#not to mention that even if a character learns a similar lesson in different chains

[emblemxeno]

The people who want supports removed from FE don't quite seem to understand that bloating the main story or plot significant script to make every single character relevant is terrible for pacing in a video game, especially for RPGs.

Actually, now that I think about it, lots of criticism from certain sects of the community towards FE writing quality and supports and the subsequent suggestions towards 'fixing' the alleged issues always seem to misunderstand how video games as a storytelling medium should be constructed so to not exhaust the player. Limiting player interactivity and agency (e.g. no supports or potential character building and the gameplay benefits as rewards for that) to such a degree is just as bad as bloating a game with too many mechanics, gameplay styles, or resources to manage (i.e. the common criticisms for 3H and Engage).

Not to mention that if you don't have some kind of material to flesh out characters, you get a Radiant Dawn scenario where most of the new cast are flat as boards, or an Echoes scenario where it's very easy to miss extra backstory if you don't visit villages at specific points in the campaign.

The video in question that's floating around regarding this topic mentions that Path of Radiance's base conversations would be an appropriate replacement, but... Path of Radiance had both base convos and supports. New Mystery and Echoes did this as well! 3H did it too, with its only issue being an extension of the problem that silent/dialogue choice centered avatars can create. It never had to be one or the other, and it's strange that it's presented as such.

Now, supports as a system can definitely be revamped or trimmed, I agree with that. But removing them entirely? When those are a major factor for why the series has now achieved mainstream popularity? Nah, lmao.

[boycottyashahime]

Alright, so I’m bad at Tumblr, and though I wanted to just reblog the original post from @strawberrycreampiefluff and put most of it under a cut or perhaps find a way to trim it, I couldn’t find a way to make it work. So, we’re starting a new thread. Here’s the link the other one if anyone reading hasn’t been following the discussion and want to catch up: https://strawberrycreampiefluff.tumblr.com/post/625063196626223104/what-do-you-think-of-this-whole-ppl-shipping

Anyhow, since we discussed this beforehand, I’ll start from the beginning, only working with the storytelling elements from the series, and I’ll leave out the latter part of the post regarding moralizing (which I mostly agree with anyway, so it’s no loss to me).

“I  was trying to convey that considering the methods of storywriting and telling,  it would break the “pattern” Rumiko Takashi built up and lowering the  impact of Sessh character growth he would later experience.  A father-daughter bond is not inferior to a romantic bond, but it  would seem out of place, to have both his father and brother form a  romantic relationship with a human and then Sessh breaking that pattern  by introducing a new kind of relationship-dynamic - when he is the most  crucial character in the series when it comes to demon-human relations.”

I’m still quite unclear HOW the impact of Sesshomaru’s character growth is necessarily lowered from not having a romantic bond with a human. Why is the continuation of this pattern so important, in your view, to the character’s development? From my perspective, introducing a new relationship dynamic into and breaking patterns is actually a good thing in stories - It’s a great way to add variety and a different point of view to a narrative. Having characters take a pattern in a different, unique direction can add meaning in a way the reader couldn’t see coming, give the story unexpected dimension.

And you’ve already said that you and other shippers like yourself don’t see anything romantic while Rin is still a child in the original series, so that is effectively what happened. Since we agree that the relationship wasn’t actually romantic within the context of the original Inuyasha series, Sesshomaru took a love of a human in an entirely different direction than his father or his brother did. Which conveys complexity in how youkai can relate to humans that wasn’t in the established pattern. As a reader, I find that kind of thing fun and engaging, though you may disagree.

“A father-daughter relationship would still put Sessh in a superior position to Rin (as the father), not adding a lot to his character development other than him caring for one other human being.”

I have to wince here, because while yes, technically Sesshomaru is in a superior position to Rin in a father-daughter relationship, the implication here is that this can be compared to the sense of superiority he had over humans as a whole that you referenced earlier. Is a parent-child relationship really comparable to a racist outlook? I feel like these two things are quite unrelated, having two ENTIRELY different connotations from the word “superior”. One is an entirely natural superior position, using one’s greater experience, knowledge, and ability to facilitate the growth and guidance of someone still on their way up. The other is a wholly unnatural and malicious disregard for a person based on superficial features. Sesshomaru’s superior attitude toward humans before he met Rin was not based on a paternalistic concern, but complete disgust and the notion that they were entirely unworthy of consideration. The two connotations of “superior” here are just not analogous in the greater narrative.

“In a romantic relationship, both partners should be equals (anything  other is unacceptable), for this to happen Sessh would’ve had to lower himself  (his pride) to Rins level, since he was the one with the big ego and  humans were regarded as one of the lower creatures of the food chain.”

Again, I think it is entirely possible for Sesshomaru to learn not to regard humans as “lower on the food chain” through a relationship that ISN’T romance, but that aside, this whole notion brings up a question: why didn’t Rumiko Takahashi write Rin into the story as a young adult? We’ve already discussed how romantic implications to the relationship couldn’t exist while she’s still a child in the series, and why Sesshomaru and Rin are definitely NOT equal during the series. So if it was so important for Sesshomaru to be otherwise equal to Rin so he can lower his pride and truly consider her such, why was Rin not written as a fully autonomous adult so we could cut to the chase? It seems that if what you’re describing was really Rumiko Takahashi’s intent, it would have been a lot easier if the girl was already grown up. At the very least, our dear author could have ended the series when Rin was an appropriate age to actually make the point instead of leaving it hanging.

“Doing the exact same thing he criticized his father for, which  for him would’ve been humiliating in the beginning of the series. The  sequel (if you regard it as canon) goes even farther, making him create  his own half demons - the very reason he hated his brother in the first  place. His mother even said he becomes like his father in the strangest  ways - and the only “strange” thing we know about his father was his  romantic relationship with Izayoi.”

Since English isn’t your first language, I’m guessing you’re just mistaken in the map of this sentence, but the word “strange” here is referring to Sesshomaru’s behavior in relation to his father’s. What is strange is how Sesshomaru is like his father, not his father’s ways. This actually makes the opposite point - it seems to refer to the ways in which Sesshomaru is behaving as odd, maybe in relation to a pattern his father fit into.

“That’s why I think it wouldn’t fall apart if we draw the parallel in a wider context as you say, because other characters didn’t have the same starting point  as Sessh. I very much agree with you, that Inuyasha’s platonic bonds  would also count as a dog forming close bonds with humans, but in  Inuyasha’s or Shippou’s case, they didn’t need the same character  development like Sessh, since they had a different attitude towards  humans or “lesser-beings” in the first place (Inuyasha was even past the  stage of lowering himself, also out of romantic reasons btw, since he  was ready to become human for Kikyo).”

I’m curious as to how the parallel and pattern matter if it’s null and void because Inuyasha and the other characters we talked about have different character arcs. Of course they aren’t starting from the same place as Sesshomaru, characters never do. They’re varied and diverse because it would be boring as tar to write them all going through the same issues. My point about the parallel was that even if it could be said that there’s some similarity in how dog YOUKAI form bonds with humans to actual DOGS, it’s not really a good parallel, because there are other “species” of youkai much less friendly with humans doing it too. I’m having trouble understanding what this argument has to do with that.

In reference to the above, I agree, the example characters you cited didn’t have the same level of dismissive racism as Sesshomaru did (I say “same level” because Shippou does carry a bit of prejudice, even as a small child), but when that’s apparent, why is the pattern even relevant? Since the characters aren’t set to all learn the same lesson, their relationships shouldn’t really resemble each other’s in the long run either, should they? Writers use relationships as tools for character development, and they usually want to use the right tool for the right job. Maybe romantic love with a human was right for Inuyasha because he had issues with vulnerability and reconciling his half-heritage. What if SESSHOMARU benefited more as a character from an unconditional bond (free from the conditions of sexual/romantic attraction) to demonstrate to him how even the weakest creature is incomprehensibly valuable for reasons impossible to articulate, and they are worth using his incredible level of “superior” power to protect and defend them? It’s a different kind of humbling oneself than what you were talking about, but I think it’s just as meaningful, and it fits Sesshomaru’s character development neatly into the the original text. It doesn’t require Sunrise make a sequel more than a decade later to wrap up the character development that Rumiko Takahashi meant to do when Rin grew up even though she could have just written her in as an adult in the first place.

“But Rin will obviously not always stay 8/11 years old, she will grow  into her own person and become a woman (while living apart from Sessh),  creating a completely different power dynamic with Sessh. One that would  still be an imbalance, but much different than when she was a child.”

As far as the narrative was concerned, Rin COULD very well have stayed a child forever, though. She was written as a character in a story. When the story is done, so are the characters. You’ve said before and here that Inuyasha is just fiction, and it is, but accepting that means accepting that Rin doesn’t grow up without some prompting. She doesn’t age but through the hand of a creator, fanfiction authors or Sunrise. When you say she’s not going to stay 8-11 forever, what you mean is that actual humans who experience actual time are not satisfied with her age as it stood when the story ended, and actively impose time upon her.

And since applying time to a fictional character is something that has to be intentional, so too do the conditions you mention to create the perfect environment for the ship. The different dynamic that isn’t father-daughter, but still a little bit of not-weird power imbalance. The “lowering” of Sesshomaru’s ego in that specific romantic way (that I’m still not sure I understand, but we’ll go with it). The way in which the romance is developed without either character realizing it so that Sesshomaru can’t be accused of using the power imbalance to manipulate a girl he’s had authority over since she was eight. Returning to what catalyzed the change in Sesshomaru in the first place while carefully treading around the fact that it was built upon an unconditional relationship that now suddenly has conditions on it. That’s a lot of mental legwork to do, which is fine, because that’s part of creative expression. But you have to acknowledge that none of this would be necessary if the pairing were “obvious”.

It certainly wasn’t very obvious to some of us. We came to a very different conclusion, saw everything a bit differently. Now we’re being punished for having a less popular interpretation of this relationship, shut down by SUNRISE and told that we don’t get to have that interpretation, because they’re considered an authority on what is canon in Inuyasha, and they’re taking sides to squeeze more money out of the Inuyasha franchise with a next-gen sequel. It doesn’t seem to matter that Sunrise was never really very good at telling Inuyasha stories, or that next-gen sequels never seem to be any good for lack of stakes and boring plots.

Sunrise’s interpretation is still considered to be more “valid” than ours. And that really hurts. So, if you found yourself wondering why there’s so much vitriol coming from the anti camp, it’s a combination of this, and the fact that they don’t really have the option of avoiding the content they don’t like anymore. It’s kind of EVERYWHERE now.

So, there we are. I don’t want to give the impression from the above that I’m trying to tear apart your arguments to somehow discredit the pairing. Shippers gonna ship, whether it makes sense to me or not. But I did want to highlight how any of the things you bring up can very well be interpreted entirely differently.

Hope you’re doing well, and you did well on that exam. :)

[fymagnificentwomcn]

What are your thoughts about Silhatar Mustafa?

Mhm pretty much indifferent to him, but as many, deserved so much better?

I mean later on he was horrible, but he wasn’t himself anymore following Gevherhan’s death and his disastrous marriage to Atike.

When we meet him we know he’s Murad’s best friend and has a reputation as ladies man, seems like a guy seriously devoted to his work, but having a messy private life lol.

The person he seems most attached to was Murad, we see he is very much concerned about his well-being and happiness, for example he is very glad seeing Murad being happy after a ride with Farya (later changes his attitude towards her after the pig incident). He also has a soft spot for Ayşe (in platonic sense), which mirrors Ibrahim’s fondness for Mahi due to being treated as part of their family (and this relationship stays strong until the end, even in her last episode, he pleads on her behalf with Murad).

It’s clear he and Kösem aren’t great friends, but they both have learned how to co-operate with each other for Murad’s sake, he also seems to have similar relations with the rest of family – there doesn’t seem to be exceptional closeness between him and the rest of the family other than Murad, but everybody manages to get along.

The show starts when Mu/rat loses his previous main male favourite (and I don’t intend here any romantic undertons either ahaha) aka Musa, and Silahtar is given his position. In later flashback scene we see what Mu/rat expects of him – absolute loyalty. Obviously Musa has left big shoes to fill in and Silahtar is undoubtedly aware of this.

Suddenly Silahtar’s professional life and his messy private life intersect because he gets caught between two sultanas – one which he begins to have feelings for and the other who begins chasing after him for a change.

He was well aware Gevherhan might be too far above him and perhaps got scared about having for the first time real feelings for a woman, so he entered into what he thought a casual relationship with Ester. However, he could have sensed that Ester wanted something more, she was pretty vocal about bearing her loneliness aka widowhood badly and wanting to have someone by her side long-term. Then he actually did decide to pursue Gev and like he said start a new chapter with his life, close the previous messy private life and start anew with the woman he truly loved. He also intended to immediately come clean to Mu/rat and ask for Gev’s hand, even at the risk of being executed.

Ironically, what proved to be an obstacle was not where he actually was at fault (Ester), but where he was innocent (Atike).

As I said, Ester serves here as foil to Atike – she has much better reasons to be bitter and want revenge, but ultimately she draws a line and leaves the matter. And LBR nobody would have cared so much about her as about a sultana… but this sultana is lying, even if she herself believes in her delusions.

The whole situation truly gives me Atonement vibes, and as in Atonement it has a bad ending, but here it gets a bit more complicated because of Silahtar’s love and loyalty being connected also with another person – Murad.

I said it multiple times – in the end the real love triangle is Silahtar-Gevherhan-Murad.

As I mentioned in the beginning, from beginning Silahtar is very protective of his friend and sultan and also wants to do as best as he can in his job. He is also a bit naïve about Murad – during the Kasim matter, he scolds Kemankeş for having helped Kösem hide the truth, but he himself has no bad intentions and does not want Kasim hurt – he believes Murad will not pursue the matter as far as he ultimately does.

Similarly, he makes digs at Kemankes to not switch sides for Kösem’s.

When he asks Murad for Gev’s hand, he is sure his friend will treat him at least justly. But boy he was disappointed. Murad doesn’t even ask him about the whole matter and trusts Atike blindly. Then puts him in that praying cell to make Silahtar understand that the most important thing in his life is his padişah and absolute loyalty to him.

To make matters worse, once Silahtar is released from prison, his “friend” decides to complete the “lesson” with “absolute loyalty test” – marry Atike.

Murad is well aware Silahtar does not love Atike and does not want to marry her. He actually uses his beloved (?) little sis and traps her in marriage that has no chances of being ever happy to test Silahtar’s loyalty.

And Silahtar, traumatised and brainwashed by everything – chooses loyalty to Murad. Of course if he had said no, he would have been executed (though Gev would have more strength to live seeing he didn’t abandon her), but he still chooses a sad life trapped in his private life with a woman he now despises… what is left is truly only Murad and his service to him.

In a way, it’s strange that following Gev’s demise Silahtar becomes obsessed with the person who caused him this misery – but at the same he lost everything, all he has left is Murad, he made his choice, chose Murad, so now all he can do is stick to his choice and save what he still has.

When Murad comes to Silahtar when the latter is mourning Gevherhan we see he has learned his lessons by now – Murad is distraught because his mother told him he was guilty of his sister’s suicide, so Murad (as always) makes his friend’s pain be about him and asks whether it’s true. Silahtar now knows what answer Murad expects and states that “all our lives and our paths, life and death, belong to you” and remarks that if Gev had accepted Murad’s will as we all should, she would have been alive. It’s deeply sad to state, but Silahtar knows Murad truly wants no other answer than this. However, before Murad’s appearance, Silahtar recalled telling Gev that only she made him feel alive and now he tells Murad he is practically dead and trapped in his life, and that he needs to live with his pain and regret forever. He actually says similar thing to Atike - yes, he chose loyalty to Murad over the woman he loved and now has to bear the consequences for the rest of his life. Atike, of course, does not get it and still belives they might have a happy ending.

It’s a very dark reality for him now, no wonder he pretty much loses his mind out of this grief, and it only gets worse because he realises Atike will never divorce him and will not even rest until he tries to be a husband to her.

When he comes to her and they “kiss” he taunts her to divorce him and sees that even when he mocks her she’s so obsessed with him, she won’t go let go no matter what. Kösem actually would be happy to see Atike divorcing Silahtar because we know she never liked him, the only obstacle is Atike’s obsession. So later he tries to play the husband part even though it’s clear he continues to despise her.

Ironically, he develops sort of his own obsession, but with Murad. Pretty much tries to remove everyone around Murad and most sadly tries to turn Murad against his mother and brothers. He suggests both changing the law and putting Murad’s brothers to kafes, which is an action very uncharacteristic of his old self. Still, it’s clearly not a vendetta against Murad because we see he still clearly cares about him, e.g. when he hides from him the fact that Farya (whom he strongly dislikes) had connection with Murad’s children death. He does confide it in Kösem though because he knows that while she will scold Farya, she will also keep quiet not to cause Murad any more pain. It again proves that while these two never liked each other much, they were able to set their differences aside for Murad’s sake.

This is not just restricted to his family, but also to Murad’s other men – Abaza, Kemankeş – because he shows Murad the letter from Kösem to Kemankes not only to strike at her, but to make Murad doubt Kemankeş too and he taunts Kemankeş with being Kösem’s spy (which is true because now Kemankeş is reporting Kösem Murad’s tyrannical behaviour, the opposite of what he was sent to Kösem, I love this irony sm ngl)

Kemankeş however is not interested in becoming Murad’s male favourite, but a new serious rival pops up – Yusuf. And a new triangle emerges 😊 Silahtar cannot hide his jealousy at all, even Atike notices it, though as always she mistakes it as him being jealous of her, same with Kemankeş who taunts Silahtar that Yusuf’s relationship with Murad curiously resembles his relationship with “someone else”.

I really despair we didn’t get more of Silahtar/Yusuf/Murad thing NGL, but I’m sure it would have gone this way if Caner had not left the show, I doubt Silahtar would have ever abandoned Murad at that stage, especially since historically he was his most loyal man until the end (“the person who was always loyal and genuinely attached to him since his youth” as Du Loir suggests) and was even in terrible despair upon Murad’s death, sooo.

In short again, he’s not among my fave characters, but he truly deserved so much better because he was living in actual hell and dark place later on, and ironically Murad was well aware of this as he remarked over his body that “for some people living is so painful, they feel trapped and in chains, death is actually relief for them, and only those who remain suffer” (aka exact repetition of what Sil told Murad about Gev following her death).

- Joanna

[crystalelemental]

“kisant: I also think that if they combined 6+7 they should update the mechanics around supports and child units. Honestly, I don't think 7's supports should have been as restricted as they were in the first place, because I also missed on lore to focus on getting the pairing I wanted. A way to update the games for a remake would be to simply add more child characters in Roy's game, change Karla's recruitment to happen earlier in the game (there are other arenas before the one she appears in) and allow for platonic supports as well as romantic supports, because only being allowed to get one A support and one B support was pretty shitty. For characters like Rath, they could also add more female supports for him with existing characters.  After all, shadows of valentia also added supports between characters (there were none in the original game) and a ton of new mechanics, so a 6+7 remake should also update those.”

This is going to be a somewhat subjective take, but we are operating on entirely different wavelengths, because everything about this is exactly what I think is the worst possible outcome.

Let me start with a statement I have made before and will make again and again until I die: infinite supports are not inherently good.  I think Three Houses proved they can (mostly) be done well, but infinite supports cause you to lose things that finite supports have going for them that don’t often get acknowledged.  A big one just being a streamlined gaming experience and adding replay value.  Infinite supports don’t encourage doing anything different at any point when combined with the free battle system.  You just take like 10 hours out of your life to try and fill out to log, mindlessly beating unthreatening maps that just kind of exist for the sake of doing this exact thing.  Finite supports may mean you have to replay the game to get a different chain, but you don’t slow down your current playthrough to unlock them (unless you’re farming support by ending turn on a seize the throne map, which wasn’t the intended method anyway), and you now have a reason to play through the game again to get something different.  That hidden lore is meant to be hidden, it’s something you stumble upon in a later playthrough when you decide to go for Canas and Renault’s supports, as opposed to their other options.  There was something worth replaying the game for.  “Customizable kid units add replay value” I’ll get to that.

The other thing that’s lost is consistency.  I’ve been on and off replaying Birthright lately, and one thing that still stands out as a problem is that, with infinite supports, nothing ever comes of those supports.  When you have a character like, say, Oboro, whose main thing is hating Nohrians, and a bunch of her supports with Nohrian characters is about overcoming that, it kinda lessens the significance when you hit that A-support and she seems to have learned that lesson, only to start up the next C-support and be right back where you were before, as if nothing happened.  Three Houses also has this problem, I feel, at least when it comes to romance.  You have all these A-supports that end with shades of romance, and then you can just...not have their paired ending.  Getting a heartfelt moment that’s shared between the two characters, and then having each go on to have similar heartfelt moments with like four other romantic options, kinda cheapens the value of their dynamic.  Finite supports don’t have this problem.  When you limit supports, that A-support matters, and the fact that there’s variety aside from romance for baby purposes makes them more meaningful.

Look at Awakening, where this problem started.  Look at how vast that support log is, and tell me how much of it was meaningful, as opposed to empty joke supports or a desperate struggle to come up with a reason these characters are married now.  You have a character like Cordelia, who is decisively not over Chrom at all, marrying literally anyone but him, and you have to just deal with that throughout supports.  Or Tharja, who is obsessed with Robin but can marry other people because kid necessity, even though most of the time she barely has feelings for them at all.  Even with supports that are romantic, you get shit like Sumia just baking Chrom pies over and over and that’s enough for romance.  There’s no depth.  Awakening doesn’t have much in the same vein as Eliwood and Ninian or Nino and Jaffar.  And the reason?  Quantity over Quantity is the name of the game with kid units.

Awakening and Fates are too busy making customization for the kids that they forgot to make sufficiently meaningful supports.  It’s so severe that even the good pairings suffer.  Chrom and F!Robin is widely considered the most canon pairing, and even they have an entire support level dedicated to a joke about how Chrom walked in on her in the bath one time.  Supports suffer when you’re forcing a child system that demands variety, so adding more children characters and more support options to make children characters is going to mean support quality takes a hit.

Not to mention, again, how much that hinders the characters.  “We need more kid characters for Binding Blade, because that game didn’t have enough characters yet!  Quick, make Priscilla have a kid!”  So now, instead of the interesting dynamic she had where she rejects every possible love interest, we have to either re-write that A-support to be reciprocated (boring) or add in another S-support where she reverses that decision (stupid).  “Bartre needs to have Fir, better add other options!”  Cool, so we’re just tossing the whole aspect of Karel being her uncle, which is something explored and explained in Binding Blade.  Like why should Bartre talk to Karel at all if he didn’t marry his sister?  Oops, I guess it’s fine, we’ll just get rid of that touching moment of Bartre apologizing to him for her death.  Not like that was a great moment for character building, we have kids to make!  “We need Rath to have more options than just Lyn, let’s include Isadora as an option!”  Great!  Now the character who doesn’t have other romance options because she’s in love with Harken and believes he’ll return to her one day suddenly has the ability to just drop that aspect of her character entirely for the sake of making babies.  Like imagine turning her support with Legault from just an amicable thing where he’s reminiscent about the old Black Fang and feels the current army is comfortable around to go “Actually it was all because I want to make babies with you.”  Lame as hell.

And double lame because it removes the fact that he’s kinda flirting with Heath.  Sure, Heath isn’t reciprocating, but like...one of the nice things about Three Houses was that it could include gay pairing ending cards, because there were no kids.  You could have things like Petra and Dorothea, or Marianne and Hilda, and that’s just treated as an equally valuable and reasonable outcome.  All of that is dead instantly upon introducing kids, because you need multiple parent options or the system falls apart and stagnates.  And in making a wide enough variety of options, there’s just no room to leave a character with their gay pairing.  It just isn’t something they’d bother to include when the focus is on making children characters, so say goodbye to that.

There’s just...no good outcome with kids.  I like the Awakening kids, but ultimately it’s just not a good tradeoff with the current approach in Fire Emblem.  Genealogy kinda made it work, but only because that game didn’t even have supports.  I want the remake to include supports to develop people’s personalities, but I’m honestly worried they won’t come out that well because of the fixation on children.  Echoes added supports too, but like...okay, yeah, how well did those go?  Which ones do you really remember?  Because mostly fandom seems to remember Faye’s because of how much they hated hers, and maybe Genny and Sonya because it was cute.  Almost everything else often gets forgotten anyway.  So not exactly a great example on the benefits of adding a bunch of supports to a game that already had a strong system.

I know they’re going to add unlimited supports, though.  I know they will, because that’s been the way of things since Awakening.  I want to believe that, because they held true to a lot of the mechanics of Gaiden with Echoes, that they’ll do the same with the Elibe games.  But they won’t.  I just...really hope they don’t combine the games, because knowing that, there is absolutely no positive outcome for a combo game given the demands of a child system.

[jeanandthedreamofhorses]

Eren the Free, Part 1: Response to linkspooky’s ‘Eren the Slave’

Thanks for asking for my response, anon, because it has allowed me to string together and articulate my own thoughts on Eren’s character at this stage of the story.

Needless to say, I have several interpretive, philosophical disagreements with @linkspooky‘s ‘Eren the Slave’ and these are expressed in my ‘Eren Jaeger – Who Freer than the Tyrant?’ meta, so please read that first. The purpose of this post will be to argue against specific claims made in linkspooky’s meta and tackle what I believe to be logical flaws in my opponent’s argument. This meta is in two parts not to flex but because my computer had an aneurysm trying to load the whole post.

Well, if the Defence in the trial of Eren Jaeger may take the floor, my opening statement is thus: Eren is no slave, and has pursued the path of freedom further than any other character.

Narrative and Personal Narrative

linkspooky draws a distinction between the Narrative of the manga and Eren’s Personal Narrative, the story he tells himself. They argue that people who have faith in Eren’s self-conception fall into his personal narrative.

But is his story not a Narrative? It is quite natural to expect character development from characters in a story - it could only rightly be called a mistake when it comes to real life. And do Eren’s detractors not themselves fall into the Personal Narratives of Armin, Mikasa and Zeke? They have repeatedly made the statement that Eren is not free, that he is being controlled by Zeke or Grisha, and every time he has proven them wrong.

There is indeed an authorial Narrative separate from the characters’ Personal Narratives which can be detected through symbolism and the course the story takes. I find that the course of the story thus far lines up far more with Eren’s Personal Narrative than it does with those of his detractors. We can tell this from how he has disproved Armin, Mikasa and Zeke’s accusations of manipulation and also how, in the last chapter, he symbolically rips free of his chains.

There is also the fact that we the readers are more in the dark about Eren’s thoughts and intentions than we are about any other character. How could we be seduced into a Personal Narrative we know next to nothing about? And why would the story deliberately hide from us the very perspective that is meant to deceive us? I think it is far more likely that the reason Eren’s intentions have been shielded from the reader is because they take the nature of a terrible truth that must be dug up with bloodied hands.

Whenever Eren opens up about his thoughts and feelings, the meta unfairly dismisses them as mere lip service despite Eren having no reason to lie to Reiner and Falco as two people he intends to kill.

Rather than our side of the fandom being deceived by Eren’s Personal Narrative, I find that the opposing side dismisses it out of hand because they have no intention of listening to Eren’s side of the story. Why is Eren’s perspective less valid than anyone else’s, especially when he knows more than every other character by virtue of his ability to literally see the future?

The only explanation I can find for this attitude, if I may be forgiven the presumption, is that people approach the topic with the automatic assumption that what Eren is doing has to be wrong instead of questioning their own morals - which is, after all, what Attack On Titan is all about.

Armin even says that he no longer understands Eren. I don’t think we should trust the perception of a character as being authorial Narrative when he explicitly makes a statement like this. linkspooky does have an explanation for this scene, however, which I shall address in the next part.

Armin and Mikasa’s Perceptions of Eren

linkspooky claims that the reason for Armin’s confusion is that his romanticised view of Eren is falling apart, which indeed it is, and the same is true of Mikasa. However, I don’t think it’s right to claim that their new perception of him is an accurate one, since they still haven’t heard anything from Eren himself apart from what both I and linkspooky agree are lies to distance himself from them.

While they both once focused excessively on the positive in Eren, now they focus excessively on the negative, not considering the reason for Eren’s actions that I believe we have received hints of in the last two chapters.

linkspooky and I both think that Eren wants to protect his friends - in my case I most definitely see it as his primary motivation. If Armin knew this about Eren, I do not think he would condone him, but I don’t think he’d so roundly condemn him as he does here either.

So I don’t think it is right to consider Armin’s words the straight truth here, given the lack of information he’s working with, and that indeed, the fandom is working with. Because Eren is doing the most morally questionable things, and because we are seeing things more often from Armin’s perspective than his these days, there is perhaps an impulse to put faith in Armin’s words over Eren’s. But in this series, nothing is ever so black and white.

In Mikasa’s case, her treasured memory of the scarf is now being being challenged by the memory of Eren murdering the kidnappers - but we know from 121 that Eren places special value on the scarf as well, instead of just the murder.

Rather than trying to paint Eren in a white or black light, they need to see Eren as he really is: like the freedom he represents, a force beyond good and evil. 

Enemy of the World

One of linkspooky’s arguments is that being the ‘Enemy of the World’ is just Eren’s fantasy as he frequently relies on others. However, linkspooky also mentions how Eren manipulates everyone close to him. I would argue that the person who manipulates you is, in fact, your enemy, and that Eren is the Enemy of the World not because he never relies on help but because he is entirely on his own side.

Indeed he knows that assistance from others is necessary even just to activate the Founder’s power, and he also refers to the Survey Corps as his friends, or even comrades, depending on your translation.

This is why he manipulates them - and the reason he manipulates rather than relying on them is because he feels that his Will contradicts the Wills of everyone around him. There is no-one who desires the outcome that Eren desires, not even Floch and the Eldian nationalists, I believe: I think even they will baulk at the scale of destruction Eren intends. Historia is the only character I think may be an exception to this rule as the other bearer of the ‘enemies of mankind’ moniker. 

This otherwise total isolation of intention is what makes Eren the Enemy of the World. Because he fights for his freedom, he rebels against peace.

I think this panel is another example of why the authorial Narrative itself supports the idea of Eren being an Enemy of the World. The positioning of the speech bubble and outside text was entirely the decision of Isayama and his editor, and is not a thought bubble from Eren’s head. He has never actually addressed himself as ‘the Enemy of the World’: Historia calls him the enemy of mankind and Willy says he rebels against peace, but while Eren has said he “might just destroy the world” and only in response to Willy’s words, he is still not ascribing himself a title or role.

Eren’s Individualism

linkspooky claims that the scene in the FT arc, where the Levi Squad is slaughtered because Eren didn’t rely on his power instead of theirs, is misinterpreted because Eren also lost the fight on his own. However, this is where I think this meta falls prey to one of its greatest weaknesses: the omission of the Uprising Arc from the analysis of Eren’s character, wherein his most pivotal transitions take place.

The event that caused Eren to trust in his own strength over the strength of others was not his fight against Annie, but when a similar situation repeats itself in the Crystal Cave.

In this circumstance, Eren is able to protect all of his friends by relying on his own strength, when they would have died had they attempted their risky manoeuvre. Eren has become strong enough to protect them on his own - this was the first inkling of that realisation.

I say ‘first inkling’ because Eren does say this afterwards, which seems to influence Armin towards his current ideology. Such an idea seems at odds with what I believe to be Eren’s current aim to genocide those different to him as a wholly antagonistic force, like the bullies in Armin’s memories who Armin now wants to make peace with.

I believe this is because Eren soon learns that those differences between people are simply too great and too much of a threat to his freedom. People are stronger together, but only if he can be confident that they will follow his Will, which is how he learned to manipulate his allies. The differences between him and Levi in the Serumbowl nearly caused the loss of his best friend, and then, when he receives Grisha’s memories and learns of Marley’s treatment of Eldians, he learns just how deeply divided humans are and loses faith in overcoming those differences.

Far from character stagnancy, this is the development I see in Eren that has led him to this individualistic conclusion.

I would also like to address what I think is a fallacy in linkspooky’s analysis of the fight Eren loses against Annie. Eren loses both with his comrades and without them - how does that make the former path any better than the latter? Eren was actually doing very well in his fight against Annie, and only lost when he realised her identity from her fighting stance.

What I think Eren really took away from that fight is the lesson he is applying now - he cannot show any mercy to his enemies.

Levi Parallelism

I find the parallels drawn between Eren and Levi quite interesting and am not necessarily opposed to it, but personally I find that Levi has more parallels with Mikasa than Eren as two Ackermans driven by their love for others (though of course this is a big part of Eren’s motivation as well). Mikasa realising she can’t protect Eren or always be by his side is more in line with Levi accepting that he can’t save everyone imo.

Those Who Push Themselves into that Hell

linkspooky draws attention to Eren’s use of language to indicate that he is not free, such as in the following scene: 

They argue that the ‘something’ pushing Eren along means he is not moving from his own will.

However, I find this claim to be contradicted by the distinction Eren makes within this very scene. He differentiates between those who are pushed into hell by their circumstances and those who “push themselves into hell”, clearly putting himself - at least as he is now - in the latter category. So I find that Eren is articulating that, because his whole past and future are manifestations of his own Will (as I argue in the attached meta), he is freely choosing to enter this arena rather than being forced to do so.

I Just Keep Moving Forward

linkspooky also argues that the reluctance in the line “I just keep moving forward’” suggests a lack of freedom. I would argue that continuing to fight for your goal even though you are frightened is a sign of strength of will rather than the reverse.

They also argue that, because those words are remembered as Reiner is about to kill himself, they are portrayed in a negative light. But this omits the crucial follow-up to that scene, where Reiner does not kill himself and finds a reason to live after hearing Falco express his desire to protect Gabi. Reiner is saved by that will to keep moving forward.

They further argue that Eren takes these words from Hange and twists them to suit himself.

But this is untrue. As they pointed out themself, Eren first heard these words in his training days from Reiner where it did mean what he thinks it means. Furthermore, there is no panel showing Eren having any special reaction to Hange’s words. He is shown with the other key Serumbowl players before Hange says them, but not afterwards, where the focus is solely on Mikasa.

I believe Isayama has Hange say Eren’s tagline because it is a key phrase in the themes of the story, and not because it has any special effect on Eren.

I Didn’t Have Any Other Choice

Lines such as “I didn’t have any other choice” and “Is there another way” are similarly argued to be indicative of Eren’s enslavement to a single course of action.

But this is just the conflict between long and short term gratification – enduring hardship to obtain your goal is an example of a strong will, not an enslaved one. Even if he is enslaved to circumstance, this is the case for everybody else as well, and it is an enslavement he seeks to permanently free himself from by crushing his enemies for good. After that, he and Eldia can do whatever they will.

Born This Way

The lines “I’ve always been that way, ever since I was born”, and “It’s probably been like this since the day we were born” are argued to be a form of enslavement to one’s sense of self. I cover this in my attached meta, where I argue that it is rather an affirmation of his own Will and right to exist.

One specific point I’d like to address is the claim that Eren saying those words after Reiner tries to take personal responsibility for his actions is evidence that Eren is running away from his guilt, and is therefore not at peace with his actions, and is therefore not free. But rather than in denial or frustrated, Eren appears to be in a state of sad serenity.

Eren does not say these words in immediate response to Reiner, but only after he hears Willy say “Because I was born into this world”. I think that here Eren is simply recognising that Reiner was simply following the unique nature of his Will - doing it because he wanted to, not because he had to, which is indeed what Eren is doing - and acknowledging that it is something he cannot criticise him for, but also something that he cannot spare him for. That is the command of Eren’s unique Will.

As for Eren not being at peace with his actions meaning he is not free, refer to the short/long term gratification point I made earlier.

Jealousy of Mikasa and the Need to be a One Man Army

linkspooky claims that Eren is still trying too hard to be as strong as Mikasa and Levi, but once again the meta suffers due to a lack of consideration for the Uprising Arc. In that arc, Eren got over his jealousy of Mikasa and Levi and explicitly stated as much.

This, I think, is also sufficient evidence against a persisting desire on Eren’s part to be a One Man Army (as opposed to freedom, which he does have a desire for). His words here make it clear that he wishes to fight alongside his friends if possible. He has simply learnt that, to achieve his goals, ruthless manipulation and rugged individualism is necessary.

Need to be Special

This is also something Eren overcame in the Uprising Arc. He thinks of himself as a normal person, the son of a special father, that he never needed to happen.

He is not doing all of this to be special. He has simply become special by pursuing his birthright: not a birthright of exceptionalism, but of the right to exist, something I shall explain further in the ‘Meaning of Carla’s Words’ section in the next part.

As with the One Man Army, it is a matter of necessity rather than desire. I cover this more in my attached Eren meta, but Eren’s character has developed in a perfect loop. Though his actions remain the same, his understanding of them has increased dramatically: that is to say, he has come to understand himself.

Indeed, people are not naturally special. But can one really argue that special people do not exist at all? To say such a thing would be to argue that there is no difference between Daz and Erwin. People become special -  Supermen, to reference Nietzsche - because they relentlessly pursue their Will to Power, their driving force to actualise their desires.

linkspooky also argues that the reason Eren’s change is the most dramatic after the time-skip is because in actuality he hasn’t changed. My argument is that it is simply the result of having the most explicit and tumultuous development in the story up to now, and crucially, the ability to see a future no-one else can.

Read the rest in Part 2 here!

[hancockstan]

Ok so here is my promised examination on why The Citadel and all its warboys got so immediately popular while The Legion are mostly hated as a group despite both post apocalyptic factions being patriarchal and the foundations of both are based on slavery.

I want to start by saying that obviously not everyone likes the warboys and not everyone despises the legionaries and that anyone who enjoys making fanworks or dunking on either are completely valid in doing so.

Spoiler warning from this point forward for both franchises.

The first thing I want to start with is Joe and Edward themselves as well as their high command. The two leaders have a lot of similarities at first glance; costumes of their own design, sicknesses that neither have the means to cure, misogyny out the wazoo, a cult of personality centered around them, empires built on military conquest and subsequent exploitation of the conquered people, the list goes on. (Also, more of an opinion but they always struck me as just a little beyond their pay grade in terms of actually leading a thriving society.) The difference I want to focus on is the fandom reaction and interpretation of both of these characters. A large portion of Fallout fans make killing Caesar one of the most important moments in their fanworks and relatively few ships involving him exist, let alone with any popularity. In contrast while Joe’s death is also a staple of character examinations and (at least in my experience) considered completely cheer worthy by audiences, its also not hard to find Immortan fans. At its peak, the Fury Road fandom had an active sub-tag called the gigadumpster which included any works (especially nsfw) featuring Immortan Joe, Bullet Farmer, or People Eater. Now it stands to mention that while Caesar himself doesn’t tend to be popular, Vulpes, Joshua, and Lanius have a decent following, at least enough to rival the popularity of the Gigadumpster trio. Which brings me to my next comparison: the Bullet Farmer and Joshua Graham. Both helped establish their factions and were close enough to their leaders to be in high positions of influence and power. Both even called their leaders their brothers. But more importantly, both eventually failed their respective leaders although Bullet Farmer didn’t live to face the consequences this may have held for him. I think that this is the first key to understanding the popularity of The Citadel. We know that for his failure Josh was set on fire and pushed into the Grand Canyon. His character allows for many different interpretations on how this has changed him. Some people take his word in the dlc that he has changed and found god again while others see him as the same man except opposed to Caesar now. Alternatively, Kalashnikov didn’t live to face the repercussions of his actions, an important distinction. When left to imagine how Joe may have reacted to the Bullet Farmer’s failure if he had lived but still failed to bring back his wives or even more extreme; accidentally killed one, the fandom tends to imagine him more forgiving than we should perhaps give him credit for. In a deleted scene (if we can assume this is what canonically happened to Miss Giddy given that nothing in the theatrical release contradicts it) the teacher who Joe has trusted enough to allow her to live with his wives was subjected to torture at the hands of the Organic Mechanic and then left in the desert to die with Splendid’s corpse. While I’m not suggesting that Miss Giddy would be anywhere near equal to the Bullet Farmer in terms of freedoms Joe allows them I am saying that we have at least one example of The Immortan not being the most forgiving guy. In addition to this we never see a scene where Joe mourns for Kalashnikov as he did for Angharad. This suggests that canonically he cared more for either this enslaved woman or the idea of having an abled son to carry on his legacy than he did about K.

Now to switch gears a little bit I’d like to point out the difference in the roles of women in the Citadel vs the Legion. Both have explicitly shown that women are treated as property and experience sexual violence. Furthermore, both the Legion and Citadel philosophies state that every person is a servant to their power structures, emphasized especially when the wives toss Nux out of the war rig and tell him he’s an old man’s battle fodder. To address the elephant in the room, one of the most powerful positions in the Citadel, under the Immortan’s family and the other two warlords, are imperators. The only named imperator in the film being of course, Furiosa. This in and of itself suggests that while extremely rare (she’s visibly the only women in their society holding any power) it is possible. Also, as others have pointed out some of the overall wearing warboys in the war party are played by stuntwomen. Miss Giddy doesn’t seem to hold any sway in the Citadel’s chain of command but she is afforded the “privileges” that the wives are in the vault as well. Educated, allowed to teach the wives, and afforded some level of comfort in comparison to the wretched at least, she’s another example of a woman in the Citadel that has more nuance than rag wearing slave. The only woman in the Legion that might be a good counterpart comparison is Siri. As she was taken from her home before she could complete her medical training and forced to serve the Legion as a doctor she is very careful not to do or say anything to get in trouble. Miss Giddy is introduced when her character is well passed the point of caring about consequences and points a shotgun at Joe while yelling, “You can not own a human being! Sooner or later someone pushes back!” It’s fairly easy to say which of these portrayals is more satisfying.

Finally, what might be the most obvious reason the warboys are loved and the legion remains its game’s least popular faction. The warboys are shown sympathetically. Namely, Nux. After being forsaken by his leader he takes a lesson in humanity from Capable and does his best to help the warrig family escape and later take the Citadel. It actually starts earlier in the film than some people may have noticed though, while Furiosa drove through Buzzard territory, our titicular protagonist was still strapped to the front of a car. While we weren’t revealed Furiosa’s motives yet the movie is framed in such a way that encourages us to root for her over the buzzards when she turns down Ace’s suggestion to turn around and run them into their backup (the warparty sent to capture her). During this scene we see Morsov get shot with a crossbow. There’s a short lull in action as Nux quietly encourages, “Get up, you can do it.” Finally he does, in order to leap to his death, destroying the Buzzard car along with him. And so it is revealed the warboys purpose. Obviously, the movie format doesn’t allow for choices like a video game. The Legion is at its biggest disadvantage in this regard because in order to learn anything humanizing about them you have to decide to play the legion route.

Anyway, that’s my analysis. Please yell at me for overlooking things and tell me how much you hate the warboys or love the legion. I’m only accepting comments in the form of bullying right now. 

[douxreviews]

Travelers - Season Three Review

Season one was good; season two was better. Season three was terrific, definitely the best so far. If you haven't tried Travelers yet, you might want to give it another shot.

Travelers is about people from a far flung, terrible future who have transferred their consciousness into the bodies of people from our time who were about to die. Working in teams of five, Travelers carry out missions given to them by the Director, an AI in their own time, saving lives and changing key events in order to "fix" their own future, even if it leads to their own nonexistence.

Although there was still a lot of action centered on lifesaving events and efforts to fight the lawless anti-Director operatives called "The Faction," season three was a lot more personal, more about the Travelers themselves.

And here is where I'm going to insert an adorable spoiler kitten! If you haven't seen season three and you plan to, I'm going to spoil everything! Come back and read this review later!

The season two finale in which David, Kat and Jeff learned the truth about the Travelers program at first appeared to be a nonevent when the three of them (and the befuddled Ray) received a 24-hour memory inhibitor that Grant had used on Kat once before. The kidnappees were told that they had been taken prisoner and drugged by a psycho serial killer, Vincent Ingram.

But the wipe wasn't entirely effective, since the kidnapping had lasted longer than a day. Jeff, an alcoholic, was able to partially resist its effects, and he remembered that Carly wasn't Carly. While David resisted a similar realization about Marcy because he loves her, he was frightened enough by what he remembered to buy a gun and start taking lessons in self-defense. And Kat kept getting memory flashes of Grant lying to her and planning to hurt her.

Interestingly, the real FBI became involved in Traveler operations when the FBI director (David Cubitt) was cleverly brought onboard. Grant got a new, reluctant partner, non-Traveler Agent Yates (Kimberley Sustad). And a 21st century artificial intelligence called Ilsa began to channel information from the Director, who was finally able to communicate directly with Traveler teams.

Season three got stronger as it went, with increasingly serious episodes and a blow-out shocker of a two-part ending.

3.3 "Protocol 3"

If you don't remember, I'll remind you what Protocol 3 is: "Don't take a life, don't save a life, unless otherwise directed." In this episode, Grant woke up mindwiped and was compelled to backtrack his own actions and find out why, even though there was clearly a very good reason why his own team was keeping the truth from him. Grant discovered that he had received orders from the Director to execute Aleksander, the Romanian child that the team saved back in season one, because Aleksander would grow up to do terrible things. (It wasn't stated outright, but he was already killing animals, suggesting that he would become a serial killer.)

This episode featured a depth of tragedy as well as ambiguity that ended up playing out through the entire season. The team managed to convince Grant that the time he had spent with Aleksander that day had changed the boy's future and that they had placed Aleksander in another, more successful foster home. But there was major subtext implying that Grant did indeed execute the boy and couldn't live with what he had done, so the team had wiped his memory and had come up with a convincing lie that Grant would probably believe. I was impressed.

3.6 "Philip"

Philip and other historians were kidnapped by the Faction, who wanted their knowledge of the timeline. We learned that the updates Philip was enduring would eventually kill him. !!! After the kidnapping, Philip decided to stop taking the yellow pills that kept him from seeing multiple timelines.

While I like Philip and this was a strong episode for actor Reilly Dolman, the real standout in this episode was Louis Ferreira as Rick Hall, who was shot and lying on Marcy's table at the garage as the team tried to retrieve Hall's knowledge about what had happened to Philip. Hall's final moments hallucinating that he was lying in a sunny field of flowers absolutely got to me; I cried for him. Ferreira did such a good job of making Hall a memorable character, considering that he was only in four episodes of the entire series.

In this episode, it was finally stated aloud that the Traveler program didn't appear to be working. Even with all of the lifesaving, positive changes, the horrible future was still basically unchanged.

3.7 "Trevor"

Trevor (Jared Abrahamson) has always been a favorite character of mine. There's something about the contrast of a teenage body housing the mind of an extremely elderly man that I've always found appealing, and the actor really made it work. In this episode, Trevor developed "temporal aphasia," a condition in which he checked out of consciousness for increasingly long periods of time, making him useless as an agent. (Sadly, we learned that the only other person who died of temporal aphasia was Trevor's late and much loved wife.)

Grace, who has a thing for Trevor, decided to save him before the Director overwrote his healthy young body with a new Traveler, and she succeeded in regulating his aphasia with a device that made his body unusable by any other Traveler. I found this denouement bittersweet since Trevor, who is extremely old, was clearly ready to die but resigned to continue doing his duty.

The B plot was actually even more moving than the A plot when David's very first client, played by the wonderful Jim Byrnes from Highlander, died and at his funeral, David gave him a beautiful, heartfelt eulogy that emphasized the worth of every human being. This homeless man's influence was what made David choose social work in the first place, and that choice in turn had a beneficial effect on everyone David has helped. This was another episode that made me cry.

In this episode's coda, Kat decided to test Grant by taking him to the place where they met, seventeen years ago. When he had no idea why they were there, Kat finally knew for certain that Grant was not the man she married.

3.9 "David" and 3.10 "Protocol Omega" (finale)

The Faction set off three nuclear devices in countries around the world, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths. David was dragged into carrying out a critical Traveler mission and had to disarm the fourth nuke alone, absorbing a lethal dose of radiation.

Key government figures all over the world were taken over by Faction travelers, and our team was clearly falling apart. Trevor's aphasia returned; Philip was hallucinating so many timeline variations that he couldn't so much as cross a street; Kat threw Grant out and their marriage was over. David's painful death was the last straw – I found it practically unbearable. His last words came from the Director: "Protocol Omega," meaning the Traveler program was over. Later, Marcy committed suicide in order to keep the Faction from the backdoor-to-the-Director knowledge she had in her head.

I'm sure it won't be a surprise that I cried through these two final episodes, too. I even yelled "Nooooooo!" out loud. Marcy and David falling in love despite the terrible problems they had to overcome was the heart of this series. I can't imagine it continuing without it.

In the end, Grant used Traveler 001's consciousness transfer device to go back to his host's body the moment Grant met Kat, seventeen years ago – and then he let her go to live her life without him. On September 11, Grant was in the Tower before Traveler 001 arrived. Grant was the one to send a different message to the Director, telling It that the Traveler program was a failure.

So many questions!

Did Grant prevent the entire series from happening at all? Or are there multiple timelines where it did? They did give us a lovely alternate moment where David and the original Marcy met on the bus before her mind was destroyed by Traveler 001. And thank you so much for that. (Of course, in this timeline, there would be no Ingram to destroy her mind in the first place.)

After stopping the Traveler program from ever happening, Grant was checking his watch, waiting for the Tower to get hit by the plane – but there was no plane. Did it ever come? And why didn't the original Vincent Ingram arrive in that office to fix the computer? If 9/11 never happened, that would be really, really interesting. What could we infer from that?

The Director abandoned "version 1" of the Traveler program, and started "version 2." Is this the end of the series? Was it all a paradox? Was it the Traveler program that brought about the original future dystopia in the first place?

I should be bummed that the series might end like this, but instead, I find it fascinating. It's an excellent ending for the series, but it's also a surprisingly cool launching point for a fourth season, if they get one. Bravo.

Bits and pieces:

— The first two seasons consisted of twelve episodes each, and there are only ten in season three. But I'm okay with that; they certainly got the job done.

— Although... the introduction of Agent Yates, Ilsa the AI and Dr. Teslia seemed a little pointless. I thought more was going to happen there.

— Carly's ex Jeff had an interesting storyline this season when Carly deliberately set up a situation where Jeff would kill her, knowing that the Director would probably overwrite Jeff first. Which It did. Jeff later being taken over by Traveler 001 didn't work as well for me, although having himself chained to a wheelchair and bricked up behind a wall was gutsy.

— Gold acting stars for Jennifer Spence as Grace, especially in the episode "Trevor." Such a droll character.

— Honorable mention for Christopher Heyerdahl, who played a serial killer for five minutes in "Archive" and then played the Traveler who took over his body and had to face a lifetime in prison or possibly even the death penalty for something he didn't do.

— And a special grossout award for Heyerdahl's character vomiting up an eyeball. Bleeechhh.

— There were many shots throughout the season of only half of each character's face. I'm sure it was this season's Most Obvious Symbolism.

I thought this season was excellent. Four out of four pair of ducks.

Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

[archonreviews]

The Archon’s Review of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is a fantasy role-playing game developed by Big Huge Games and published by Electronic Arts. In the fantasy realm of Amalur, Fate has dictated the comings and goings of all things. Particularly sensitive to the workings of Fate are the immortal Fae, whom are divided into the Summer Court and the Winter Court. However, tragedy strikes when a rebellious Winter Fae named Gadflow decides that the current Winter King isn’t doing enough murder, and that he should be king instead. After killing the Winter King and usurping his throne, Gadflow and his followers, the Tuatha Deohn, go to war against the mortal races of Elf, Gnome, and Human. The mortals seem doomed, as while the Tuatha can be killed, they reincarnate quite quickly and return to fight, whereas the mortals die when they are killed. To circumvent this disadvantage, a Gnome by the name of Fomorous Hughes creates the Well of Souls, a device meant to resurrect the dead. You are its first apparent success, and in the process of reviving, you become unbound from Fate, and basically ruin it for everyone. Now, you are the last hope for mortal-kind to defeat the villainous Gadflow and his Tuatha followers, restoring balance to the Fae Courts and preserving the realm of Amalur.

I first heard of Kingdoms of Amalur back in the mid-2000′s, just around when I was playing Oblivion obsessively. It was contemporary with another third-person fantasy thingie, Two Worlds, which the GameStop employee recommended against, before trying to shill for GameInformer. I suppose my point here is that I picked up KoA:R because I was curious to see what I had missed all those years ago. And yes, I am aware of the controversy surrounding the game’s creation and the dismantling of Big Huge Games, but I must confess to not being too familiar with the happenings.

The first thing one may notice in this game is the graphics. They’re actually pretty damn good, with beautiful vistas and vibrant landscapes. The characters are surprisingly expressive, even if that expressiveness does result in some humorous facial expressions. The character models are a little funny though; all the men, at least, have what I like to call “Ground Beef Body”. I ended up naming my character “Flaskkott Djur”, or “Pork Animal” in Swedish because he immediately reminded me of a hunk of ground beef (I got the word “Flaskkott” confused with the word “Nottkott” which is “Beef”. There’s your Swedish lesson for the day).

(Just look at that chin! And he’s got the neck of an ox to boot!)

Speaking of vistas, the diversity of environments is greater than I might have expected; although, get ready to see plenty of magical forests. There are, however, plenty of deserts, beaches, swamps, and arid landscapes to explore, all with plenty of monsters to kill and things to loot. All the environments are quite pretty and vibrant to behold and great emphasis has been placed on making each area feel like its own self-contained region. Even the magical forests feel different enough from one-another that you’re not likely to get lost.

(Upward shot of one of the game’s major cities. Go all the way south, along a beach and across a desert and through a forest, and you’ll find a Greco-Roman city ruled by Gnomes, as opposed to this necropolis-looking thing.)

Character creation is interesting. You only have two choices at the start; race and deity to worship. Funnily enough, you can choose to be an atheist, and it may be the best choice in my opinion, not because I’m some trilby-wearing “Dark Enlightenment” nutter, but because being an atheist gives you a permanent +1% experience point boost, and I’m always a slut for levelling up. All the other deities give you different boosts, and each of the four playable races gives you certain bonuses to non-combat skills.

When I say that you only have two choices at the start, I was leading up to something. See, KoA:R sort of has you create your character throughout the entire game. Every time you level up, you get a point for non-combat skills and for combat abilities. You could easily make the case that all RPG’s do something similar, having the player build up their character over the course of the game, but the difference is that KoA:R basically gives you nothing to begin with, save for a few points in all the beginning combat skills, plus a few points in non-combat skills dependent upon your chose race. Most other RPG’s would at least give you a bit more than that, if only to establish a direction. KoA:R is unique in that building your character is a persistent, fluid process, which keeps it engaging; in addition, the ability to refund all your points for a small fee allows you to go back and try a different build should you get curious/ fed-up.

One side-note I’d like to make mention of: If you’re the sort of person who gives a shit about difficulty curve, don’t buy the “Weapons and Armor Bundle” DLC. As the name would suggest, it creates a chest in the first town filled with weapons and armors for you to grab and use at your leisure. And while you’ll get/craft better equipment in time, it’s still better than the equipment you would otherwise have at the time, and it throws the balance off for a bit.

Speaking of crafting, the game actually has a pretty rad crafting system which allows you to create equipment, potions, and socketable gems. And frankly, once you put enough points into the requisite skills, you can craft some frankly ridiculous things. After a while, I was salvaging nearly all my equipment for the spare parts, rather than selling it. Gold wasn’t much of an issue anyway, and I wanted to see if I could craft an even more effective murder tool.

If it seems like I’ve been avoiding the topic of combat for a while, it’s because I’ve been avoiding the topic of combat for a while. Honestly, I think it’s one of the weaker elements. It’s slow and cumbersome, and it’s completely possible to be hit for a full combo because you couldn’t get your fucking shield up in time because you were already swinging at a different enemy. Whenever I swung my sword, I was committed for roughly the next half-hour. Also, for those of you more used to Dark Souls styled dodge-rolling, I should warn you that the dodge-roll in this game does not seem to have any invincibility frames; it just zips in a direction real quick is all.

(Spiders rather quickly became my arch-nemeses. They always came in groups, attacked somewhat unpredictably, and where often harder to kill than might be expected.)

To be fair, once you level up a bit and develop your own tactics, combat becomes easier. Learning your enemies’ attack patterns and learning abilities that stagger them, or prevent you from being staggered will help immensely.

If the plot synopsis up there seemed kind of involved and a little faffy, it’s because that’s how the game is. Ostensibly, the whole thing is based on old Irish and Scottish myths about the fae, and while the influence is clearly there, and it’s clear that the devs at least did a modicum of research on the mythologies they use. I like the idea of fighting Fate, the rapacious bastard. Although, there’s a bit where it’s implied that you’re appearance (remember, your character exists outside the web of Fate) was itself predicted by Fate. As others have pointed out, that point is kind of mad, but it’s not as big a deal as it sounds, and there’s evidence to suggest that perhaps Fate has simply rewritten itself to fit you in.

(The antagonist either screaming in madness or receiving amazing head. I’ll let you decide.)

Now, I have a bit of a confession to make. I spent almost my entire time playing this on sidequests. Much work has been done to ensure that the sidequest chains are engaging, from helping the resident mercenary guild fight an invading demon lord and his army of elven followers, to saving a small village from a rogue Fae and her spider minions. I had a lot of fun on all the sidequests; I almost forgot about the critical path. By the time I got back, I was massively overlevelled and had a set of powerful equipment to back me up.

Here’s a weird thing apropos of nothing: while the human ladies are dressed normally (boob-plates notwithstanding), the elven ladies are almost always in some kind of revealing top, often a deep V-neck. I have no idea why this is; there’s no lore reason for it. Maybe Big Huge consisted entirely of elf-misogynists? It’s bizarre is all.

(She’s just dressed like this. No idea why, especially when a normal human wearing leather armor has it look like regular leather armor.)

Now, some people have compared this game to Skyrim; certain reviewers even calling it “Baby’s first Skyrim“ I don’t necessarily think the comparison is a fair one. Whereas Skyrim is very much a standard fantasy RPG in the vein of its forebears, KoA leans more heavily on semi-frenetic combat action, even bumping up against the (admittedly nebulous) action-adventure genre in the subway car. Crafting is different as well. Whereas Skyrim has you stock up on ores and ingots to craft with, this game has you salvaging your old weapons to find screws and grips and rivets, which gives the crafting a different feel, even if they are functionally very similar. While Skyrim is admittedly a more detailed, immersive experience (glitches notwithstanding), KoA is about as complicated as it needs to be. It gets in all the features it needs to be a pretty good game in its runtime.

And Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is a pretty good game. Levelling up is more addictive than it is in most RPG’s, and great pains have been taken to make sure that each quest is fun and interesting, not just the main questline. Despite the reputation it’s accrued as a cut-rate Skyrim or “That one game what got a bunch of people in trouble and now it’s owned by Rhode Island,” I’d recommend it to anyone who likes somewhat complex fantasy worlds and/or anyone who likes their RPG’s a little bit on the actiony side. I may come back to it. After all, I’m more than half-way to the level cap and I’m not even close to the end of the main quest.

All in all, it’s a damn fine game. Would love to complete it some time.

(A back shot of a male character. I told you these people are made of ground beef.)

[lilyreads2020]

Week Six: The Book Thief

My chosen YA historical fiction novel, The Book Thief, is a story narrated by Death about the experiences of Liesel Meminger, an impoverished girl growing up in Nazi Germany at the time of the Holocaust. A Jew by the name of Max Vandenburg lives in her basement, a fist-fighter whose story is much more than living in fear of concentration camps: he’s also an (unpublished) author of a book he writes to Liesel called The Word Shaker. Her next-door neighbor, Rudy Steiner, is in love with her, amidst the swarms of the compulsory words, “Heil Hitler” across her country that Liesel and Rudy find themselves seeped in, he plays soccer with her, dives into ice-cold water to save one of her most prized possessions from sinking in the river, climbs a barbed wire fence to steal apples with her that they both can’t afford to buy at the store, and trades insults with her on (probably) a daily basis. Although Liesel survives the bombing of her street, the risk of being taken to the concentration camps when members of the Nazi Party come to inspect her basement for Jews, and her traumatic childhood, aided by a man with a paintbrush and an accordion, many people close to her do not. This book uses dark humor to make its sobering topics easier to read about, but does not shy away from the reality of the Holocaust - its last line is, “I am haunted by humans.” 

One of Sepetys’ claims in The Silent Soldier that resonates with me is that “when discussing historical fiction, the conversation inevitably shifts to individual and personal stories.” This shifting of the conversation to individual and personal stories reminds me of the second writing piece in my final multimedia project, a letter in the form of a poem to Liesel, titled “To Lily, from an Out-of-Character Liesel.” There was no requirement in the final multimedia project to have a character write to you, or suggestion to expand on the narrative of the protagonist in your chosen YA Historical Fiction novel by relating their experience to your own. And yet, this is what I found myself doing - of course, not that my experience was anywhere close to Liesel’s. As stated in the letter/poem, our similarities nearly stop at the fact that we both have brown eyes. As for the question Sepetys’ poses in “The Silent Soldier” of “How would I have endured this history,” when I read the introduction to The Fountains of Silence and most of The Book Thief, I realized the threats to the characters’ lives were so severe that I found myself asking a version of this question with the word “how” crossed out. Instead, the question I asked myself was “Would I have endured this history?”

I think historical fiction is an important genre for adolescents because in classrooms (I’m studying to be a teacher, I have to talk about the classrooms), it can be a relatively safe way for them to process ugly things like injustice, corruption in governments, violence against non-dominant social groups, and atrocities in the world without the curriculum being struck down as often by authorities as being “too political.” Of course, books like The Fountains of Silence and The Book Thief are sometimes banned in schools, but The Book Thief was a book I read in 8th grade; books like Allegedly or Monster that deal with violence against non-dominant social groups in the United States today, were stories I was not assigned to explore in the classroom. Sepetys writes of “striving to learn from the past,” which makes me think of a reason to study historical fiction that has been spoken in many different tongues, many different ways: we study the unpleasant aspects of history so that we do not repeat them. We study historical fiction to prevent the election of Hitlers, the trauma of differently named Max Vandenburgs (the Jew in Liesel’s basement), the creation of new Franz Deutschers (the teenage Nazi), and the bombing of another Himmel Street. Along those lines, we study it to be aware of the chain reactions that lead to these events, so that we do not unknowingly invite them into our lives, and to be aware of the realities of their survivors and perpetrators. Historical fiction is also an important genre for adolescents because for those who are descendants of survivors, seeing stories like theirs talked about in the classroom provides them with a gateway to speak about intergenerational trauma. Likewise, Sepetys explains how beneficial it is for young adults to know about their family history “(the good, the bad, and even the ugly),” by stating what studies show: the more they know, “the more control they feel over their lives and the stronger their sense of self-esteem.” 

One of the passages from The Book Thief that articulates a concept that feels deeply true to me is Death’s description of Hans Hubermann in Chapter Two of Part One, Growing Up a Saumensch. 

It is this:

---

 “Somehow, though, and I’m sure you have met people like this, he was able to appear as merely part of the background, even if he was standing at the front of a line. He was always just there. Not noticeable, Not important or particularly valuable. 

The frustration of that appearance, as you can imagine, was its complete misleadance, let’s say. There most definitely was value in him, and it did not go unnoticed by Liesel Meminger [...] she saw it immediately. 

His manner.

The quiet air about him. 

When he turned the light on in the small, callous washroom that night, Liesel observed the strangeness of her foster father’s eyes. They were made of kindness, and silver. Like soft silver, melting. Liesel, upon seeing those eyes, understood that Hans Hubermann was worth a lot.”

---

I chose this passage because it reminds me of a deep truth about more than one person I know; I seem to find these kinds of people magnetic. When I read it, I am reminded of both fictional and real characters in my life who (might) have the same kind eyes, the same tendency to fly under most people’s radar, and the same quality of being worth a lot. 

Most people reading this will be more familiar with the fictional characters I mention than with real people in my life. So, to put these traits of Hans Hubermann in the context of someone we know, I will say this: 

I think Aristotle would have kind eyes (in spite of the fact that he used violence to avenge the way that bullies hurt Dante). He has a quiet air about him, and not many people sign his cast in class - not because they dislike him, but because they don’t really see him. 

People might not notice Aristotle Mendoza if he were one of their classmates, but there is so much value in the questions he asks us about the universe and in the part he plays in Dante’s life. 

People might not notice Hans Hubermann if he was standing on their street, but there is so much value in his painting, his accordion playing, his reading lessons to Liesel, and in his repeated actions of kindness.  

You might not notice the people who are “able to appear as part of the background” in your own life, those with the appearance of being “always just there.”

But they are important. 

They are valuable. 

They are worth a lot. 

Link to The Silent Soldier:   https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ALAN/v42n3/sepetys.html#:~:text=Historical%20fiction%20is%20the%20quiet%20soldier%20of%20our,published%20in%20over%2045%20countries%20and%2033%20languages.

[jmsebastian]

Lament of Innocence is to Curse of Darkness as Demon's Souls is to Dark Souls

One of the most highly touted reasons for the success of Dark Souls rests with the interconnectedness of its world design. Lordran doesn’t exist on a level plane. Levels don’t act as spokes on a wheel, simply starting at a hub and moving outward in a single direction. Levels exist over and under each other. They double back on themselves. There are shortcuts, such as elevators and and locked doors, that make navigating the world much more straightforward as a reward for exploration. It makes the world interesting and surprising. There’s really nothing like working one’s way through the Undead Burg, only to get to the church elevator below the bell tower, and realize it connects back down to Firelink Shrine.

Really, Dark Souls took the philosophy of the level design in its predecessor, Demon’s Souls, and applied it on a much larger scale. Demon’s Souls featured a hub, the Nexus, from which the player could select the game’s various levels. The levels were very large, often interwoven, and rife with shortcuts as well, but each level was self-contained. There was no way to walk from Boletaria through to the Tower of Latria. They existed separately from one another, their only link being through the arch stones residing in the Nexus.

I bring this up not only because it is now a legal requirement to mention Dark Souls in every conversation about videogames, but because the differences in level design philosophy between Demon’s and Dark Souls have an earlier parallel in the pair of Castlevania games made for the Playstation 2, Lament of Innocence and Curse of Darkness. Often overlooked due to the quality and renown of games like Symphony of the Night, Koji Igarashi also managed to prove that Konami’s early foray into 3D with the series was not a waste, and that solid action adventure games could exist alongside the Metroidvania style games.

Let’s start with the hub. Lament of Innocence’s world is built around the game’s NPC and vendor, Rinaldo Gandolfi. The player character, Leon Belmont, buys items and learns more information about the nightmare he has decided to face in the safety of Rinaldo’s cottage. Lying basically at the doorstep of the vampire’s castle, it’s a convenient home base. Once a level is beaten, you return here to progress the story and restock your supplies. You can also use special ticket items, purchased from Gandolfi, that allow fast travel back to the cottage from wherever you are inside the castle.

The warp points that lead to the actual levels are up short path from Rinaldo’s, in a small reception area to the castle. There are five levels, each represented by a symbol on the floor and a pillar, which lights once the stage has been completed. The levels can be entered in any order, and re-entered once completed,  to collect items or access areas not possible on the first time through. The game’s final stage is locked until the five main stages have been completed.

The level select area.

The Nexus, in Demon’s Souls, combines the respite and stage select ideas into one impressively large area. Getting to the various stages is done simply by interacting with the arch stones that represent their corresponding worlds. Outside the beginning of the game, the worlds can be entered in any order and revisited at any time in much the same way they can be in Lament of Innocence. The Nexus is where the majority of NPCs end up, becoming vendors for items or spells, much like Gandolfi. The idea of a safe place is key to both games. It allows for reflection on what the player did or didn’t do well in the previous excursion against foes. More importantly, it allows players to plan things out and prepare themselves. Running around under a constant barrage of enemies, as in Lament, or wary of a quick, unexpected death in Demon’s Souls makes quiet time invaluable.

The scale of the Nexus makes this hub area a level unto itself.

Hub worlds, are by no means unique to Demon’s Souls or Lament of Innocence. They do share some common features, but the more interesting parallel is that their successors both did away with a true central hub in favor of a more natural and cohesive world. In Curse of Darkness, levels are connected in order, meaning a player has to progress through the first to get to the second, and so on. To reduce the time spent getting from one level to another, there is an elevator system, which when used, allows the player fast travel back or forward to the desired level’s elevator room.

These rooms must be discovered and activated before they can be used, making them most effective for backtracking. The intended reason to do this would be to buy items back in the town area of the map, or to explore areas that might have been skipped over. In practice, using them is rarely necessary. Only in an instance or two are there dead ends in levels that require navigating back to previous levels to open new areas. For that reason, I hesitate to say the world is interconnected. The linearity of progression reduces its impact quit a bit, but it does feel consistent in a way that was completely absent from Lament of Innocence.

For being 3D games, both of these titles have an interesting, and frustrating, lack of vertical level design. There is implied verticality in Curse of Darkness with the fast travel elevators, and it’s implied heavily via  inclines and the map being organized by floor, but it has little practically application with regard to how the levels are put together. Old areas can’t really be accessed from directly above or below.. At best, a section of the level will be separated by a big pit in the that you have to glide over to reach another pathway. Even really does nothing to add complexity to the level. They can be thought of exclusively in 2D. To highlight this strict adherence to flatness, the game’s map system is entirely two dimensional and works perfectly well for the purposes of navigation.

This map would work just as well for a game like A Link to the Past.

Lament of Innocence is a little better about this. Many rooms have two floors to them, though often consisting of just a balcony or some other minor addition that doesn’t lead anywhere new. There are levels stacked on top of each other, but they exist mostly as an excuse to have players do some platforming with the whip. Whip platforming adds a little something to the exploration, but it doesn’t open up the game a whole lot. It isn’t integrated into the level design to the point where it felt like a totally worthwhile inclusion. The possibilities are evident, but the follow through is nearly non-existent. Worse yet, the few instances that do feature some elevation changes make reading the 2D maps much more challenging. You might see a door on the map and not realize it’s somewhere above you, and since the various floors of the level can’t be viewed stacked on top of each other, it’s impossible to know how each floor connects to each other.

Only one level of Lament featured a surprising shift in design tone. In The Garden That Time Forgot, there is an area with two ledges tantalizingly out of reach. While not in plain sight, jumping around the arena reveals ledges that are clearly meant to be reached. Placed in the room are monstrous plants that, when attacked enough times, become stunned and can be safely used as platforms to reach the ledges. The use of enemies designed specifically to aid in world navigation is a great idea, but it’s only used in this single instance. Considering the hoards of repetitive enemies that exist only to slow your progress, there is a clear sense that several more interesting ideas existed within the developers, but whether due to budget or time constraints (possibly both), it leaves navigating the rest of the levels feeling unrewarding.

This is one of only a handful of times the game makes use of multi-level areas.

The biggest flaw shared by the two games is that their levels are mostly sprawling messes. While Curse of Darkness had enormous levels, it managed to generate a feeling in the player that they were moving forward most of the time, something Dark Souls managed to accomplish exceedingly well. By having various rooms act as intersecting points for a system of hallways, players can almost always run forward and get to where they want to go. This greatly reduces the feeling of backtracking while making the map remain as simple as possible.

Lament of Innocence, on the other hand, rarely gives players the satisfaction of forward progress. Taking a large lesson from Symphony of the Night, Lament is utterly rife with backtracking. Levels have doors that must be unlocked by stepping on switches located at various points throughout the level. Unfortunately, these points are often far away from each other and down hallways that have one way in and one out. Running back and forth down long corridors crowded with enemies gets wearisome quickly, especially since it lacks Symphony's fast-paced platforming to break up the monotony. The tedium is exacerbated by areas in each level having little to distinguish them visually. Hallways all look the same, big open rooms of enemies look the same. Many glances at the map are required to get a good sense of where everything is in relation to each other.

Comparing these two games to From Software’s work is not entirely fair, or justified. Igarashi’s games have very different goals from Miyazaki’s. Foremost is that they are much more rooted in action games than they are in role playing games. Lament of Innocence is a bit more similar to a classic Metroidvania than an action RPG, even. Curse of Darkness, on the other hand, is almost a straight up action game. Attack combos, subweapons, attack chain bonuses: these are all staples of beat ‘em ups or brawlers. Enemies are generally killed quickly and in large groups. They aren’t put in places to surprise you, or keep you alert and focused through the entire game. They often just appear in the middle of your path, clear as day. Other times rooms just become impassable until all the monsters in the room are slain.

To accommodate all this fighting, big, flat fighting arenas make sense. Fighting on top of bridges or near ledges would mean players would constantly be plummeting to their doom while they flip dodged through enemy attacks. The constant turning of the character to face the yet to be felled enemies would cause the camera to become an incredible nuisance, viewing angles blocked by obstacles getting between the camera and the player character, or in the case of Lament, the uncontrollable camera never readjusting itself to give the player a decent view of the action. Unfortunately, the big trade-off made is that most of the game’s time is spent just running down hallways, trying to get from point A to point B as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Konami can’t really be blamed for wanting to take the Castlevania series in a different direction. Despite the valiant early 3D attempts to capture the spirit of the series on the Nintendo 64, Castlevania (64) and Legacy of Darkness are not looked back on especially fondly in the series’ canon. There was a need to distance the brand from those games and attempt another genre that still fit with the source material. In many respects, Lament of Innocence and Curse of Darkness do that perfectly. Both are truly enjoyable games. As with Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls, saying which game is better is both difficult and folly. They both offer a variation on a theme, and that theme is memorable.

[worryinglyinnocent]

Star Force: A Guide To Rumplurians - Part Two of... Who Knows!

Part One, exploring the Rumplurian religion, can be found here

BEFORE WE BEGIN:

====

Rumplurians are a fictional race of aliens found in a fictional TV show, Star Force, as mentioned in my rumbelle fic Friendships and Fandoms, an AU in which the various Once Upon A Time characters were the cast and crew of this fictional TV show. Gold played the Rumplurian chief medical officer, Dr Stiltskin, and Belle was his make-up artist (and also stood in as Stiltskin’s human wife, Lacey, when the actress due to play her had to pull out).

Friendships and Fandoms can be read here and @licieoic and I also wrote a few Star Force screenplays which can be read here.

====

You can all blame @woodelf68 and @ripperblackstaff for this. Thanks to them, I spent a ridiculous amount of time thinking about alien anatomy and reproduction and now, well, this happened. 

I need to thank @hedwighood and licieoic for some of the headcanons herein. Licie, I dunno, this might be useful for future Star Force episodes?

Anyway...

Are you all excited to learn more about scaly alien dicks?

I’m gonna take that as a solid yes! Without further ado let’s begin our second lesson in Rumplurians... anatomy and reproduction! As you’ve probably guessed, this post is not safe for work!

Disclaimer: Before we begin I’d like to remind you that this is all completely made up. No similarity to any actual aliens (or any aliens from other franchises like Star Trek etc) is intended. 

I’d really love to illustrate this essay with some naked Rumplurians but 

a) I’m bad at drawing

b) I’m even worse at drawing scaly alien dicks

c) I don’t have a scanner to upload said terrible pictures of scaly alien dicks

So you’re going to have to settle for some suggestive gifs and using your imaginations. 

*puts on David Attenborough documentary style voice*

To all intents and purposes, the Rumplurian doesn’t look all that different to the human, with the exception of the scales. When you look a little bit closer however... 

(I’m sorry I’m having way too much fun with this.)

Rumplurians are scaled all over. Yes, all over. They have no body hair, apart from that on their heads. (And eyebrows, because no eyebrows just looks... weird. We’re not quite sure where the eyebrows and head hair came from, but we think it’s the result of intermarriage with hairy races earlier on in the evolution chain.)

Their scales are not the same texture all over. The scales are generally smooth but will give a slightly rougher texture if rubbed in the wrong direction, with much smoother scales on the palms and soles (necessary for grip) and genitalia (necessary for enjoyable sexual encounters). 

Like a lot of scaled creatures, Rumplurians do shed, generally once a year. They don’t shed their skin all at once like snakes, that would just be creepy.

[Sheesh, I now have visions of Stiltskin shedding his skin on board Aurora while they were stranded and hiding it somewhere for Hook to find and freak out. Onwards because that’s just gross!]

The scales flake off individually, usually a good scrub in the shower with a loofah will get them all off. Their scales get greyer when they’re about to shed and are very itchy, so most Rumplurians like to slough off the shedding scales as quickly as possible. The new scales beneath are very sensitive for the first day after shedding. On the Rumplurian homeworld, it was perfectly acceptable to take sick days when shedding. 

Lacey particularly enjoys having fun with Stiltskin when he’s shedding. Many a happy shower has been shared.

Rumplurian skin is tougher than human skin and it takes slightly more force to puncture it; they tend to heal from scrapes and abrasions slightly quicker. Likewise, Rumplurian finger and toenails are much harder and more claw like. They’re fast-growing and naturally grow into points, and need regular filing, but they don’t like paring them right down like humans do their fingernails because the claws are a part of them and due to the way the nerves work, it can be painful to cut them too short. Mostly they file the tips to make sure they’re not sharp. 

(As has been mentioned in previous Star Force smut fics, Stiltskin keeps his index and middle claws clipped short. This is both for practicality and hygiene when performing complex operations and for Lacey, whose soft human insidey bits would not enjoy being accidentally scratched, and whose soft human insidey bits he likes putting his fingers into...)

(No, Rumplurian women do not have scaly vaginas but their inner walls are a lot tougher.)

(I cannot believe I just wrote the phrase ‘scaly vaginas’. Twice.)

Ahem. Onwards!

Since we’ve already veered into incredibly not safe for work territory, let’s stay here in the gutter! 

Rumplurians have long tongues (not like, chameleon long and prehensile, but longer than a human’s and more dexterous) and are very enthusiastic givers and receivers of oral sex. 

They aren’t cold blooded, they don’t need to sit under heat lamps of a morning to get them going, but their internal thermostat is set lower than a human’s and they come from a very warm planet. If they get too cold, they get sluggish. Which is the opposite of most humans, who get lethargic when it’s too warm. 

Lower core body temperature means... Yes, Licie, Stiltskin has internal balls. Rumplurian testes are kept in a kind of pouch inside the body, nice and protected from being kicked by... anything that might want to kick a Rumplurian dude in the nackers. However, the balls do drop down out of the pouch and hang down beneath the scaly alien dick in a human-like fashion (although they tend to be smaller than humans’ balls) when said Rumplurian is sufficiently aroused. The balls think “aha! time to make baby Rumplurians! let’s get to work, fellas!” and are very eager to get in on the action. So if you really want to successfully kick a Rumplurian in the nackers, wait till he has an erection first. 

*Worry has to go and take a break before she dies of either embarrassment and laughter.*

YES! ONWARDS! LET’S GET TO THE END OF THIS ESSAY BEFORE I DIE OF SHAME!  

Since we’ve got the lowdown on the downstairs bits, let’s move on to the act itself. Good grief, what am I writing here? *Worry takes a moment to question her life choices.*

Ahem. 

As you all know from my Star Force smutty fics (they’re on my masterlist somewhere), Rumplurian Baby Making is not all that different to Human Baby Making. Don’t worry, we’ll get onto the actual babies in a minute. Woodelf mentioned refactory periods and I spent way too much time thinking about them, so I’m going to talk about them. If a Rumplurian guy keeps receiving stimuli after having an orgasm he can be ready to go again fairly quickly - quicker than a human. However, if there’s kissing and cuddling and getting breath back time afterwards and his balls draw back up inside, then it will take him longer to get ready to go again - longer than a human. Rumplurian balls need time to recharge, dammit! 

And now for the Baby Making.

Rumplurian ladies don’t ovulate anywhere near as frequently as human women, generally only about twice or three times a year. They get super horny around this time because they don’t have as much opportunity for conception, but they don’t go mad, like animals in heat do. 

They also don’t menstruate because their womb is constructed differently. If conception is successful, then they’ll start to build up a shell like substance around the baby that grows with it. A full-blood Rumplurian pregnancy lasts five months, the babies are much smaller than human babies when born. When it’s time for birth, the shell shatters and the baby is born in a pretty much human way, although covered in pieces of shell. The rest of the broken shell is delivered as afterbirth, like a human placenta. 

Stiltskin can’t tell when Lacey ovulates, possibly because she doesn’t get as super horny as a Rumplurian lady would. He was amazed to find out that she does it once a month and to be frank he’s incredibly grateful for birth control methods. 

Half-Rumplurian babies are different and depend on DNA, each case is different. They follow gestation and pregnancy patterns of the mother carrying them, so Stiltskin and Lacey’s babies grew and were delivered in a human way, but a Rumplurian lady carrying a baby sired by a human father would have a five month shell pregnancy. 

Rumplurian ladies do breastfeed but their milk is very different to human breastmilk which can cause problems in mixed-race babies. Stiltskin and Lacey’s son Bae was fine with Lacey’s breast milk and it’s generally accepted that the human DNA in him is dominant. Their daughter Nim, however, rejected Lacey’s milk and also rejected Rumplurian formula. They tried a compromise whereby Lacey would express her milk and mix it with formula to create a mashup, but again that didn’t take and poor Lacey was frantic. 

Their Rumplurian friend, Dr Morgana, came up with the solution of giving Lacey some Rumplurian hormone supplements, which did the trick, giving her milk just enough Rumplurian hormones for Nim to be happy with, and my word, once she was happy with it, she was a greedy little girl. Lacey was so relieved!

The supplements made Lacey’s skin very dry and itchy as a side effect (since they’re designed for people with scales), but it was worth it for Nim, and Stiltskin helped by rubbing cream in all over... 

Right, I think I’ve exhausted my knowledge of Rumplurian Bits and Rumplurian Babies. If you have any questions, fire away! If you want to add your own headcanons, go ahead! If you want to write fic based on Star Force, feel free (just tag me in it because I wanna read it)!

If you think I should go away and think very hard about my life choices, don’t worry, I agree!

*Worry hits post and shakes her head*

[sickficsbypyroyoshi]

Pyro’s archived fics #4: Tyler vs Norovirus

Again, the characters here are based on people I’ve known in real life. Additionally, parts of this story are true. The puke parts are all made up, but the field trip to the electrical convention, someone’s name tag being misprinted, Creeper Face, etc all actually happened.

At first, Tyler had simply assumed he was ravenously hungry, but now that he had food in front of him, he wasn’t so sure if he wanted it or not.

He’d woken up with a stomach ache and thought it was from hunger despite practically stuffing himself with food the night before. It wouldn’t be too surprising, as he did have a really fast metabolism. Since he didn’t have much time on this particular morning, he’d only had a piece of toast and a glass of orange juice for breakfast. It wasn’t satisfying and didn’t relieve the ache at all. In fact, it had only intensified by the time he got to school at 7 am.

Today was going to be a field trip day. He and all the other students in the electrical program were taking a trip to the Metropolitan Electrical Convention, and he had to be present at 9:00 am sharp in order to receive the points for it.

It was currently 7:38am, and he was sitting in the cafeteria area with three of his classmates, Devon, Zach and Sadie. The four of them would be carpooling together. Devon, an avid pot smoker, was a little short kid who had a different hat for every day of the week, while Zach was tall and lanky. He was a straight up redneck type who could go on for ages about hunting and at age twenty six, he was one of the older guys in the class. Sadie was the only girl in the class, and despite being the high maintenance hair and makeup must be perfect type, she was just as savvy with tools as her male classmates.

Tyler didn’t pay much attention to them. He stared at the sausage breakfast bowl in front of him. It was compiled of sausage, bacon, scrambled eggs and cheese on top of tater tots. Usually he wasted no time in devouring them, but something was off today. His abdominal pains had reached the point of being quite uncomfortable, but for some reason he had no real desire to eat despite being convinced he was hungry.

He was snapped out of his thoughts when he noticed that Zach was giving him a strange look.

“What’s the matter with you? Aren’t you going to eat that?”

“Uh, yeah. I was just zoning out.” Tyler responded. It was partly true.

He forced himself to eat the food in front of him. The first few bites had to be choked down, but eating did seem to help ease the pain a little, which made him relax a bit. He finished the whole thing and drank the large Pepsi he had bought to go along with it. Once he had demolished his food, he no longer felt agonizingly hungry, but really full. Little did he know all he was doing was temporarily diffusing the sickness that was building inside of him.

Once the four of them finished eating, they headed outside towards Sadie’s car. She was the most familiar with the city, so she would be driving.

After they all climbed into her car, they were on their way to the convention. It would be about a forty five minute drive.

Even though the drive wouldn’t be that long, the fear that he was sick was beginning to creep into the back of Tyler’s mind. He didn’t have a phobia of being sick, but he couldn’t evict the thought that he’d feel nauseous and throw up while at the convention. He usually got a stomach virus once every few years or so, and they all started the same: first he’d think he was incredibly hungry, then he’d feel overly stuffed and bloated, then the nausea would hit after that.

As much as he tried to tell himself that it was all in his head, he couldn’t ignore the rapidly growing stuffed feeling in his gut. The breakfast bowls were on the filling side, but they had never left him this heavy and bloated. He felt like he had eaten several of them.

Devon lit up a joint and took a long drag of it. “Any one want to hit this?”

“Give it here.” Zach swiped it and took two tokes before offering to pass.

Tyler held out his hand. Just because he didn’t feel that great didn’t mean he was going to turn down free weed. He took a drag and held the smoke in as he passed the joint to Sadie. She too took a hit.

“You think Creeper Face is going to be there?” she asked.

“I hope not. Besides, he’s gotten like six DUIs. How would he even get there?” Tyler responded.

“He’ll find a way. For him, getting another DUI must be like getting a trophy. He acts all pissed off but in some fucked up way he’s probably proud of it. I mean, I learned my lesson after two DUIs.” Zach noted.

For some odd reason, thinking about Creeper Face made Tyler really notice the expansive, heavy feeling in his stomach. He shifted around in his seat in an attempt to get more comfortable, but it wasn’t working. As the minutes ticked by, the fullness hadn’t dwindled even a little, which indicated that something definitely wasn’t right.

He refrained from mentioning it and looked out the window. His classmates were blathering about something, but he didn’t feel like saying much and just added a word here and there.

A sudden spike of mild nausea took him by surprise. It wasn’t strong enough for him to ask Sadie to stop the car, but it was enough for him to notice. When he took another drag from the joint, it receded a little, but wasn’t completely vanquished. He shut his eyes and tried ignore it for the remainder of the ride, but it didn’t work, mainly due to his classmate’s blathering.

“People need to stop licking Teddy Bridgewater’s asscrack. The dude has played ONE game and looks like he’s about twelve.” Zach rambled.

“He’s better than Christian Ponder! Ponder’s the reason why the Vikings have sucked so bad lately.” Devon countered.

“No, the Vikings have always sucked. They sucked in 1963, and they still suck now.” Sadie corrected.

Tyler didn’t give even a fraction of a crap. He was more of a Packers fan anyways.

He passed time by looking out the window and focusing on the skyline to try and take his mind off of the nagging nauseous feeling that was worming its way back.

He was feeling pretty sick by the time they arrived in the city, and his hope that it would pass had been shattered. Even the slightest bump in the road seemed to increase his nausea.

His companions were pretty baked at this point and failed to notice his predicament. Any trace of a high that Tyler had felt had been replaced by his rapidly growing queasiness.

Finally after several missed turns, circling blocks multiple times and a women can’t drive joke from Zach, Sadie located a parking garage with open spots. They parked on level F and had to walk several blocks to the convention center.

The air was rather frigid for early November, and it was actually cold enough to allow for an inch of snow had it been in the forecast.

Three members of the quartet whined about being cold, but Tyler felt hot in addition to feeling sick. By this point, he knew he was well and truly fucked. The signs of a stomach virus were all there: intense abdominal pain followed by bloating, nausea and heat waves, which suggested he would most likely end up down on his knees in the bathroom at some point in the day.

Still, he kept his thoughts to himself and remained silent as he followed his classmates to the convention center’s main doors.

The cavernous building was packed with people standing in large clusters, thus barricading paths and bringing a claustrophobic feel to the place. Tons of temporary directional signs were scattered around, and each one had at least five and sets of numbers arrows on it.

Tyler passed a bathroom and debated on wether or not to go inside. He thought about getting it over with and forcing himself to throw up, but if he did have norovirus or something similar, it wouldn’t help much, so he decided to forgo that idea.

He felt a bit sicker as he was herded towards a large conference room on the first floor. Before any of the students could actually browse the show booths, they had to sit through half an hour of guest speakers.

One of his instructors met the class outside of the room and handed out their name tags. Devon’s nametag had been misprinted as Devson. Normally Tyler would have found that amusing, but at the moment he was not in a laughing mood.

He was dreading this presentation and doubted that he’d make it through the whole thing. What if he puked during the presentation? Not only would everyone be able to see and hear it, there was always the risk that it would set off someone else and start a chain reaction puke a thon. He tried to push the thoughts out, but they stayed and tormented him.

And so he sat there in misery, not listening to a single word guest speaker number one was saying. The temperature in the room was sweltering, partly due to his sickness and partly due to the sheer number of people occupying it. He briefly removed his hat and ran his fingers through his hair before putting it back on, but it did nothing to help cool him down.

Another nausea wave ripped through him, and he involuntarily emitted a soft moan. With the nausea came a hot sensation the started in his stomach and radiated outwards. At this point he knew he was definitely going to puke, it was just a matter of when. He hoped that it could wait, but it wasn’t too likely. Some people could fight off the nausea and banish it completely, but Tyler wasn’t one of those people.

He thought about all the things he had eaten in the last 24 hours that were currently residing in his small intestines. The sausage bowl, large Pepsi, toast and orange juice from this morning, the entire pepperoni pizza from last night, and the LeeAnn Chin bourbon chicken entree from yesterday afternoon, all of which he’d be seeing again soon. He could practically taste them.

Time had never seemed to pass so slowly. After what seemed like centuries, the second guest speaker stepped down and the final one took the stand.

Tyler gripped his abdomen as another intense peak of nausea washed over him. It reminded him of a pulsating DC sinewave, with a sharp peak followed by a much flatter receding line, with another sharp peak right after it, only in this case it was peaks of nausea instead of electricity. He wouldn’t be able to keep this up much longer.

He must have looked quite sick, since his baked classmates finally noticed that he was struggling to hold his composure.

“Hey, are you okay? You don’t look so good,” Sadie commented.

Tyler shook his head. “No. I feel really sick.”

He wanted to get up and seek out a bathroom, but at the same time he didn’t want to bring attention to himself. Acid crept up his throat, and he was gripped by panic. He swallowed and tightly gripped the edge of his chair, trying his best not to puke on the floor. Unless he got up now, he wasn’t going to make it.

Thankfully, the final guest speaker ceased their speech and stepped down, signifying that everyone could leave the room.

Tyler felt dizzy as he stood up and once again choked back the chunks that were threatening to rise. He had to get out, but the people in front of him were taking their sweet time.

Somehow, he made it out of the room without exploding, but the panicky feeling returned when he realized that he didn’t have the faintest idea where the nearest bathrooms were. Time was up, so he’d have to settle for the next best thing. He spotted a large garbage can nearby and went for it.

He was about to be humiliated in public by puking in front of a bunch of strangers and it was going to suck, but it was his only option besides staying where he was and letting it all come out where he stood.

Right as he was about to lean over the garbage can, his path was intercepted by someone he didn’t want to see. Creeper Face stood there, and Tyler could tell he was going to say something douchy.

“So I almost got another DUI last night,” Creeper Face began.

“I don’t care, fuck off!” Tyler barely managed to get the words out as saliva dripped from his mouth.

“So I met these two hot chicks, right? They were underage, but I didn’t let that stop me, I got them both loaded. One just passed out, but the other one managed to lose both her bra and panties, if you know what I mean.”

Tyler retched.

“I fucked her senseless in every position. She wanted me so bad. And you know what? She was a virgin before she met me.” Creeper Face continued.

Tyler pictured his hideous, thirty something and extremely creepy classmate thrusting into some poor barely conscious girl who may or may not have consented, and the mental image pushed him over the edge.

He heaved and brought up a large mouthful of light brown puke which just barely made it into the can. He hovered over it and braced himself with his left hand while he put his right hand on his head to prevent his hat from falling off. The first mouthful was merely a precursor, and he knew that gastrointestinal violence was about to ensue. He was right. The second wave was more forceful and voluminous, and he could see it splash down all over the garbage in the bottom of the can. Since it was mainly composed of things he ate a mere two hours ago, it didn’t taste too bad.

People had taken notice of the scene by now and some were gawking, but Tyler did his best to ignore them. Thankfully most of the spectators had the manners to leave him alone as opposed to shoving an iphone in his face.

Right after expelling a third wave of liquified sausage and toast, he sensed his personal space being invaded.

Creeper Face had gotten too close for comfort and seemed to be watching him intently.

Tyler shuddered at this. He had heard of emetophilia, and while he wasn’t into it, if someone else got aroused upon seeing him puke, so be it. However, if that person was Creeper Face, that was more than a little disturbing.

His thoughts were interrupted as he retched noisily and continued to puke his guts out rather violently. The orange juice burned as it came up, and it nearly made his eyes water. It was followed by a torrent that was 50% Pepsi, which only made the burning sensation worse. His throat was on fire by this point, but another plentiful wave came up before he got a break.

Once he was sure it was over, he slumped onto a nearby bench. Creeper Face followed.

“What’s the matter? Don’t you like virgins?” he asked in a perverse manner.

Tyler just glared at him before putting his head in his hands. He didn’t have the energy to deal with that creepy asshole’s bullshit. He didn’t feel much better either, and it would probably only be a matter of time before round two would commence.

Despite that, he stayed at the convention for a little while in order to receive his points. He rejoined with his small group, bought himself a bottle of water to get the taste of barf out of his mouth and was relieved when Creeper Face was driven off after Zach and Devon threatened to kick his ass two on one for being a pervert.

Tyler absentmindedly browsed the booths. If he had felt better, he would have been more interested, so he briefly scanned them instead. Each booth had individual parts, a device, a motor, or even a full circuit on display. There were snacks as well as tons of parts and tools for sale, and many of the electricians present were named Mark, Bob or Dean. It was probably a mere coincidence, but Tyler thought that was a bit odd.

They stayed for another half hour or so before deciding to head out. Tyler didn’t object since he was beginning to feel crappy again. It wasn’t as bad as before, but he wanted to get home so he could lay down for a while. On his way out, he caught a glimpse of a peeved looking custodian cleaning out the garbage can he had puked in earlier.

His nausea level didn’t dramatically increase until they began the journey back to the school grounds. Not even five minutes into the drive, the rising and falling nausea peaks took him over again, and much faster than before.

“How are you feeling?” Sadie asked, as if reading his mind.

“Terrible.” Tyler admitted.

He didn’t have to throw up quite yet, but he could feel things sloshing around in his stomach. He shut his eyes and rested his head on the back of Sadie’s seat for several minutes. Just like earlier in the day, he could feel every bump in the road and the need to puke again increased every time Sadie did a jack rabbit start or sudden stop. After a while of this, he was awash with nausea and felt his throat expand. Instead of suffering like he did back at the convention, he decided to get it all over with and ask to be let out of the car.

“Can you stop? I feel really sick.” he asked desperately. He had a hard time forming the words and subconsciously knew he had waited too long to ask.

“I’m afraid not. We’re on the highway. Can you hold on a bit?” Sadie questioned.

“He could puke out the window,” Devon suggested.

“No way. That could be a safety hazard for the people behind us. He’s going to have to wait until I can get off the highway.” Sadie countered.

Tyler gagged and knew he was doomed as a copious amount of vomit surged up his throat. He put a hand to his mouth and tried to hold it back, but it was no use. It gushed through his fingers and rained down onto his shirt, pants and the seat, sending hundreds of thousands of norovirus particles in every direction.

“Oh shit! No way!” Zach, who was in the back with him, tried to move further away, but he had nowhere to go and was bombarded with the virus particles. He swallowed more than enough of them to make him sick.

Tyler forcefully threw up all over the back of Sadie’s seat, making an even bigger mess. He had no control over it, and it felt like he was bringing up everything he had eaten in the past year. It was starting to become painful. Yes, he had eaten a lot, but how much more could there be? Apparently quite a bit, as he leaned forward and continued to puke profusely all over the plastic car mats. A sizeable pool had formed on the floor at this point, and some had gotten on his shoes as well.

“No offense Tyler, but I can’t concentrate on driving with you puking demonic possession style in the back of my car.” Sadie said bluntly. She inhaled many norovirus particles, as did Devon.

In a matter of seconds, Sadie, Devon and Zach all consumed thousands of those malicious microbes, which only ensured that they’d be sharing Tyler’s fate within a day or so.

After Tyler was finished, he panted and tried to regain his composure. He didn’t know what to say, so he remained silent. He was unable to look his classmates in the eye and he was beginning to feel rather humiliated as he sat there covered in his own puke. It was starting to soak into his clothes. The silence that fell over the car was turning awkward, so he finally broke it.

“Uh..Sadie, on a scale of one to ten, how mad are you?” he asked cautiously.

“I’m not mad, but you’re paying for the interior car wash when I can find one.”

It took her twenty minutes to find a car wash that offered both exterior and interior washes, and by that time all four windows had been rolled way down despite the cold temperature.

The newly infected trio waited outside as the vehicle was taken inside to be thoroughly cleaned, and Tyler moseyed over to the adjacent gas station to get himself cleaned. He received more than a few stares as he maneuvered through the store isles.

When he slunk into the bathroom and looked in the mirror, he realized just how badly he had nailed himself. The puke was immediately noticeable, as the brown clashed with his green T shirt. There was no point trying to save it since it would likely be stained forever. He settled for wiping all the chunks off of himself, and that alone required using many sheets of thin, sub par paper towels.

After combating the damage, Tyler waited around for a couple minutes. He still felt sick and wanted to be rid of the offending virus. Despite the fact that he had thrown up quite copiously twice already, he still didn’t feel empty. There was definitely more to come.

He hovered over the toilet and waited for a while, purposely thinking about grotesque things such as pus filled abscesses exploding onto a naked Creeper Face, but to no avail. Nothing happened.

Several minutes later, he gave up and went back outside. His classmates were waiting, along with Sadie’s now sparkling clean car. They asked again if he was alright, he said no, and so they got a bag for him before getting back in the vehicle.

Tyler reached out for the door handle, but suddenly stopped and paused. His throat expanded and he dry heaved with no warning. Whatever was left inside him was coming up at an alarming speed.

He barely had time to turn away before he sent a waterfall of sour tasting liquid splashing all over the pavement. He dropped to his knees and puked violently onto the ground, the ensuing retching and splashing sounds rousing the attention of his classmates. There weren’t many solids left at this point since it was mostly made up of bile and water. Each heave was accompanied by a stab of gut twisting pain, which only made the experience worse.

“Damn, he’s really sick. Maybe we should get him some medicine or something.” Devon stated the obvious.

“Yeah, you aren’t going to die are you?” Zach inquired. “Because that would be tough to explain to the cops.”

“I just want it to stop,” Tyler moaned in between retches, only to be cut off as he expelled more opaque watery puke.

He had officially reached the stage of wanting to curl into a ball and call for his mom despite being nearly twenty two. Not only that, but all of his control was gone. Of the three times he had puked today, not even once had he made it to the bathroom on time. It made him feel like he was about five.

He gagged and painfully puked up a few small waves of stomach acid before he was finally finished. His entire abdomen hurt from throwing up so much, and there was a large part of him that wanted to lay down right there in the parking lot.

Slowly but surely, he felt a teensy bit better as the minutes went by. By no means did he feel good, he was more in between super crappy and really crappy, but at least it was a slight improvement.

Eventually he felt okay enough to get back in the car. Even though he had successfully eliminated a good number of the norovirus particles, he had a nagging suspicion that it wasn’t quite over yet.

[rock-and-compass]

Rock and Compass Watches Once Upon A Time – 6.19: The Black Fairy

Overview

Many, many years ago, Malcolm and Fiona welcome a baby boy, but their happiness is disturbed by a fairy prophecy that says that he is destined to be a saviour who will die in service to his fated duty. This sets about a chain of events with far-reaching consequences. In Storybrooke, Rumple is determined to get his son’s heart back but in the process, he discovers the truth about why his mother gave him up.

Discussion and Thoughts and things of significance

This is an episode that improves on re-watch after the shock of Rumple’s short-held fated role of Saviour has been absorbed. It’s dense on detail and provides a fascinating chapter of Rumple’s backstory. What makes the story extra interesting is the parallels it offers and the very real possibility that this is foreshadowing future events. (I must mention that my enthusiasm for writing about the show is a little thin since the announcement that Jennifer Morrison is not returning. It doesn’t feel fun to speculate anymore. With the strange set-up for the shows continuation all the threads that I’ve been pulling at for the last six years are going to come to nothing and that makes me sad. I’ll finish out this season and try to be business as usual.)

Discussion and things that might be of significance:

Like Mother, Like Son – There are a lot of similarities between Rumple and Fiona. They both take on magical powers to “save” their child. He became the Dark One to stop Balefire from having to fight in the Ogre War and she becomes a Fairy, to try to find a solution to her son’s pre-prescribed life-path. They both become evil in the pursuit of that goal – Fiona is willing to (presumably) kill the child with the crescent mark and she goes so far as to create the dark curse spell that would send all the potentially threatening children to the Land Without Magic. Rumple kills, schemes and manipulates once he gets the magic that gives him power and status. Neither of them is willing to give up the power for the good of the child they are trying to save. Both of them are good examples of self-fulfilling prophecy - their choices, in trying to circumvent something actually lead to the thing they feared coming to pass. Rumple’s actions after he hears the Seer’s prophecy and Fiona’s choices after hearing the fairy’s both lead directly influence the machinations of their prophecies . Fiona literally becomes the thing that will kill her son, and Rumple’s actions lead to his son becoming fatherless. They are a great lesson that trying to change the future doesn’t work. This is demonstrated literally when Henry tries to write a set ending in the book and it is erased, and is contrasted completely by Emma being willing to meet whatever her fate has in store for her.  I also love the revelation that Malcolm blamed the baby for his wife’s loss. This is a fantastic explanation of why he was so neglectful, why he was searching for a place like Neverland. 

Like Mother, Like Wife – It was interesting that Fiona’s power comes from books – it is book-knowledge that allows her to become a fairy. Her fairy colour is yellow, and she gets about in a yellow ball-gown… the parallels to Belle are not a coincidence. 

Foreshadowing? – The flashback is interesting in its own right for sure, but on re-watching I was struck by some other possibilities, particularly during the scene in the fairy vault.  The story here involves two mothers – one biological, one “adoptive” in the form of a fairy godmother – both women are invested in the child’s future. In the potential parallel I’m seeing, the roles have been switched – Tiger-Lily wears red and is representative of Emma, Fiona, throughout the episode, is seen wearing a beige wrap over her yellow gown, a beige very similar to the coat that Regina has been sporting lately. Yellow turns into Black with the pursuit of the curse; this along with all the other similarities between the two hammers home their paralleled characters.  Tiger-Lily knows that Fiona is potentially dangerous, but works with her rather than against her for the good of the baby. Sound familiar? So now I’m wondering if Henry’s Author problem is not going to prove to be more serious than we presently know and that when this becomes apparent, Emma and Regina are going to disagree on the course of action,  leading Regina to do something drastic, and probably questionable, to try to avoid his fate. Which could indeed be the setup for our bizarro world season seven. I wonder though, will it end up with Henry banished, at least temporarily… Or Regina, and Rumple and Hook banished elsewhere.

The problem with saviours – they are apparently not as helpful as advertised, according to Rumple. But really, when has Emma not been helpful to him? She broke the curse as planned, she helped him find his missing son, she helped him out when his blackened heart would have killed him, she’s tidied up after so many of his schemes and he wouldn’t have his freaking powers back if it wasn’t for Emma making the hard decisions as the saviour! Or is he meaning that time that he wanted to kill her and get her power but she didn’t cooperate? Is that her being unhelpful? The real zinger though comes from Emma when she says the same could apply to him. Only in her example, it’s accurate.

A mother’s breath – Rumple is terrified of losing another son. Belle says he won’t, “not as long as his mother is drawing breath”. It’s an interesting line. She doesn’t say “as long as I’m drawing breath” so it invites one to consider multiple meanings. Is it foreshadowing Belle’s demise and the eventual loss of another son? Is Gideon too bound up with Black, the woman he calls mother, meaning that her death will lead to Gideon’s downfall? 

A family’s fate - there is certainly a pattern of children and parents being separated in Rumple’s family tree – it happens to every generation. Is it fate or choice? Maybe this family just needs to start making some better choices…

A Snow Job – Black and Gideon masquerade as Snow and David. It just seems like a timely reminder that this is a thing that the magic-types can do. Although it was weird that Black and Gideon revealed themselves rather than just stay in character and whisk blue away, confusing everyone in the process. That would have been funny. But alas, these villain’s do love to explain themselves.

A Snow Job II – Gideon gets cuffed and so is unable to use magic to get away. Belle tries to reach him, but he tells her that The Black Fairy has ordered him to feel great pain if he tries to resist her commands again. He gives a demonstration and Belle stops the interrogation. I’m not sure I’m buying it. Then, when they use the sands of Morpheus (Gideon’s particular speciality) to try to locate his heart, they end up in Rumple’s dream and Rumple is the one who ends up learning information that makes him more open to listening to his mother’s side of the story. Everything seems to go in Black’s favour – even the secret she didn’t want him to know (that she cut his fate to be a saviour) ends up working for her. And I’m still not very trusting of Gideon – how much loyalty does he have to his adopted mother? Because honestly, that family reunion didn’t feel very warm.

What’s good for the goose – Rumple does what’s good for Rumple. It doesn’t ask or discuss or think of others. He puts his need ahead of all. If you’re in his select circle he can seem very giving at times, but it often comes at the expense of others. Rather than ask Emma to delay killing the Black Fairy so he can get Gideon’s heart back, he forces her to join him on the dream walk by inflicting the dust on her without permission. Even if he is playing a deep game with the Black Fairy, it will still be at the expense of everyone except Belle and Gideon. This guy is no Hero even if his last minute actions do save the day in the finale.

Do you trust me? – Rumple asks Belle the question, and her answer is telling. Well, the big pause before she gives him a diplomatic reply is – she trusts that he’ll do what’s right for their son. Does she personally trust him? No, clearly not. But she trusts in Rumple doing what’s good for Rumple, and in this case, the salvation of Gideon is what’s good for Rumple. Sometimes it seems like Belle has forgotten that Rumple and his actions were what led her to give temporary custody of baby Gideon to Blue in the first place. She seems to have forgotten all about his dalliance with Evil Regina, but at least the lack of trust is a sign that she’s not quite as “forgiving” and spineless as she seems. I think that working with Rumple to get their son back is much more about Gideon than it is Rumple.

A different kind of stick – Regina teaches Zelena to drive. And whoa, what a car! This would seem to be a nice sisterly bonding thing, but it’s really about ulterior motive. Regina wants Zelena to take Henry away from Storybrooke once the final battle starts and if doesn’t go so well. In short if Regina dies, she wants Zelena to take him out of Storybrooke to live in New York where they can start a new life. Problem here ��� Henry’s not going to let that happen for one, and two, this proposal doesn’t; seem to have been discussed with Emma. I get that she wants to save Henry’s life, but her process is questionable – more ammunition for my earlier speculation perhaps? And what are they expecting this “last battle” to be anyway? A fight to the death with swords? A magic duel at dawn? The whole town bearing arms on Main Street? 

The heart of Storybrooke – it’s the jukebox. With songs. Music is the heart of Storybrooke. I see you upcoming musical episode.  And is there something else in the cavity under the jukebox? It kinda looks like there is… it’s silver and shiny. It might be a trick of the light but It doesn’t seem to match the shadows.  A wand perhaps…

Who are you – I like that Hook was so quick to vocalise suspicion that Regina was not Regina in the Diner. It wasn’t suspicion of Regina per se, but it was a welcome awareness that they need to be more cautious. Regina’s annoyance was funny – I’m not sure why she would be offended at the suggestion that she was not herself, a guilty conscious perhaps? If only. I would love to see the Charming family develop their own code words. Another missed opportunity.

My Town, My Rules – there it is again, that insistence that one particular individual owns the entire town. Regina thinks she owns it because she created it with the original curse. When the show continues with the skeleton cast, I would love to see Regina removed from this town to a place where she is not even a usurper queen – where she would have to face herself with honesty and without status, wealth or power. I’m guessing the Black Fairy has designs on “owning” Storybrooke too. The Regina vs Black fairy showdown played as superfluous to the episode – Not only do we know that conventional magic is useless against Black, as demonstrated by Zelena last week, it also comes across as hypocritical because she does everything that she cautioned Zelena against. But then, Regina and hypocrisy have always been close buddies. The scene seemed to be trying to make Regina seem more of a big deal than she presently is but it actually only reinforced her irrelevance in this entire “last battle” storyline. She has never felt more shoehorned in.  And apart from Zelena hitting Black with her car, it was an unnecessary waste of two minutes that might have been spent more effectively elsewhere. Is it just me or was Regina’s eagerness to “kill a fairy” a little chilling, her facial expression was pure evil.  Her taunt that the Black Fairy was not brave enough to cast the curse was positively alarming! Does she really equate killing the thing you love the most and cursing a kingdom full of people with courage and valour?

The Colour of Magic – The Black Fairy’s magic didn’t seem dark at all ? And Rumple’s magic, when freeing Gideon from his bonds is red, much redder than the dirty red it usually is.  

Over-identification much – Emma and Rumple go on the dream walk they inadvertently start to peel back some of the layers of his young life and, in the face of his reluctance, Emma encourages Rumple to seek the truth and councils him as to the scary nature of finding out why you were abandoned. She presumes anxiety and fear and assures him that this is the scariest thing he will ever face. Emma’s abandonment discourse is strong – she might be part of a family now but her experience has had a huge impact on her – we know it has – and it’s still something she carries with her. It is why she reacted the way she did when Hook went missing, it’s why she held her parents at arms length for so long.  When Emma hears that Rumple is also a saviour, she is ready to believe, perhaps over-identifying with his childhood abandonment and the burden of being the saviour. Rumple warns her not to presume his experience is the same as his, but I don’t think she listens – this is why she’s so ready to hand the wand over, and let him assume the mantle of Saviour. My God Emma Swan is a generous soul! How freely she shares her title with such a dishonourable man who has caused so much damage! It’s the same strategy she used on Regina – encourage the good  and ignore the bad. It doesn’t always work. 

Wand reformed – the reformed wand is handed over to Rumple. It still makes me incredibly uncomfortable to see that wand in anyone other than Emma (or Hook's) hand, even more so after the flashback - Tiger-Lily sent it back for Emma; Emma saw the memory and finds out that Rumple is a saviour sure, but she still meant the wand for Emma, not Rumple. Of course, she didn’t see Rumple’s fate get cut but still, the wand was sent back as a weapon against the Black Fairy and the wand was sent to Emma – she should have kept hold of it. And why does Regina take credit for finding the wand when she very clearly didn’t.

Belle of forgiveness – Belle is chuffed to hear that Rumple “is” a saviour. She takes it as proof that he has been a good man all along – the man behind the beast. Too bad his actions and choices have not backed that up. The title “saviour” doesn’t make up for all the dark and evil deeds he’s undertaken, it just shows that he’s failed to live up to his potential to be a decent person. And Belle is remarkably forgiving – she seems to have forgotten all the things he did that led her to surrender baby Gideon, not to mention his affair with Evil Regina. Belle seems to have misplaced her backbone again.  One wonders how she will cope with his duplicity when it is revealed.  

Everything I do – Rumple assures Belle and Gideon that, even when it might not seem like it, everything he does is for them. It sounds noble, like he is pre-warning them that he is playing a deep game to protect them . . . but he also seems to be willing to sacrifice everyone else to achieve his goal and that ain’t noble at all.  And here we go off the same old well-worn track they’ve all walked before. Cos he’s about to do the wrong thing for a ‘noble’ goal, just as his mother did, just as he has done before. Do they never learn any lessons? And can I just say I have a bit of difficulty with a grown man and a grown woman needing this kind of intervention and protection. Surely they are entitled to the truth of the situation and allowed to have some choice in how the family proceeds. 

Banishment - I’ve also got to say, the Black fairy’s punishment for creating the curse and being a renegade is very odd. Tinkerbelle was stripped of her wings and power for attempting to help someone and for stealing a bit of pixie dust. Black gets banished, wings intact, to a realm that she is able to become overlord of AND be free to mine dark fairy dust – the most powerful and dangerous of all the magical ingredients – complete with slave labour. Some punishment.

Operation Best Man – so sweet that Killian asks Henry to be his best man. I like that Hook has always viewed Emma and Henry as a package deal. “Your mother will most certainly kill you” is a very interesting line though – Hook says it in relation to missing rings but … I don’t want to say it . . . but I’m going to say it -  that line sounds OMINOUS. Henry even says that word at the beginning of Hook’s speech. And there is an air of ambiguity about it with the generic “mother” used rather than a more personal, “Emma” or “your mum”. Is Henry in peril being foreshadowed here?

Very Superstitious - Hook is not staying at home tonight – it’s bad luck to see the bride before the wedding and he’s a superstitious seafaring man. “The last thing you and I need is another stitch of bad luck. “After tomorrow, there’ll be no getting rid of me.”  Oh great, you big buffoon – now you’ve done it – of course you’re going to get separated again! And for the whole of this freaking unnecessary season seven too. But apart from that their happiness is just gorgeous! Make hay while the sun shines.

WTF – so even though she’s got her son back in her corner, Black is determined to confront Emma because . . .  and that is the sixty-four thousand dollar question. Because she is the saviour? Because light and dark are ‘fated’ to fight the final battle? It all seems very thin and petty. This woman doesn’t know Emma Swan in the slightest, there is no vendetta or hate - there is nothing personal driving her malice. she just came out of nowhere determined to fight or kill Emma and hasn’t ever really made it clear why. And everyone just seems to go with it because the words “last battle” bandied about. It all just seems so misplaced and overblown. She is no worse than any other villain that's paid a visit to town and not even anywhere in the same league as Rumple or Regina! She is simply not worthy of being Emma’s end-game nemesis.

[alcyone2305]

The Kingsglaive + Their Appearance (Spoilers?)

And here I am once more, trying to pick apart the armor the Glaives have available to them. I’ll be honest: I always thought they have two outfits, the black coat one with black boots and their battle uniforms.

But since I took my time to find every little bit of clothing, I’m wiser than before. Read More if you want to!

We’ll kick it off with the shirts they wear beneath their typical black coats:

I’d consider this one to be the most basic one as we’ve seen numerous Glaives wearing this plain shirt with a sword pattern on its front part.Most of the time the Glaives are wearing their coat over the shirt so we only get to see small bits of the sword. It’s obvious the sword is a reoccuring symbol on the clothes. The most prominent sword would be either on the back of the black coat or on bits of the armor.

Anyway, we also get to see this type of shirt:

I’m still unsure. Is Luche’s shirt part of his outfit or not? Because it’s of the similar color and fabric. There’s also a pattern reaching all across his chest down to the hem. But I’ll settle with “Not part of the uniform” as the wing pattern on the side sticks out too much and tends to be covered by the coat anyway.

The female uniform is more.. delicate. I mean the whole construction with the red crystal makes it seem like it. There’s not really much I can say though except for the male and female uniforms are different. We never get to see a female Glaive sliding into a Niflheim soldier’s DMs and fuckin’ shit up, so I don’t know whether Crowe’s outfit is a mage or female specific outfit.

Side note (and a spoiler for FFXV!): It’s possible for Ignis, Gladiolus and Prompto to wear the uniform of the Kingsglaive, with and without the coat! This is where we get to see another piece of clothing, a vest. Its sword pattern spreads over the entire front of the shirt and doesn’t just go down to the hem. It doesn’t have sleeves. We know that because Prompto only wears the vest and no shirt in game.

EDIT: Would you look at Nyx though in the following picture:

Nyx is indeed wearing the vest the Chocobros are wearing in game. So there are different pieces for the upper body and Luche’s might be just a variation. Maybe he was on a different duty that day? (Thanks to @honeyflavour-blog for telling me it’s not a shirt, but a vest!)

To back it up, have a look at this concept art inspecting every layer of clothing of Nyx further (and backing up my claims):

Carrying on!

Of course it’s the uniform we most likely see them wearing when we mention the Kingsglaive. (I think I won’t lose too many words about this part.) I’m wondering: Are they wearing another long sleeved shirt beneath the heavy coat? Because I’d say the sleeves of the coat are pretty short, covering only half of the upper arms. Or is this bit connected to what I’d consider to be the second shirt? It seems just (or almost) as thick as the coat itself.

The boots, mhmmmmmm, good stuff!!! The sound of those boots being put on and the buckles being closed.. Yas, yaaaaas. If you inspect the shoes, you’ll also notice a small metal plate protecting the heel of each boot. Extra protection maybe? I like to imagine it gives them more support and more strength to run/kick stuff in certain situations.

The female boots though.. They must be pretty uncomfortable to wear. I mean, just look at them!

Reaching all the way up to the thighs. Wouldn’t that restrict your movements? Who cares, it looks damn fine. If we further look into the concept art of Kingsglaive we get this “full set up” of the female Glaives:

The first thing I can think of is ASSASSIN! And what a pity we never realy get to see Crowe kick some ass. This outfit makes her look even more badass, if not intimidating.

I’d consider the pants to be.. less interesting so let’s move to the gloves!

Whenever you see pitchblack gloves like the following one, it tends to be (or even always is) just a minor character.

Why am I saying this? Because Tredd and Luche for example do not wear those thick gloves. Instead they wear those: (brown - Tredd, black - Luche)

I guess our main characters are too cool for school, idk.

I won’t try to justify their usefullness in battle and instead only claim “Hey, they’re different from the rest because they’re much more important than other Glaives”. Of course Nyx also has different gloves.

And Libertus’ gloves could probably knock out anyone since there are even small metal (glass? I don’t know) attachments.

Let’s get to the more juicy stuff: Their battle armor they select for missions. This is where I was genuinely surprised. I won’t argue about the practicality of the pieces we’ll inspect. In fact I’d consider most of them.. impractical. Oh well.

Notice how the usual uniform doesn’t have Bahamut’s symbol like we can see here. It’s clearly a seperate piece and being worn on top of the coat. (I’ve actually gone back and checked which uniforms have such a symbol on them. As long as I’m not entirely mistaken, the movie can’t settle with a clear option anyway. Some uniforms have this symbol, some don’t.) 

This is also where the hood they wear on missions comes from. It’s a seperate piece they choose to wear.

The metal visor thing and the bandana covering their mouth are attached to the hood and guarantees protection from dust. Furthermore they also cover up their faces which might confuse enemies. If Tredd didn’t get rid of his hood, we wouldn’t have got to see he was one of the betrayers. And today’s lesson we learned is: If you want to remain unnseen, make use of masks and similar objects and doN’T REMOVE THEM. It’s always wiser to just keep yourself covered up. Anyway, I’m getting carried away.

Instead I’d like to pinpoint a similarity: For some reason I’m reminded of Bahamut when the Glaives are wearing their masks. Only Bahamut’s eyes are visible, the rest is entirely covered. Just like when the Kingsglaive is out on a mission. Coincidence? I don’t think so since Bahamut seems to be damn important entity. Maybe the Glaives are supposed to be Bahamut’s swords..? I don’t know where I’m going with this.

Let’s get to the armor in particular.

The metal plate with Bahamut’s symbol is probably the most recognizable as we’ve seen it almost everywhere and anywhere. It typically covers a part of the chest. If I’m not entirely mistaken, we’ve seen Glaives wear them on both sides.

And then there are three bits of shoulder protection. The first one is the one we see in the picture above. Its pattern is similar to a wing (Bahamut’s wing?)

Just noticed Mr. Unknown up there makes it clear they are indeed just wearing their usual uniform and just pile everything else up on top on it... C’mon, that should get uncomfortable at some point! Aren’t they supposed to be quick and deadly? Whatever.

Luche is wearing the wing as well. And Axis went for the second kind of shoulder protection we get to see. Sonitus should be wearing it as well. And Tredd doesn’t need to be wearing a fuckin’ hood, okay.

Nyx has the third and last one and probably the most useless one.

Thin metal pads. I have nothing else to say. If someone understand the structure of the Kingsglaive outfit, please enlighten me.

@laciewhy came up with an interesting idea when it comes to the protection, though it sadly doesn’t seem to fit for every single Glaive: Maybe the different parts indicate the Glaive’s preferred fighting style. Heavy, thick armor implies brute force and heavy impact while the lighter parts are worn by people who move fast like assassins and don’t want to decrease the speed they move forward.

I sadly can’t get solid screenshots of the reoccuring daggers wielded by the rather unimportant members. The one we see in the picture above is rather.. untypical. But then there are people like Nyx and Luche with different daggers.

LIES, ALL LIES! Of course you can get good pictures of their daggers. Would you look at that:

The typical daggers have a slightly curved shape. I guess it makes it easy to ram the blade into either the enemy or an object. 

This is the one Luche is using and it’s even more curved than the one before. (Sadly hard to see.) And then there’s Libertus with something more of an axe/butcher knife than a dagger, holy shit. I never noticed that before!

Since @the-galahdian-warrior wanted to have Drautos’ outfit as well, let’s go for Daddy Drautos, no? 

His first appearance in the movie. (I’ll directly assume the producers/animators/whoever forgot to add Drautos’ medals to his chest but I’ll get back to those later.)

Whenever I look at a shot of Drautos’ whole body, I get this sense of sheer authority and force. You really don’t want to mess with this guy. It’s obvious he’s part of the Kingsglaive. Just look at the back of his coat (Bahamut’s sword) and at his chest (similar to the Glaive’s shirt with Bahamut’s sword). But overall it’s vastly different. First of all, his color (of course), but also the collar is more impressive. But the outfit is also asymmetrical. A cape which actually consists of two layers over his left shoulder, but not his right. Chains on his right side, but not his left. You see him and you just know this guy means business.

I don’t know about the quality but of course there’s also a concept art of his outfit. Definetely check it out! There’s one last thing I want to inspect though: His medals and his sword.

While the Glaives stick to daggers and similar, short weapons, Daddy D has a real sword, distinguishing himself further from the members. Now the medals.. If I’m not mistaken, he wears each medal twice. So let’s cross fingers and try to find a medal similar to his. Since the production team of FFXV has stated they directed the game towards the Western audience I think it’s fine to check Army Medals and Ribbons.

I’ll simply let good, old wiki speak: “The medal was created in the aftermath of the Second World War to recognize those who had performed occupation service in either Germany, Italy, Austria, or Japan. [...] The Navy and Marine equivalent of the Army of Occupation Medal is the Navy Occupation Service Medal.”

“The NATO Medal is an international military decoration which is awarded to various militaries of the world under the authority of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).”

“The Commendation Medal is a mid-level United States military decoration which is presented for sustained acts of heroism or meritorious service.”

Listen, I’m not saying that’s what Drautos’ medals represent, but it’s either thought through or a fitting coincidence. The pendants beneath the ribbons seem to be a Lucian/Insomnian inspired medal referring to the shape of Insomnia’s walls.

EDIT: Thank you so so much for all the active support! Because of you guys, this post grew even further and even more beyond of what I had in mind.

[4colorrebellion]

4cr Plays: Puyo Puyo Tetris

Like many gamers, I have a long-running history with Tetris. I first got a Game Boy back in Christmas of 1993, and it came bundled with Link’s Awakening. Well, being an idiot, I didn’t want Link’s Awakening. I didn’t care that it was free. I wanted some Ninja Turtles sidescroller.

I did get the Turtles game, and it was bad. However, I did give Link’s Awakening a try, despite my earlier protests, and it ended up being one of my favorite games. To this day, it remains my favorite 2D entry in the series. 

Then came Tetris.

A couple of months after getting the Game Boy, my teacher took it away when I got caught playing in class. It wasn’t a big deal - she gave it back later that day. However, when she gave it back, there was an extra game. To my credit, I did tell her that it wasn’t mine. She told me to take it anyways - as long as I promised not to play in class. That is how I ended up with my first copy of Tetris.

Again, being an idiot, I thought this Tetris thing looked stupid. I must have learned a tiny lesson from the Link’s Awakening experience, however, as I did slot the cart into the system that night to give it a try.

I never did learn who that copy of Tetris belonged to, but I definitely owe them. I was immediately hooked. I ran down so many pairs of batteries playing that game. To this day, Tetris is just something I have to have on every handheld system. According to my play log, I’ve put about 75 hours into the 3DS Virtual Console release of the original. I must have put hundreds into Tetris DS. I even have a copy of the mediocre Tetris Ultimate for Vita! 

Whoever you are, anonymous donor of Tetris, I hope you won the cosmic karma lottery. 

I have far less history with Puyo Puyo. And in all fairness, the western world as a whole has far less history with Puyo Puyo. However, I do have one memory from my early days. I never had a Genesis as a kid, but I did love Sonic the Hedgehog. Like a lot of kids I was really into the Archie comics and the Saturday morning cartoon (the good one - the one that, in retrospect, was a total Star Wars knockoff). I did have a couple of friends who owned a Genesis, and one weekend, I went over to see the new games they got for their birthday and watch cartoons. One of those games was called Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine. 

In one of the stranger marketing moves of the 90′s, SEGA took Puyo Puyo and inserted Sonic characters. Aesthetically, it’s a mess. Even at the time, my main reaction was that the game looked weird, and that the Sonic connections were only surface-deep. Since I didn’t own any SEGA systems at that point, I never really got into Mean Bean Machine like I did Tetris, but I do have some lingering memories of falling blobs. 

This long, rambling, road leads us into Puyo Puyo Tetris - a PB&J mix of the two long-running puzzle titans. Puyo Puyo Tetris is actually old news in Japan - it came out almost three years ago for every system under the sun - but never made it to the west. However, we have a new system, the Nintendo Switch, and not surprisingly, SEGA has taken the opportunity to both port the game and release it world-wide. 

Unlike a lot of westerners, and mainly because of my Tetris addiction, this is not my first encounter with Puyo Puyo Tetris. I actually imported it for Vita and played a ton of it there. That being said, I am unreasonably excited for the new release for two reasons:

Even though I own a truly ludicrous number of handheld systems, I have some inexplicable need for a copy of Tetris on all of them. I have a new system (the Switch). I need Tetris. No, this isn’t healthy. Let’s just move on.

I’m not exactly fluent in Japanese. I can parse the menu screens, but my Japanese was absolutely not up to the task of making sense of the story mode.

And oh yes. There is a story mode. In a puzzle game. It also turns out that it makes about as much sense in English as it did in Japanese. But that’s OK - it’s fantastic. We’ll get to that more in a minute.

First, it is worth taking a second to explain the western release, because it is a little confusing. They are releasing it world-wide for both Switch and PS4. For Switch, you can buy it either digitally or physically. The digital release, in the US, is $30. The physical version is $40, but comes with keychains. The PS4 version is physical-only, and costs $30 (and does not come with the keychains). This is due to the insane licensing requirements for Tetris. Because Ubisoft sells Tetris Ultimate digitally on PS4, SEGA cannot release Puyo Puyo Tetris digitally. I have no idea why this does not cover physical copies as well, but I am glad - at least PS4 owners can get this in some form. Because there are no other Tetris games on Switch, SEGA could release in both forms. However, if you want this digitally, I’d recommend getting it sooner rather than later.

OK - that was a bit confusing. To summarize, this is out on PS4 and Switch. It is physical-only on PS4, and comes in both physical and digital form on Switch. 

Let’s step back for a minute and cover the basics. 

You are probably familiar with Tetris. If not (What are you doing? Go buy a GameBoy!), the premise is that shapes fall from the sky. These shapes, called tetrominoes, are formed from the combination of four squares - just as dominoes are formed from two squares. You control where those shapes fall, and if you can form a solid line between the two sides of the screen with these shapes, the line will disappear. Your task is to keep forming these lines as long as you can, while the tetrominoes keep speeding up their descent. You get points for each line cleared, and bonuses for clearing multiple lines at once - up to a max of four, called a “tetris.” There are a few minor additions, but the basic formula is beautiful in its simplicity. 

Puyo Puyo is similar. Colored pairs of blobs fall from the sky. Over time, they fall faster. In this case, your goal is to form combinations of four blobs of the same color. These combinations can be in any configuration except diagonal, so you can have a big square, a line, a cross - etc. - as long as they share a color. Like in Tetris, you get more points for clearing multiple combinations at once. You also get more points for combinations with more than four elements. The biggest twist is the concept of chains. When you clear a combination, the blobs above it fall. If you clear a combo, and the falling blobs form a new combo, then you get a huge score bonus. This builds as more chain reactions occur. The key to Puyo Puyo mastery comes in setting up massive chain reactions. 

If you are entirely new to one of the games, they include a series of tutorial videos covering each of the core concepts. I wish they were a bit more interactive, but they do the trick for covering the basics. 

In most of the modes of Puyo Puyo Tetris, you play either Puyo Puyo or Tetris. If, like me, you have a ton of love for Tetris and very little experience with Puyo Puyo, this is a fantastic way to get your Tetris fix and explore a new game. The same would hold true for die-hard Puyo Puyo fans. There are a ton of different game modes, and both Tetris and Puyo Puyo are represented excellently. Both games also mix well. In multiplayer, players can choose their game. In both Tetris and Puyo Puyo, scoring will drop garbage pieces on the other player. This means that they can be combined fairly seamlessly, with one player playing Puyo Puyo and the other playing Tetris.

There is also a fusion mode where you can play both games at the same time, with both tetrominoes and blobs falling on the field. It is exactly as insane as it sounds.

So, getting back to the story mode. Apparently this is a staple in the Puyo Puyo series. I guess - as a Tetris player - I’ve been missing out. The “adventure” mode presents a 10 chapter storyline where the Puyo Puyo cast find themselves (a) on a spaceship, with (b) blocks falling from the sky. The spaceship inhabitants aren’t particularly bothered by the tetrominoes, but are quite perturbed by the sudden appearance of falling blobs. Suddenly, the two groups must unite to stop the… falling puzzle pieces. I wasn’t kidding when I said it didn’t make much more sense in English. It’s kind of delightfully nonsensical. 

Each chapter is made up of a series of levels where you play either Tetris or Puyo Puyo. In each level, you have a set of three objectives to fulfill. At the end, you get a star rating based on how many you passed. This is actually a fantastic way to get better at each game, as you have targets to work towards. I really appreciate this, as I really haven’t played much Puyo Puyo, and this has really helped improve my skills.

The “Solo Arcade” menu offers a variety of game modes to play, as the title implies, by yourself. You can face off against a CPU opponent in either game. You can play the fusion mode that I mentioned earlier. There is a mode called Swap, where you alternate at set intervals between both games. This is really fun, as you have to keep track of where you left off. There is a Party mode where items fall from the sky that activate as you clear lines or combinations. The Big Bang mode tasks you with clearing set patterns without making mistakes. Finally, there are three “challenge” modes for each game. For Puyo Puyo, there is an endless mode, a mode where you complete preset chains as long as possible, and a mode where the blobs are extra tiny. For Tetris, the standard marathon is present (150 lines). There is also a sprint mode where you complete 40 lines as fast as possible, and the “ultra” mode, where you get the best score you can within a three minute limit. 

You can play any of these, except the challenge modes, in local multiplayer as well. Local multiplayer can either be done on the same system, with each player taking a joycon, or over a wireless connection. The online mode also offers the same modes, and you can play either ranked or unranked matches. 

There are a couple of nice additional bonuses. As you play, you accumulate credits that can be exchanged for game skins and voice packs for the announcers. There are also trophies for each game that you can unlock. 

One of my concerns going into the Switch version was the lack of a “real” d-pad on the system. After putting a good bit of time into the final release, I needn’t have been concerned. The split “d-buttons” on the joycon are fine. I actually think they feel better than the Vita d-pad in the game. The game also looks fantastic on both the Switch screen and on a big TV. 

All-in-all, Puyo Puyo Tetris is a fantastic package, and I’m thrilled that SEGA has finally released it to the rest of the world. If you have a PS4 or a Switch, I cannot recommend this enough. It is a packed collection of variants of two of the most important puzzle games in existence, with a huge variety of single and multiplayer modes. I can see this getting a ton of playtime on my Switch.  

[mittensmorgul]

I was trying to answer this anon a minute ago, and accidentally hit the POST button prematurely, and deleted the original message, but I copy/pasted it before I deleted my half-answer, because I didn’t want anyone to reblog and incomplete answer while I was actually finishing my thoughts on it >.>

Copy/pasted from my accidental nudging of the post button:

Anonymous asked: I saw a tweet going around that said if John had been the one faced with the decision to give up what he stole to possibly save his boys, he would have done it immediately. And I think I agree. I'm not the biggest John fan, but I think it's interesting how the show is destroying the "perfect mother" image of Mary. I wonder what John and Mary would think of each other if they could meet now.

Well, the difference here is that John DID once give up the Colt… to Azazel, in a bargain for Dean’s life. in 2.01.

Honestly, the text of s2, especially from DEAN’S pov, expressed HOW WRONG Dean felt for that entire season. That was the source of all the “What’s dead should stay dead” stuff in the entire series.

DEAN RESENTED THE HELL OUT OF JOHN FOR BURDENING HIM WITH THAT, SO LET’S NOT TRY AND PRETEND THAT JOHN’S DEAL HERE WAS AN OBJECTIVELY GOOD THING.

In s1, John KEPT ALL SORTS OF INFORMATION from Sam and Dean, apparently “for their own good.” To “keep them safe.” It took a long time for him to realize that keeping them in the dark was actually putting them all in danger. Their ignorance of the larger forces at play DIRECTLY AFFECTING THEIR OWN LIFE AND SAFETY was detrimental to EVERYONE in the end.

Sam ended up possessed by Meg, because he and Dean hadn’t KNOWN that they should be protecting themselves. They hadn’t KNOWN about the Yellow Eyed Demon Azazel from the start. John had tried to control every aspect of their lives, to keep them in the dark and out of the way. Sending them on unrelated hunts to keep them too busy to interfere.

They were working at a MAJOR disadvantage, because of the secrets John kept from them. They spent most of s1, s2... heck, most of the SERIES playing catch-up to the cosmic forces that had been manipulating their ENTIRE LIVES, going all the way back to the dawn of time when Chuck locked Amara up. The Mark of Cain is their family legacy, after all. Mary’s deal with Azazel is just one step in the long chain of events leading back to that original “sin.”

I think a lot of Mary’s journey this season has paralleled the sorts of choices that John DID make himself back in s1. She is working from the information gleaned from his journal, after all.

Remember, from 1.21, the argument where John was angry that HE’D been kept out of the loop about Sam’s visions... despite having ignored multiple pleas for help from both Sam and Dean over the last year, including Dean’s plea in 1.09 when he was SITTING RIGHT THERE WITH MISSOURI, and ignoring Sam’s plea when Dean was literally given three weeks to live in 1.12. I mean, it took all the way until 1.22 to even get THIS much out of John:

John: I’m surprised at you, Sammy. Why didn’t you kill it? I thought we saw eye-to-eye on this? Killing this demon comes first – before me, before everything. Sam: No, sir. Not before everything. Look, we’ve still got the Colt. We still have the one bullet left. We just have to start over, alright? I mean, we already found the demon...

He was still on a suicide mission to kill the demon at all costs, up to and including his own life. To Sam and Dean, revenge took a back seat to the “Saving People” portion of their mission statement.

Right now for Mary, she’s got to learn that same lesson. For her, though, it’s also coming from a sense of personal guilt... for the deal she’d made, for the fact that she hadn’t been able to stop her family from being destroyed over all of this. And that now she’s back, she’s trying to find something to keep living for.

THIS IS MARY’S JOURNEY. This is her character development.

In some ways, it’s running parallel to John’s, in some other ways it’s running parallel to Castiel’s back in s6, and in other ways it’s all her own.

Saying “John would’ve handed the Colt over if he’d been in Mary’s position there” is a false equivalency, and makes no freaking sense. John had never been in the same sort of position that Mary is in now. It’s unfair to imply he would’ve chosen differently if he had been.

Not to mention, right at the end, after Cas was cured and then asked what Ramiel had meant by that, that something had been stolen from him, the camera cut to Mary’s face. She was opening her mouth, about to speak-- ABOUT TO CONFESS SOMETHING?!-- when Dean spared her from having to fess up by deflecting with a comment about Ramiel being crazy.

What was she about to say? Was she going to make a similar dismissive statement? Was she about to pull out the Colt and say, “Hey, I found this lying around, maybe THIS is what he meant?” Who knows?

We also don’t know if Mary handed the Colt over to Ketch, or if he only got to “see it” (which is what he asked, if he could SEE it). Right now, we don’t even know who has the Colt, or if there are any bullets for it.

All of that remains to be seen. Meanwhile, Mary now knows just how far she can trust the MoL. Their gear might be useful, but the intel is HIGHLY SUSPECT.

Just as John had to learn in s1, Mary is slowly getting to the point where she realizes her own sons are more competent and useful as allies...