is exactly the same – if better in every way. Loving perversion returns, exemplified here by one of Ungoliant’s daughters looking particularly… un-spider-like, and by the ways in which Celebrimbor and Talion’s conjoined tales now both stretch one another, grow thin around the edges, and finally break away, to clear the path for the Fellowship we’re all familiar with. A few places are referred to here that shouldn’t have existed so early in Sauron’s rebirth, but unless you’re the type who launches into angry screeds whenever someone expresses their ignorance of who Morgoth is, you’re likely to be able to forgive much of it. As with Shadow of Mordor, Shadow of War exists as a modern, gritty and unapologetic side-tale in Middle-Earth’s history books, the kind of project you’re almost surprised to see Middle-Earth Entreprises cautioning – but still one that treads its little corner of the lore confidently.

As before, it’s essentially AAA fanfiction. Excellently-written fanfiction, of course, with a star-studded cast and unlikely friends and allies; but still a piece of fiction that purists can afford to safely ignore. That is, if they’re part of the Fun Police – as Shadow of War remains entertaining throughout its thirty-hour run. This is largely thanks to its cast of procedurally-generated Orcs, who all somehow manage to remain memorable. The pendulum swings wildly between sympathy, disgust and raucous amusement – even if they all remain fittingly murderous – which takes the legendarium’s treatment of Melkor, Morgoth and Sauron’s respective lackeys and tears it apart. If you’re a little like me, you’ll finish your run through Talion’s story thinking that with enough pipeweed and Lembas bread, you might be able to pluck a little Orcling out of the breeding pits and turn it into an overgrown Hobbit with a serious dental problem.

Of course, I’ll also briefly touch on the one and single Orc in the entire game you’ll desperately want to kill, but can’t. That would be the cash shop’s vendor, with his pre-release visage packing unfortunate cultural and stereotypical connotations. Good on Monolith for fixing that in time; I doubt many of us were interested in funnelling micropayments towards the kind of face 4Chan’s trolls bracket in three pairs of parentheses. The pre-release stream’s showcase definitely did pack a few related Oy vey moments…

So. Spoilers abound beyond this point. Abandon all hope and whatnot, alright? Cool.

We ended Shadow of Mordor with Talion and Celebrimbor, from here on referred to as Brim for the sake of ruffling that undead sourpuss’ Elven hair, taking to Mount Doom to forge a new Ring of Power. Being distinct from those offered to Middle-Earth’s rulers and of a different provenance than the One Ring, it was designed by Celebrimbor in order to allow him to wrest control of Mordor’s Uruk forces away from Sauron. Unforeseen events unfold which separate Talion from Brim, which sets the pace for the game’s tutorial and its first act. We’re exposed to the same Assassin’s Arkham Creed-esque mechanics the first one presented, with a few small aesthetic and functional improvements. Desperation then forces the reunited duo to follow Shelob’s advice and take to Minas Ithil, a scant few days before its fall at the hands of the Nazgül – and its rebirth as Minas Morghul.

It’s there that War blatantly references its elders in the genre, as Ithil is one of the few fully-realized settlements you’ll find in Mordor. It’s obviously packed and serves as the smaller of the game’s five regions, while still adequately evocating the scale of its more familiar brethren, such as the Gondorian city of Minas Tirith. You reach it just as it’s pushing through the Orcs’ first open siege in months, the stately beauty of its colonnades looking adequately pitted with age and duress. Ithil, after all, remains a city of Mordor and not Gondor, and as such looks to have thrived in an atmosphere of near-constant tension. You just so happen to reach it as the proverbial levee breaks, which conveniently provides you with both a familiar set of rooftops to serve as a series of transitional environments for anyone coming in from Assassin’s Creed titles or the Arkham games and more general stuff to do. Pick some basic Ubisoft open-world mechanics and you’ll find something similar here.

The same can be said of the combat mechanics, while it’d be more fair of War to say it’s cribbing from his bigger brother than from what other studios have put together. Talion is a bit sprier than before, Brim is a lot more agile once a few story-focused unlocks kick in, and most of Mordor’s mid-to-late-tier upgrades here serve as entry-level abilities. Unlike the first game, you don’t spend the first hour or so getting your ass handed to you by Püshkrimp the Armchair Philosopher – you’re potent from the word go. The same can be said of your enemies, as most Captains are now sufficiently detailed so as to consistently pose some challenge. Doormats with a title are less common, and so are unbreakable towers lording over you from a dozen or so levels. Hence the use of the word some, as you’re never in a position of overpowering strength, either from your point of view or the enemy’s. That’s a good thing, as the Nemesis system is a lot more detailed and records several additional variables. Cut an arm off of a persistent Captain, and he might come back with a new title, one or two extra levels – and a gnarly-looking DIY-plus-Black Speech prosthetic limb. Particularly eloquent types can be relegated to the rank of drooling wretches if Brim Shames them to the point where they Break. The use of capitals here is intentional, as the game clearly differentiates between Dominating an Orc and Breaking it. Dominated Orcs join your ranks, while Broken Orcs take a massive dip in levels and power. You’ll sometimes encounter Captains that stand several levels above Talion, too high for them to be recruited. Shaming them puts them within your reach, provided you find them again.

That said, as the Nemesis system characterizes everything about the Uruk-Hai, you might start out with a sympathetic and rambunctious sort who treats your repeated clashes like joyful reunions – even while he’s trying to skewer you. Break him, and chances are he’ll be reduced to monosyllabics. He’ll still be potent enough to serve as a Captain by the game’s standards, but he’ll be pretty much due for the paddywagon… The main campaign includes one fairly striking example of the scripted Breaking of a former follower – and is where the sandbox’s goofy greenskins tend to step aside for the franchise’s gritty wartime themes to reassert themselves. This is perhaps one of the few thematic issues with the title, as while Troy Baker and Alastair Duncan are both as gravelly-faced and somber as Gandalf and Elrond at the worst of times, levity rests almost entirely on the shoulders of the procedurally-generated Orcs. Mordor looks verdant at times, chilly at others – but it is most assuredly a grim and dire place to be, unless you’re above seven feet tall and happen to be one of the Dark Lord’s vat-born servants. Then, judging by those green palookas I’ve run into, you’re in for copious amounts of wanton violence, thousands of variants on head trauma and dismemberment, and lots and lots of grog. That seems to be the Orcish concept of fun, at least… That can make for jarring tonal shifts in the same scene, but at least it occurs more consistently than the first game’s half-hearted inclusion of Ratbag the Coward.

So the core mechanics are the same, but what’s changed? The premise having moved to a war in need of orchestration, your Dominating Orcs isn’t just a means of affording yourself some handy meat shields anymore. The betrayals and covert operations you staged across war camps now cover entire regions, the core Nemesis operations allowing for the development of a strong covert force as well as of a direct assault battalion. You’ll need it, as War now packs one fort for each of its five regions, from Nürnen’s verdant coastlines to Gorgoroth’s perpetual lava floes. That’s five sets of regional Captains to either slice and dice apart, Dominate, replace, or appoint to favorable positions. The cash shop includes Training Orders, which enable you to relocate Captains from one region to another – or from your Barracks to the open world. As you could expect, sworn fealty isn’t a guarantee of unwavering service. Orcs with a particularly strong will are likely to turn coat at inopportune moments. This seems like a harmless mechanic, until you consider that the hotshot Uruk War Boss you paid five bucks for could very well leave your service.

Each fort packs three capture points you’ll more or less take à la Overwatch, by piling your followers into the indicated circles. Each point can serve as the theatre for several high-level bouts, as this is obviously where the enemy sends its best attackers. It’s largely where you can expect last-minute saves from your Dominated retinue, and where the oft-mentioned battlefield relationships can develop. It’s all very Platonic, of course, but an Orc you’ve appointed and who takes well to his post might very well decide to take out the guy who’s about to choke the life out of you with a well-placed crossbow bolt. A few canned animations sell that basic sense of respect, Talion waving his thanks to his savior of the moment before going back to carving his way to the Warlord’s chambers.

 Of course, War does pack its Ratbag analog, the star of 2017’s E3 presentation. Brüz the Chopper serves as an amusing bundle of Australian lingo wrapped in an eternal optimist’s attitude – right up until he doesn’t. The game tries to dovetail its way to the point where Brüz leaves the luxury of scripted scenes and rejoins the rest of the Nemesis Captains, giving him an appropriate sendoff that many might not appreciate as being in keeping with the series’ themes. Of course, if you’d rather keep the Chopper in his Chatty Cathy phase, you can always take to Online Vendettas in Nürnen and snatch someone else’s Brüz for your own use. In theory, you could repopulate your army with the same plot-mandated Uruk in a dozen copies if you compulsively play Online Vendettas. They’re also the only way to earn Loot Boxes beyond paying for them with the in-game currency, Mirian, or ponying up hard cash for Gold, the premium currency.

So let’s say you’ve staffed your front lines, you’ve got men poised to backstab Osgiliath’s Overlord at your command and you’ve upgraded your support positions with Sauron’s elite – which you’ve unceremoniously stolen from him. What now? You can travel to another region to carry out the same process, you can put your staff through the meat grinder of Nemesis Missions or Fight Pit events to have them gain power levels, or you can wait for one of the unaffiliated Captains to find you, or for one of your own to turn coat. Outside of story missions and collectibles, your conquered regions are more or less likely to sit nice and pretty until you reach the final chapter of the game – and its most controversial one – Shadow Wars.

See, the game rather ingloriously ends with your being forced to bide time for Middle-Earth, between the events of Two Towers and Return of the King. The same point-based mechanics play out in reverse, expecting you to work from the stronghold and outwards – but not after having seriously committed to a long grind. Sauron’s efforts to reclaim your territories are going to be two or three times stronger than yours at the onset, so you’re expected to buff up your forces before triggering each attack. At this point, you can either pay up for a quick-and-dirty boost, or work your way up a rather steep slope. All of it for what, exactly?

Well – let’s just say Shadow Wars isn’t integral to the story in any shape or form. All it does is pad out the game’s length and transition the story from its shocker of a “proper” ending to one that neatly resolves all remaining conflicts in a nice bit of CGI. As with the previous game, all of the events that unfolded are shown as having had no real impact on the official lore and timeline. It more or less left me smirking and shaking my head, wondering why I even bothered with all of this if, as before, Talion’s contribution to the core events end up being conveniently scrubbed aside.

Thanks, Gamer-Person, you really did us a solid, right there! See, Frodo and Sam had a lot of cramps along the road and spent way too much time in that Bombadil fellow’s forest, so you stalled Sauron’s boys for a couple weeks! Cheers, off to the Halls of Mandos with you; we’ll mail you a cast photo of the Fellowship as thanks! No, Gandalf doesn’t take phone calls, so KTHNKXBAI!

Said story doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel, but it does flesh out both Talion and Brim a fair bit more. You bearing witness to Minas Ithil’s destruction scatters a few Gondorians of note across Mordor, and you’re made to assist them while simultaneously working with another newcomer to the lore; Eltariel, the Blade of Galadriel. In another canon-shattering move, she packs the Light of Eärendil in weaponized form. Talion consistently attempts to wrest the events back to the ensured survival of the exiled Gondorians, only for Brim and Eltariel to constantly hammer in the need to stop Sauron. It’s there that a rather Nietzschean observation concerning Celebrimbor rears its head, as our Brim doesn’t quite pack the objectivity and self-restraint of his Silmarilion counterpart. If anything, compassionate politics seems to be Talion’s consistently-ignored proposition, while Brim steadily makes his moniker of Bright Lord look like a bad joke.

Brüz has the right of it, honestly, as per his comment in the E3 gameplay snippet. “Bright Lord, Dark Lord?” he rhetorically asks, a snarky smirk on his massive face, “Same thing, really.” Talion doesn’t miss a beat for most of the game, which makes your bipartite entity come across as something close to a squabbling couple with different viewpoints. Then, and if only to motivate another loving skewer of the legendarium and the transition to Shadow Wars proper, he skips on the last gigantic red flag pointing to his ethereal friend’s seriously problematic approach to justice. It undermines what is meant to be some sort of massive twist – and potentially a setup for any potentially Eltariel-themed DLC to follow – and makes it come across as more of an inevitability. Safe to say, Monolith would have to bend over backwards in order to produce a third game in the same continuity, based on the position in which they’ve left things.

Not that the story isn’t fun as it’s presented, though. It’s a bit rote and it does leave me feeling as though Talion was shortchanged in a fairly ridiculous way: I do have the nagging idea that Monolith figured they’d just finish checking off boxes from their Big List of LOTR Figures to Introduce, and that they plugged in Gollum as a sort of admission of the character’s position as a series staple. It feels as though some exec somewhere said “It’s a LOTR game, right? Plug Gollum in there even if it’s not entirely conducive to the plot, or else!”

If the previous game struck me as being a fairly Postmodern approach to Tolkien’s source material, this one is also starkly progressive, in contrast. The proper lore does include its fair share of femmes de tête such as Eöwyn, but it always did treat them as outsiders to the norm; it serving as a sort of reflection of Tolkien’s own musty sensibilities. I’ve even heard some armchair scholars refer to the man as a Luddite, which isn’t too surprising.

Still, Shadow of War is entirely a creature born of the same climate that allowed for the Peter Jackson films, the creation of Middle-Earth Entreprises and the adaptation rights to the LOTR name being sold off to Amazon Video. It stems from the same zeitgeist as Christopher Tolkien’s stepping-down from ME’s ruling council and the general sense that the publishing of Beren and Luthien marks the end of an era. In a sense, it’s from the same spirit that’s now seeing the production of Game of Thrones spin-offs. Insofar, the new climate we’ve only just entered is one in which celebrated Fantasy universes are ripe for the picking, setting the stage for something we might one day come to call the LOTR Expanded Universe.

If you’re a purist, as before, you’ll probably quiver in your boots at the thought of humanized and fleshed-out Easterlings and Haradrim (yeah, about that one, dear White Eurocentrist Tolkien Fans…) or, Eru forbid it, even more nuanced portrayals of Middle-Earth’s canonically “dark” races and species! If you’re the type to cling to the books the way Star Trek diehards cling to their Klingon dictionaries, fly! Fly, you fools!

Honestly, I think that’s a good thing.

Yes. Yes, dear purists, I’ve said it. I’ve said the thing that motivates no end of detailed screeds on YouTube and across literary circles. You’re probably frothing at the mouth, right now, waiting to tell me that Orcs are vat-born, that the Haradrim and Easterlings all serve Sauron, that Middle-Earth is a land of refreshing absolutes where Good is saccharine and Evil eats babies for lunch – but even the source material packs a few Uruk who resort to mercy as a tactically-sound approach of dealing with captured Hobbits, or greenskins who don’t object to talking in their master’s back at the favor of being eavesdropped on by Sam Gamgee. These same Orcs reminisce on the good old days that didn’t involve their being on the warpath, suggesting that they actually do have some concept of peacetime!

Be the Fun Police if you have to – I’ll be over there cackling madly at the sight of sappy fanfics involving Azog and an unusually determined Numenorean maiden. If Shadow of War is what happens when game devs don’t just stick to established tenets but are allowed to run with a franchise’s overall vibes, I could take dozens more titles like this. The only real problems the game rises are thematic or character-based, the rest is as fluid and visceral as its predecessor.

That said, I do wish Püshkrimp the Armchair Philosopher were a Nemesis variant. You’d walk into the gutted and torn remains of an old Elven fortress in Seregost, sword drawn and muscles taut, only to be met with a cozy fire, a profusion of bear pelts, Gondorian mead and a comfy chair – and a seersucker-clad Uruk with elbow pads and pince-nez glasses, wanting to challenge your ability to address the Nature versus Nurture question, as presented by his own people... Fail to follow the right dialog options, and he would put you down to a sliver of health by the sheer sting of his contemptuous rebuttal. Manage to beat him, and the game would strip him of his title, rebranding him as Püshkrimp the Sophist…

Or – ooh! The Obsessed types from the first game could actually trigger a mini-dating sim, in which a seven feet-tall humanoid with olive-green skin and scruffy facial hair tries his hardest to initiate a consensual gay relationship between himself and an undead Ranger of Gondor!

[lysspizza]

RWBY First Member Spoilers 11/18/17

Trying something new here! I don’t want to make a video about this season until the end because I just don’t have the time to prioritize that kind of thing, but I do have a lot of thoughts about what’s been happening so far, so I’m going to do a weekly review on this blog until the season is done.

Oh, and for those of you who haven’t seen it, I’ve got a video explaining my thoughts on RWBY Volumes 1-4 over here. It’s a bit long so if you’re not a fan of video essays, I also plan to post a transcript for it on here at some point. TL;DR I had a lot of reasons not to like Volumes 1-3 so I like that Volume 4 marked the beginning of a new direction.

Anyway, here goes! Spoilers for RWBY Volume 5 Chapters 1-6.

I’m going to start off with a very brief overview of how I felt about the past few episodes.

Chapter 1: This episode was admittedly kind of boring, even though it served to set up a lot of what was to come later. Just a lot of people talking about things and foreshadowing stuff.

Chapter 2: Actually really liked this episode. Well, mostly. Loved the Weiss battle scene and appreciated further insight into what Hazel is like. He isn’t quite as over-the-top as the other villains; I’m digging the chill vibe. But did they really have to introduce a cool new WOC just to kill her off?

Chapter 3: Not sure how I feel about Blake’s storyline, yet; will have more detailed thoughts about that later. I think this was the episode where Ozpin pointed out that RNJR still have a lot to learn, so I was really excited about that--especially when he pointed out Ruby’s weakness. The scene with Weiss at the very end was touching; I really like this storyline about her developing powers.

Chapter 4: Felt a bit iffy about Oscar taking up too much screentime because I worried that yet another character was taking up the time that Ruby needs for character development, but the next episode quickly proved me wrong. Really loved the Weiss/Yang reunion; it was sweet.

Chapter 5: Again not sure how I feel about Blake’s storyline, but I looooooved the scene with Ruby. The fact that Oscar points out Ruby’s perpetual optimism and Ruby actually addresses it is amazing. I guess it took an outsider’s perspective to truly understand how much she must be bottling up. Felt like Ozpin’s praise was a bit on the nose, though; I wouldn’t praise somebody for bottling up her feelings for everybody else’s sake, but whatever.

And that leads us to this weekend!

I felt like maybe the first scene stretched on a bit too long, but the idea behind this whole part of the episode was interesting. I actually felt like I was legitimately invested in the story during this part, maybe because it was building up to a mystery that wasn’t just vague foreshadowing. Also there was just something about Qrow acting nervous and uncertain without any of the vague bullshit that made me warm up to him more as a character. I’m glad we actually get to spend some time in his headspace. See what happens when you narrow down the cast?

I don’t think I’m alone when I say that Raven’s “reveal” was kinda underwhelming. Okay, super underwhelming, actually. It was just retreading old ground, really. Like oh...wow...you can turn into a bird...who would have ever guessed... I mean, I had kinda been under the assumption that that was just kinda normal in this world. Did RNJR know that Qrow can turn into a bird? Or was that info only revealed to the audience? Either way, it just kinda annoyed me that THAT was the big reveal after Raven basically went over information that wasn’t so much “information” as it was Raven telling us that 1) Salem is dangerous and 2) she doesn’t like or trust Ozpin, which is not very useful information if she doesn’t explain why. Like, wow, Salem is the Big Bad and Raven doesn’t like Ozpin. What a twist.

But I’ll admit, it is interesting that this isn’t the first time Ozpin has hunted down kids with silver eyes and favored them irresponsibly. It makes me feel like his relationship with Ruby is a bit less mentor/student and a bit more like somebody trying to use a kid because she has some kind of special Chosen One trait. Even if his intentions are ultimately good, it’s still kinda shitty, and it fits the way he pressured Pyrrha into becoming the Fall Maiden (also arguably what he’s doing to Oscar, but I dunno.) I also hope that I’m not reading too much into what she said, because it sounds to me like there might be more to the lore of this world than what Qrow and Oz are saying. One of the big complaints I saw floating around last season was that RWBY ended up being a lot more black-and-white in terms of morality than people had hoped, and while I was mostly indifferent to that, it would be cool to see our heroes struggle with moral gray areas.

More importantly, the reunion! The reunion was great! It actually made me emotional to see Ruby’s walls come crashing down. Initially, I had been a bit confused, but then I realized--the last time they spoke, Yang had been pushing everyone away. She was depressed and angry and hurt, to the point where she even lashed out at Ruby. And then, instead of trying to help Yang through her depression and PTSD, Ruby ran. Ruby isn’t equipped for that kind of thing--sometimes she has no idea how to deal with everyday social interactions, so how could she know how to deal with her sister’s trauma? And as she explained to Oscar, she copes by moving forward. It’s hard for her to look back on her past and her mistakes, so when Yang shows up, she completely breaks.

The best part about this is, all of that stuff is communicated in the span of a few seconds. Ruby’s expressions and body language really illustrated how guilty she felt, and for once she actually voiced regret over her decisions. Personally, I would’ve liked to hear Ruby talk about this last season, but given how Ruby’s character has been set up so far this season, I can accept this. I’m really glad that the writers are demonstrating a clear awareness of what they overlooked in the past (or maybe they left it unaddressed until now intentionally? Seems like a bad idea but who knows) and fixing it in a way that makes sense. If I had to nitpick, I’d say that this might come a bit too out of nowhere, since we haven’t spent THAT much time exploring how Ruby bottles things up (and in fact the narrative seems to reward her for bottling it up, which is troubling), so the viewer might be like, “Wait, is that really how she felt? Where did that come from?” But honestly, ANY Ruby characterization is good characterization at this point.

Weiss’s expression and body language were great, too. She clearly felt like she shouldn’t intrude on a family moment, but her wistful expression reminds you that she doesn’t really have a family to have moments with. So it really warmed my heart to see them welcome her with open arms. I don’t think Weiss has gotten any affection in a long time, so there can never be enough Weiss hugs.

So yeah! Pretty good episode for the most part. Hope the rest of the season gets even better from here.