#not to be one of those toxic Aether mains

[jamrroll]

Caelus speaking the truth once again. I love him.

[punkpandapatrixk]

🌻Thinking About You ♦︎ Timeless Pick A Card

My Dearest Dream Person,

I think, the signs are all around me. When I weave dreams of my ideals, surely I must be thinking of you. I’ll recognise you when our eyes meet for the first time. I’m sure I can do that. After all, I have dreamt of you for the longest time.

I know I will love the way I feel, the way I am, when I’m in your presence. I’m certain that I will know then that this is true love…

with all of my heart,

Your Destined One♥︎

PLAYLIST: so this is love playlist by Sea Pearl

MOVIE: Sleeping Beauty (1955)

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☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・.

For my Pink Clouds, there is a little incident with Pile 3, which is like, super random? But I was told it was important LMAO So I’ve included a mini behind-the-story for it as a sweet extra message🥰If you’re already subscribed, don't miss the full post on Patreon~🌷

☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・.

Pile 1 – I will hold and heal you, and always be there to protect you♥︎

VIBE: So This Is Love from Cinderella

my daydreams leading to you – Knight of Pentacles Rx

At the time you’re finding this PAC, your Destined Person is in a state of wanting to hurry and meet you XD They have this strong desire to be with you and hold you close. I think their Higher Self is making it clear to them that you exist somewhere in this Universe and that makes them daydream a looootttt about being in a relationship. Problem is, they don’t really know what you look like or how to find you… so… they could be trying to find a glimpse of you in so many different types of people! LMAO

For the most part, I don’t think this means your Destined Person is all and about dating all kinds of people just to find you—that would be kinda trash, right? But to a large extent, they daydream to no end. They could be seeing people, yes, finding them attractive or interesting, and being curious about them, only to realise there’s quite nothing there… These people don’t feel… right… or complete. Like there’s always something… wrong… or missing.

This could drive them crazy at some point. Wondering why their wants and ideals are so damn complicated! So unrealistic! But the truth is, they could never be satisfied with any of those different types of people because each of them hold only ever a piece of the puzzle that would make a whole picture of YOU~🧩It is your Destined Person’s task to figure this out themselves and finally get a clearer picture of what kind of Love they do truly deserve in this world (it is YOU~!)💕

let’s go on a date! – 5 of Swords

If you’ve chosen this Pile as your main pile, I feel like you’ve had a few storms in the past involving human connections in general. In simple terms, a lot of people have been so MEAN to you! It could be your own “family”, fake friends, toxic partners, whatever, really. A lot of people have caused a great deal of psychological pain onto you. And I have a strong feeling your Destined Person knows about this. I’m sure they know about this from the aethers, one way or another. After all, it’s not like their Higher Self isn’t in communication with your Higher Self? Huehue

That said, even before you meet in the physical, your Destined Person already has this vibe about them… of wanting to protect you from harm. I feel like they have this unsettling feeling deep inside of them, a feeling they can’t quite put a finger on, that they want to protect somebody. They want to be a hero to you. When you’re finally together, I still see this image of them wanting to punch anybody who would pose a danger to you XD

I’m seeing this comical image of them punching the air to demonstrate how they’re going to keep you from any, ANY, kind of harm. They’re funny like that. Humour is their love language hahah They’re not afraid of making a fool of themselves if that makes you laugh. Your Destined Person is going to be so devoted to protecting and comforting you♥︎

i want you around – Queen of Pentacles

Aaand…there’s a high chance that your Destined Person is a rich boi/gal. Not only do they have this nurturing quality to them, but they also have the means to provide for you. Even if they’re not that rich (yet) when you meet, the key thing is that they have this desire to work hard to provide for you. Make your dreams come true more easily. Make your life together easy. They don’t want you ever again to experience pain or hardship.

Truly, this is a daddy/mommy vibe~ It doesn’t matter if your Destined Person is younger or smaller than you, they will take it upon themselves to be the daddy/mommy in the relationship😂If you’re the one who’s older or bigger than them, you will find this stupidly endearing HAHAHAH

Your Destined Person is sensual, reliable, emotionally dependable, very honest and hardworking, on top of being funny. They have all of these lovely qualities that they can’t wait to pour unto you. They’re currently in this weird space where they really, really want to be someone’s boyfriend/girlfriend… GOSH, I HOPE YOU MEET SOON, DAMMIT!✨🍀🩰

DAYDREAMS🔻💚

words to describe you – Priestess of Patience

what’s in my heart for you – Priestess of Enchantment

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☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・.

Pile 2 – You’ve shone a light of hope on my dark and dreary world

VIBE: Once Upon a Dream from Sleeping Beauty

my daydreams leading to you – 9 of Swords Rx

Right off the bat, your Destined Person has gone through some hellish experiences in this world. They’ve not had an easy life, and that’s caused them to view reality as immensely bleak. Before the idea of you came into their conscious mind, they’d probably had it so rough they couldn’t let themselves dream big or dream beauteous things. You know how people settle for less because they’re afraid of getting disappointed, again and again, by reality… by people?

On a different note, this could also mean that your Destined Person has endured much trauma in this life. People who have endured trauma could tend to have nightmares, even night terrors, right? We’re talking bad memories, PTSD, even CPTSD, so… this isn’t exactly an easy energy to navigate. Due to their traumas, they could also have developed harmful habits or strange coping mechanisms needed for survival. Within their psyche, there simply was so much chaos and pain.

One day, God came to your Destined Person and awakened a dream of YOU in them~ This miraculously gave them so much comfort and brought a sense of gladness for the first time in their dark and dreary world. When your Destined Person learnt of the aetheric connection you share, that you exist somewhere in this world and that you are waiting to meet and fall in love with them, they felt genuine softness for the first time in a long, long while…

That there is still something down the lane, there’s someone dearly beloved, that’s still worth living for~♥︎

let’s go on a date! – IV The Emperor Rx

From that moment onwards, your Destined Person went on to transform themselves. To make them stronger and more dazzling so they could become a perfect match for you. If this Pile is your main pile, I’m sure you’re a super dope person! I mean dope as in super awesome. I just know it that you’re a wonderful individual who has a big heart, and that a lot of people find you capable and inspirational. One way or another, this of you was conveyed to your Destined Person by the Universe~!

You are strong and kind and your Destined Person already knows this of you. In many ways, I feel almost like your Destined Person feels like they might not have that much to offer you… You’re so, so much, much more than they ever have been. Perhaps you’re richer, more successful, more famous, and all that, so…

Your Destined Person is currently just working on themselves. Making something out of themselves. They don’t really know yet what they could ever give you aside from their genuine heart. But they’re not going to be satisfied with just that. They’re not a loser, you know. They’re only beginning to let themselves be what they’re supposed to be—there’s still a lot they’re discovering about their strengths and natural talents! When they’ve figured this out of themselves, they’ll know just exactly what precious something they could offer you as a token of their Love~

i want you around – 8 of Cups Rx

Of all the Piles, I feel like your Destined Person is quite literally currently in a phase of self-discovery. They’re deep in the trenches of their own trauma healing and self-transformation that they can’t afford to focus too much on your energy. So this could mean you don’t always get clear aetheric messages from them. Plus, it feels like your Destined Person can’t or don’t even want to convey too many messages about what they think or feel about you because they know words would simply fail them.

The reason why? They’re afraid their words would become empty promises. They don’t even know themselves yet at this point. They’re not their best version of themselves yet. What tangible ideas or things could they possibly offer you? So, that’s kinda the vibe they’re operating with at this point in their Life. And if you should know anything, it is that your Destined Person has not had the luxury of being helped, supported, or coddled much by those they relied on. So there’s this vibe of them being afraid that they themselves can’t be relied upon. And that’s so sad because I think your Destined Person has such a genuine heart…

But worry not! At the end of the day, your Destined Person is literally just being taught by the Universe how to love themselves, prioritise their own needs and wants, and express themselves more honestly. They’ll get there😊They’ve just had a very lonesome and miserable life for the most part. One thing they do want you to know though, is that they’re thankful you exist at all in this Universe. You’ve given them so much hope and calmed down the storms in their world♥︎

DAYDREAMS🔻💛

words to describe you – Priestess of Prosperity

what’s in my heart for you – Priestess of Inspiration

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☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・.

Pile 3 – I offer you now… Heaven on Earth! My Love!

VIBE: When You Wish Upon a Star from Pinocchio

my daydreams leading to you – 3 of Pentacles Rx

Even just looking at the pic you’ve chosen, it feels like you and your Destined Person really do wish to offer something precious to one another~ It’s almost like a prayer, I feel. That you hold such precious thoughts of one another and wish for the most wonderful things to happen to each other. But even more than just hoping, wishing and praying, the two of you are intent on making the world a better place so the other could rest more easily.

This isn’t just your Destined Person’s thoughts; I feel that even you have always held it in your heart that you wish to become a better person for the one most worthy of your Love. That person destined for you also carries it in their heart to work on themselves and transmute a ton of generational trauma as well as curses. If this is your main pile, I hope you know that you’re a powerful Soul who’s been tasked with the transmutation of Mankind’s negative inclinations.

You and your Destined Person are Divines Feminine and Masculine. You each embody the essence of the Divine in your own unique expression of Feminine and Masculine. Since you were a child, you were already a sage; you knew it within the heart of your hearts that changing the world begins with changing yourself. That’s why you will notice later on that both you and your Destined Person will appear to be such distant creatures from the rest of your families each—because you will have transcended above the ordinariness of the lineage you were born into LOL

let’s go on a date! – X The Wheel of Fortune

All of the above said, of all the Piles, yours is the most certain to meet very soon. I feel like, in the aethers, you are already one and united, and so, you’re just waiting for the temperatures of Planet Earth to get right so she could welcome your Divine Union. You and your Destined Person are such high-vibrational creatures that when you come into contact forests would shake and mountains would shudder XD I’m thinking of the chaos caused by Ponyo when she was trying to get to Sosuke LMAO PERFECT illustration!

You don’t want to end the world. So, this world has had to ready itself in order to witness your Divine Union with your Divine Counterpart. I’m sure when you’re together you’re going to become famous; whatever the scale of your community may be. You’re going to be seen by those around you as the charity-couple or inventor-couple or some shit. You and your Destined Person are going to be working together. And there will be something magical about what you do together—even if that thing is just a small business of a cosy café! For example.

Or it could be something what would be similar to the stories of the invention of bandaids and the surgical gloves. It’s just something lovely like that. There is healing in whatever you do which is needed by Mankind right at this passage of time. I just know it that your matrimony is going to be so full of meaning, of love and joy, or service to Mankind, and most importantly, so full of magical moments that make everything you’ve been through so worthwhile.

i want you around – King of Cups

The King of Cups—the King of love songs and poetry. He is kind, sensitive, patient and caring, compassionate and understanding. And immediately, a quote comes to mind with this aenergy:

‘The right person will make you fall in love with yourself, too.’

Your Destined Person resembles you so much. They possess so many qualities that you like that remind you that you have them, too. Looking at your Destined Person, you are reminded of how good and kind and capable you yourself are. The deeper your feelings get for them, the more in love you feel towards yourself, too. Life, finally makes sense.

You’ll find, ever so unexpectedly, that you don’t need so many distractions anymore. You need only this one person and everything else is a blur. You couldn’t care less anymore about people or things that feel so little in meaning. Not interested anymore. Ain’t got time for any of that now. You want only the one and true thing: a union—a Life—with your Destined Person.

Ever so naturally you will understand that the way to manifest this Love is through your own personal transformation. And so in that sense, your life’s focus becomes only one: YOURSELF. And you realise this—you become motivated to purify your world—through receiving the awakening call of your Destined Person’s identity.

DAYDREAMS🔻💗

words to describe you – Priestess of Magick

what’s in my heart for you – Priestess of Divination

Access full reading + cards on Patreon🌸

☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・.

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[ashsirens]

All the evidence that shows Lumine is indeed a canon protagonist.

Like these old times, with Sumeru's promotions, Lumine's players have again been put aside and again we had to face antipathy and mockery from some Aether's players.

As I saw that a lot of Lumine's players started to feel insecure about their own games, I wrote this article to prove that contrary to popular belief, Lumine is indeed a canon protagonist and that if ever others toxic Aether's stans come bother you, you can get them this post.

1. The trailers and the concept art

Many people have said that Lumine can’t be the canon protagonist because according to them, Lumine was not an option in the beta.

After some research I can tell you that this argument is false. Lumine was in early development concepts arts of the game as an MC with paimon. She is 100% intended to be an MC/protag by the devs. Heres the early devs concept art :

As surprising as it may seem, official trailers prove it too. In the beginning of the game the trailers show Lumine with the title traveler right next to her. And for those who are going out "Yeah but it was only at the beginning of the game it has since changed". There is a third trailer where she shown as a traveler in Liyue with Paimon during the lantern festival.

2. The manga

Yes. You read correctly. And then you say to yourself : "But how the favorite argument of annoying Aether’s stans is a proof that Lumine is a mc ?" Well this is where we will see that some do not pay attention to the dialogues of the game. (Arguments found on @Genshin_Kineli on Twitter, who makes very good Genshin Impact character theories and analysis content.)

Aether in the manga isn't the Aether at the start of the game because:

1) Paimon is not here to prove to us that we see the traveler. As the game cutscenes go through, it is displayed that Paimon appears in most of them when it comes to the main story.

2) In the manga, Venti use his old Lyre "der Himmel", it’s the same lyre which as been preserved in the church during the Dvalin's arc in the game. While in the game, he use his other Lyre "der Frühling".

3. Aether’s outfit.

The tones of his outfit show that he does not resonate with any elements. And no it’s not geo.

Geo is yellow. Here it’s orange. His outfit in the manga is the same as his outfit by default on his anemo card. Which it’s not logical because like we can see in the game when he resonates with anemo, his outfit takes on turquoise tones.

4. The quest "We will be reunited" let us know that it was MC's sibling who travelled trough Teyvat before.

Plus, Venti's speech at the end of the prologue of the manga :

He wonders if the world became a little bit stronger thanks to Vennessa's perseverance and actions that gave more freedom to Mondstadt but justice as well.

This gives an insight that the Mondstadt within the manga is peaceful instead of seeing the archons being target of the Fatui noor seing the Abyss Order doing their revendous to attack the cities or so.

So it’s possible that the Abyss twin has awakened first, has travelled Teyvat, has acquired all the knowledge to have (for the future abyss order), then comes Khaenri'ah destruction, he/she wake up the Traveler Twin then when the latest gets captured, trying to save him/her, the Abyss Twin becomes mad.

In conclusion, unlike everyone's believe, the manga implies it’s Aether the leader of the abyss and not Lumine.

After, like I said it’s open to interpretation.

3. The Web Events

Yes, the web events is also canon, there is even one with Lumine and Venti who was released before the game comes out, which shows that Lumine was well designed for being the protagonists from the starts.

[baeshijima]

Discovered your streamer au and sjjdjejw im in love with it its so cute and wholesome but i see albedo getting so much love what abt the others cmon

Like i cant believe there arent more characters like streamer!Scaramouche would be like those streamers who are really pro gamers but rage and hurl toxic insults a lot when frustrated but thats the reason why they are so popular. Then he gets in genshin starts insulting everyone (condescending) and… insult his fav character (endearing).

Streamer!Kaeya does a lot of voice acting in games and also has trolled as the voice of characters he voices in game and hes a kinda decent gamer. He has too many simps lmao. Flirts a lot but only gives the lovesick look to his fav character in genshin. Def hits up with their voice actor early on and thats why mihoyo gave them the wedding skins :pppp Mains his own characters (and fav character cus shipp) when he can cus its funny.

Diluc occasionally gets dragged into Kaeya’s streams and he gets super annoyed oof cus its nothing to do with him like bruh stop hes got his own shit to do. I see Diluc would be in the food/drinks part of twitch cus he is a bartender and mixes drinks. Can see him also being a food/drink connoisseur esp wine. Doesnt ever get into gaming lol cant do shit but u bet he gets into genshin only because he fell head over heels in love with fav character (and happened on kaeya’s streams too uwu). Blushy boi emotes then happens a lot lmao. Def gets teased by Kaeya (and gifted a body pillow. Actually now Im wondering abt all streamers getting body pillows of fav character dijdjejd)

Streamer!Aether and Lumine who both are gamer twins lmao with Aether the completionist, taking his time type and loves lore while Lumine the speedrunner, really skilled with gaming and does op shit. (Since in-game its canon that when the twins fight tgt Lumine is more aggressive and Aether is more defensive) Aether is one of those who makes complete walkthroughs of any games while Lumine has too many funny/insane pog compilations. Both main same fav character but use them different which has them arguing who uses them better which devolves to whos the better match lmao. Def one up each other when it comes to getting fav character in their banners hehe.

Streamer!Kazuha being those polite and wholesome traveler that explores places from all over the world. I can see him bringing attention to each local specialities by praising them and streaming it live. Sometimes streams games, particularly indie ones, he particularly enjoys whenever he has the wifi/connection available. Also a lore person and I can see him maining a fav character because of their personality and complex bg. Hes just soft for them sjdjdjjds

Streamer!Heizhou who games as well tho its mostly either puzzle/strategy heavy games or games with lots of interesting lore and mystery or both :3 Usually does incredibly out of the box yet genius tactics or solving that has ppl meme abt him being 100000iq. Also somehow accurately guesses the plot/answer most of the time. I can see him loving all the puzzle/riddles gameplay and lore in genshin. THEORYCRAFTER AS WELL. Another one who would be into fav character for personality and lore. Also is it weird that i see him potentially being like game theory channel?

Streamer bennett feels bad lmao I can see him being like a young boy streamer playing many games but whos well known for insanely bad luck. We talking like gacha games being utter crap experience, getting the weirdest af glitches that no one else gets, talks abt his encounters in life that make everyone go wow thats very very unlucky. Might be seen as annoying to some but his audiences find him endearing and support him :((( awww. His fav character is likely his emotional support character. (I add bennett here because hes one of the ones I really like and feel like he needs more love. Platonically of course)

Ok yea these are my ideas feel free to add on or disagree with any of them cus your post literally inspired me ajjdjdjjdjxjds sad I cant ask this as my alt blog trashcanfills my fandom blog cus tumblr sucks :/ but ah well

take it. take the series, the au and my money /lh

NO BUT I AGREE 10000000% ON UR HCS !!!!! PLS AETHER WOULD BE THE ONE TO GIVE CHARACTER BUILD GUIDS AND LUMINE DOING SOLO BOSS SPEEDRUNS OR SMTH 😭AND HEIZOU WOULD GO ON SUCH LONG TANGENTS ABOUT WHY HIS THEORY IS CORRECT AND DEBUNK EVERY OTHER THEORY 😭😭 bennett would just be made into a meme where if someone has bad gacha luck, they would mention how they pulled a bannett :((

kazuha the indie gamer so true !!! he would be so supportive of the smaller creators and promote their games so well his community already get the game once they see the title before he even plays 😩 scaramouche also gets made into memes like in .exe vids when they show a funny moment/low numbers and then hes just there. raging. screaming. flipping a table.

VA KAEYA SO TRUE SO TRUEEEE if he has voiced a playable character, he would create a separate party for him and character!reader with the team called “lovers shalala” aND YES !!! DILUC WOULD BE THE KING OF THE FOOD AND DRINK CATEGORY !! ngl its mainly bc he makes jabs at alcoholics while promoting the benefits of fruit juice and how its “like drinking without getting drunk”. blushy diluc emotes so true so true *bangs fist on table*

[epicspheal]

Hi again! Just wanted to know your opinion on the Pokemon villains, especially towards a chance of redemption. I think the only villains that kinda got redeemed was Archie and Maxie, learning that what they did was a mistake ( a little too late tho) and maybe Colress ( being the true neutral he is), through the Alola games. But yeah, what's you're opinion on them?

Hi Ihopethisendswell!

I’ve been sitting on this ask for a bit just trying to gather my thoughts. To be honest, the Pokemon Villains are some of my least favorite aspects of the games, mainly because in my opinion they’re rarely handled well (except for original Team Plasma and Team Skull, those guys are amazing and I except no slander of either)

I’ll start with Team Rocket. They have a very basic but realistic evil goal (especially in a setting as fantastic as the world of Pokemon). I honestly can’t say I dislike them. I would like to see more teams using their concept of just taking advantage of Pokemon for profit and selfish reasons rather than trying to tie in some philosophy (because to be honest in my opinion most of the teams who try to use philosophy to justify their extremism just end up looking really stupid for the most part). I like Kanto Team Rocket better than Johto’s plot and Rainbow Rocket was only good for the “what if” aspect and adding to the new multiverse lore. As far as redemption...I don’t think Giovanni or the grunts really deserve it.

For Team Aqua and Team Magma, I actually like them in a “so bad it’s good” type of way (definitely nostalgia based as even though I got into Pokemon during the original anime, I didn’t get to play a main game until  gen 3). Like the idea of having two separate evil teams competing against each other to see who can enact their plans first is a super cool concept in my opinion but wasted on the idiocy of the “expand the land/expand the sea” goals. I will say I enjoyed their Emerald enhanced plot and ORAS’s expansion on them in the Delta Episode. I think the Emerald clash of Kyogre and Groudon was the most logical conclusion to their schemes. As far as redemption goes, I do think Maxie and Archie should’ve served some jail time like Chairman Rose because their plan was just as catastrophic if not more so.

For Team Galactic, ugh. They’re my second least favorite. They were just boring and made an already painfully slow game even more intolerable. This is where I give the Pokemon Anime credit, they made them more interesting in the games and I actually really loved how it was adapted (proof that when they want to the anime can have some really solid writing). Redemption for them? Nope, you literally tried to rewrite the world. Even with Cyrus’ tragic backstory...still nope.

Now for Team Plasma. This is how you do an evil team. Easily one of my favorite teams to actually go up against in game. I like that they actually tried to tackle an ethical question with Pokemon in Team Plasma.  N was a fantastic antagonist and I’m glad he saw the light at the end and he definitely deserves the redemption. And all of the Team Plasma grunts who actually believed in N’s goal deserve redemption. I really enjoyed what they did in BW2 where they had the Plasma House with the misguided former grunts and the confrontation between the old team plasma and Neo Team Plasma about how ostracized the reformed grunts are. Although I don’t like Neo Team Plasma as much (although the outfits are 100 times cooler), it does make sense that the ones still loyal to Ghetsis would try for another attempt. Also it took me a second runthrough of White 2 to really appreciate Colress and his “this is for science” mantra but you know what, I love him. Him and N are really awesome and deserve the redemption. Ghetsis can go jump in a fucking volcano though, him and his followers (:  As for Team Flare, they suffer a lot from not getting a sequel or third version. But like Team Galactic the anime adaptation did a lot of good for them. Team Flare is like Team Aqua/Magma for me in that I think they’re so bad it’s actually good. They actually had some funny dialogue bits and there was actually a lot of potential for them storywise if we had of gotten another Kalos game. The Great War, and AZ all had a lot of potential. Plus having an Elite 4 member working with them? That was more of a twist than Lysandre being the boss. And the Xerosic post-game plot was heartbreaking. Redemption wise though, it’s kind of hard to do with a group who literally tried to nuke the world. 

Team Skull. I love these guys. I love them so much. This is another example for me personally of an evil team done right. I really liked how they weren’t even evil, just frustrated youth who were failed by Alola’s tradition. Like I could seriously go on about how toxic the Alolan community really is if the fact that a child failing the island challenge (a coming of age journey) somehow makes them feel so down about themselves and feel like rejects to the point they join a literal gang to find some sort of belonging (this is of course not talking about the origins of Team Skull being from a disgraced Kahuna who incurred the wrath of the tapus). Like I feel so sorry for them and I wanted to yell at the Kahunas in game for them not recognizing that their traditions were creating the Team Skull problem. Team Skull definitely deserved their redemption as they reformed in the post game

Aether Foundation though, ugh. Easily my least favorite. I really disliked the Aether Family as a whole as I felt they were invasive to the plot and that the focus should’ve been on team skull and how traditions while important can have harmful consequences. I will say it was nice to have female antagonist and I vastly prefer SM Lusamine to USUM Lusamine. USUM Lusamine was more redeemable but she was less interesting and USUM really screws up Lillie’s development which I dislike (which is saying something because I really can’t stand Lillie). 

Team Yell was a disappointment. Honestly there was so much potential because like Team Skull they are a very grounded team (as you can see, I like the grounded in reality teams more so than the philosphical extremist ones). Like I can totally understand why they would form considering how dilapidated Spikemuth is. The issue is that they aren’t given a chance to do much actual evil. Even though Team Skull wasn’t really all that bad, they still did bad things. Which is realistic given their desperation. As desperate as Team Yell was to get Marnie to become champion I was expecting more sabotage and outright hostility. Which while being bad, would be realistic given their situation. That and the fact that no one really calls out the fact the irony of their sabotage actually delegitimizing Marnie’s strengths as a trainer. Like is Marnie truly one of the strongest trainers from the gym challenge or were their people who could’ve beat her who got targeted by Team Yell and ultimately dropped out? Not to mention the implications of ongoing beef between Team Yell and Chairman Rose. Again so much potential wasted. If they had of just made them just a tad more hostile and had someone point out how they were unintentionally making Marnie look bad, they’d easily be one of my favorites.

Macros Cosmos. I think this was the team most screwed over by the plot, and the controversial anime adaptation did them only a few favors. I’ve said this before, but the royal twins historical manipulation plot was more interesting than Rose’s “I’m going to start the Galarian Apocalypse to save Galar” plot. And the sad part is Rose could’ve been a very compelling antagonist. I’ll say that if they really wanted to make Rose an antagonist, they could’ve taken away the Eternatus plot and just used his poor communication skills to cause problems for the gym leaders and champion. A bad boss with impatience and crappy communication skills is something many people can relate to, and I think would’ve been a more interesting plot than trying to force philosophical extremism on to him because.

And lastly the Royal Twins. Man I hated them, but also they’re some of my favorite antagonists. I think people at times look solely at their goofy hairstyles and entitledness and forget how dangerous these two actually were. They had a whole network of spies loyal to them? Imagine a game with them as the main protagonists where it gets to the point you can’t trust the NPCs because who knows which one supports them. Also their historical revision plot is something so relevant today with textbooks being written in a way to minimize horrible atrocities such as the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Granted their plot in game left a lot to be desired, but they had so much potential and honestly a better reasoning to want to awake Eternatus than Rose did. As you can see I prefer the more grounded teams such as Rocket, Plasma, Skull and Yell (in theory) and the Royal Twins given how their goals relate to the real world. I also think in many ways Gamefreak does better with those plots wiriting wise than the philosophical extremist teams. 

[eunique]

I am so fucking sick and tired of the Western Genshin Impact fandom rn.

This fandom just LOVES to maul anyone at any given point

Like this fandom chased Diluc and Kaeya's ENG VA off twitter for retweeting innocent fanart of Kaeya and Diluc (original artist got attacked to), disrespected Corina (Paimon's ENG VA) to tears on tiktok and now ya'll are making Zach (Aether's ENG VA) feel like shit after the 2.1 livestream because it was scripted and cringe?

You don't have to like the stream and that's absolutely fine but it really doesn't give you the right to attack the VAs. They don't know what the final product will turn out to be like. They just do their bit and get paid. They're human beings doing their job to put food on their table and pay their bills.

And then you complain when the 2.0 stream was in Chinese? And I BET that the same people that complained are absolutely fine playing Genshin with the JP dub or even watch anime subbed. Make it make sense ffs. Can't understand the language? Subtitles exist use them. It's literally not that hard.

Telling people to unalive themselves because they got your fave character? Like ya'll are getting so shitty over p i x e l s. Your fave being your kinnie or your comfort character is not an excuse to go attacking anyone who has your fave character. You can be envious. You can be frustrated. Those are all valid but to the point of sending death threats is never okay

Not to mention people shitting on other people's mains and builds? Like fuck off. It's a predominantly single player game. No one asked for your input and if we wanted input, we'll go see a build guide and work it out. Like I don't mind if someone is new to Genshin and you're politely guiding them but literally insulting them is not the way to go.

The co-op experience as well is a shit show. See point above. Its the people that literally are assholes in co-op telling people who they can or can't use. Like I get you're trying to clear the domain hence why you co-oped to get help but you could be nicer about it.

I literally don't let anyone into my world now because I've had terrible experiences in co-op being judged as a Beidou main on several occasions or having Beidou be dubbed as shit when she's perfectly fine in a domain like the one in dragonspine. I've only let in a total of like 15-20 people. Most coming from my early days. Now, I let only like 1 person in because I know them irl, I trust them, they're pleasant to co-op with and I always have fun with them. I don't let strangers into my world anymore because of bad co-op experiences.

And I can go off on several hundred other things but I've already addressed them on my blog so I won't get into those.

It's just so fucking upsetting when people have no basic human decency. Like some of ya'll are so entitled and it S H O W S. I'm legitimately ashamed to see the fandom tune like this in less than a ye a r and by GOD makes me very happy I am bilingual so I can choose to not have to deal with the toxic shit.

Part of me knew that the Genshin fandom would unfortunately turn out to be like this when it was still less than 6 months old but my god the fandom turned toxic real fast with the 1 year anni coming up.

It's really unfortunate and I know Tumblr is not as bad. Thank you. Makes it much much better. I'm just tired of seeing people get hurt over a game because someone decided to be a fucking bitch.

[neurotic-knives]

Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood, The Story of Hali Naras

Beneath the cut is probably a very long story, detailing a lot of feelings and other things, including feelings, opinions, and experiences as told from my perspective. I will not be tagging certain people with whom I’ve since parted ways, both to prevent further conflict and spare them all the reminder that I exist within a shared space, especially as some have come to fear or are made uncomfortable by me for some reasons I wholly understand, but some that I still do not fully comprehend. For those people, if you see this post and choose to read it, I am thankful for the good times, and regret all the bad that has transpired despite them. I hope all involved here, friend or otherwise, can move on and enjoy Shadowbringers with nothing holding them back. I know that I will.

Near the end of Heavensward,

I returned to FFXIV after over a year of being gone. I didn’t leave of my own volition. I’d changed out my phone, and, with it, lost my authenticator. I had issues with customer service, then, and, instead of deactivating it like I had asked, they removed my payment info and said nothing more, essentially, as I put it “soft-banning” me from the game.

WoW had become a toxic place for me. The creativity and ideas that I had grown to love sharing with my friends had begun to be spurned due to several changes in leadership, some of whom were not used to my off-the-wall ideas and story arcs there. Combined with the rise of community groups like Failzeroth and the like, I had wound up seeing, as the Discord admin, that I was being talked about behind my back. People dithered on what to “do about [me]” because the ideas I had for my longest-running character, @titantechcorelyn, were viewed by the leadership at the time as “possible, but not probable” despite countless instances of proof in the lore, which I prided myself in knowing inside and out. I made the decision for them, and I left the game after getting sick of feeling like I was being swept under the rug.

At the time, my ex-girlfriend and roommate had a friend from work that we both got along with well who played FFXIV and got us both back into the game. After a couple of days trying again with customer service to get my account back, I was back in. Corelyn Rosefire, my main at the time, a Garlean defector who had long since taken refuge in Eorzea, was brought back into the spotlight, and I began trying to find RP again as I worked my way through the MSQ, preparing for the new Stormblood expansion.

Eventually, I reconnected with @danshadowsrp / @raptorswithlaszorz, who had been a fabulous and supportive friend for a very long time, since almost a decade ago when we met in WoW. He was the one who helped me ease into my transition and I owe finding my identity entirely to his help. He means a great deal to me, even though we don’t get to do much together these days.

Corelyn’s story moved forward slowly but steadily, and, eventually, I met Aegir, Bragi, and Araceli during a “Garlean Bar Crawl” RP. I eventually got Corelyn involved with their Garlean group, and a linkshell of Garleans at the time they were all part of. The frienship grew, and I began hanging out with them exclusively. They were great friends and I loved every moment we all spent together, hanging out and having fun.

Eventually, I was introduced the the Gold and Glory free company, which was still run by Jaliqai at the time, being a hunters’ guild full of Xaela and Miqo’te, yet that also played unwitting host to the “Not-Garleans,” Aegir, Bragi, and Araceli, as well as Araceli’s main, Lirilith. It was less than a few months in that Jaliqai decided the she no longer wished to run G&G, and passed leadership on to the Not-Garleans, who made a fantastic RP experience with their boundless creativity and inclusiveness. They invited me in, at that time, and I’d found my first real home in FFXIV since before, for the long time I’d played, I never really belonged anywhere. This felt nice. I had good friends.

G&G took off. There I met wonderful friends, some of which I still am happy to know, including Naoh, Keerith, Dato, and more. Soon, I decided to use that font of creativity within the free company to create a character that I had intended as an experiment: Hali Naras, my main character now known by the name Asashio no Haruhi, and the subject of this tumblr: an autistic Keeper of the Moon miqo’te of somewhat awkward height and build who, through the Echo, could feel out aether and tried to use that to copy spells she experienced or studied. She was meant to be something I had never done before: a character based on what was, overwhelmingly, a self-insert concept. Inevitably, she grew, and she grew fast. She was discovered by another of the Not-Garleans, their boss, Zheng. and, after helping with a job gone south, she was taken to meet the Crawfords, Aegir and Bragi’s personas for the new owners of G&G, played by an alt of Aegir’s and a recustomisation of Bragi’s main.

Things were off to a rough start, as, given the lack of a real event system, we used Grindstone rules for the most part, opposed rolls never quite working out for her. She was established very quickly as a fluke - someone who performed well when no one was looking, at first meeting, then proceeded to become a helpless, anxiety-ridden mess, incapable of really helping anyone, even herself. She was beaten, broken, and abused, time and time again, to the point where it sort of became a running joke. Aegir tended to play off on it in his comics quite a deal, picking on her from time to time, though usually just in good fun. I’ll admit a small bit of resentment over it since I had wanted her to start off as a somewhat competent, interesting character, but instead wound up with a woobie.

Hali liked to cook, as I do IRL, and so she found her niche within G&G thanks to some intervention. She would go on adventures to hone her skill and magic as much as she could, but her primary job was the overnight chef. She excelled there. My penchant for writing food porn got her far, there, and so we also decided to open G&G’s old tavern, the Bountiful Chest, back up. I took the lead on the project, creating a menu, helping to make the restaurant, and taking the lead on running things. The crew at the time was fantastic, Araceli waiting tables, Aegir and Bragi hanging about as the Crawfords, greeting people and overseeing operations, Hali cooking up a storm, and, as time went on, more and more people took part. It was a fun weekly thing - or semiweekly as my health began to decline due to a mixture of issues that I have only recently begun to have treated.

We began to network from time to time with the Outriders free company and with a storyteller, O’byahta, who was a big part of that FC, run by @glitterychaospersona and @superiorthaumaturge, along with a couple others at the time. Hali got involved in “Byahta’s Ventures” around the same time as she was scouted out by Aegir, Bragi, and Zheng’s “Immortals,” a sect of Thavnairian Blue Mages that were throwbacks to FFXI’s BLU. Hali faced a great deal of turmoil, but always managed to overcome it.

We had also, eventually, taken over the Garlean community linkshell, being heavily active with the Not-Garlean, networking with Corelyn and a multitude of others. We created what was called the Fustuarium, a group of Imperial special agents that would hunt down rogue elements, judge them, then either bring them back into the fold or execute them. We had many members join by being “re-acquired.” It was a lot of fun.

Through all I did in both the Fustuarium group and G&G proper, I was made an officer. I was never really asked if I wanted it, and likely would’ve asked not to be, but I accepted the role. I had taken such an active role within the FC, and loved the feeling of belonging to this wonderfully-creative group that ran immensely-fun events and came up with great ideas together, such as Iron Chef Eorzea, the Menphina Madness Blitzball Tournament, revamping the Golden Gala, and so much more.

Hali’s story moved on and on, eventually earning herself the title of Iron Chef, she went with the company to Kugane, was taught to become a shinobi, eschewed the blue magic of the Immortals, fought for her life with the Outriders at her side, became captain of Kugane’s Koban Crushers Blittzball team, and so on.

Eventually, through the Fustuarium group, @phantom-singularity was introduced to me and to G&G. I was leery of her at first, admittedly, as she was brought in by a member of the group, Otho/Odeai, for whom I really didn’t have much fondness. However, we began to talk in general, and then she DM’d me on Discord. Since that day, nearly two years ago, not a single day has passed where we haven’t been in contact nearly all the time we share awake. We fell in love, suffered together, visited one another, and eventually moved in together. If there’s anything I’m grateful for from this expansion, it’s her. If it were not for us starting RP between Hali and her character Dahlia @umbralhearts, I probably would not have survived the stress and abuse I had suffered over the course of the past few years thanks to, I have only recently discovered, a very abusive pseudo-relationship with someone we are still trying to escape.

As time went on, and Odeai continuously stirred shit up (eventually getting herself kicked from all those groups), I grew to greatly dislike her, especially as she was very much the catalyst that led to the awful witch hunt that was perpetuated against Dani. I won’t go into all of that again - the posts can be found on my main blog, @nierfenhimer, somewhere - but it was hell for us both. She wanted to have friends. I loved the friends I had, but they way it was all handled was, inevitably, disastrous, no matter how much I tried to stop it. Eventually, she left G&G and the Fustuarium. Not long after, I did, as well. Everyone was angry, everyone was hurt, and we all hated it. It was a nightmare come true for many reasons. There is still, today, especially after repeated similar situations on Aegir, Bragi, Liri, and Zheng’s parts with G&G, a lot of resentment between us all, I’m sure. What bridges were burned are likely gone for good. Everyone made mistakes. Following all of it, Dani and I became so stressed that we left FFXIV for a year, sacrificing the house that we had just gotten together for the sake of our safety and sanity.

During that time, Hali and Dahlia, who had been struggling together against a voidsent that possessed Dahlia, became embroiled in an awful conflict, eventually resulting in Hali’s death. Thanks to a combination of a great many things, Hali was resurrected when we returned. We left for WoW for a time, going back to my decade-long friends like @tyrellia, @kombink, @squishlecharacters, @aythala, and so many more. However, it didn’t last because, frankly, Battle for Azeroth turned out to be a dumpster fire.

It sucks, but today, I’m happy to have several great groups of friends. Dani and I joined the Outriders officially, along with Naomi and Otto, as well as Naoh and Keerith, who had gone there, Hali’s long-time rival and best friend, @trahventia, and more. We made new friends like @weaponskill, @deviltouched-xaela, and more. We reconnected with old friends from before we left such as @floating-city-of-nem and others. We made new friends. 

Even though I was unemployed on and off, going through hell on earth, and constantly unstable, Dani, along with the Outriders and my friends from the Retribution/TSV/Ashguard back from WoW were immensely supportive. The Outriders, over the summer of 2018, raised nearly $350 together to help pay for my name change as part of my transition. Today, I have a name to match my identity - one that I’m comfortable and happy to use - because of them. We’ve played countless games of D&D together, as well as other tabletops. We’ve had fun, and we’ve even had our share of drama, but we’ve made it through. 

Hali and Dahlia got married in-game, and we’ve come up with wonderful ideas, characters, and even ships together. Hali has since become a cyclone of chaotic life events, combining her shinobi training with abyssal magic as she’s embraced her inner darkness. We managed to reclaim a house for Hali and Dahlia and have since made a wonderful home together in the game.

Stormblood was an expansion where I truly let go of past hurts, in RP and otherwise, and found my niche. I found my identity, I grew up, I suffered immensely, but I learned, I fell in love, I had fun, and I let go of the things that had been holding me back as a person and from letting me truly have fun.

To all of you who were a part of my life, for better, worse, or both, thank you. Thank you all for everything you have been for me. To G&G for getting me involved, to the Outriders for picking me back up when that all fell apart, to the Retribution for taking me back for the short time I was back on WoW and understanding my propensity to disappear when life gets hard, to the friends, both old and new, that we have had, kept, and lost, and, most of all, to Dani, who I love without parallel and am happy every day I wake up next to you, no matter what trials we face.

Stormblood brought good and bad. It was truly a Storm of Blood. But it was good. It was amazing, and it was terrible all at once. I wouldn’t trade any of it for anything. I’m looking forward to Shadowbringers, and to experiencing it with all of you. We’ve all come a long way. See y’all on the other side. ♥

~ Asashio no Haruhi / Hali Naras of Balmung, Crystal DC

[republictrooper]

Because I feel like I want to get my thoughts down some place where I can kind of let it all flow, here’s where I am on what I thought of the keynote, specially why it lowered my hype overall:

GENDERLOCKED RACES

-The Genderlocked races thing speaks to toxic attitudes about gender that we, as a people, should have gotten over long ago, specifically about how so much of gender is wrapped up in wrongheaded views and fantasies of the cis hetereosexual men who still hold most of the power in most modern societies.

-Viera being kept as woman-only seems to be both a clear concession to male sexuality (Viera racial gear is clearly made with a straight male sexual gaze in mind, and Viera women are designed with supermodel bodies that appeal to a large section of stereotypical straight males) with a slight nod to gender roles (making male Viera who shared the female viera perchant for skimpy clothes and lithe sinuous bodies would make homophobic straight men uncomfortable). 

-Hrothgar very clearly fulfill stereotypical straight cismale fantasies of being big buff powerlifter types. Strength and power over any other type of depiction of men.

-Hrothgar are also suspiciously underdeveloped compared to Viera. No examples in the trailer, and their models in their preview video are very obviously not created with the same care and attention to detail as the Viera examples we’ve seen, say, in the dancer reveal video. I’m not saying the Devs chickened out on male Viera and threw together Hrothgar as a very weird peace offering/attempt to deflect criticism at the last minute, but also, very obviously putting more work and care into the fetishy male-gaze lady-only race is a little much, don’t you think?

-The lore excuse holds no water. If the lore excuse was valid, we would have no playable WHMs (because the elementals only allow a small handful of people to become WHMs, and then mostly only Padjali), no playable BLMs (because BLMs are outlawed with extreme prejudice due to their affects on the land’s aether), no playable male miqote (because lore-wise, they are born at exponentially lower birth rates than miqote women), and no playable viera at all (because lore-wise, they never leave their forests other than a small handful of rebels and misfits. certainly not in large enough numbers to justify the thousands of lady viera that will be seen on the streets of our major hub cities soon enough). I could probably go on, but I’ll stop there. Point is, lore hasn’t stopped the dev team before, and even if the lore was rock solid here... Yoshi is the head designer. He could change it. 

-The “We didn’t have time for both genders for both races” explanation doesn’t sit right with me either. It’s kind of like how in Dragon Age/Mass Effect we constantly learn that they were planning to add more gay/male-on-male romances but ran out of time. Even if that is true, what you chose to cut first says something about your values and priorities. IE, if you chose to cut a queer romance instead of a het romance, it says you got some heteronormativity issues at the least. And if, when faced with the inability to complete two new races, you keep both races, but cut the genders that least conform to standard modern gender roles instead of completing one race and cutting or delaying the other, it says you still have some pretty messed up views about gender. I would have much rather seen them cut one race and make two genders for the other, and it would make more sense to do so absent the gender issues obviously on display.

-They have already made this mistake in the past. Multiple races were genderlocked in 1.0, and they deliberately fixed that in 2.0. It was clearly a mistake. Returning to that same mistake now is a clear backslide.

LACK OF THE HEALER CLASS

Listen, the idea of a Dancer Class at its base isn’t bad. I love the idea. I like capping all battle classes on my main, so I will play Dancer, and probably cap it before multiple other classes. 

However, I am a main healer at heart. Scholar is the first class I level in new expansions, and the class I take to do new content 9 out of 10 times.

I love Scholar. Even if there was a new healer class, chances are I would still level Scholar first.

But sometimes I get tired of Scholar and I want a little variety. But I’ve played WHM and AST a lot already. What if I want to explore another possibility? It is now very possible that I will not have that chance for over 6 years.

When I get tired of my main classes in other roles, I have options.

If I get tired of my BRD (main DPS class), I can switch over to NIN for a while, and in the most recent expansion, I had RDM and SAM to offer new ways to experience the role.

If I get tired of my WAR (main Tank class), well, I WAS in the same boat as healer, but at least I get Gunbreaker this expansion, so that drought is SOMEWHAT broken.

Listen, I understand that healers are technically a little more common than tanks judging by queue time, and most people play DPS, so you feel like you’d rather just pad out either the stuff that needs the most new players or the stuff most people play anyway, but that doesn’t make it any nicer for healers to be the neglected middle child. 

Given that I already had to stop playing Overwatch because they neglected their healer chars, I’d rather not one of my other beloved games do the same. It’s also kind of disconcerting that at the same keynote we learn FFXIV made some very weird male-focused genderlock choices, they also indirectly implied that the MMO role most commonly associated with women will have a lack of classes for at likely least 5 years in a row.

I mean, I can keep my fingers crossed for a surprised reveal of a chemist or geomancer in a patch class, but at this point that is wishful thinking. We healers deserve some indication that the dev team hears us and wants us to feel wanted and appreciated as players. 

FAT MIQOTE.

I’m fat. I will probably always be fat. Call it genetics, call it social pressure, call it whatever you want, but the reasons for being fat are as many and varied as there are fat people. It is not simple for most of us to become not-fat, and we deserve care and consideration as human beings regardless of our body size, body type, or whether we are trying or even planning/wanting to become non-fat or not.

And yet, in popular culture, again and again, fat people are almost universally presented as little more than dopes or comic relief at best, and usually as gluttons and bad people. Fat people are often, or even usually bad, evil people who’s body size is either a punishment or an indication of a corrupt, greedy person who consumes and takes. Even good fat people are often small-minded and weak gluttons who talk of nothing but food, are picked on or made the butt of jokes because of their size, never get a spotlight or even a break, and are often shown as gluttonous to the point of actively endangering themselves and others in pursuit of more food.

That is not who we are. Fat people are fat for a variety of reasons. Fat people can be healthy or unhealthy. Fat people can be good or evil. And yet we always fall within a few negative stereotypes in fiction. And now FFXIV is carrying those forward, front and center on the main advertising for their new expansion. 

And like, If devs don’t want to allocate resources to creating fat models for player races because of animation concerns or whatever, that’s one thing. It’s still speaks to your priorities that you think fat people aren’t worth animating, but at least we have some sort of explanation.

But the fact that the only time fat people get paraded out is as shorthand for greed and corruption is demoralizing at best, and speaks to a lack of understanding and compassion.

Fat people deserve to see heroic fat people. They deserve to see brave fat people. They deserve to see kind fat people. They deserve to see fat people of all walks of life, not just corrupt villains and lazy comic relief. I hope at the very least FFXIV’s devs realize this and give us fat people populating other villages and cities, being as visible and varied as thin people.

IN CONCLUSION, I FEEL KINDA BAD, SORRY

Anyway, I still plan to play Shadowbringers. There’s still a lot about FFXIV I love. But I feel like the dev team made a lot of really bad missteps and unforced errors at last night’s keynote, and I hope they realize that and strive to do better and fix those errors in upcoming live letters and patches.

[zchaotic]

Finished my US Mono Fairy Type Run. Now it is time to review.

I just beaten Giovanni and ended RR.

Replaying the Ultra Games have given me a pretty good perspective on Gen 7′s Alola games.

The Ultra games are as their names implied, better versions of SM in every aspect to me. Keep reading if you are interested.

The Pro’s. The Story changes.

Lillie’s arc may have not been given as much focus as SM. But it dawned on me what her story really was. It wasn’t about an abused child standing up to her abuser. It was about a timid girl being inspired by those around her to become brave enough to protect those close to her and to become strong enough to do it. That is what her Z Powered Form represents, her getting over those doubts and anxieties, becoming her own while she takes on the world.

That is why she wanted to save her mother in SM. To try and save that woman from herself. I personally believe that Lillie’s arc, while losing some of that focus from SM, had a better trade off in USUM due to how it ends, instead of Lillie going to Kanto to help Lusamine recover and essentially going back to her.

Through out both games, Lillie kept admiring trainers for the things they do and breaks out of that shell. Once we get to the end of the Necrozma plot, Lillie settled things with Lusamine and only went to Aether Paradise with that woman to see Nebby recover. Once that happens, the two parted ways and if you go to Mahalo Trial after beating Gladion, we see Lillie do the last thing needed before becoming a trainer, giving the same emotional goodbye to Nebby.

Once you beat the league and start RR. We see Lillie at the start of her carrier as a pokemon trainer. Kicking a grunts butt and fighting along side you. She becomes for feisty even against freaking Ghetsis and for those picky about Lillie’s confession at Exeggutor Island, that girl has what is pretty much the same confession towards you at the end of RR.

In addition, Lillie’s story ends with her living with Kukui, at a more healthier environment and her wanting to become you Battle Tree Partner.

Gladion’s motives are more fleshed out in USUM, with him stealing Type:Null and running to A. Get away from Lusamine and Aether Paradise due to the toxic controlling environment... much like in SM. And B. So he can become strong enough to protect those close to him once the moment is needed. To keep his family from falling apart more than it already had.

The change between SM and USUM doesn’t hurt his arc and dare I say USUM is a bit more realistic in this regard.

I also liked how his story ends in USUM compared to SM. In SM, he was forced in an adult position in the place he was abused in and wanted nothing more to do with. Because a certain adult close to him couldn’t take the job herself.

In USUM however, because Lusamine didn’t get sick, he got more freedom for the next step of his arc. To get more of that strength, he went to Kanto this time... had a pretty cute goodbye to his reforming mother and spend a whole month training. He comes back in a month with a full team of six and is the toughest of the title defense matches in USUM. He is needed to trigger the games true ending.

Finally, the seemingly biggest change in USUM’s story.... Lusamine.

I liked the changes to her character. In SM we had no reason to care about her, she was an unrepentant cunt and the hints that she wasn’t always that horrible came from the mouths of other characters. We got a good villain, but the bigger picture of her was written very badly.

In USUM. We still have Lusamine go nuts due to trauma from Mohn’s disappearance and as a result of her not wanting to let things go, became more controlling of her kids and obsessed over the Ultra Wormhole and the things beyond to try and get Mohn back.

This resulted in her allowing and doing messed up stuff in her desire for vengeance. Including allowing the creation of Type:Null and being willing to have Nebby go through all sorts of horrible stuff. Gladion was the first to find out about this, took Null and left. Which resulted in Lusamine being more grief stricken and while not mentioned in USUM, resulted in her becoming more controlling over Lillie.

Eventually, Lillie couldn’t stand Nebby’s suffering, stole it and ran.

Leaving Lusamine alone and with nothing left... in SM this resulted in her becoming focused solely on the wormhole and the only beast that she has clues on. Nihilego. But in USUM, something changed in the ripple that prevented her from getting to the levels seen in SM. The Ultra Recon Squad showed up and went to the Aether Foundation for help on their problems, they told this woman about the beasts and about something for her to focus her objections on... Necrozma.

In USUM, we see Lusamine as someone who develops a messiah complex. If she can go beat Necrozma, she would live up to her position as a protector of pokemon and people along with having the resources needed to find Mohn. She still has Mohn as an objective in mind, but she is still pretty crazy due to how she was conducting reckless things with Ultra Wormholes. (The point of the scene in Aether Paradise in USUM.) Froze her pokemon. (Not wanting to lose those close to her.) and was bitter/ nasty to her kids when it was time to confront her.

Lillie is scared of Nebby getting killed with little she can do about it and Gladion is more scared due to how if Lusamine crosses that wormhole, the family will likely lose another parent. But this woman is so stuck up in her ambitions that she refused to listen to her kids and do it anyways.

This is pretty real in broken families where the adult acts like it is their way or the highway and those not them are to shut up.

In USUM, Lusamine is still a horrible person... but it actually gives her some onscreen humanity. While she is less scary of a villain compared to SM, she is better as an actual character in USUM. A woman who has gone off the deep end in her ambitions to get a loved one back and keep the family together, but is so blind in how she done it that her kids ended up suffering.

This was always what Gamefreak intended to make with her Character. But they messed up badly in SM and instead created a caricature of an abusive parent. This one was so chilling in that regard that the fanbase are often only seeing that aspect of her character and believing that is the intention of her character. An abusive parent to get toppled over.

This is why the fanbase are not a fan of USUM’s Lusamine, who is made more human and have more going for her that people are confused in figuring out whether or not she is evil and even more, this version of Lusamine shattered the fanbases head canons on what kind of person this woman was. People don’t want to admit they are wrong and instead lash out.

Especially towards the end of USUM where Lusamine got curb stomped by Necrozma and had a heart to heart talk with Lillie while you were busy. Lillie told is at Vast Poni Canyon what she wanted to tell Lusamine about.

"The president... My mother is— She's selfish. She decides all by herself what she thinks needs to be done to make other people happy, not even caring what it is they may want... But people ought to help one another out! That is what I have learned here in Alola! And that is what I'm going to teach her, too.”

This combined with Necrozma knocking Lusamine off her high horse, gave this woman a self reflection and realization on what she was doing and started her turn around for the better.

Apologizing to Lillie by admitting the girl was right to take Nebby and run. (Admitting that Gladion was right to do the same with Null.) Making it up to Nebby by tending to it with Lillie. Then letting the girl go off back to Kukui’s

Making it up to Gladion by seeing him off when he went to Kanto...

Letting her kids go, is the first major step to Lusamine making it up to her kids.

Then in between the Champion ending and RR, she has an identity crisis from the realization of how awful she was. This gets resolved after RR when she vowed to love her kids from a distance, without interfering with their lives anymore. All the while, trying to understand her kids better.

After RR, you find that same employee who talked about the frozen pokemon and we got implications that Lusamine is having those ready to be thawed.

Then once Gladion comes back, we got a scene where Lusamine meets an amnesic Mohn. Knowing that the man would be hurt for the rest of his life if he knows the things his wife has done for him, along with the new life he has... Lusamine treats it like an ordinary conversation and lets him go off to his life. Letting... Mohn...go.

This is pretty good character development despite how the juicy bits of her turn around happen after the main story is over and how you have to really look to get it.

I appreciate the closure and resolution of this family in USUM since SM ended this story very messily when it should have continued.

While I give a lot of praise to this portion of the story, other character like Hau are more fleshed out. Mina’s trial gave a bit more world building to the Captains. The Ultra Warp Ride in itself is good lore on the UB’s, for we see their world and learn more about them. We also know more about Z Power and where it all comes from.

Alola’s lore was expanded upon in this game.

We also get to see Guzma go through a redemption arc in RR and all the good that came out of it. Colress got to contribute more in the main story as the guy who helps with Necrozma.

Don’t even get me started on Rainbow Rocket. That is where we see Lillie’s grow into a trainer, fight past villains, see more from Colress and Guzma, along with adding into the concept of alternate realities. It was a better post game than SM in every aspect.

Con. What was added into the story and how it affected the changes.

However, there is a few things story wise that I would say are striking flaws.

Before anything, this is still mostly the same story as SM and it doesn’t change drastically until the end of your second visit to Aether Paradise. Like most third games, it is going to take a while before you get to the biggest changes. If you didn’t like what was in the base games... you are not going to like what is in this game.

The new characters added to the plot, the URS... their deeds are mostly background and they don’t do much besides build up on Necrozma. Sometimes appearing in places that they are not needed.

The things they do add does make sense in changing the story from SM. (It is established they only used their Solgaleo and Lunala for travel. If they used them for Necrozma, they would have their way to get help eaten and as explained, it causes Necrozma even more pain. They let Lusamine use Nebby because they need a safer way to send trainers over to confront Necrozma.... but then Lusamine went Leeroy on them.)

But they themselves... could have been done better. In addition, Necrozma served more as a looming threat that motivated the actions of the regions villain teams and their goals. Rather than a looming threat that could have been used much better to give the urgency and doom. He showed that the URS and those scared of him were NOT wrong to be scared of him, but that is all at the climax. Poor build up, but amazing pay off.

Even more, Lillie and the narrative focus on her lessened when you go fight Necrozma. Exeggutor Island was removed, though I get the reasons. Lusamine being less of a bitch and Lillie’s scene at the end of RR made it redundant. This along with Lillie calling her mother out off screen made some moments with her weaker compared to SM. (It isn’t any worse than how Lillie and Lusamine resolved things in SM though. Where Lusamine recovered somewhat and Lillie was eager to not only forgive her... when it wasn’t earned, but go to Kanto to help her recover.)  Even though I believe the things that happened with Lillie after Necrozma more than made up for it.

Some would come to conclusions and say this cost Lillie her character development... the thing that made SM’s story good. But personally, it didn’t really hurt her development, it just lost focus and we got our pay off to the build up in the post game.

However, if you liked Looker, Anabel and Nanu... those three got the shaft completely due to their post game story being cut out for Rainbow Rocket.

Pro. The Gameplay.

USUM added a lot into the game compared to the bare bone SM game.

With Mantine Surf, the Photo Club, Ultra Warp Ride, quality of life changes, (move tutors.) more pokemon and the SOS system being more controllable. You will be picking up Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon over Sun and Moon in a heart beat, just for these things.

The battles are more challenging compared to SM, the Totem Pokemon were better realized as actual bosses and Ultra Necrozma is the highlight of your main campaign.

Not to mention Rainbow Rocket and all the joys I got out of playing that. This is the game to play if you want to do challenge runs... like a Mono type run or others. It feels satisfying to beat the game and see the closure to our characters stories. Not to mention all the side quests and visuals that make Alola feel more alive as a region and not die over when you finish the game.

Con. What stuck from SM in a gameplay perspective.

Unfortunately, USUM didn’t fix all the issues from SM. Multi Battles are laggy, Festival Plaza stinks and with how many cut scenes are in this game still, it is going to be a while before you can actually play the game.

In addition, Alola is a linear in its pathway and what you fight still. If you just played SM... you are going to get bored really quick. In addition, the focus on Gen 1 is going to get old here as well.

Final Verdict.

Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon are the last games in the handheld era and Gamefreak did a fantastic job in making this game a hurrah.

With most of what made SM good going over into these games, getting polished out and turned into a funner game, I strongly recommend getting it while holding yourself over for Sword and Shield.

It has fantastic battles, an amazing sense of closure to the characters from Sun and Moon you came to know and love. (Lillie is my favorite of this generation and I hope to see her again with more development as a trainer.)

It hits a lot of good beats for me and I am still rather shocked that people give so much bile to what these games have to offer. The changes to the Story were not bad in the slightest, it isn’t perfect but we have a lot of good trade offs to what we did lose from SM. (Example. Lillie’s two big moments are either moved over to RR or provide a better resolution to her story arc.)

The games give a good challenge for anyone who are fans to the series and it makes Alola stand out as a region.

I honestly hope Sword and Shield is able to continue where these games leave off. Maybe give us a story that is built by exploring Galar and still giving us a challenge with a wide variety of pokemon.

[pkmnjesus]

5 years of the PokémonJesus

Before the night comes to a close, I would like to personally reflect on today’s importance (thus the reason for the Takeover queue). It’s been 5 years since I officially became engaged with this fandom that has really became a weekly routine of mine when new episodes come out. This is really just to put my thoughts out there in the blog archive, so I would prefer if no one reblogs this. P J’s beginnings started all the way back with Serebii Forums...

2013-2014 (The Pokémon forums Era)

I have been lurking in the fandom as early as the Best Wishes days, and often visit sites like Serebii Forums or tumblr’s Pokémon anime tags around 2011. I usually talk Pokémon online when it comes to the games when battling or trading in certain chat rooms (was really active during the Gen. IV era of games), but never really talked about the anime with. I have been a spectator to the discussion while the BW saga was rolling a long, then I decided on September 26th 2013 (which was the airdate for the final BW! episode in Japan) to create a serebiiforums account under the username PokemonJesus123, just in time for the start of the XY series which I was mad hyped about! I WAS A FAN SINCE DAY 1...some y’all just tagged along in XY&Z NO LOYALTY xD . My serebii profile is still there actually, so you can try to find my old inactive page if you want lol (my avatar was me holding up my 3DS in a cringey way...looking back why tf did I take that photo lol delete later). Coming into 2014, I joined tumblr as well under the url name you see right before you. Never changed it, and probably never will. The origin of this name you ask? You’ll just have to ask me personally for that story 😉 I absolutely joined tumblr out of pure boredom to view and follow blogs I was a fan of. I had no intention of posting whatsoever. Oh, and I made a Twitter account under the P J name too! Follow ME :^)

2014-2015 (Thursday LIVE! tumblr era)

After a couple months of finally creating a tumblr account and actively posting on serebiiforums and bulbagarden, XY episode 50 (the episode where big lips Nini/Nene debuted) was the first EVER Pokémon anime episode I ever posted about in my blog. I was still new the #pokeani tag (funny story, I didn’t really knew what it meant back then besides to tag it lol), but I got as much as around 30-100 notes. Seeing those notes already got excited that it pushed me from making it a weekly thing since I had a livestream to watch it every Thursday night and screen-cap it. My goal from the very beginning was to try to be the first one to post about here, like what the Japanese fans do on Twitter under the #Anipoke tag. Of course, most of my notes came from either an AmourShipping post or a Serena post. I’m not going to lie, I was really a huge Serena fan when the series first started. I rambled a lot too getting hyped for Citron/Clemont episodes because he was probably my favorite character at the time xD

2015-2016 (A growing blog)

This was the era I started to do special long posts in celebration with Pokémon’s 20th anniversary. Around this period is where my blog was in a developing state getting like 2 or 3 followers every week. And trust me, there were A LOT of posts that I regret posting, but I learned to watch my words every week and say the right things (I really try not to trigger anyone here). I took a couple of weeks off when new episodes aired since I was really busy with college, or I wasn’t into XY filler episodes that much. Would usually tune in live when Team Flare was involved or anything with Squishy/Puni-chan (I absolutely ADORED Bonnie/Eureka in this arc), but I didn’t post that much on tumblr...unless if there was like an AmourShipping moment that happened xD. The hype for Gen. VII was already looming, and I kinda got bored from the anime A BIT. When Ash-Greninja came into the picture however, I got excited again! Then the Kalos League happened, and the anticipation of Ash’s journey hit a climax! We all know what happened, and the rest was history...

2016-2017 (GIFmaking era)

So the Sun & Moon anime happened late 2016, and the hype for a new series was within me again! This is when my blog REALLY started to boom, as well as the birth of my Pokémon Discord server PokéTōku. My notes were higher than over compared to what I posted from XY. One possible reason is that a lot of pokeani bloggers from back then weren’t really interested in Sun & Moon (probably because of the animation change), so I was one of few who still stayed for the ride and that really benefited my blog’s exposure. I absolutely loved Lillie’s character development, and I also did not expect myself to enjoy Lana/Suiren’s character so much! Brock & Misty’s was a huge highlight for me as well seeing my childhood come to a modern-day Pokémon series. I was surprised to have popular people reblog my stuff that destroys my notifications per second. I was even flattered when popular pokéblogs such as shelgon, corsolanite, chasekip, and a few others followed me. Back then I really wanted to get a lot of notes, but at this point I just wanted to be myself and post screen-caps that I feel like talking about. The series also motivated me to start making GIFs since I finally had access to Adobe Photoshop through my university’s application benefits. Later in 2017, I graduated from college and it gave me more time to improving my blog. Also, can you believe it took me 3 years to get 1,000 followers? If you asked me from day 1, I would have never expected to get that much since I had no idea about tumblr’s audience.

Everyone here knows that my blog doesn’t really follow “traditional” tumblr methods such as tags or making specific posts and what not (since I’m not really that into the tumblr culture lol...I’m just here for fun doing my own thing), but I hope I’ve brought something different to your dash experience 🙃

2017-2018 (Making friends)

From 1,000 to 2,500+ followers the next year. You’d be surprise how small that still is compared to the other popular Pokéblogs that joined tumblr later than me, but I’m still grateful for that number. My hype for movie 20 was crazy! I’d always make a post about it when a new trailer was out. But just like Sun & Moon, not everyone was looking forward to the AU it produced. The Let’s Go games shared the same fate as well since everyone didn’t want another Kanto, but I always defend the things that deserve a chance! I fairly enjoyed movie 20 though, and was the first movie that I posted screen-caps and GIFs for in this blog, even made an experience post about it watching it in the theaters! What’s MOST important to me during this time was actually interacting with some of my followers...or should I say friends now :) Out of the 5 years I’ve been here (not counting serebiiforum peeps I’ve known since 2013), I only recently talked to some of you around 2017. My interactions with people here have been awesome (for the most part at least lol) from sharing interests, geeking out over the anime, sending memes xD and concerns when P J isn’t feeling P J. You know who you are, and THANK YOU for cheering your boy up in times when I needed it despite not telling you about it <3 Going back to PokéAni hype, my next excitement attack was when they announced the Aether Foundation and Ultra Beasts were getting involved in the main story. It really makes up for no Alola movie...but hey we still got 1 year left, so maybe there’s hope?

Despite the brief breaks I took, P J’s activeness in the fandom has reached its highest when I managed the time to do scheduled posts and even started a few mini-blog series this year. Even during stressful times, I always make it an effort to find time and contribute to the fandom. I honestly don’t care if I get any asks because I know who the real homies are ◉‿◉つ A special shoutout as well to all the people that joined my Discord server through this website. I couldn’t have reached 100+ members without some of your blogs ^_^ And to the lurkers out there (I know some of y’all are creepin’ in the shadows of my blog without liking anything), you may not know it but I love you people too ლ(́◉◞౪◟◉‵ლ)

Anyway this is just a summary of my journey here so far, and if you’d to hear a more in-depth story on some toxic things I’ve experienced in this fandom just message me. I personally don’t like venting out stuff in public because it just promotes more negativity, and I’m not about that. I will make a separate post on my feelings toward the schedule change maybe next week, and an appreciation post (5th tumblr blogaversary) for my specific followers January 2019. I am still preparing for that because there are so many people (even ones I don’t even talk to) I want to thank ❤ Moving forward into my 6th year, I probably won’t make another post like this anytime soon...but I am very hopeful for the future of the SM series and possible Gen. 8 anime late 2019. I also do plan on making some PokéAni-related stuff in my YouTube channel when the time is right, and have the resources to do projects. Keep your eyes out fam 👀LET’S F’N GO!

[rdhblack-reach]

Rune Magic and Soul Traits

Rune magic: as explained is very different to born magic and comes in different categories. For drawing (which is optional), putting the symbols in a pyramid like shape would help to know which is which being common on top, advanced in the middle and a pillar or dimensional being at the bottom. These symbols appear in the soul to show which one the user is currently using.

Common: the common elementals are always the 4 elements of life being fire, water, earth and wind.

Advanced: can be a number of elements ranging from toxic to blood to metal. So if anything there could be a unlimited amount of advanced magic but could be split into different types. This will take a while to do.

Pillar of existence: there is 8 pillar of existence magic being as follows: Light, Dark, Time, Space, Chaos, Order, Arcane and Spirit

Dimensional Magic: these are very strong and rare and there’s 4 in total so far being Life, Death, Aether and Nether.

Forgotten/Forbidden: these magics are as they say they are, no one remembers what the magic is and those that do knows it’s forbidden to use due to those who have used this type of magic have been a massive threat to monsters and humans. There is 5 of these magics being Calcification, Decay, Rebirth, Reality and Mind.

Soul traits: Soul traits are obviously very important as there is so many different types and possibilities. However in they don’t play in with runes, they work just like any other soul traits. Humans and monsters have traits with the main 7 traits being more common than others. Monsters, however, can’t have determination. It is not unheard of for humans to have more than one whilst monsters have one. When it comes to appearance of a soul, the only way to know which trait it is, is for the soul owner to flash the colour. This is to make sure no one knows the trait unless they are friends. This comes in handy if captured by enemies.

This is all a work in progress and most likely, there will be more info on this.

[lovecleanbeauty]

Blue Beauty: The Fight to Protect And Preserve Our Oceans

New Post has been published on https://lovecleanbeauty.com/blue-beauty-movement/

Blue Beauty: The Fight to Protect And Preserve Our Oceans

  There’s no doubt that you’ve probably heard a lot about the “green beauty” trend that’s been buzzing around the beauty community for a while (especially the clean beauty community). While green beauty has been a great stepping stone to improving beauty’s impact on the Earth and its environment, there’s a new beauty movement that’s been making waves recently: blue beauty.

But what exactly is “blue beauty” anyway?

What is Blue Beauty?

The blue beauty movement began as Project Blue Beauty, started by the founder of Beauty Heroes Jeannie Jarnot. Jarnot came to realize that while the green beauty movement was making progress in reducing harmful waste and creating a sustainable model for the beauty industry, it was not enough to simply cut back on plastic packaging and use Earth-friendly ingredients.

While similar, blue beauty’s mission is a bit more focused. This movement is more specifically concerned with the effects that our beauty products and packaging have on the ocean and how to restore and maintain these ecosystems.

While many green beauty products and brands also share this same sentiment, it’s an important distinction to make, as simply using clean ingredients isn’t always enough.

How Does the Beauty Industry Effect Marine Life?

Most of us know that plastic waste is one of the most detrimental things affecting our environment currently. Of the over 300 million tons of plastic produced each year, at least 8 million tons of it ends up in our oceans every year as well.

This waste is currently the most abundant type of litter found in our oceans, making up 80% of all ocean debris. Plastics can be found in every part of the ocean, from shorelines to sediment at the bottom of the ocean.

The main problem with plastics is that they can take up to 1,000 years to break down, if ever, and when they do, they release harmful chemicals into their surroundings.

Plastics make their way into oceans by way of urban runoff, improper waste disposal and management, construction, industrial facilities, illegal dumping, and beachgoers.

Almost every mainstream beauty brand is guilty of using plastics in their packaging, and much of it will end up in the world’s aquatic ecosystems. In fact, over 40% of total plastic use comes in the form of product packaging. Hard plastics such as those used in deodorant sticks will likely never break down and will continue to pose a threat to marine life for centuries.

When these plastics find their way into oceans, they have a devastating effect on marine life. Many species, such as turtles, fish, whales, and birds, will mistake plastic waste for prey, leading them to ingest the substance.

This causes devastating effects on their health and can result in starvation.

Ocean creatures are also frequently the victims of strangulation, lacerations, and infections due to the buildup of plastics in the ocean.

What Are Beauty Brands Doing to Change This?

Despite the sad reality that the beauty industry is contributing to our ocean’s plastic problem, there are many brands that are committed to making a change by implementing blue beauty practices into the production, distribution, and advertising of their products.

Beauty brand Ethique is making huge strides in creating a more ocean-friendly and sustainable beauty industry. New Zealander Brianne began mixing her own formulas in her kitchen and started her brand out of frustration for the amount of waste the beauty community creates.

“I figured out that up to 95% of your bottle of conditioner is made up of water—which is just ridiculous considering you have water in your bathroom!”, she explains on her website.

Ethique has made it their mission to eliminate all plastics and other harmful chemicals from their products, even down to the box they’re shipped in. Sustainable practices and a zero-waste philosophy make this brand the perfect choice for eliminating plastics from your body and hair care routine.

Aether Beauty is another brand that’s fully contributing to the blue beauty movement. Founder Tiila Abbitt left her position as Head of Product Development at Sephora to launch her own brand after finding that most clean beauty products lacked efficacy and variety when compared to conventional beauty products.

She learned how to formulate cosmetics according to a chemical ban list of over 1,400 harmful chemicals, including only organic, fair-trade, and child-labor-free ingredients in her formulations.

Abbitt has been successful in creating eco-friendly, highly-pigmented color cosmetics and her eyeshadow palettes are known to be the first zero-waste eyeshadow palettes in the beauty industry.  She makes sure to never launch a product without making sure there is a more sustainable alternative available first.

A portion of the sales of each product is donated to environmental charities, continuing her mission to make the world a more beautiful and sustainable place.

What Can You Do to Make a Difference?

One person will create around 220 pounds of plastic waste each year, mostly in the form of product packaging. But thankfully, with more and more people choosing to adopt a zero-waste lifestyle, it is easier than ever to start implementing blue beauty into your life.

Beauty Heroes features a compilation of dozens of beauty brands that are committed to making a change in the environment through recyclable and biodegradable packaging, skin and Earth-friendly formulations, and sustainable ingredient sourcing.

Research your favorite brands and products and see what they’re doing to eliminate plastic waste and create a more sustainable and less toxic planet.

  Sources:

https://www.iucn.org/resources/issues-briefs/marine-plastics#:~:text=At%20least%208%20million%20tons,causes%20severe%20injuries%20and%20deaths.

[tw6464sloreblog]

The Leagues of Valkyrea, Barak, and Vostarg, Durin, Davisson, and the Clanless

While there are many minor squat leagues, each with their own set of traditions, values and societies, some of the larger leagues are so varied in their look, how they act, etc. that to not speak on them would be doing an injustice to them.

Here are descriptions for 5 major leagues, as well as detailing the outcasts known as the Clanless

*the League of Valkyrea are a matriarchal league of Squats. They are ruled by a high queen. While the males of Valkyrea still hold an important place in their society as laborers and merchants, it is the women who ultimately hold the final power. They are ruled by a High Queen, who in the 41st millennium, is Freya Sifsdottir. Freya is an example to all the warriors of Valkyrea, as she is an experienced warrior and commander, a learned philosopher, a intellectual without peer, and, above all else, a fair and just Queen.

*The society of Valkyrea is extremely militaristic, but also honorable. They won’t attack a wounded foe unless they are extremely dangerous, and they will always offer a condition of Surrender. Their mastery of medicinal sciences is well known throughout all the Squat leagues, and Valkyrea have a reputation for arriving at just the right moment.

*Their most elite troops are called the Nirn Valkyries. these troops are given heavy exo armor, jump packs, shields and a large polearm with a power field, and dropped down from orbit, crashing into the enemy lines and ripping through them like tissue paper. They are always deployed at the moment when the tide of battle must be turned, and are nicknamed “The Choosers of the Slain”

*the League of Barak are a Merchant Guild-led League. They make their living possible through trade, providing mercenary work and mining a unique form of cosmic dust known as Aethergold, which is used both as a commodity, a fuel source, and ammunition. Their navy is the strongest amongst the leagues, but they are also extremely protective of it. They are governed by a strict code of law, which prevents them from fighting in anything that could unprofitable. As such, when they fight, they fight to win as quickly as possible.

-Aethergold: when used as a fuel lasts more days longer than promethium or other fuel sources of similar nature. When used as a propellant in ammunition, it increases the killing power of a weapon by tenfold, the muzzle velocity created by traditional propellants not even coming close to the force generated by Aethershot ammunition. However, this extremely useful material comes at a steep cost... Aethergold is highly toxic, breathing in just a miniscule, almost insignificant amount of it can cause numerous health problems, from a minor cough to tumors colored a deep jaundice, the most horrifying of which is Geld Sickness, which drives those in close proximity to it insane with avarice and warps their perception of reality to where they view everyone as attempting to steal what they see as theirs. While by no means a death sentence, contamination by Aethergold is still a very serious matter. As such, everyone in Barak wear a specially sealed suit in order which, if breached or otherwise compromised, can alert the nearest Aether-Khemist who will immediately quarantine the victim, and determine if they can be saved or not. Using their Atmospheric Anatomizer, they are able to detect if the level of contamination is low enough to where they can be saved.

*Their Navy is powered by Endrins, which are large, spherical-shaped metal objects, which are powered by Aethergold. The sizes of these endrins are all different, as each is made for a different class of ship, and some must be small enough to allow Skyriggers to make repairs on the fly and to allow Skywardens to provide a form of air support to their brethren. Each of the larger classes of ships have an Endrinmaster, who serves as an equivalent of a Guild Engineer and are armed with a Macro-Hammer and a built-in Laser Eye in their Exo-Armor; an Aetheric Navigator, who serves as the ship’s cartographer and chief navigator who are equipped with a Ranging Pistol and a Zephyscope; an Aether-Khemist, who serves as the chief medical and science officer, as well as a detector of Aethergold via smell, the only known method of detection known; and finally, and most importantly, a Captain, whose word is law onboard a ship. An Arkanaut Admiral will accompany a fleet detachment, often taking the largest ship or the ship with the most experienced crew as a flag ship. Admirals are clad in baroque Exo-Armor, and wield a Aethershot Volley Pistol and a Macro-Hammer.

*The sizes of Barak’s naval fleet vary wildly, from the tiny Grundstock Gunboats to the massive Khrundal Battleships and Grundcarriers. The most commonly seen ships are the Arkanaut Frigate and the Ironclad. These ships are equipped with a variety of weapons, ranging from Heavy Cannons to Heavy Aethermatic Volley Guns and Harpoon Guns, while also having aethershot carbines for close quarters defense.

*Since there is not a “centralized government” in the traditional sense, there is no need for conscription amongst the League of Barak. However, there are still those who wish to rise above their station in the society, and so they join the Arkanaut Companies, who serve upon the ships of Barak’s fleet. Given a sealed suit of carapace armor, an Arkanaut Cutter, and an Aethershot pistol, they fight in order to earn their keep and for the chance to advance in society. Veteran Arkanauts are equipped with Aethermatic Volley guns, which rival Rotor Cannons in terms of fire rate; Skypikes, a large polearm with a hook on the end for horrific tearing power; and Light Skyhooks, which are harpoon guns that strike with the force of a melta blast.

-For those who wish to continue on the path of a mercenary, the Grundcorps Corporation is more than willing to bring on the most experienced Arkanaut Companies to “upgrade” with Exo-armor and equip them with powerful and experimental weapons, but only after they pass the Grundstok Academies and their brutal training regime. Once that is done, they graduate and are inducted into the Grundstok Thunderers, and outfitted with Aethershot Rifles, which act similar to standard Squat Shot rifles, but can also switch these out with Aetheric Fumigators, which spit out a deadly gas laced with Aethergold; Decksweepers, which have multiple barrels which fire in a 90 degree arc; Aethercannons, which are packed with concentrated aethergold to create an explosive force equivalent to a Missile Shot; or a Grunstok Mortar, which fires explosive charges that fire in an arc in order to bombard enemy fighters.

(why yes I did literally take the Kharadron overlords and put them into 40k, why do you ask??)

*the League of Vostarg are a League where members are required from birth to take up the Slayer Oath. While many leagues consider taking the Slayer Oath to be an admittance of shame and dishonor, The Squats of Vostarg consider it a badge of pride and honor and a way to become closer with Grimnir, the Great Ancestor God of Vengeance, Righteous Anger, Avenging lost honor, and, perhaps appropriately, volcanic rage. The Vostarg Squats make their homes on planets with obscenely high temperatures and with nigh-constant volcanic and tectonic activity. Their society is ruled by a single Patriarch of the Lodge, known as the Runefather. The male children of the Runefather, called Runesons, compete to eventually inherit the title of Runefather. Those who do not inherit the title sometimes choose to leave their family behind to become the Runefather of their own Lodge, and thus the cycle repeats.

--As a symbol of their great importance, the Runefathers are often given a Latchkey Grandaxe as both a ceremonial weapon, and an actual weapon. This grandaxe is specifically designed to catch the melee weapons of enemies and, with a motion similar to the turning of a key, snap the weapon in twain. Of course, with weapons such as Power Fists or Power Klaws, it’s not as effective; However, the grandaxe has the reach to engage those equipped with such weapons, and sharp enough edge to even injure Bloodthirsters. Runesons are often equipped with Wyrmslayer Javelins, which are tipped with an explosive charge which can prove deadly to enemy vehicles and armor.

-The Runesmiters are another vital part of the Lodge, as it is they who can seek out Runegold, also known as Ur-Gold, which is everything to the Vostarg. After discovering, the Ur-Gold into runes, the Runemaster (the equivalent of a Master Guild Engineer of other Leagues) then form and place the newly-forged Rune (often still smoldering) onto the open skin of the recipient. While extremely painful at first, overtime the more Ur-Gold runes one has, the higher their pain tolerance will be. Ur-Gold runes often bring a number of significant powers, such as enhanced strength, speed, durability, and, in certain rare cases, mastery of pyrokinesis.

-there are those amongst the League of Vostarg called the Battlesmith, who is in charge of holding their Icons and maintaining the history of their Lodge, as well as creating Forge Weapons for their Lodges. Also, they help to create 

-The greatest champions of the Lodge are called the Grimwrath Berserkers. Their strength, speed and endurance, in addition to their Runes and main weapon, which often take the form of a humongous Forge Weapons. Their ferocity is rarely matched by an invading force, and more often than not, a single member of their number is enough to make an army second-guess their invasion.

-Finally, the Vostargs have another secret weapon: the Magmadroths, giant reptilian creatures who appear to be made of super-heated lava. They make their homes in the deepest part of the crust of a planet, where the temperatures reach unbearable levels. It is a right of passage for a Runeson or Runesmiter to steal a Magmadroth egg and return it to their Lodge in order to raise it on their own and ride them into battle.

(why yes I did literally take the Fyreslayers and put them into 40k, why do you ask??)

*the League of Durin, so named after one of the Great Ancestor Gods, are the oldest known Squat League in both Imperial and Squat records. They are extremely isolationist, often burrowing deep into their strongholds. As such, there is not much known about them, except one surprising detail: they are often aided in battle by Eldar of all stripes, from Craftworld Eldar to Dark Eldar to Harlequins and even Corsairs and (most bafflingly) EXODITES (of course this is very rare). 

-The Ancestors of the League of Durin, according to Squat historical records, first came into contact with the Eldar shortly after the Fall of the Eldar Empire and before the Age of Strife, which is known to the Squats as The Age of the First Reckoning. First contact went surprisingly well; the Squats opened their holds to the Eldar refugees and took them in, sheltering, clothing and feeding them. Among those Eldar was a young Asdrubael Vect, who would go on to become the Supreme Overlord of Commoragh; However, despite his often meaningless and harmful decrees, he never forgot the kindness that the Durin showed him. As such, he decreed that the Kabal of the Black Heart shall never raid a world where the League of Durin inhabits, and any other Kabal who does so would suffer severe consequences. Of course, Vect being Vect, he made sure the other Leagues were not afforded the same protection.

-However, then the Age of the First Reckoning began; soon after taking on the Eldar refugees, warp storms began manifesting around the Squat worlds. Entire systems were cut off from each other, but amongst all the clans, the Ancestors of Durin were hit the hardest. Daemons began manifesting like locusts, sweeping across the surface of the planet, slaughtering everything in their path. Before this carnage began, the people of Durin weren’t so inclined to spend their entire lives in their Strongholds, and as such, had a number of outposts scattered across their worlds. It soon became apparent that in order to protect the majority of those in the strongholds, they would have to seal themselves in. After intense debate, it was decided that the great stronghold doors would be sealed, dooming those outside to their fate, and forever associating the world outside their Strongholds with death and destruction

-When Durin goes to war, it is a momentous occasion; there is often an air of ceremony and pride not usually seen by those who frequent their strongholds. However, there is also a distinct feeling of death; almost like a mass funeral for those who venture outside their safe holds. They wear masks and helms that obscure their faces, shaped like skulls. They fight like they go to their deaths.

-One wonders if they remain in their holds, how are they able to interact with the outside world for trade purposes?? simple: they use Robots. In fact, the number of remote drones and giant combat androids rivals the Legio Cybernetica in size and grandeur; the bulk of their forces are these combat machines.

*the League of Davisson were created at the start of M39 by a disgruntled Overlord of Thor, known only by the clan name of Davisson. Tired of the constant need for ceremony and ritual, he took his clan, who are famed for their bike squads, and left, forming his own League. They have no Stronghold worlds, which would go against their very nature as free spirits. Instead they form “biker dens”, essentially temporary outposts where they can refuel, rest, eat, drink and (more often than not) brawl before heading out on the “road” again.

-They live, act, dress and ride like a bizarre version of a biker gang from old M2 motion pictures. They sell their services as mercenaries or enforcers. They are rowdy, brash, rude, crude, and irreverent; however, they also practice a bizarre form of honor, always paying back what they owe and taking responsibility for their actions. They have always fought for the oppressed, and act as vigilantes. They never attack civilians or the Clanless and only fight in self-defense (at least.... that’s what they’ll tell people). However, there are exceptions; for Example, Wazdakka Gutsmek has earned the eternal ire of the League of Davisson due to multiple raids upon their dens.

*the Clanless are those who have either lost their League, whether due to their planet’s destruction, because everyone in their clan was banished from their Stronghold, or because of an overwhelming attack forced them into exile. Whatever circumstances may be, they now carry a stigma, for every stronghold that has ever taken in the Clanless has had a great tragedy occur. While many of these cases are merely coincidence, some attacks fall a bit too conveniently to be mere coincidence.

aaaand that’s pretty much all the Leagues I’ve got for now. Let me know what you think of them!

christ this post took way longer than i thought it would

[how2to18]

This essay contains many, many spoilers. Avoid reading if you haven’t yet seen Infinity War, or, honestly, if you’re a tertiary member of the Marvel Cinematic Universe who maybe hasn’t been paying attention. I’m looking at you, Hawkeye. —Ed.

The MCU cycle began when Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk were created in 2008, in the last year of Bush’s presidency. They are set against the backdrop of wars—in Iraq, in Afghanistan—that never seemed to end, and as such, are fables about the military industrial complex, artifacts from an era when people were still talking about “blowback,” when we still remembered (or cared) that the CIA had helped to create the conditions for Al Qaeda, and when “end the war” was a thing people promised, said, and demanded. To watch them now is to remember a time when we could still remember a time before we were at war, forever, with terror.

And so, those very first movies gave us Iron Man’s discovery that he is his own worst enemy, that Bruce Banner’s experiments have created a monster: himself. They are stories that take the salience of these stories for granted. Like Christopher Nolan Batman movies, which came to us around the same time, they are stories that ask a single, basic question: what if we are the enemy we’ve been searching for?

Since the answer, unavoidably, is yes, the next phase gave us The Avengers: with Thor and Captain America in 2011—leading up to The Avengers in 2012—the movies started to tell a larger story, about building a team of super-heroes out of this disparate set of “special” individuals; as fucked up as they all were, separately, maybe, together, they could be something… more? These are still stories in which the enemy we are searching for might turn out to be us, of course; they are still movies where anxiety about the self gets exorcized by violent combat with a double, just as Iron Man fought an even more iron man and The Incredible Hulk fought a bigger, more incredible hulk. And they are right to be anxious! What is Nazi-fighter Captain America, after all, but a genetically-modified Aryan super soldier? What is Thor’s quest to be “worthy” if not a conquering despot’s desire to justify the unjustifiable, to insist that he rules for some reason other than force? On some level, these movies always know that their protagonists are hypocrites, that the things they are fighting are basically themselves. S.H.I.E.L.D. vs. H.Y.D.R.A… what really is the difference?

But they are also stories in which “we” comes to take an interesting centrality, where the individual might be saved by the group, by friends, by family, by work. What if—in the course of human events—we the people could come together and form a union of super-special people? What if together we can become more than the sum of our individuality?

Alas! It only lasts as long as the alien invasion, and by the time we eat the shawarma, there’s not much to talk about. In Iron Man 3 (2013), we learn that terrorism really is just the MIC tail wagging the democratic dog; in Thor: The Dark World (2013), we learn that the Asgardians really are just conquering bastards; in Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) we learn that S.H.I.E.L.D. and H.Y.D.R.A. actually are the same thing; in Age of Ultron (2015), we learn that keeping the peace with drone armies is a truly terrible idea, and it’s the only thing that Tony can think of; it’s the only thing ANYONE can think of. By the time of Civil War (2016), we’ve learned that “Us” is an unstable combination, that blowback is still real, and that no one really transcends their deep flaws. Even the two Guardians of the Galaxy movies tell a version of this story: if the first (2014) is about finding a new family, the second (2017) will be about remembering just how toxic family can be, and how long-lasting its wounds are.

Somewhere in the midst of all this, as the Avengers broke up and as the movies started to proliferate beyond narrative control—Ant-Man? Doctor Strange? Black Panther?—the people making them started to think about the next story they would tell. And so, it turned out that in the margins of these stories of American Empire—always the subtext for the original Avengers—they had begun planting the seeds for a different story, particularly in the post-credit sequences; there were hints and rumors and whispers of the larger story that was already taking place just off-screen, that had been from the beginning, a complex and nuanced and revelatory story—the very Grandest of Grand Narratives—about how a dude named Thanos was trying to acquire the six Infinity Stones so he could blow up the universe. This would be their big idea, their magnum opus, their greatest and most consequential story.

For a long time, only the super-fans saw it coming, only the people that already knew the story could see the groundwork being laid. If you weren’t a serious fan, after all, would you know that the “Tesseract” was the “Space Stone” back when Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) fought the Nazis to prevent them from using it? Would you realize that since Howard Stark was Tony Stark’s father—and since Howard Stark gets a good look at Tesseract-powered tech in that movie, and massively improves his own technology as a result—that the original Iron Man suit is, in a roundabout way, the result of Space Stone-enhanced technology? Would you be aware that Loki’s scepter had the “Mind Stone” in The Avengers (2012)—given to him by Thanos—and that he used the “Space Stone” to open the portal allowing the Chitauri army to attack? Would you realize that the “Aether” the evil elves in the second Thor movie are using is actually the “Reality Stone” (2013) or that the first Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) movie revolved around the struggle to find the “Power Stone”? Did you notice—as super fans did—that The Age of Ultron (2015) was always implicitly about the coming threat posed by Thanos and how earth could prepare for it?

Probably not. I wasn’t; I had watched a bunch of these movies, and after Black Panther I watched a bunch more, but it was only in preparation for this movie—where we were explicitly told that it would be based on the Infinity MacGuffins—that I watched them systematically, and then watched internet theorists break down how the backstory for Infinity War had been retroactively threaded through the variety of previous films that were ostensibly about something else. And it is true that, on some level, the Avenger movies are often about the Infinity Stones, even when they seem to be about something else. But it’s not all they are about, of course. Ant-Man, Captain America: Winter Soldier, Iron Man 3… these have nothing to do with the Infinity Stones. The villain in Spider-Man: Homecoming builds his tech from the wreckage of the Chitauri invasion, so without Loki’s use of those two Infinity Stones, that story wouldn’t have happened; Doctor Strange has a “Time Stone,” and uses it, but is it really what the movie is about? Meanwhile, Black Panther is not about Infinity Stones at all, and other than occasionally exporting advanced technology, it barely fits into that broader story at all. There had been much speculation that the “Soul Stone” would turn out to be the basis of the vibranium that powers Wakandan tech, but that turned out not to be the case… which not only makes the attack on Wakanda in Infinity War annoyingly unmotivated—as it requires Wakanda to volunteer for destruction and sacrifice in ways utterly alien to their demonstrated sentiments—but also demonstrates that tightly weaving these stories together hasn’t really been a priority.

“About” is a strange word, though. On some level, it is certainly true that without the Infinity Stones, these stories play out very differently, and perhaps not at all. Though only implicit in Infinity War, it can be inferred that Odin’s death and the destruction of Asgard, in Thor: Ragnarok, are what made Thanos’s attack possible: a fully-functioning Asgard would have stopped him from forging the Infinity Gauntlet in the first place. We can also guess that the death of Doctor Strange’s mentor, The Ancient One, leaves Earth particularly helpless, making now a good time for Thanos to put into motion the plan that Gamora says he’s been working on for the entire time she’s known him (but mostly, um, doesn’t seem to have been). Still that doesn’t mean that Doctor Strange or Thor: Ragnarok are “about” the Infinity Stones.

Think about how little ground-work those nineteen movies laid for the story of Thanos, the real protagonist of Infinity War. When did he get the idea for the Infinity Stones gambit? Why is he so naturally powerful as to be able to wield them himself? Who even IS he? What is his deal?

These are not questions with answers. Or rather, there are answers, but they are so stupid, so ludicrous, that they come apart in your mouth if you try to say them out loud. Do you know what Thanos’s real motivation is? Put aside the nonsense in the movie, the almost half-plausible-seeming Malthusian thing about culling the universe of its excess populations; Thanos’s real motivation, in the comics, is to kill half the population of the universe because he is in love with the embodiment of death and wants to get a date with her, and then, to retire as a farmer.

That is not an answer, but at least it’s honest about what it is: totally absurd.

¤

“The main thing I’ve learned over the years is that the MacGuffin is nothing,” as Alfred Hitchcock once put it. And the best MacGuffin was “the emptiest, the most nonexistent, and the most absurd…boiled down to its purest expression: nothing at all!”

Why would this be a useful narrative device? One reason, I think, is that it allows the audience to disentangle their own desires from that of the characters; if we know that what they are struggling for is a meaningless, absurd, and contrived doo-hickey, we can detach our sympathies from them; we can regard them cynically; and we can understand that what the movie we are watching is about is not what the movie we are watching is about. They might want something in particular—a Maltese Falcon, say—but we are just watching a story about people who want.

What we want is not a particular, arbitrary thing, in other words; what we want is to want, in general.

Though there are many examples of the narrative device in question—the holy grail being one of the oldest, though unobtainium is my favorite—the term itself comes from a story that Hitchcock told about a story told by Angus McPhail:

A man is riding on a train when a second gentleman gets on and sits down across from him. The first man notices the second is holding an oddly shaped package.

“What is that?” the first man asks.

“A MacGuffin, a tool used to hunt lions in the Scottish highlands.”

“But there are no lions in the Scottish highlands,” says the first man.

“Well then,” says the other, “That’s no MacGuffin.”

A MacGuffin, in this version, is a thing which cannot exist; only in a world where there are lions in the Scottish Highlands could a “MacGuffin” obtain as an object. Since it doesn’t exist, it registers an absence, a lack, something we could—if you’ll pardon the pun—find wanting. But again, when we are watching characters want—and when we know that the thing they want is not the thing we want (because the thing they want isn’t even a thing)—it helps clarify that what we want is simply wanting: we desire desire itself.

In this sense, it’s worth observing that Infinity War can’t really be “about” the Infinity Stones. They are the object of Thanos’s quest, and all the action revolves around them, but they are also, as six of the most MacGuffinny Macguffuns ever to guff their mac over the story, ridiculous in that very specific MacGuffin way. They are too absurd to be what the story is about; other than the Collector’s ridiculous monologue in Guardians of the Galaxy, we never learn what they are or why they are or who made them or anything about them; they just are, so that the story can revolve itself around them. They are there so Thanos can want something, and so that—in using them—he can make everyone else find themselves wanting something: the lack of half the population.

Destroying people we like is something the movie can do to make us feel. And so it does. That is what the Infinity Stones are for, and what Infinity War is a machine built to do: channel the power of the Infinity MacGuffins to make us feel bad. The worst words that came to mind when I first watched it were “narrative sadism,” and a few days later, I still find that first impression to be broadly correct, with the caveat that “sadism” does not necessarily explain why we would voluntarily place ourselves in a position to be made to feel so bad. I heard people weeping at the end of this movie, and I myself feel about watching Peter Parker turn to ash the same way I feel about the time I saw someone get hit by a car: days later, the image flashes into my brain and my muscles tense and I feel really shitty about it. Why is this what Marvel chose to do with their power?

¤

A better question than “Who is Thanos and what are the Infinity Stones?” would be: why has Marvel Studios made twenty movies about MacGuffins? Or, rather, why would Marvel pretend that this is what these movies are all about? Why would someone want to say that all of these stories have been leading up to this one, final, climactic story?

On a certain level, as I said, they aren’t about the Infinity Stones, not really; marketing claims about how Infinity War and Infinity War 2 (or Avengers 4 or whatever) are the climax of a twenty-movie epic are, well, marketing claims. Credit where it’s due: Kevin Feige and company have done an impressive job of connecting these very different movies—made by very different people in very different contexts—and they’ve been very patient and careful in how they’ve done it. But it’s a loose association at best, and for good reasons: most of the most interesting things in the most interesting movies have nothing to do with the Thanos plot at all. Black Panther is currently the most popular character in the franchise and there was never an Infinity Stone in Wakanda until Captain America brought Vision there (thanks, Cap!). More to the point, if there had been—if the Vibranium mound had turned out to have been the “Soul Stone” all along—well, it would have made the entire Black Panther story a lot more… pre-textual. It would have cheapened it. It would made a second Black Panther movie a lot harder to imagine.

If the eighteen movies leading up to Infinity War I & II were only about the Infinity Stones, the franchise would never have gotten there; the first Captain America movie is about an Infinity Stone, kind of, but the second one really, really is not. In fact, when you get right down to it, most of the movies have nothing to do with the Infinity Stones. They tell very different kinds of stories; if there technically are Infinity Stones present, that’s not really what those stories are about.

To pick a few random examples: Thor: Ragnarok was about emigrants fleeing a lost home, about how you carry home with you wherever you go. Spider-Man: Homecoming was about choosing not to be an Avenger, but simply to be a modest, humble, neighborhood hero (and also to be a kid). Black Panther was about blackness undefined by, conquered by, enslaved by, or beholden to whiteness. Guardians of the Galaxy is about finding a family among other people whose families hurt them.

Infinity War—as Gerry Canavan observed to me—destroys each of these stories completely. It does not develop them, build on them, or bring them to a climax; it simply eats them up. Thor: Ragnarok ended with the remnants of Asgard sailing bravely into the future in a kind of space ark; Infinity War begins with that space Ark having been blasted to hell (and though Thor later says something about how “half” his people were killed, come on). Peter Parker ended his movie by declining to join the Avengers; in this movie, he joins the Avengers almost immediately. Black Panther is about a place where everyone is black, the white guys are not that important, and Wakanda’s survival is the most important thing; Infinity War has T’Challa deciding to sacrifice Wakanda in battle without any trace of the prickly and regal insularity that has been the entirety of his character up to that point. Guardians of the Galaxy was about finding a family and staying together; in Infinity War, Thor arrives and they break up the group immediately.

My point is that there’s a conflict between the accumulative narrative impulse to see these movies as one continuous story and the sprawling impulse that lets them maintain different styles and themes and even narrative logics. If the MCU has been good because they let different voices tell different types of stories—and to the extent that it is good, it is because of that—Infinity War is bad because it smashes them all into indistinguishable paste. The Collector said that a powerful person “can use the stones to mow down entire civilizations like wheat in a field”; this is a good description of how Infinity War relates to its constituent stories: it harvests them.

Let me put it this way: There’s an extractive, exploitative relationship between the Avengers “team up” movies and the standalone single-hero stories, the same relationship we see between the Infinity Stone MacGuffins and the stories that the various Marvel movies have built around them. The Infinity Stones are the real story, the big picture, the driving force behind their master-narratives in the same way that capital always thinks it’s the “job creator.” But this is exactly backwards, in exactly the way extractive relations of exploitation tend to condition their beneficiaries to misunderstand what is happening: The Infinity Stones and the “team up” movies are spending the currency whose value was built out of the sweat and blood and human labor of the standalone movies. Infinity War is the moment when profits are extracted from the richness and depth of their stories, skimmed off and collected and sold: “Look, we killed Spider-Man, Black Panther, Bucky, Gamora, Loki!” they say; “Look how it makes you feel!”

But it’s a bad movie. It’s a bad movie in the way extractive economies are bad stewards of their chains of production; it takes interesting, complex, and very delicate stories and it reduces them to extremely simple versions of themselves, massively degrading the underlying system. They are complex ecosystems, these stories, their development a function of careful nurturing and adept pruning. Infinity War looked at those stories and saw fields, turned the fields into grain, turned the grain into money, and then spent the money. Infinity War learned the lesson of Game of Thrones: people are so desperate to feel something that they will mistake narrative sadism for powerful storytelling.

And it works, the way a strip-mine “works.” Spider-Man: Homecoming did interesting stuff with youth and with a youth’s relationship to a figure like Tony Stark—and with Tony Stark’s burgeoning feelings about playing a “parent” role—and so Infinity War brings that to a climax by making Tony Stark watch a terrified young man die in his arms. Black Panther came out of nowhere to be the biggest movie in the franchise, by far, a character whose narrative was rather uniquely tied to actual world history—and uniquely detached from Marvel’s historical timelines—and so Infinity War put him in his place by making his death meaningless, random, and utterly disconnected from everything that his story had been. Gamora’s relationship with her father was a mix of complicity, love, and hate, all forced on her against her will as a child; her death was her (inadvertent) assistance to his plan where he kills his darling. And Loki is a character who has died many times and always come back; when Thanos kills him, it means something that he declares, “No resurrections!”

So on and so on: if we feel things with these deaths, it’s because they are climaxes to stories that other movies have carefully developed. But only as end-points, only as final withdrawals. Infinity War has nothing to add to what those previous movies say about youth or about complex feelings about parents or about the African diaspora; moreover, because all of its deaths are transparently going to be taken back, it has nothing to say about the finite nature of life. Indeed, even though Thanos’s pseudo-Malthusian motivations would seem to be related, on some level, to Tony Stark’s discovery of a perpetual energy source in the first MCU movie—and his decision to make it into a weapon, instead—it doesn’t develop the problem of societal limit points that it might otherwise seem to be thinking through; other than linking the two characters in their final battle, the fact that Thanos can only understand power in terms of the power to destroy is a fitting climax to Iron Man’s story without doing anything interesting to develop it.

Thanos’s motivations, after all, are wildly nonsensical. Infinity War tries to imbue Thanos with tragic nobility, making his loss something we should have feelings about: As terrifying as his violence it, we learn, he thinks he is doing the right thing! But: with the gauntlet and the stones, he has become omnipotent and omniscient and he could do whatever he wants to make the universe a better place. The finger snap of doom is dramatic and terrifying and it’s also really, really dumb. It’s so dumb that the comic-book plot where Thanos is in love with Death herself, and kills half the universe to get a date with her, is actually less dumb.

It’s dumb because this movie doesn’t want to tell complex stories about the nuances of existence in an endlessly expanding and surprising multi-verse; it wants to pound us with stories about violence as simple and clear as a literal roller coaster. It doesn’t want to keep building a franchise; it wants to sell off the parts and pocket a percentage. It looks at a house and instead of a place for people to live and grow, it sees a real-estate property.

¤

No one has an unironic relation to a MacGuffin. The MacGuffin is not the thing that MacPhail’s original story about the guy on the train is about, because the story only exists to explain what the word means. There is no MacGuffin without the story; MacGuffins are the things whose nonexistence the story was invented to explain, but which the story actually calls into (non)existence. This is a paradox, which is what MacGuffins are, paradoxical.

However, since the very definition of the thing includes its own incoherence—to define it is to explain why it doesn’t exist, but it only exists because of its definition—the MacGuffin, rather uniquely, is not something you can ever take seriously. To name it that is to know what it is—that it isn’t—and like trying to explain to someone that Thanos has a crush on death and THAT’s why he wants to blow up the universe, these are words and sentences that drown out their own meaning when you speak them.

Thanos is humorless and lacking in self-consciousness. He has an image of himself as the man who does what no one else will, and so that’s what he does. He does not quip; he does not get angry; he is patient and even selfless in his way; because he cannot see that he is ridiculous, he cannot be self-conscious. His tragedy is this lack of irony, his total commitment to a destiny from which he cannot obtain even the slightest trace of detachment. If he could, he would see how ludicrous it is. But he can’t. He is exactly the sort of person who would misunderstand what a MacGuffin is for, because he has an unironic relationship with it. He is the sort of maniac who would set out to be a farmer by burning the world to the ground; he knows costs but not value, because he farms but does not eat.

He is the people who made this franchise, on a certain level, or they are him: from the beginning, from the first Iron Man onwards, we’ve seen the development of powerful technology out of apparently limitless energy sources, and what is it that our heroes have done with that power? What Tony Stark does with his arc reactor—in first and subsequent versions, as it develops into ever more powerful and sophisticated iterations of the same idea—is not provide humanity with a clean, renewable source of endless energy; this possibility is raised multiple times, and then, instead, he make a death-robot suit for his ego to enjoy. He is the hero of that film, as Thanos is the hero of this one; as Thanos sets out to bring order and peace by culling the herd, arbitrarily, what is it that Tony Stark has been doing, since the very beginning? Has he not, as Iron Man, been killing the bad guys in the name of the greater good? Has he not, since the beginning, been arbitrarily deciding which is which?

My first reaction to watching it was that Infinity War is trash; my second has been that it’s a film which explores how the entire franchise is bullshit. But at least the first few films understood that Tony Stark was the problem, that his was the very same smirking rich frat-boy military masculinity that had gotten America lodged in wars which never end, which resulted in meaningless death for untold multitudes, and for no reason at all; ten years ago, the film still remembered that wars that last forever are a bad thing, that they were our fault, and that something had to change. But then nothing did; Tony Stark became the foundation for a franchise, and now, Thanos has been its logical endpoint: endowed with infinite power, he does not empower the universe, he culls it. And unlike our flawed heroes, who make spontaneous decisions that affect the fate of millions, he does it randomly. They are arbitrary, but him? He is unbiased.

So let’s come around to the beginning. What is bullshit good for? What the filmmakers know about what they have made is its value, but apparently not the process by which it came into existence, or by which it could continue to thrive going forward. They know what they can get from it by killing it, but not what its life could continue to do. Like Thanos, they have misunderstood the value of disorganized growth, of the commons, and of a wilderness where new things can happen that you didn’t plan for. Instead, they only seem to understand their property as a site to be mined of value as thoroughly as possible; they do not see that stories are the reason why value is valuable in the first place.

Most of all, Thanos is like the people making these twenty films: exhausted, over-burdened, and longing for the relief of peace and quiet. Can you imagine how exhausting it has been to make these films, and then to integrate them all—all these characters with all their different aesthetic textures, genres, and stories—into one single movie? No wonder the filmmakers killed their darlings by chewing and mashing and digesting them into a consistent narrative paste.

And so, this is the lesson of Infinity War: if this is how you think, this is what you get. If you build an entire movie around MacGuffins, the material embodiment of wanting, insufficiency, and lack; if you fill every beat and narrative space with the problem of those MacGuffins, leaving no space for anything else; if you crush every story down to the problem of how it relates to those MacGuffins; and most of all, if you find all the chatter and babble and noise to be tiresome, wearisome, and in need of organization, well, then this is what that will get you: a demonstration of why capitalists are bad farmers. They get it all backwards, and they don’t know what you use organic matter for. MacGuffins aren’t the crop, they’re the fertilizer; guff is the bullshit you put in the ground to make the plants grow. And if you think that shit is the thing that you’re growing in your garden, well, bon appetit! You are what you eat

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