#the issue is that that hero doesn’t work all that well on that particular map

[unpopularly-opinionated]

Sorry but I don’t care how much you think you’re right about an argument, if you completely devolve into just repeating “you’re a retard” over and over and over again that’s an immediate L in my book, friendo.

[whisperingwisterias]

Hetalia: Axis Powers and Stereotypes

Hetalia: Axis Powers is a well known anime that attempts to explain history in humorous ways using anthropomorphized countries and their relationships with each other. Although it’s quite controversial because of the way it portrays certain countries and toes the line between satire and offense, I think this show also provides a unique perspective on our world that can still be appreciated even if it is not enjoyed.

One of the biggest issues that this show runs into is its use of stereotyping which is often used for humor but can also be interpreted as unfair stigmatization. One of the biggest ways this happens in the show is how Italy is portrayed. In every episode he is shown to be weak, a bit air-headed, a bit stupid, and almost single-mindedly focused on pasta. In the “chibitalia” sections he is often infantilized and treated like he is completely unaware of the world around him. This is showcased particularly in one episode where the Allies attempt various methods to lure Italy to them to capture him, each one of which works easily. Every time they capture him he offers them whatever knowledge they want without hesitation and does not object when they start treating him like a pet. Many other countries also get an unflattering portrayal: Japan’s hobby is said to be reading the room, refraining from speaking, and saying no to everything; austria is portrayed as being uptight, strict, and prone to nag the other countries; England is delusional; France is said to be too flashy and showy and almost as weak as Italy, shown by a montage of France embarrassing themselves in several wars and summed up by the sentence “their killer technique is profiting from the sidelines.”

While definitely mocking and unflattering, I think such portrayals also serve the purpose of seeing how these countries are thought of and seen by the world in general, something I noticed in particular when it came to America’s character. He starts off the show very loud and boisterous, optimistically claiming that all the problems in the world can be solved if they all work together. However he also takes a very clear leadership position, saying that no one is allowed to disagree with him in the meeting. Over the course of the show he is also shown to be very self-centered, insisting that he will be the hero in the war and the other allied countries will only need to back him up. His self-centeredness is also shown when he opens up a map of America and is surprised when he doesn’t find Japan on it, a mockery of how America believes they are at the center of the world. America’s unhealthy consumerism is also shown in the mountain of burgers America is seen to eat and the giant sodas he guzzles down. While all of this is an obvious mockery of America and also obviously not an entirely accurate portrayal of the country, it is an enlightening look at how other countries see and define America.

Overall, while this show has its issues, it’s a very intriguing concept that, while mocking, also challenges our own definition and view of other countries in a way that hopefully inspires its audience to lessen its uninformed stereotyping of other nations.

[hopeymchope]

How would you rank the 18 Class Trials from THH, DR2, and V3 from worst to best?

This is... virtually impossible for me, lol. Comparing the trials from each game to each other?

How about I just rank them within each game? That'll make it a little easier for me to deal with...

DR1

6) 5th. It's driven by lies and ultimately rushed to its end before the characters can draw any solid (pointless/meaningless) conclusions. So of course it's last for this game, and it’s probably last for the entire series as well. If there are any saving graces to this trial, it’s the surprise when your closest ally is willing to let our protagonist die... and that this trial contains the fake/bad ending route.

5) 3rd. Although the main culprit is pretty obvious from the jump, it requires some surprising twists to explain how everything got to be the way it turned out. But did I always find those twists plausible? Errrrm... not really. 

4) 2nd. Pretty good trial that's hurt for me by the fact that there'd barely be any need for a trial at all if a certain third party didn't dick around with the evidence for no reason. Also, the dual nature of Toko is an incredibly predictable reveal. Without those two aspects dragging it down, though, this could easily go higher.

3) 1st. Sure, the major hint given and, subsequently, the eventual culprit are pretty obvious, but this one establishes so much about how the trials work and how much the details you observe will matter that it’s still pretty fun that first time around. The initial surprise of the first victim makes for a great way to keep you invested in the trial experience. This trial is damn near iconic now, so it feels almost mandatory to respect it.

2) 6th. DR1 still has the best "final trial,” easily. SO MANY great reveals, and they all totally work for me. Nothing rings false or disappointing, and it also features Makoto finally coming into his own and taking the lead. I nearly labeled this my top pick for DR1, but...

1) 4th. It's easily the most emotionally dramatic/satisfying for me, and there’s something weirdly inspirational for me about Hina’s incredibly harsh stance during it. This one GOT ME IN THE FEELS, and in part that was because I saw so little of it coming. After the more predictable elements of the first and third trials, this felt like the writing was firing on all cylinders. 

DR2

6) 2nd. You have to accept a couple leaps of logic to make this trial keep flowing, and the fact that trial is ultimately reliant on someone noticing a candy that’s very small and hard to see while the person is also in a stressful situation and they are groggy from being drugged/asleep and it necessitates the person retaining this seemingly useless detail inside their brain .... that’s always bugged me.  The “escape route” conversation even retroactively raises questions about the first trial. Oof. On the upside, the reveals it brought us about Fuyuhiko and Peko were incredibly important, satisfying, and legit surprising turns. And it’s pretty cool how it’s basically a two-for-one combo trial because you have to solve the Twilight Syndrome case before you solve the current case. 

5) 3rd. Other people have pointed out the leaps of logic and missing pieces of this trial, but at the same time, the candlelight hanging is so intense and the ultimate reveal of the culprit is such a brutal turn that I have to give it some props. The culprit’s primary plan is ultimately one of the most ingenious in the series, IMO, and definitely one of the most twisted/fucked-up, which earns it some points. 

4) 4th. This is probably the single murder case in the franchise that I understood the absolute least about when entering the trial, for better or worse. On the one hand, that made it really fun to see the mystery gradually unfurl, but on the other hand, it made it tough for me to provide the right answers at certain points in the trial, leaving me fumbling. A big part of those issues was how it was initially hard for me to wrap my head around the nature of the funhouse via the provided 2D graphics... but once I eventually got there, I had to respect the creativity that went into devising such a “weapon.” Also, it can be hard to tolerate Komaeda in this trial. He’s even more of a know-it-all-but-reveal-none-of-it jackass than ever before, and his turn towards overt cruelty towards the others (and Hajime in particular) left me raging. The culprit reveal is good, but the motive does beg the question of why he didn’t just come forward from the jump.

3) 6th. There are a lot of great reveals in the final trial that totally reframe how you see the characters, and some of them are deliciously twisted. There’s also a ton of great dialogue provided, and in retrospect, it’s actually sort of neat to have one endgame mastermind reveal in this franchise that doesn’t involve the “They were hiding among us this whole time” trope. All that plus the surprise return of our surviving heroes from the first game! However, this is also where they officially reveal a core element of DR2 and its setting that I've never liked. This knocks the trial down a few pegs for me. Of course, by the time you reach the trial, I'm sure 99% of players have already figured that particular "twist" out. There’s adequate evidence to predict it in the first freaking chapter, and I know this because I DID predict it in the first chapter of my initial playthrough... which further hurts the supposed “reveal” of the island’s true nature when it comes around. 

2) 1st. Probably my favorite of the “first trials,” there are lot of components that go into this one. There’s a combination of two premeditated killers plus one spur-of-the-moment accidental victim, there’s a satisfying (though admittedly maybe too easy) reveal of the killer being one of the most unpleasant people to be around during the first chapter, and I really dig how audio became a very important component of the mystery due to the total blackout. This is also the part of the game where we learn just how twisted Komaeda really is, which is HUGE both in terms of its immediate shock factor for a total newcomer and in terms of its impact on the game as a whole. Of course, since it’s a “first trial,” it can’t be too complicated... but they still manage to confuse so many of us with “MEAT ON THE BONE” :P

1) 5th. Again, I will almost always give the most emotionally intense one the top slot. The “traitor reveal” is obviously THAT MOMENT in DR2. I also love how this one used the strange internal logic established early in the game RE: Komaeda’s luck to develop the eventual solution. And forcing us to make use of evidence gathered in multiple locations outside of the immediate site of the body/murder? That more complexity of that type that I see relevant to a trial, the more I appreciate it, and this one has loads of that stuff. Although I guess the investigation isn’t technically part of the trial itself... but it’s still very relevant to it. 

DRV3

6) 4th. I found this whole trial to be just... extremely predictable. Maybe it’s because I was so far into the series that I’d gotten used to its tricks by this point, but this was the most predictable trial for me since the first one in the first game. The whole looping/rollover map setup of the VR? Obvious. The murder weapon? Obvious. Our culprit’s ongoing confusion at everything discussed? Obvious. There were only a couple of points I didn’t have already figured out when I walked into the trial room, and those turned out to be basically irrelevant (such as the bottle of poison). The eventual motive is at least a surprise, but I also found it hard to accept that this culprit would really kill people over it. Overall: Super lame. 

5) 3rd. Another double murder trial, and once again one murder overshadows the other. The séance murder is definitely clever. Sure, you know the culprit pretty early on, but the methodology is the good part. However, the real fascinating one for me is the art lab “locked room” murder. Going into the trial, I couldn’t fathom how they were going to explain that one, and I found the answer both smart and satisfying. It’s funny to imagine how many times the culprit had to try that stunt with the lock before it actually worked, heh. This is probably the best of the three “double murder” mysteries in the series, but the trial isn’t as emotionally affecting as the 3rd trial in DR2 to me. Moreover, the trial loses points for the most infuriating Hangman’s Gambit of the series and especially for the motive reveal. When the killer’s motive can be boiled down to “they’re basically just a psycho serial killer,” it’s not very interesting.

4) 6th. The first part of the trial, which deals with re-assessing the first case? It’s pretty damn on-point. That leads to the mastermind reveal, which... isn’t great, really. It’s not a terribly interesting character to make the mastermind, they have no interesting motives or characterization to unevil, and they’re ultimately just a pawn behind another, off-screen group of masterminds. But then things get uproariously funny to me. The metatextual stuff is just so goddamn ridiculous. It’s frustrating and annoying how much of our not-mastermind’s explanation is clearly full of lies and half-truths that we’ll never have complete answers on, but that’s also part of what makes it all fascinating. We get to swap protagonists like four times! There’s a fake-out Game Over! These are really cool things. But it all leads down the road of our protagonist arguing that fiction does affect reality (yes, good), that fictional people can still matter (definitely) and that... fictional lives are equal in value to real ones? Uhhhhh slow down there, champ. That only works for YOUR universe, where fictional people can be made out of living, breathing individuals. But in light of the metatextual stuff you’re surrounded by, you kinda sound silly AF right now?

3)  2nd. Look, this is still incredibly irritating to me. Also, if you go down the alternate “lying” route at one point, you are forced to accept that these piranhas were somehow trained to only eat dead things, which is just... so deeply dumb.  But what is good is the entire ropeway conceit (which is a very significant part of the trial!) and the idea of the partition inside the tank. This was a murder with an elaborate, intelligent plan that is very well-executed. And the motive reveal? It’s one of the best in the series! I respect that stuff. (If I had the right to toss the execution in as part of the soup, I’d say that it’s also one of the series’ best. Let’s call it the icing on the cake.)

2) 1st. The writing that made this trial work is undeniably clever. The way the narration told us exactly what was happening without really telling us what was happening? It was a masterstroke of both great writing and perfect localization coming together. When it becomes clear during the trial what is about to happen, it’s a huge shock. The transition to another protagonist with the lights flickering out and back on is beautiful. Even the core concept of a protagonist who was willing to step up and try to kill the mastermind immediately is just deeply interesting. And obviously this one made my emotions run high. HOWEVER! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Kaede Akamatsu was a more interesting, unique, and compelling protagonist than Shuichi Saihara ever was. Ultimately, the protagonist-swap, no matter how well-written, was a mistake because they shifted us from a unique character with an interesting new perspective to a character who is, in many ways, “Makoto Naegi with even less self-esteem.” Yes, I know he has aspects that make him distinct as his own person, but there’s still just too much there that feels like we’ve done it before, and he never fully escapes from that. It feels like a massive waste and a huge missed opportunity to ditch Kaede like this. Now, if they had just done the protagonist swap in reverse — making us start out with Shuichi before flipping things over to Kaede — we could’ve had ourselves something amazing here.

1) 5th. I know I decided that I couldn’t rank all among each other, but if I did do that, I feel confident that the 5th trial in DRV3 would rank very high indeed. You go into the trial unable to even determine who the victim was due to the fact that two people are missing and there was nothing left of the body that spoke to an identity. Going into it, you naturally figure that one of the two missing parties has to be the victim and the other one is probably the culprit. But even with just two friggin’ suspects, the amount of turnabouts in the case that made me rethink all my assumptions was insane. Sure, the explanation for how the person inside the Exisal can maintain “character” is pretty damn thin, but once you get past that, I don’t think there’s a single false note in the trial. It even breaks unprecedented ground by continuing into another Non-Stop Debate after everyone has already voted. And of course, it culminates with a lot of intense emotion. Even the execution is emotionally satisfying! ..... although I’m not sure if I should count the execution as part of the trial, but hey, still. As far as Dangan trials go, the fifth one in DRV3 is basically a masterpiece.

[davidmann95]

Comics this week (5/26/2021)?

Heroes Reborn #4: JAMES STOKOE?! Hahahahaha this shit ruled

Heroes Reborn: Magneto & The Mutant Force #1: Nothing revolutionary but if you're in for Orlando or any of a couple eras of X-Men worth a look-see.

X-Men #20: I recently realized Hickman's entire 'main' X-Men run has been nothing but setup for either what he'll do with his upcoming next book, X of Swords, or other titles in the line, and that the real story hasn't actually progressed since HoXPoX. Glad to see any sign of that changing soon.

The Marvels #2: My dad did want to get it himself after all, and it's a perfectly decent issue.

Miles Morales: Spider-Man #26: I think I'm done. This represented another slight uptick but I don't think I can justify continuing with a book defined by its occasional slight upticks anymore.

Abbott 1973 #5: This on the other hand flat-out sucked and I'm not bothering with whatever trilogy-capper's in store.

Haha #5: Another relatively not-horrifying one! Maybe Prince really is starting to vary himself a bit. In any case it's Walta so obviously it's gorgeous, if you're already in the tank for anyone involved this issue's a treat.

The Department of Truth #9: Oh boy howdy do I love me a good high-falutin' bullshit lecture issue. This can't exactly hang with Promethea in that regard but it's a respectable mere rung or two down.

The Blue Flame #1: This didn't knock my socks off the way I was hoping, but for a mini of I believe just a few issues I'm curious enough where it'll go.

Strange Adventures #10: I don't think it'll go for a disappointing 'actually it was Alanna all along!' ending at this point so I'm pretty wholeheartedly enjoying this testament to how hard my least-favorite character sucks. Everybody's fixed on the map, but personally my favorite art accomplishments of the issue were Doc's look at the Seafolk and Gerads' Alanna in flight.

Action Comics #1031: PKJ continues to strut his stuff but for me this was first and foremost a Sampere showcase issue, this is the most since Ryan Sook I've thought "this is the guy who should define Superman's interior art for the next decade".

Batman/Superman #18: Increasingly a slight Multiversity vibe to this whole thing even besides the dimension-hopping, with 'traditional' storytelling giving way to something more unsettling as a reveal of deeper social truths - I continue to extremely fuck with it.

RWBY/Justice League (digital) #10: A letdown tbh aside from Bennett clearly having her own take on the arc of Yang and Blake's relationship; I was hoping this is where her character talent would get a chance to shine, but not so much. It just feels shockingly perfunctory compared to her original run, though I suppose that's par for the course with crossovers, and I'll continue to hope for a more fruitful sequel.

Batman: Black and White #6:

Thomas/Randolph/Bennett: Unsurprisingly a fun little story coming from Thomas. However - and I'll concede it'd be hard to do a 'Batman realizes that as a white man however well-meaning he's still unconsciously practicing systemic racism' story I'd be 100% onboard for, and maybe that's just on me as a white guy who doesn't want that fictional idol despoiled in quite that way - I've never bought the idea that there are parts of Gotham Batman avoids, whether the East Side or the Cauldron or in this case The Hill.

Charretier/Colinet/Maher: Nice but we've all seen this exact story done better before, though the last panel of the kids' recounting was effectively striking and Charretier really struck the perfect visual balance for it.

Derington/Wands: Writing's not as good as it wants to be but who cares it's Derrington drawing Batman.

Arcudi/Harren/Napolitano: ...ok?

Snyder/Romita/Janson/Napolitano: It's fine, it's a Scott Snyder Batman story so you know roughly what you're getting (though his chapter in Detective Comics #1027 really should have been his last word on the character), and Romita Jr. does his best work in a minute here.

The Other History of the DC Universe #4: Probably the best issue since the first, bringing back a lot of the intimate focus in possessed and the same visible filter of how this particular character is perceiving things in a way the reader is inevitably going to clash with that gives the whole thing a charge. And my philosophy-major dad will definitely get a kick out of the last couple pages. Shame it didn't end with "AND THEN I RECRUITED THE SUPERMEN OF THE MULTIVERSE TO HELP BEAT UP MANDRAAK THE DARK MONITOR" though.

[crystalelemental]

I have 20 minutes before I have to feed the cat and get started on these courses that finally allowed me access, so let’s take a moment to talk about my good friend Thracia 776.

I made it through Chapter 5, and got both sidequest chapters along the way.  So that’s fun.  I decided to play on Paragon mode, because I don’t give a shit about challenge, I’m here to try and enjoy the experience for a game whose story I actually really like.

Currently, Leif is doing pretty well, mostly seems to do great with strength and speed, but his skill is bad and I don’t think he’s gained any build so that’s fun.  I think Macha’s been the most unprecedented hero so far.  She’s had two 6 point levels.  That’s really good.  Brighton’s had mostly 1 point levels so he’s not doing so hot.  Asbel seems super magic screwed, he still only has like 4 magic at level 7.  Not looking forward to that long-term.  Tanya actually got some fantastic levels too, including a lot of extra strength, so I’ll be doing my damnedest to get her back.

Chapters 1-3 remain pretty enjoyable.  Moreso now that I understand capturing as a mechanic and how to do that effectively.  A big issue before was not knowing how to set up a good capture, but now that I’m in the swing of it...I kinda like this feature?  Like it’s kinda cool.  Only kinda, though.  And the “only kinda” part kicks in as soon as you hit Chapter 4, where everything starts breaking down, but I’ll get to that.

I’m currently playing with the Lil Munster patch, which also allows me to see the hidden skills for units.  Such as Miracle+ on Eyvel, which just literally prevents her from ever dying.  I did not know that was a thing, and let me tell you, everything going on with Chapter 5′s pitfighters is suddenly a lot less bullshit.  Yes, you can argue all you want that it increases the tension when you don’t know it’s there, but also fuck that.

Chapter 4 is really where I think I’m going to start complaining.  Which is funny because on a second playthrough?  This is actually a pretty fun chapter.  You know, mostly.  Facilitating the escape of the civilians was pretty simple and fun, and it honestly helped out Karin the most, since she wasn’t particularly threatened by a guard holding a captive.  I was also pleasantly surprised at how engaging that map managed to be in terms of just...gathering Vulneraries.  Like, looking at it, I expected a disaster, but judicious use of the thieves and maybe a capture here and there actually nets you enough to equip everyone with a full vulnerary.

Until the trouble.  Let me be frank: I am always one for soft resetting when a character dies, and I’m trying to break myself of that particular habit a bit.  It’s not that I want to not care about characters, so much as recognizing that some characters I don’t give a shit about so why reset everyone else for them?  I play a quick run of Shadow Dragon before this, and just let people die, and honestly it was a lot more engaging when you’re not resetting for stupid things.  But there was one unit who causes two of the three resets, because I couldn’t afford to lose him.  Julian.  I couldn’t just lose the thief and that utility.  Resets occur not because of character love, but because you cannot give up the utility presented.

I feel like that’s part of early Thracia’s problem.  Chapters 1-3, it’s pretty easy to keep everyone alive, especially with Eyvel being actually invincible, and having three super units in Eyvel, Dagdar, and Finn.  If you got the Vouge and the Brave Axe, Osian and Halvan are actually ridiculous too.  But once you hit Chapter 4, things feel like they change to a level that’s a bit absurd?  If you didn’t successfully set up recruitment of Dalsin, I kinda feel like Chapter 4 and 4x are just impossible.  The only way to damage these armor knights are Leif’s Light Brand at range, and Dalsin’s axe.  Pretty much everyone else is dealing about 2 damage, and hoping for a crit, with none of them having the B-rank swords to make use of Armorslayer.  So the chokepoint strategy to the north feels decisively impossible because of how much damage you take, how little you deal in response, and how hard it is to actually break through and take out the mages when their numbers dwindle.  Not to mention one less unit means you have less defense against the soldier reinforcements, and it’s that much harder to protect your thieves.  Which, actually, speaking of: Thieves plural.  Which requires you actually got Lithis.  You probably did, his condition is super easy to achieve.  But.  My recollection is that the original version of this game didn’t give you little icons to tell you when people could talk to one another.  So unless you just figured out that Leif can talk to Eyvel (but not the other way around, that’s too much), you’d miss the hint about “Just catch him and hold onto him.”  At which point I feel it is fair to say people might release him after taking his stuff.  And then you only have one thief.  Which is.  Not great.  And slows down that prison escape significantly.

Then there’s 4x, where you really need 4 strong frontliners to block off attacks, and if you don’t have Dalsin I honestly feel like you’re just hosed, both in terms of taking too much damage, and having too few units to deal with the mages.  I’m not going to say it’s impossible to deal with, but for a putz like me it feels pretty impossible without the big tank man on deck.

Then there’s the issue of capturing.  Capturing only works if your build is higher than the opponent.  If you have a lower build, you can’t capture anyone.  Which is all well and good when you have four chunky axe bros and a cav on your side.  Then you can capture just about anything, especially with Tanya and Ronan giving you some nice chip damage to set up those easy captures.  But Chapter 4-5, you really don’t have many options.  Brighton is consistently able to capture, but Fergus isn’t.  8 build isn’t bad, but it’s not enough to capture one of the soldiers and take their vulneraries.  So if you didn’t get Dalsin, you have one guy who can consistently capture people.  One.  The thieves can steal, but Lara’s build is so low she basically can’t steal anything heavier than a vulnerary or door key, and she’s got 14HP so good luck leaving her in range of anything.  So like.  That’s fun.

Point being, some of these challenges feel distinctly impossible without save states as a result.  I think the biggest offender was admittedly an optional one: the two Loptyr mages in front of the chests in Chapter 5.  Man, those guys are fucked.  Tremendous damage output, poison, and had an absurdly high crit rate that would one-shot anyone if it hit.  I think Leif was able to deny the crits with Light Brand but I’m honestly not sure.  The fact you had to deal with two of them, or risk Leif having to chip them 3 damage at a time at range, was kind of a problem.  That’s the kind of thing where I don’t really know how you’re supposed to manage that, and save states feel incredibly necessary if you’re going to stand a chance.  Granted, this is optional, you can escape and just leave those chests.  But this isn’t the only situation I can think of where the game just plays stupid, and usually the stupid is with mages, because magic is resistance and no one has any.  Except Karin, who is delightfully too weak to actually KO a mage in response.  So that helps.  Situations across Chapters 4-5 have been difficult, because of the presence of magical hits that can 2-shot people if they connect, and a lot of situations feel like you’re desperately hoping for a particular attack to connect so you don’t start losing people left and right.  And then the attack misses anyway because 100% accuracy doesn’t exist, and whoops now you’re gone.

Despite that, I’m still enjoying this more than my first time through.  Maybe it’s familiarity with the game and its mechanics, but I do feel like being able to clear Chapter 4 without screaming is a good indicator that maybe it’s not as bad as I remembered.  We’ll see though, there’s much worse to come.

[suffering-and-happy-about-it]

Nicole's Rambling: The Avengers Problem (for PS4)

Let's start with the usual chanting: ❗this is my opinion, it's biased as hell (since I grew up with Marvel comic books and movies) and you don't have to agree❗

I was wondering why Avengers game gets so hated... So I took a look and I played it myself. Let’s have a look.

SPOILERS AHEAD

First off: the game isn't in any way horribly bad. It's just a button smasher with a story that has its good and bad beats. It's not memorable at all, but it could've gone way more downhill in my opinion.

At the start of the game, you meet the mighty Avengers through child fan's eyes - it's pure fanservice and let's be honest, it's dope. It was sweet, but pretty dragged, to be honest. I really didn't need to play as all five Avengers (HAWKEYE IS MISSING, AGAIN) in the first hour of the game, but sure, why not?

For the most part, you see the squad through Kamala Khan's eyes. For those who might have not a clue who the hell Kamala is; I am not wondering about why you don't know who the hell she is. She's a Marvel heroine who outed in 2013 and who will have her own spinoff on Disney+.

And again, Ms Marvel is fine, but not memorable at all. I've never, until this day, met anyone who would say that 'Ms Marvel is my favourite superhero'. I was halfway through the game before I even realized it's Ms Marvel - AFTER SHE PULLED HER DAMN COSTUME OUT. That can be due to my utter ignorance or because I heard of her so little that I can count it on my fingers. In all honesty, I loved Kamala as the story progressed, the gal's not bad at all - but as the whole game, she had good and bad beats. There were times where I wished to play as Iron Man and the game forced me to play as her... Whatever.

Let's look at the three problems I have with this game and three positives I found in the game:

0. (Technically zero since it's a personal problem of mine) The soundtrack and the voice actors:

By any means, I am not trying to say they should hire RDJ for the role of Iron Man and Mark Ruffalo for the role of Banner... But it was so hard to distinguish the voice of Nolan North (For example: Nathan Drake x Iron Man) and Troy Baker (Samuel Drake x Bruce Banner). For me, as for a PS4 gamer, it's annoying to hear the same voices again and again in every game I am genuinely excited about (Idk how Xbox players are familiar with them). Of course, there's even Laura Bailey as the Black Widow; I feel like these are the three only people who do voice acting for games these days and sure, I should've seen that coming.

Side note: Nolan North is not a good fit for Iron Man in the slightest in my opinion, but if you like his Iron Man, that's cool as well!

The soundtrack... M A N, the soundtrack. When I heard Marvel gave a green light to the Avengers game, I expected to hear at least the iconic Alan Silvestri's 'The Avengers'. Problem with this is simple: Marvel had spoiled its consumers with good and memorable soundtracks (don't you tell me you don't remember as they all gathered for the first time). Since it was Marvel itself who gave the green light for this project, which was supposed to be based loosely on the movies' and comic book success, I hoped to get all of it.

It's not Iron Man when AC/DC song isn't playing in the background as he flies through a canyon for his life. I mean, Iron Maiden are fine; but come on. COME ON. It's not the same. It's not the Avengers (WITHOUT HAWKEYE) without their significant theme.

1. IT. BUGS. ALL. THE. TIME and the combat is incredibly repetitive:

When I was little, I was a rage gamer. I could barely play Crash Bandicoot or Rayman without losing my cool. Since then, I grew up, skilled and etc. I try not to rage when playing games since it's simply not worth it.

But when you're replaying a boring mission for the tenth part and you're almost over and SUDDENLY, the game bugs out and you lose control over the character (it starts running in circles, etc.) it sucks shit. And don't let me start on the minor bugs. Like when you don't cross the platform by one pixel and the game doesn't let you make combos when you're in the air and bug into a tree when you bug into a wall, a rock, fucking nothing... Bruh. It was released in August, shouldn't these bugs be fixed by now? The game is fucking broken, hoes. It barely feels like a game ready to launch at times.

When you're so lucky that you don't bug out in the middle of doing something, the combat... It isn't bad. It's not terrible, but the Avengers deserved something better. It didn't deserve mediocre combat that repeats itself in every level. Once you find yourself good combo, you're done for. You can use it to finish the game if you will.

2. There's too many missions, too much information and too much things player has to understand if he wants to play the game properly:

Okay, this might seem to be a little confusing; I didn't understand the game system at all when I first ran it on my PS4. There's story missions, HARM training sessions, daily missions for particular heroes, faction missions (SHIELD, Pym, Stark, etc.) and character-side-story missions, and a lot more.

Trust me, it doesn't sound that hard, but once you open the map menu for yourself... Oh boy, that's a different story. And if it only was the map menu. The inventory and such aren't too collected all together either. Before you can safely tell what is what, it will take you at least a whole afternoon. Also, the fact that game just spills it on you just like that, one thing after another, it doesn't help the overall feel.

On top of that, there are MULTIPLE currencies in the game; some even involve microtransaction. It mostly is involving the customization of the Avengers, so it's not THAT big of a deal; you can get one currency by collecting boxes and stuff, but it takes ages before you can buy one single thingy.

Also, if you would like to get stuff (very useful stuff) from factions (SHIELD and Pym mainly), you have to do in-factions daily quests, which usually require to do a certain amount of things as a particular hero (you can do some quests with Ms Marvel only, some with Black Widow, it usually involves the damage dealt while playing as a character etc.). And if you forget to fetch these minies? Well, no faction points for you, bucko.

The system feels overall too complicated in the begging and even after finishing the game, I am not certain by some.

3. The gameplay of the one and only... Natasha Romanov, and the entirety of Steve Rogers:

Right off the bat: IT. SUCKS. SHIT.

This was your shot in opening our mouths and showing why Black Widow BELONGS to the Avengers in the first place. Like, sure, storywise you proved the point, but gameplaywise... That's a different story.

Out of the bunch, Natasha feels the slowest, most clumsy and overall not too pleasant to play as. Mainly is because her attacks do... Nothing. The gun reloading is basically constant when I have to put it simply and it takes about 3-5 seconds for her to even reload; which can be a matter of life and death inside the game. Sure, she can make herself invisible; but that's like... It. It's not that it would be suffering when you are forced to play as Nat... But not a pleasant experience either.

On the other hand, maybe it's just me. I have friends who told me the same about her gameplay, but maybe there's someone who enjoys the Black Widow. It's my personal with the entirety of the gameplay.

Steve, on the other hand, isn't hard to play as. It's just fucking boring. At the start of the game, I couldn't wait to play as Steve's character. He seemed to be awesome - Jesus fuck, how could I be so wrong? As I said, he's incredibly boring and dry, his skills would do the same amount of work if they even weren't there. I think that Rogers is there just for the shock value (as a value that doesn't even work in the slightest) and nothing more.

As you learn to do the tricks and combos with them, it gets slightly better and skill tree and equipment upgrades can help almost unnoticeable... But really, Steve and Natasha are the absolute worst.

Now the reasons why the game convinced me it isn't a hot mess as I initially thought:

1. The characters, dynamics, chemistry and the overall story:

Sure, it is mainly a basic plotline, a cookie-cutter one, full of cliché - Avengers have to regroup after a traumatic event and you're the one who has to find them and bring them together.

Yet it is quite interesting; the game leads you to believe that Steve Rogers is dead after an event called the 'A-Day' (which you won't believe even if the game does the hardest to make you to, constantly remaining you that 'Oh boy, Cap died, did you know that?') and the Avengers had left to exile because they were considered as big bad for the people and the country. They have their emotional baggage and the banter between Banner and Stark (though it ends too soon), is just the thing that makes them human and relatable.

Even the villains are quite compelling; not like ultra super convincing, but the game can turn around when you least expect it to; which is definitely a huge plus.

The characters were done GOOD. The dialogues are full of personality and jokes you'd expect from each one of them; Banner is a wallflower cutie, Tony fishes for compliments all the time, Natasha is the big independent woman she always was and Thor? CHEF'S KISS, I swear. It hits the Shakespearean vibe perfectly and at the same time, he still is charming and quite funny to hang around.

Every time you can listen to a chit-chat between two characters, it is a great pleasure for you as a Marvel fan. Also, I need to say that regardless of my personal issue with the dub (regarding Tony and Bruce; since they're the people you spend most of your time with), the dialogues for these two characters are on point without a doubt. And I kinda grew fond of the in-game Bruce Banner throughout the course of the game, to be honest.

There are references, jokes, inside jokes, one-liners... The dialogue was done amazingly and that's a huge   T H A N K   Y O U  to the developers.

2. The mind-blowing gameplay of... Tony Stark and Thor and AI, while not being too bright, getting stronger as you do:

In what the Natasha gameplay lacks, these two give you exactly what would you expect and way, way more than you'd ask for. Again, it mainly reflects the personal gameplay preferences of the player; let me tell you why I think these gameplays are, in my opinion, the best.

a) Tony's gadgets and weaponry: The suit itself is bloody brilliant. Once you master the ability to attack and fly at the same time, you have the moments when you can not only feel like Iron Man - but really be Iron Man. It's not even that your gameplay would suddenly become 10x easier; it significantly becomes funnier.

b) Thor's heavy fist-to-fist and Mjolnir preferences: the Mjolnir is bloody brilliant as well. Thor's combat is mainly physically based, but when you want to throw the hammer around like the madman you are, you can suit yourself. You can use the lightning if you please and you can fly if this style of combat suits you. It's all in your hands. Thor can take quite a bit of damage, which is significantly supporting you in this style. If you accidentally drop Mjolnir? Well, call it back and smash them!

Also, regarding the AI... As I said, they're certainly not the brightest sparks in the flame; yet thanks to the power getting bigger as you level up and continue with your story and a huge variety of enemies - from turrets to flying men with flamethrowers. It is just button smasher, but a pleasing one in this regard, I must say.

3. The fanservice to comic book fans, movie fans and loyalty to the property:

As one IGN review once said... "This game makes you feel like Batman." And this game more or less accomplished it as well, but diluted and stripped down. Of course, in no way I can compare this to the masterpiece to the Arkham saga; these games are brilliant.

But there are moments when the game can just drag you inside the story and tell you: "You're Iron Man now, boss. It's in your hands." And it's there. I think the only issue was that the team of devs just took too big of a bite. I wouldn't mind stand-alone titles emerging into one and big Avengers game. That would be fun as well and I would spend my time with it gladly.

To end it: it's a mess, but a good mess you might like. If I was to rate it, would be 5.1/10 Wait until it is on sale, don't rush it. I'm overall disappointed and I most likely will forget I have ever played it.

[irandrura]

Third and final post: what were my other thoughts?

 Let’s talk about the game’s mechanics first.

I am overall very pleased with the battle gameplay. On the battlefield itself the gameplay is more-or-less unchanged from the past, but the character advancement and customisation system is significantly improved. Moving to a single overall character level and giving every character the ability to change classes at will is a much more fluid and elegant system than in the past, and the ability to choose the specific combat arts and abilities each character takes looks like it adds a lot of depth. It’s probably appropriate for the overall ‘teacher’ theme of the game that you have much more power to mould each character’s skills and talents, but I’d like to see it in other games as well. There’s an important balance to strike: on the one hand, characters should not be infinitely malleable, and should all have their personal strengths and weaknesses. On the other, so much of the fun of the game is in developing characters and watching them grow that it’s really good to be able to specialise them.

Speaking of battle gameplay, divine pulse is great. The Fire Emblem series has always struggled a bit with accessibility, and while casual mode definitely made the series easier, it also felt to me like missing the point. Casual mode is too easy, and by removing any risk of permanent death, it felt like it removed a lot of the game’s tension. Divine pulse is a much better way to make the gameplay a bit easier and less frustrating while still keeping the same feel as classic FE gameplay. It gives you just enough room to survive a lucky enemy crit, or a small misjudgement on your part, without totally removing the need to be careful. I approve. That said, I did feel that by late-game you probably had access to too many pulses and it removed the need to conserve them. With a dozen pulses, there isn’t much risk any more, whereas if it stayed capped around three to five, each individual pulse might have felt more precious.

 (Apparently Mila’s Turnwheel in Shadows of Valentia actually did the mechanic first, and I totally forgot about it. Oh dear…)

Other gameplay innovations were more hit-and-miss, for me. Battalions were fine, but I don’t think I would have missed them if they weren’t there. They helped make the battlefield seem busier and more populated, but they don’t seem to have had a massive impact on the game. Similarly, monsters were mostly fine (Cindered Shadows boss notwithstanding), but again, I don’t think I’d mind very much if they didn’t come back. They rarely actually felt like the most dangerous enemies on the battlefield, and just required a slightly different strategy, and… well, maybe it’s just me, but it feels weird for FE to have boss monsters like that. I suppose arguably it’s been a tension in the series going all the way back to the original game? Marth was supposed to fight monstrous dragons, but his entire game was about enemy soldiers, and dragons didn’t stand out as the terrifying beasts they ought to have been. Still, I’m not sure I’m sold on them here.

When I started playing I complained that exploring the monastery was tedious. You can get into a routine later on, but for the most part, I did think it could have been streamlined more. Having lunch with students or going for special training or browsing the marketplace are all fun things to do, but a bit less sprinting all over the map to talk to everyone and return lost items would have been appreciated. The lost item mechanic in particular feels like busywork. A bit of exploring is nice, but only as long as it doesn’t get tedious. It might have been lovely to explore other locations as well – Enbarr, Fhirdiad, the army camp outside Gronder, etc. – but I can understand that the amount of work required would not be practical.

Speaking of tedium, though… I really could have done with a few more maps. Maybe this is my fault for constantly choosing battles, but I found myself replaying the same forest, plains, beach, or volcano map too many times for comfort.

I might also have liked for crests to be a bit more mechanically impactful, given their important to the world and the plot. I regularly forgot which of my units have crests, and what any of the crests do, since most of them have so little effect as to not matter. The only one I did usually remember was Felix’s Crest of Fraldarius, and that was mainly because it makes him do more damage and sometimes made him kill people I’d hoped to leave on one or two HP. I don’t think crests should have been overpowering, but a little more power would still have been nice. It should not have been so easy to forget that they exist.

Similarly, by the time I finished the game I realised that I had never used a Hero’s Relic, even once. I would like to say that this was a principled decision on my part, given that they turn people into monsters (and it looks like I was right about them being made from bone?), but it was mostly just the BUT-WHAT-IF-I-NEED-IT-LATER effect. They all have quite low durability, and while I understand that infinite durability, as with relics in previous games, was not an option due to breaking how combat arts work, it was still enough to discourage me from using them. Perhaps on a higher difficulty they would become necessary? I always feel a bit sad when for mechanical reasons I never let characters use their most iconic weapons.

 Moving on from mechanics…

There is technically a shipping mechanic, with an S support for the protagonist, but it really felt like an afterthought to me. I don’t think the game would lose anything significant if you just removed all the S supports. Compared to a game like Awakening or Fates, where the second generation makes it mechanically important and the plot seems like it works best with a bit of romantic drama (f!Robin/Chrom and m!Robin/Lucina looking particularly intended), Three Houses is surprisingly chaste. I suppose picking a character to be your waifu might be part of the culture now, perhaps looking also at the growing influence of waifu gacha games, but for me it felt tacked on. I can imagine potentially rewriting the game to make romance a more important theme – perhaps talking about Jeralt and Sitri a bit more? – but to be honest I think that that would have been worse for the game overall.

In particular, it stands out to me as sitting a touch oddly alongside the teacher concept. One of the things that stands out to me about Byleth as a protagonist is the way that Byleth is in a superior position relative to the other units. You are a professor, in a position of authority, and you have more life experience. Your job is to teach and mentor these younger characters. This contrasts strongly with Robin, who I think was presented as the equal of the other Shepherds (your relationship with Chrom is that of comrade and friend), and with Corrin, who was presented as an inferior or junior (your siblings are older than you, and they start off with higher status). Because of that superior position, then, I found the game suggesting a feeling of responsibility towards them, and a feeling of pride in their accomplishments.

This might be a bizarre comparison, but in some ways a game that Three Houses reminded me of while playing was Princess Maker 2, a weird little DOS game from 1993 about raising a girl. The core loop of choosing activities to raise the stats of a character in your care, punctuated with occasional outings to fight monsters and get loot, felt quite similar. Similarly, the emotions that seemed to be evoked, to me, were emotions of care and pride: perhaps not paternal as such, since Byleth isn’t that old, but certainly the satisfaction that comes from nurturing a younger and less experienced person.

For the most part that actually worked, and I certainly applaud it for feeling less icky than Fates. If I compare tea parties to that weird Fates mechanic where you could invite characters to your room and touch their face, it is vastly less creepy. So I’m glad that the romance has been toned down.

And speaking of things that I’m glad aren’t prominent…

I’m deliberately burying this part in the middle of a long post. Tumblr is famously ruthless on issues like this, but fortunately I have a very low follower count and you’re all nice people. Basically, one of my worries going into the game was that Three Houses might be the ‘woke’ Fire Emblem game. I am glad to find that concern averted, at least so far. A person could perhaps make some pretty cringeworthy interpretations of Duscur to do with racial politics, but the game itself does not push you in that direction. Tumblr and AO3 love slash shipping, but as far as I can tell that remains as canonically unsupported as ever. Interestingly, while Three Houses has a small handful of same-sex romantic S supports and endings, as far as I can tell they’re all for Byleth and they’re all simply copy-pastes of the opposite-sex versions. It’s enough for me to genuinely wonder whether they’re in the original Japanese at all, or if they were added. I know translations of FE games have played around with character sexualities before, so it’s possible. At any rate, part of me was concerned that this might be the Dragon Age: Inquisition of Fire Emblem, and fortunately it isn’t. (I mean, I did actually enjoy Dragon Age: Inquisition, but at times it did get to be a bit much.) I’ll take this as a valuable lesson when it comes to not believing posts I see on Tumblr. You’d think I would have learned from previous games: popular fan interpretations of a character are often completely wrong. Three Houses seems for the most part to be a very traditional Fire Emblem game.

In terms of the overall series trajectory, I take Three Houses to be an overall positive sign. Awakening and Fates seemed to be taking the series in a direction that I didn’t care for as much, with heavy use of player avatar characters, much more fan service, and more trope-driven plots. Three Houses seems like a return to deeper worldbuilding and characterisation. The cast of characters overall has definitely been a high point: in Fates I sometimes struggled to build a team of characters that I felt truly fond of, but in Three Houses there were usually more characters I wanted to use than I had space for, and there were no recruitable characters that I truly disliked.

Really, the biggest disconnect between me and Three Houses, in the end, is the fact that Three Houses is built for replayability, and I don’t like replaying games very much. However, I don’t think I can in good faith call that a flaw or poor design: obviously there are a lot of people who love replayability, and considering that I got a good eighty hours of gameplay out of my first playthrough (DLC included) and enjoyed it, I’m not really in a position to complain.

So in the end, then, I think that while Three Houses is not my favourite Fire Emblem and does have some places where it could be improved, for the most part I think it’s quite a good outing and a significant improvement on the last few. It is not designed entirely to my tastes, but what is here is mostly good. Three Houses leaves me feeling much more optimistic for the future of the franchise than Fates did.

[mnetruinedmylife]

Untitled Gang AU

This is just my need to write an AKB Gang AU combined with shameless Yuunaa. It’s written in mostly stream of consciousness writing, so the topic jumps to whatever connection my brain jumps to, it can get a little disorientating at times.  It’s also kind of unfinished, but I didn’t want it sitting in a file collecting dust, so here it is.

Warnings: this piece includes: mentions of violence, though nothing too graphic; traumatic flashbacks; mildly sexually charged scenes, though nothing truly nsfw.

 _____________________________________________________________

The town of Akihabara is a place of conflict and contradictions.

Located in the central ward of Tokyo, it has the highest rate of organised crime activity in all of Japan. The police will claim that there are no gangs in Akihabara – after all, the businesses are flourishing and the tourists come in droves, there is no safer place. Yet, every denizen knows that the infamous 48 Gangs originated in there, and it’s even a point of pride for a few.

If the press interviews a resident, they’ll swear up and down that they’ve never felt safer anywhere else. But more than once has a tourist revealed that they’ve been told by locals scuttling about to either stay on the nearby streets north and west of Akihabara train station after dark, or else not go wandering about at all.

The Akihabara sect of the 48 Gangs themselves are full of conflicting information too.

Sometimes, when the residents manage to acknowledge that they exist, one may hear them whisper in hushed tones about how they’re vigilantes, heroes who do the right thing when the police can’t or won’t. But in the same breath they’d tell you to stay away from one particular café in the Hanaokacho district, and the theatre near Taito station. The members of the AKB sect themselves would laugh themselves sick at the term, all the while shooting a defenceless man in the head without batting an eye, because they’re not heroes. They have their own goals, their own plans, most of which revolve around protecting their own, their members, their family, and if some things extend towards heroism, than that’s just a coincidence, and if some things stretch closer to the other side, well, that’s fine too.

Word on the street says it starts during the days when multiple factions ran rampant all over Tokyo. When kids were recruited right out of high school (and some still in it) into the Project gangs and prostitution rings. Some say a man rose up to create a force that could clean up the streets and keep the gang violence where it belongs – between gangs and not involving civilians.

Aki-P they called him, the man who swept up the capitol’s underbelly.

People say also he’s the same man who created the Sakamichi Syndicate and started the bloodiest turf war Tokyo has ever seen. Some say he did it because he gave up on the AKB sect, when they started losing their way and becoming more dangerous than the gangs they rose up against. Others say he did it after losing control of the 48 Gangs, that he was ousted from the inner circle and so created a rival faction as vengeance.

No matter how different the stories get, they all have one similarity. The 48 Gangs are dangerous, the sect in Akihabara doubly so, and anyone who gets in their way, or harms anyone in their sphere, or dares to challenge their grip over Tokyo, take heed and be on the lookout.

They’ll come for you.

__________________________________________________________)

Okada Nana is fifteen when she boards a train from Kanagawa to Tokyo and doesn’t look back.

Kojima Mako and Nishino Miki are similar ages, and in similar situations when they run into each other, having decided to pickpocket the same mark, and the three of them decide to run together. The streets are a little less intimidating with two sets of eyes to watch your back, and two bodies to keep you warm at night.

Mako’s the devious one, with her heart-melting gummy smiles and disarming laugh, she’s able to charm any passer-by and con them out of their hard earned money.

“Sorry sir, I’ve lost my parents, can I please borrow three hundred yen for the train fare?”

It works more often than not, there’s never a shortage of businessmen willing to play hero and help out a stranded school girl. And if she steals the rest of their wallet when they’re not looking, well they usually don’t notice until it’s too late.

Miki is bolder. She takes items right off of shelves when she walks by, and isn’t afraid to go after other street kids who wander into the space they’ve claimed as their own.

Sometimes she’s a little too bold, “Let’s get lunch from there.”

And that’s where Nana comes in. She’s the cautious one, the voice of reason, the brains behind the operations as small and simple as it is.

“We can’t go in there,” Nana hisses, grabbing the other two by the backs of their collars before they do something stupid.

“Why not? The foods cheaper in there than anywhere else in the city,” Miki points out, not unreasonably.

But Nana is adamant, “Yeah for good reason. That café belongs to AKB.”

The innocuous street side café about a minute’s walk from Akihabara station is something of a local legend in the area. Anyone above thirty avoids it like the plague because of the rumours of it being owned by the 48 Gangs, or perhaps it simply just serves the members of AKB. The little number 48 carved into the brickwork above the café doors is a symbol of that.

However, it is popular amongst the youth of the city for that very reason. With many hanging out there to bask in the rebellious feeling of danger, or on adventurous dares from friends. Whispers fly about AKB recruiting from the youth who flock there. A few yankees even claim to be initiates recruited from there. They’re all bald faced liars. No prospective recruit would be stupid enough to loiter in a known gang-owned establishment.  

A few have, however, been known to have been recruited around the station. Our little trio of street rats like to linger around the area, pickpocketing the stupid school kids, the otakus heading to the Gundam café across the street, and the rich folk visiting the golf club on the other side of the block.

They do that for months before they’re approached by a member of AKB.  

Okada Nana is sixteen when Minegishi Minami approaches her and her friends with an offer they can’t refuse.

Her first job is with Mako and two other recruits. They’re tasked with the simple job of delivering a package and Nana has to wonder what’s so important that there needs to be four of them for this. Or maybe it’s not so important, considering there are four barely trained, fresh faced initiates on the job.

They scuttle about the train line, Mako skipping along merrily, Hikari following behind quietly, with Nana and Ayana bickering the whole way. They deliver the package without any issues worth mentioning to one Itano Tomomi at an upscale bar in the heart of the city. It turns out to be cold hard cash, and Nana goes white at the thought of possibly losing that much money. Or rather, what the gang would do to them if they lost that much money.

The next few jobs follow in a similar manner. Nana gets to know the names and quirks of her fellow runners. Innocent, seemingly useless things like:

Iwatate Saho is stronger than she looks.

“Oh god he’s unconscious…are you planning on joining Team K?”

“No, too dangerous. I’m thinking Team B. You know, manning the cafes and the casinos and stuff.”

Mogi Shinobu doesn’t do so well under pressure.

“What the-!? Mogi-san why didn’t you just shoot him?”

“I panicked!”

“I can’t believe you want to join Team A, you’ll die in a week.”

Murayama Yuiri is stupidly pretty.

“Yuiri-chan…We’re half an hour in the wrong direction. You had the map upside down.”

“Sorry! I’m sorry, usually Naa-chan corrects me when I do this, I mean, I’m not blaming Naa-chan! It’s just she…Naa-chan what are you looking at?”

“Err nothing. Nothing, I got distracted.”

Takashima Yurina has somewhat of a crush on her.

“Naa-chan I bought drinks.”

“Where’s one for the rest of us?”

Uchiyama Natsuki knows a ridiculous amount about the law.

“Article 13: every individual has the liberty of protecting his or her own personal information from being disclosed to a third party or made public without good reason.”

“Somehow I doubt beating him up would fly as ‘taking the liberty to protect our property’.”

Apparently they do a somewhat of a good job, because Nana finds herself selected as part of a joint project between all the 48 Gangs. She, Mako and Miki are the representatives of the Akihabara sect and Nana wonders how the hell the upper echelons decided on that.  

“So, what are your specialties?” somehow it falls to Nana to lead this ragtag group.

The Namba sect representative Shibuya Nagisa is actually the oldest (by a few months) but she’s no more experienced than they are – Nana finds out later, the reason why all of the sects sent their freshest recruits. It’s all internal politics, and a mission too important to turn down, but not important enough to ensure successful. In short, they’re expendable and they weren’t even expected to make it home.

The job is in Tokyo, so Nana takes the reigns by default.

She finds that leadership suits her.

It feels like a natural extension of what she was already doing when they were just three idiots on the street, planning operations meticulously so that they come back in one piece, and utilising the skills of her teammates in the most efficient way possible. There are three more idiots to account for now, but she is familiarised with them soon enough.

Nagisa is the strongest in hand-to-hand combat amongst the seven of them, Sakae’s Ryoha the most accurate shot, Hakata’s Meru joins Miki in being the loud charismatic distraction, while Mako and Hakata’s Mio are swift and sneaky with their hands. It’s the perfect team for covert operations. Which makes sense, considering they’re being sent south of the Kanda river, into Sakamichi territory to gather intel on the new gang that’s popped up by the Roppongi hills.

It seems like a simple mission.

Get in, look around for suspicious activity, get out. There isn’t supposed to be confrontation or combat involved.

But no plan survives contact with the enemy, and no one cares about supposed to be’s when there are guns pointed at their heads.

When she’s desperately wrestling with a knife that wants nothing more than to dig into her flesh, when she’s slammed against the wall, breath knocked out of her, when a pair of hands wrap around her throat and squeeze, and her lungs scream as her legs thrash uselessly underneath, her vision blurs, and the terrifying realisation that she won’t actually get out of this situation alive sets in – oh god is that Miki screaming she hears in the background? – the air is rushing out her lungs and –

“Naa-chan. Naa-chan! Snap out of it, you’re not there anymore.”

Nana eyes fly open, as she dashes up, heart still thudding in her chest. She has to make sure everyone’s okay, what happened to Miki, and oh god Mio was stabbed, and where the hell is Mako, and they lost contact with Ryoha half an hour in, and Nagisa is unconscious, and no matter how deep a breath she takes, it doesn’t seem to be enough. Her chest burns, she can’t breathe and – a hand lands on her shoulder, the accompanying scent of hinoki pine only just barely manages to stamp down the instinct to lash out.

Yuiri’s concerned face drags her back to reality, “It’s okay. You’re home. You’re not there, you’re safe now,” to the little hole in the wall apartment she has (firmly on the AKB side of the Kanda river), to the bed she’s sharing with the pretty distraction on her team. Though, perhaps that would be unkind to say, even if she refuses to think of what they’re doing as anything more than just stress relief, blowing off steam.  

Belatedly Nana realises that she has a death grip on Yuiri’s upper arm, she loosens her grip but doesn’t let go, “S-sorry,” her hands are shaking, she’s trembling and she can’t get it to stop, and Yuiri’s murmuring nonsense things in her ear.

“Why are you sorry? I’m sorry, I’m such an idiot,” Yuiri apologises with a grimace. They’ve established early on that Nana does not like hands anywhere near her neck, that one horrendous mission spoiled that forever, but sometimes Yuiri forgets, and the resulting post-traumatic flashbacks are the most mood-killing thing possible in the bedroom, or sometimes out of it too.

The first time it happens is in a street by the AKB theatre of all places. It’s after a job with just the two of them, when they’re both high on adrenaline, breaths heavy, eyes glazed, still in the heat of violence, fresh from a near-death scuffle. Nana’s not sure who jumps whom first, but suddenly they’re in each other’s space, hands tangled in hair, and tongue against teeth. Yuiri tastes like citrus that night, some kind of lemon mixed, and the deeper she kisses her the more she can taste the metallic tang of blood and the salt of sweat mixed in.

Nana closes her eyes tightly, a low, throaty moan of approval rumbles deep in her throat as her back hits the wall with a light thud, the moan turning markedly louder as the elder girl’s fingers slip inside the waistband of her shorts and shoves them down over her hips. Strong, forceful fingers dig into her and pull her in even tighter as her mouth is once again claimed in a desperate, hungry kiss.

“Yuu-chan,” she moans, gasping at the feel of the other girl’s tongue against her throat.

“Yes?” Yuiri’s lips curls into a smile against Nana’s, she groans low and deep as Yuiri’s hips grinds into her own.

“Don’t stop.”

It’s easier with Yuiri, they understand each other in ways her other teammates simply don’t. Maybe it’s because the most of the others are like what Nana was at first, just street kids and lowly thieves dragged in way over their heads. When Nana and Mako come back from that FUBAR recon mission with their hands soaked in blood, the others look at them different. With wariness in their eyes, with guarded stances, with hints of fear in their faces.

Mako’s stupid grin thaws their hesitance soon enough. But Nana has never been that kind of charismatic. Not in the way that makes other at ease. She’s always been harder, more serious, and that only makes her look much more intimidating now.

“You’re still here?” Nana raises an eyebrow when she realises that Yuiri is still lingering about. These days, most of her team disappear faster than a blink of an eye the moment the job is done, not wanting to be around for longer than necessary.

But Yuiri only looks at Nana like she’s the one being unreasonable, “Don’t we usually go for kakigori after a job?”

“You want to have desserts with me? What, not afraid I’ll snap and kill you?” Nana asks, sadly only half sarcastically, because with the way the rest of the team treat her, it seems that’s exactly what they’re thinking.  

The other girl snorts and actually has the audacity to chuckle, “You’re going to have do a lot more than be traumatised to scare me. I’m sure I’ve killed more people than you.”

Yuiri wasn’t some street kid when she got recruited. She was born into this world, her family neck-deep in the underbelly of Japan, and she’s no stranger to violence. There’s only one other like that on their team, Nana would’ve overlooked Mion entirely if Yuiri hadn’t pointed her out.

“You can always tell when someone’s killed before,” Yuiri says, “It’s in the eyes.”

The months blur into years, and before Nana knows it most of her team have the same eyes, the ones who are still alive anyway. The ones who are left split off into the different teams of AKB eventually. Mako, Ayana, Mogi and Komiharu are sent to Team K, with their dangerous combat orientated jobs and Nana just hopes they keep coming home. Saho and Saki are off in the relatively safer B, the front jobs, manning the café and the casinos and the above-board stations. Yukari and Mion end up in A, and Nana hopes beyond hope that they don’t lose themselves in there.

Nana and Yuri themselves never leave 4. They’re the ones chosen to train up the newbies, and she has no idea who thought that is a good idea. She never actually does anything too important in the gang – up until the moment she accidentally founds an entirely new sect.

She’d been in Fukuoka visiting Mio and Meru, and it’s in Hiroshima, on her way back to Tokyo that Nana manages to get herself recognised and chased. She hated cults with a passion. Why did they have a problem with her anyway? It’s not like the 48 Gangs had territory claimed in Hiroshima –

Ow.

She falls off the fence the she’s attempting to climb over and lands on her back with a dull thud. The grass is soft at least. She spends a few moments just staring up at the night sky, it’s actually quite breathtaking when you’re far away enough from the city lights to appr—

“Are you okay?”

Oh, there’s a kid in pink and purple. A teenager really. Nana can’t tell ages anymore.

“…m’fine. Sorry didn’t mean to land in your backyard,” she says. An apartment complex’s backyard anyway, she realises when she sits up. It’s a rundown building that’s clearly not in official use. It appears there are kids squatting in it.

It’s difficult to tell in the dark, but when Nana squints she can make out maybe two more teens peeking out from behind a window.

“Wanna come inside?” the girl asks, and Nana really really shouldn’t.

A gunshot sounds in the air though, and Nana quickly scrambles to follow the kid inside. Being noble is all well and good, but it definitely doesn’t beat being alive.

When Nana awakens the next morning, she hears furious whisperings back and forth between the teens – and there’s clearly more of them this morning than there was last night.

“—it’s dangerous, she’s clearly a member of the 48 Gangs! You saw that tattoo!” an unknown voice hisses, and Nana wonders when and how they saw the little 48 tattoo on the back of her neck. That’s not usually visible and she’s usually a light enough sleeper to wake up if they touch her.

“Yeah, that means she can help us!” that’s Chiho, one of the girls she remembers half-heartedly greeting the night before. The one with the bruises on her face.

“We can’t trust a gang member!”

“So what else are we going to do? They took Yumirin, we’ll never get her back ourselves!”

Nana’s always had a soft spot for stupid kids. It’s probably why they never took her off Team 4, and how she finds herself hopping all over the setouchi region, rescuing girls from a fox worshipping cult.

Girls who somehow end up forming the Setouchi sect of the 48 Gangs – Sashihara-san comes down from Fukuoka to make it official and everything.

Mogi never lets her forget it.

“Hey Naa-chan, remember the time you went to visit Mio and Meru and ended up playing prince charming and rescuing ten damsels in distress?”  

 _____________________________________________________________)

Might finish it later, might not. Who knows...

[animal-moon-harvest-crossing]

Magical Melody Remake - A Wishlist

Based off my post from yesterday that I wrote!

MM generally gets a bad rap, I think, from the fandom overall. Which is fair, in all honesty! And as a kid, it was frustrating to play! But now as an adult, I treat playing MM as a challenge to overcome, and once you get past the clunky controls, it’s actually a very fun game to play!

So, if I were in charge of remaking MM for the Switch, here’s some of the changes I would implement, or like to see.

The controls are the first, obviously. MM is so notoriously slow, with how it takes a few seconds to get your character moving into a run, the menus, pretty much...Everything. And there was no real reason to have it like that, so I would hope that would be the first thing to get fixed lol.

Proper volume control!!! I dunno how I put up with it as a kid, but now as an adult, I can’t stand hearing all the little “beeps” and “boops” when I’m going through all the menus. I now turn the volume of my tv way down, or just off when I’m playing the game because there’s no option to turn the SFXs off. I have the same issue with basically...All older HM games. But that’s probably just a me thing :’D

So I actually am a fan of the layout of Flowderbud Village 2.0! MM’s unique gimmick is that you start off with 1 of 3 properties to build on, then start buying up more and more as you progress, to the point where you can basically own more land than the town itself! I really enjoy this system, and I feel it makes the farming experience much more unique being able to have your “main hub” kinda anywhere on the map. 

So of course we gotta talk about the character models- Most people have an issue with everyone looking like weird chibi baby things. I personally was never too bothered, but I wouldn’t mind them getting “updated” either. Not like the models that are in the current FoMT game, but something that just doesn’t make everyone look like...that lol. I wouldn’t mind it as much if they were also given portraits as well when you talk to them.

And not just updated models, but also updated designs as well! So the cast of MM is a mix between characters that appeared in SNES AND in Save the Homeland/Hero of Leaf Valley. The SNES characters did get some updated looks, as they’re not those EXACT same characters, but I would love to see everyone get a wardrobe update that set them apart as brand new characters, or as the decendents of who they’re based off of. 

Interesting to note though, that some of the characters who share a name and likeness to SNES...Are actually their grandkids! Or, most of them are! Eve will mention that she’s named after her grandmother, who she looks very similar to. The implication is that Eve from SNES is her grandmother! I think she’s the only one who mentions it, but other SNES bachelorettes are also clearly based off those counterparts. MM!Ellen works on the ranch, but she loves to bake, and your rival for her is Carl, a patissiuer. Ann is an aspiring inventor, just like her SNES counterpart. Maria, the Mayor’s daughter, was also his daughter in SNES and also worked at the library. Nina looks basically the same, and also works on the farm that sells seeds, and still loves flowers! There’s a lot of hidden lore for these characters that you can only learn about if you happen to catch them at the right places (usually at home, try it out sometime!)

I would...Totally get rid of their “voices”. Some of them sound okay, but others...Ahheehhhh. May as well just dump ‘em altogether lol.

Let! Us! Continue! Playing! The! Game! If! We! Marry! Jaime!! In the original Japanese version, Jaime was just like all the other bachelors/ettes, and in that same version, there were rival marriages! Both these features were removed for the North American version. I’m not sure if they were put back in for the Wii re-release, but I doubt they were.

Which speaking of marriage...Of course the chance to romance both bachelors and bachelorettes!! But also, keep Jaime androgynous! The original (English) player booklet for the GCN mentions only one that Jaime will “always be the opposite sex” of your character. But even then, Jaime is never referred to with pronouns or gendered language in the English version of the game. I know something similar happened with Inari in Trio of Towns, so I just hope xSeed would continue it!

The child growing up into an actual, well, child! Back in the day, your son (and yes it was usually always a son) would learn to walk at most, and then that would be it! He’d be stuck in diapers and his little mouse hat forever! I would love for the child to now wear clothes, take off the hat (or maybe wear a baseball cap??), and be able to talk to you and participate in events around town.  As for the look of your child, I’ve always been a sucker for “your child physically resembles who you married but dresses like you”. 

Make training the horse freeaaaaaking easier!!! I’ve never won a Horse Race because I couldn’t figure out beforehand how to properly train my horse. It’s based off hearts but also star level?? But getting the horse in and out of the barn is so tedious that I just...Don’t bother half the time. Sorry horsey!!

And speaking of the barn, and the coop for that matter, an actual, proper bell that you can use from the outside. Also, maybe not use up stamina when using the makers?? I don’t know why that was a thing to begin with, but it’d be real annoying to waste stamina on that first BEFORE getting to water your crops. Luckily, this was back in the day when crops only needed to be watered once a day but still.

The whole stamina system would need a re-do. I hate that just about EVERYTHING cost stamina to do, requiring you to basically stop playing for that day or to go out of your way to get food to restore it. This is especially annoying in your first spring before the inn and the bar are built, and money is harder to come by.

Keeping the tools separate from the inventory? I really hated how this became a thing moving onwards, where tools would take up precious item slots in your tiny rucksack. And since the basket didn’t really make a reappearance in this game in particular, it was extremely difficult trying to explore and forage in the early game with all your tools taking up space. I make a routine of running in and out of my house and keeping the tool box right by the front door to swap them in and out, and...I shouldn’t have to but that’s the best system I have. So it’d be nice to Not have to do that again!

Music Notes; I can take ‘em or leave ‘em. I don’t mind the challenge of them being there, and it feels kinda nice to always have something to work towards. I know they’re a part of the plot, but it’s still so exciting to even now unlock them at random.

That’s all I can think of for now! Did you think of something different? What are you feelings on Magical Melody as a whole, and what would you like to change about it?

[aethelar]

All the world’s a game

And Izuku’s the main player. A My Hero Academia AU where Izuku has a gamer quirk.

-

Izuku Midoriya’s abilities started developing when he was three years old, marking him as one of the eighty percent majority that had a quirk. They didn’t give any sign that they’d started, of course; no small objects flying towards him, no fire hiccoughing out when he sneezed. Nothing obvious at all in fact, but quietly behind the scenes, his quirk developed.

“An invisible quirk,” the doctors called it, a year later, when Izuku’s x-rays came back free of extra toe joints. “It’s possible it has an obscure activation criteria, or an effect which hasn’t been noticed yet.” This particular doctor pulled a rusty but at least somewhat sincerely sympathetic face at Izuku and cautioned him, “You may never find out what your quirk is, I’m afraid.” He laughed, then added as though he couldn’t resist the pun, “Invisible quirks can be very hard to see.”

“Shows what he knows,” Kacchan scoffed when Izuku faithfully relayed the explanation. “If you were invisible you’d be impossible to see. Stupid old man.”

“I don’t think that’s what he meant,” Izuku said, pushing himself into a jog to keep up with the taller boy. He ran, as he always did, for precisely seven seconds, then walked for four, then ran for seven, then walked, and so on.

“Keep up,” Kacchan yelled from several paces ahead.

Izuku ran for another seven seconds at top speed before his feet slowed stubbornly to a four second walk.

-

“Maybe,” he theorised to Kacchan several months later, “maybe it’s a brain quirk.”

Kacchan wrinkled his nose. “What, like a super nerd? That’s lame.”

“Izuku’s super smart thought,” Tsubasa said thoughtfully from his other side. “He’s really good at homework.”

“That’s even lamer. How is homework going to help him be a hero?”

“I don’t think it’s homework.” Izuku frowned, trying to find the words to explain something he wasn’t even sure existed. “It’s like… I always know where I am if I’ve been somewhere, but I have to actually think about it first. And I don’t know how I know but I do, you know?”

“Oh, that’s a quirk?” Tsubasa asked, wings shifting in excitement. “I do that too! I thought I just recognised places. You think I have two quirks?”

“Yes, I mean, no, but - as in, I think I have a map? In my head? Of where I am now and where I’ve been before. But a moving map, not a paper one. And I fill it in when I go places.”

“A map?” Tsubasa’s wings drooped. “Oh. I can’t read maps. They don’t make sense.”

“Maps aren’t quirks and you’re both idiots,” Kacchan said. He pushed himself off from the wall and landed with a harsh thud on the ground, palms sparking with just enough force to slow his descent, and Tsubasa and Izuku scrambled to follow. Tsubasa opened his wings into a controlled fall with a graceless but effective flap, while Izuku turned around and began the lengthy process of climbing down hand over hand.

“Slow,” Kacchan complained. The fact that he couldn’t scale the same wall didn’t seem to occur to him, nor the fact that it was a smooth stone, entirely lacking in footholds or anything to grip.

“Sorry,” Izuku said, dropping the last step and waiting the required four seconds before he was ready to run. He was up to eleven seconds now before he needed a rest, but climbing was harder - he could manage six, and never on glass, under an overhang, or in the rain. Six seconds of going vertically up pretty much any non-smooth surface, but then his arms and legs would seize up and he’d go tumbling to the floor until his required four seconds of rest were up.

(He’d learnt the hard way.)

 -

“I’m hungry,” Izuku explained again.

“You want to be hungry and in trouble? Move, Deku!”

“Kacchan,” Izuku said, voice wobbling dangerously close to tears, “I’m hungry. I can’t run. It doesn’t work.” And, because Kacchan still looked mutinous, he sniffed and added: “It’s part of my quirk.”

Kacchan threw his hands up with far too much exasperation for any six year old to reasonably feel, then settled the issue by dragging Izuku into an uncomfortable piggy back. “Anything else I should know about you being hungry?” he asked, jabbing an elbow into Izuku’s side to make him stop squirming.

“Um. If I’m hungry for too long I get sick?”

“Your quirk is the most useless thing ever, I swear.”

 -

“Here,” Katsuki said, roughly shoving a packet of crisps, a juice box and an apple into Izuku’s bag. He knew better than to give them to Izuku to hold directly; he had two hands, and therefore could hold two things, and if given any more to hold had a bad habit of dropping them on the floor like an idiot.

Because he was. An idiot. One who couldn’t be trusted to take care of himself, which is why Katsuki was feeding him, so he wouldn’t go hungry and stop running again.

“Ah, Kacchan - wait -” And the second Katsuki let go of the last item, Izuku staggered to a halt and sat down hard.

“Deku,” he growled. “What.”

“It can only hold ten things! You put too many in there and now it’s full.” Izuku shrugged himself out of the straps and tugged forlornly on the top handle, but the backpack stayed resolutely on the floor as though Katsuki had tipped lead bricks into it instead of food.

Tsubasa took the opportunity to lean over and peer inside the bag. “There’s still space,” he said helpfully. “It’s only half full.”

“And anyway! I’ve seen you carrying things for Auntie, there’s no way you can’t lift that!” Katsuki had seen Izuku casually lift a table to move it around the living room. For a scrawny mess of big eyes and freckles, Izuku was sometimes freakishly strong.

The scrawny mess in question heaved at the drooping school bag, twig-muscles standing out on twig-arms as he failed to make it budge. “They weren’t eleven things, Kacchan! Quirk says ten max!”

“Your quirk is a pain. Tsubasa, carry Deku’s bag.”

“‘Kay,” the other boy said, lifting the backpack up with the tip of an outstretched wing. “Have you got any more juice boxes? I finished mine.”

“You can have mine,” Izuku offered. “Then I’ll be able to carry it again.”

Katsuki knocked Tsubasa’s hand away. “No,” he said. “It’s for Deku when he’s hungry. I’ll get you one after class.”

“‘Kay.”

 -

“Ten things,” Kacchan said later. Izuku turned towards him warily; he recognised the tone of voice. Kacchan was planning.

Kacchan’s plans only sometimes went right for others involved, but it was never a good idea to try and back out. Wariness was about the best Izuku could manage.

“Any ten things?”

“Um,” Izuku said. “I think so? I tested some of it, and it’s definitely ten. But if they’re in something they only count as one.” He got a somewhat blank look, so pulled his bag towards him to explain. “Like, here. My pencil case. It’s got ten pencils in it, right? But it’s only one thing because it’s a pencil case, so it counts as one. Even though it’s actually ten. Or, well, ten pencils plus one case so eleven. It’s eleven, but it goes in my bag as one thing.”

Kacchan turned the case over in his hands. “Huh,” he said, squinting at Izuku. “Could you put a hundred pencils in ten cases and put those ten in one big case and put that in your bag?”

“Yeah, I think so! So long as they fit. I did some testing when I discovered it, I think I have the notebook somewhere -”

“Nerd,” Kacchan interrupted with a roll of his eyes. “I believe you, I don’t need your diary.” He snapped the pencil case shut and handed it back - then doubled over laughing when it slammed Izuku’s hands to the floor as soon as he took it.

“Ow - Kacchan! What did you - you added something to it!”

“A sticker,” Kacchan wheezed. “I put a sticker in it and you actually can’t - oh my god Deku your quirk - a freakin’ sticker -”

“Ten of anything, Kacchan! Only ten!”

Anything, it turned out, really meant anything. The backpack wasn’t big enough for Kacchan’s liking so they retrieved Izuku’s mum’s suitcase from under her bed and filled it with the heaviest things in the house, including, at one point, Kacchan himself. Ten items or less, Izuku lifted it no problem. Add the sticker as an eleventh, and it crashed to the ground.

That part wasn’t so bad, but Izuku had two hands as well, and each hand could hold one of any item. Including Kacchan. And the sofa. But add the sticker, and, well, that’s how Izuku’s arm broke.

“Shit,” Kacchan swore, staring at it white-faced. In any other circumstances Izuku would’ve protested at the language, but he could be forgiven for being distracted.

“It’s going backwards,” he said with a morbid fascination that was probably the only thing keeping the pain at bay.

“Don’t touch it!” Kacchan slapped his good hand away. “And don’t tell Aunty! It’s not hurt that bad. I’ll get you a chocolate bar tomorrow if you stay upstairs and I’ll tell Aunty you’re sick and don’t say anything.”

“But it needs a plaster - ow!”

Izuku’s eyes filled with tears and Kacchan dropped his arm as though burned, eyes wide. “I’m sorry, don’t cry,” he flapped. “I’ll get a plaster, you’re fine, right? Plaster, bed, chocolate, don’t tell Aunty, stop crying. Right?”

“Two chocolate bars,” Izuku argued between sniffs. “And I want the All Might plasters, the normal ones aren’t as good.”

“Done,” Kacchan agreed, and hustled the shorter boy down to the bathroom. The All Might plaster was dutifully stuck on Izuku’s shoulder (they weren’t sure if it would work there, but seeing as his arm hurt when it was touched the shoulder seemed the safest place), Izuku himself was practically barricaded in his room, and Kacchan prepared his best innocent smile for lying through his teeth to every parent in the vicinity.

It was foolproof.

The fact that Izuku woke up in the morning with his arm completely healed only proved how flawless their planning really was. (That and the unmistakable power of All Might plasters).

 -

“Where’s Deku?”

“Here!”

“Shit, don’t do that! Make some noise or something, seriously.”

“Sorry, I forgot I was crouching.”

“Your damn quirk Deku, I swear to god.”

“Sorry, Kacchan.”

 -

“Again, Midoriya,” the gym teacher said. “And this time actually try to run the course without stopping.”

“But sensei, I can only manage thirty eight seconds of sprint and it takes two minutes and four seconds for each lap -”

“Midoriya!”

Izuku growled wordlessly and stomped back to the starting line. “Middle school is the worst.”

“You want me to hit him for you?” Tsubasa offered, standing ready with a stopwatch. He eyed the teacher, carefully comparing his wing strength to the man’s arm muscles in the way Katsuki had taught him. “I can hit him for you.”

“No hitting teachers, Tsubasa. No hitting anyone. We’ll get detention.”

“You and Katsuki will rescue me,” he said with easy conviction. “You’re heroes, it’s what you do.” It made Izuku smile at him, briefly lifting his mood. His old teachers had got used to the oddities and restrictions his quirk put on him, but even a month into middle school and his new teachers didn’t seem to have caught up. In a class full of visible quirks and Kacchan, Izuku was easy to overlook; it was an annoyance, but not one worth getting into trouble for.

At least, Izuku didn’t think so. Kacchan had practically exploded with protective fury when a teacher had tried to stop Izuku eating between classes, but Kacchan liked exploding so it probably wasn’t a good test.

“Heroes don’t hit people,” he told Tsubasa. “Unless they’re villains.”

“Yeah, but villains are people who disagree with heroes, and you ‘n Katsuki are heroes, so you can hit anyone who disagrees with you. It’s how it works.”

“It’s really not -”

“Midoriya! Less talking, more running!”

Izuku fought the urge to glare back at the teacher. Tsubasa, far too honest with his feelings and unused to fighting his urges, glared double.

“Let’s get this over with,” Izuku muttered, settling himself into ready position. “Count me down?”

When he was done, the time on Tsubasa’s stopwatch showed a clean six minutes, twelve seconds, with a precise time of two minutes four seconds per lap. Exactly the same as the previous two times Izuku had run the course.

He might not be the fastest of runners in a straight out sprint, but at least Izuku was consistent. If it wasn’t such a pain to stop and eat when sprinting made his hunger ran out he’d make a good long distance runner, but it was a pain, so he didn’t.

Also quirk use was forbidden in gym class.

“You need to push your boundaries,” the teacher said with a disappointed head shake. “I won’t tolerate slacking. Here, collect these and take them back to the equipment cupboard.” He pressed three stopwatches into Izuku’s hands, and Izuku could only watch in resignation as one of them tumbled to the ground.

“I’ll get it in a sec, sensei,” he said dully and trudged off to deposit the two in his hands before he could be accused of being disrespectful of school property.

Tsubasa jogged up, the fallen stopwatch carefully retrieved. “I can still hit him. You’re sure you don’t want me to hit him? Kacchan won’t mind.”

“No hitting people, Tsubasa.”

“Even villains?”

“Sensei’s not a villain.”

“Oh. Do you want me to hit him anyway?”

“Tsubasa.”

 -

By the time he was fourteen, Izuku thought he had most of his quirk nailed down. He wasn’t sure what the common theme was - he had suspicions and ideas, but seriously, a gamer quirk? Ridiculous - but he was pretty certain he’d got the features in place.

The map he’d started filling in as a four year old covered most of the city by now, with long spider legs arching out along the train lines. It didn’t include a compass, but he could usually tell which way was which just by tracking his position along the map as he moved. It was on the one hand less useful than the map his phone gave him as it didn’t show places he hadn’t been, but also more useful in that he could zoom it into buildings and bring up floor plans if he concentrated hard enough.

His phone didn’t give him as many headaches though.

The issue with only being able to hold one thing in each hand, or ten things in a bag, required some creative thinking. Packing for a trip anywhere was the worst, everything had to be grouped in stacks of ten and placed in other bags just to allow him to pick up a suitcase. His school bag was usually ok, but carrying shopping was a logistical nightmare. Thank god for multipacks, that’s all Izuku was saying.

On the other hand, there didn’t seem to be a weight limit on what those items were, as Kacchan had so spectacularly discovered when he dropped a sofa on Izuku’s head and broke his arm. Izuku hadn’t found much use in his life so far for being able to deadlift a bus (plus up to ten passengers, but the bus was the impressive thing), but he was pretty sure it would come in handy as a hero.

And the other discovery from that day with the sofa, although neither of them had realised it at the time - sleep was good for Izuku. None of this waiting around, lying awake in bed unable to drift off; if it was night, and Izuku was in a bed, then he slept the healing sleep of the dead right through to sunrise and woke up in perfect health. On the plus side, he never had a nightmare, and never had an illness or injury follow him through to the next morning.

On the downside, Izuku didn’t budge from bed until the sun was up. In summer, he woke early. In winter, he still woke kind of early because sunrise in Japan only ever got as late as around seven-ish. But if he needed to be up before then, well… No. Not physically possible. A villain could burn the house down and tango on the ashes, and Izuku wouldn’t stir until sunrise came.

He got surprisingly used to skipping sleep all together when he needed to be up early. That and apologising for being late, he got the apologies down to an art form.

(He hadn’t yet unlocked the feature that wouldn’t let him sleep when enemies were nearby for the simple fact that, at fourteen, Izuku didn’t have enemies. Nor had he discovered yet that he couldn’t sleep without a bed because why on earth would he try to sleep without a bed? He’d once mortally offended Kacchan by offering to take the floor when they were having a sleepover, and Kacchan had responded by drowning Izuku in blankets and smothering him with pillows until he apologised and promised never to do it again.)

And, of course, his stamina. By fourteen, Izuku could sprint for forty six seconds before his forced rest of four seconds. Climbing gave him twenty three seconds, which was usually enough to reach some kind of ledge or windowsill to recharge his energy. The rain was still deadly, as was the bucket of water he and Kacchan had experimented with that other one time Izuku broke his arm. He could hang stationary on to the side of a building practically endlessly, but if he reached his twenty three second limit of actively climbing, he just dropped.

Incidentally, Tsubasa had got surprisingly good at catching him.

So, that’s Izuku’s quirk: he navigates weird, he sleeps weird, he runs and climbs weird, he carries things weird, and if he ever gets too hungry then he just goes weird. He’s only once pushed his hunger long enough to make himself sick, which was more to find out his limits than anything else. They’ve probably changed in the past few years, but when he was twelve he had two hours, twenty six minutes between being unable to run and being so hungry that he threw up in a trash can. Thirty four minutes after that and he’d been shivering and sweating and unable to stand, and eight minutes after that he’d been found by Kacchan and yelled at and force fed corn soup from the closest vending machine.

Ah, fond memories.

All of which led, approximately seven months ago, to Izuku deciding: “Yuuei. I’m going to apply to Yuuei.”

“Well, duh,” Kacchan said, making a face at him over his spicy chilli noodles. “We’re going to be heroes. Where else would we go?”

“Doesn’t Shiketsu train heroes as well?” Tsubasa asked. Kacchan rolled his eyes and kicked him in the shin.

“We’re going to be number one hereos,” he amended. “All Might went to Yuuei. If I’m going to be number one and Deku’s going to be number two then we need to go to Yuuei too. It’s logic.”

And when Kacchan put his unique stamp of approval on one of Izuku’s plans, that was it. The plan was happening. He, of the green hair and the twiggy, bus-benching arms, would go to Yuuei and be the number two hero.

Off the edge of his mental map of Tokyo, in a part of the city that he hadn’t yet unlocked the map for, a small marker started flashing in his mind.

Main quest: Yuuei Entrance Exam. Achieve a passing grade in both the written and practical portions of the famous hero class entrance exam and begin your journey to becoming a pro hero...

[phoenixrisesoncemore]

The Feast of the Annunciation at 35,000 ft

March 25th, Tolkien, and the X-Men

[Content Warning for discussion of Panic Attack Disorder and Anxiety Disorders as well as Dissociation]

Panic attack disorder really messes with you.

It stops you from doing the things you really want to do. It prevents you from enjoying life. And because—intellectually—you know the fear it generates is irrational, it not only steals life from you, but leaves you feeling guilty for letting it.

“If only I could have been brave,” you think. If only you could have stared down the beast.

You never feel so much like an animal as when you are having a panic attack; the urge to escape is all-encompassing. Your heart is pumping blood faster than it ever has before. Every second is elongated. Whatever you didn’t smell before is suddenly suffocating you. Whatever you didn’t see before is suddenly ballooning across your visual field and, oh, was that color always so bright? Noises are all so loud, touch is all so much. You must get away, your body tells you, your cells tell you, your bile tells you—get away or you’ll die! But where do you go? You start to disassociate. You sink into feelings of surreality. Is this you? Whose are these eyes you’re seeing out of? There’s an extra step between the thought and the movement of the hands. The part of your mind that is not ruled by the clump of cells that kept your distant ancestors safe from Things With Jaws is perfectly aware there is nothing to be afraid of. There are no jaws. There is no predator. There is no cause for fear. But there is still fear.

Gripping, penetrating, chemical, animal fear.

Against the wash of hormones, the cerebral cortex holds no power, it can only watch you, watch itself, detached and analytical. It realizes—quite quickly, really, and in parallel—two things. One: that the thing you need to escape from is yourself, and Two: that, therefore, there is no escape. Be reasonable, it asks you. But who can escape their own mind?

No matter. The urge is still there, and it’s so hard to suppress.

Now extrapolate the fear of having a panic attack to the enclosed cabin of an airplane at 35,000 ft.

You see the problem, I’m sure. And yet...

A year ago today, after a lifetime in fear of flying, I got on a plane for the very first time. How? The Maker of Middle-earth exhibit came to New York.

I’d been drawn back into my Tolkien Obsession about 4 years before, digging deeper than I had in over a decade into notes and reference books. I was remembering what Middle-earth had meant to me—what it had given me—when I was a teen. In light of all that, could I miss what might be the only chance in my entire life to see some of these things in person?

But it was a long drive, I didn’t want to go alone, and we only had so many free days during my husband’s spring break. And it was New York! I’d never been to New York. Think of all the other things we could see while we were there! Did we want to spend that time driving instead? I tied myself in knots for days while ticket prices rose, until a scant week remained before we’d have to leave. 

Watching the turmoil practically radiate from me, my husband turned to me and said, “If you go, and you see it, will you cry?”

I didn’t even have to think: “Yes.”

He smiled, though he had already known the answer. “Then you should go. Do you want me to order the tickets now?”

I swallowed, then froze. 

This was a trip about Tolkien, about my greatest love, the primary lease-holder of my brain. 

So why am I peppering this with comic panels?(1)

In 1976 Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum decided to shake things up in a comic called The Uncanny X-Men. They wanted to add a cosmically powerful character, and they wanted this character to be a woman—a first for parent company, Marvel.

Marvel hadn’t had the most progressive run with their female leads. X-Men in particular had started out with only a single woman on the team: the kind telekinetic Jean Grey, whose primary characterization seemed to be her gender. She had experienced some changes in the 13 years since the first issue of X-Men was published, the revelation that she was also a telepath among them. We’d later learn that her powers developed too early when she telepathically linked, in desperation, with her best friend, Annie, as Annie lay dying, allowing Jean to feel what it was to die without dying herself, causing her to grow into the fundamentally compassionate human being we knew so well. But back in the mid 70s, compared to the more diverse and exciting cast that Claremont had devised just a scant year prior, Jean seemed rather dull, and not long after Claremont took over, her character decided to leave superhero life behind.

Or so it seemed. 

Pulled out of retirement on a space mission gone wrong, Jean finds herself trapped with her former teammates on a space shuttle. The shuttle is on a re-entry course, but must pass through a massive solar flare. Sealing her teammates, many against their will, in the shuttle’s only shielded chamber, Jean does the most quintessentially Jean thing: she decides to sacrifice herself for her friends. She telepathically absorbs the flight training of the only pilot on board, locks herself in the cockpit, and prays she can use her telekinetic shield to keep herself alive long enough to land the shuttle.

We do not get to see what happens to her, and nor do her friends, as the shuttle crashes into Jamaica Bay. 

But we know. This time Jean did die: either her flesh was burned to ash by the sun’s fury, or her body was crushed in the crash, or was she drowned in the depths of the bay.

She is truly gone.

But Phoenix Rises in her place.

Claremont took the woman perceived as both the kindest and the weakest of the X-Men and made her Marvel’s first cosmic female hero, a being that has “the power to cut and re-grow any part of the universe, as well as destroy it entirely, which is part of the Phoenix's purpose: ‘The Judgment of the Phoenix’, to burn away what doesn’t work.” The Phoenix Force is described as being “the embodiment of the very passion of Creation—the spark that gave life to the Universe, the flame that will ultimately consume it.” And the first thing she destroys and remakes is herself.

Not many issues hence, she’ll do the same for the whole of Creation. Claremont even goes so far with his purple prose to dip into Kabbalah. Phoenix becomes Tiphareth(2), the Sephiroth at the center of the Tree of Life, “the force that integrates the Sefira of Chesed ("compassion") and Gevurah ("Strength, or Judgment (din)"). These two forces are, respectively, expansive (giving) and restrictive (receiving).”

If you search for info on Phoenix you’ll inevitably be inundated with articles about the span of Uncanny X-Men issues known as The Dark Phoenix Saga, and with good reason: The Dark Phoenix Saga—the events that follow Jean’s transformation and quest to save Creation—is still considered one of the greatest of all comics stories. In it Jean-Phoenix—under the influence of a powerful, manipulative telepath who wants to use her limitless power—is twisted into something fundamentally without compassion, a threat to the whole of the universe. Understanding this, she chooses to die again, to save the world and the people she loves from what she has become.

The intricacies(3) and implications of this transformation and the devolution that followed it are a post for another time. Suffice it to say that any human, even a supremely compassionate one, struggles to adjust to godhood; the ability to care, empathetically, and so deeply, about all of life made the Jean-Phoenix capable of rebuilding a dying universe, but it also made everything in that universe lose all meaning.

But Tolkien. This was about Tolkien. And airplanes. And New York. And the Feast of the Annunciation.

Before I knew Frodo, even before I knew Taran and Eilonwy, I knew Jean; I knew the gentle, compassionate woman who died twice for those she loved--once to save them from the burning heat of re-entry and once to save them from herself--and in between looked the universe in the eye, and understood it was good, and gave it another chance.

Before Tolkien codified in me a kind of personal mythology, gave me a vocabulary for my spiritual relationship to the world, I had Phoenix and her birth from the ashes of what had been Jean Grey.

Now, sitting there with my husband waiting for an answer, I opened up my iPad and pulled up flight dates and our potential flight path on Google (because I deal with fear through research). And I laughed. 

We’d be there on March 25th, and we’d have to pass over Jamaica Bay as we came in to land.

“Buy it,” I said. And I, a 38 year old woman, dyed my hair red, threaded my film reproduction One Ring onto a silver chain around my neck(4), and boarded a plane for the first time.

Fortified by love, Xanax, and a personalized mythology, I saw clouds from the top side. Imagine how many tens of thousands of years humans existed when not one of them could have said that(5).

I saw dinosaurs, I saw Madame X(6), I saw an amazing view for three nights from our hotel room.

And I saw Maker of Middle-earth.

Today is March 25th, The Feast of the Annunciation and, not coincidentally, the day the One Ring falls into the fires of Orodruin.

It’s the day I flew over Jamaica Bay and burned away the part of me that didn’t work. It’s a day of promise. Of expectation. Of new life. The promise of redemption, and the power of compassion—and pity—to change the world.

And that is what stories can do. That is why we tell them. That is why we read them. That is how we live in times that are good and in times that are bad. That is why, when there were only stars in the night to give light, those stars became things with stories—people, animals, gods—and like lanterns they illuminated the dark of both the sky and the soul, mapping out meaning, obliterating the shadows where the Things With Jaws dwelt.

Notes

Comic panels are taken from The Uncanny X-Men issues #100, #101, and #108.

“A new pattern forms—shaped like the mystic Tree of Life—with Xavier its lofty crown and Colossus its base. Each X-man has a place, each a purpose greater than himself or herself. And the heart of the Tree, the catalyst that binds these wayward souls together, is Phoenix, Tiphareth, Child of the Sun, Child of Life, the vision of the harmony of things.”

There is very little in the Marvel universe as intricate as Jean and Phoenix.

The Ring is treacherous. As we were sitting down to dinner just before we left the Ring somehow caught on the underside of the table, broke the chain, and forced me to wear it on my finger for the rest of the trip.

I realize it is entirely possible to climb high enough to be above certain types of clouds without the need for aircraft, and that clouds can form quite low to the ground, but I’m speaking both more abstractly about the nature of fantastic experiences and in the specific about cirrus clouds.

I also saw the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, but I talked about that here.

[a-strange-inkling]

SASUSAKU MONTH DAY 2: Patterns

Rated T (for suggestive content and language)

Summary: Only in another life would Sakura ever hate Sasuke, and even then it’s debatable. Though in a different sky, the stars always follow the same pattern (RTN AU, First Chapter of Story that I’ve been working on) 

 Annoying

"You aren't mad at me, are you Sakura?" 

Ah. There they were. 

Uchiha Sasuke's infamous Puppy-Dog Eyes. 

Haruno Sakura held back a sneer as she turned her attention back to the romance novel she was currently indulging, not in the mood for any of her overly hormonal team mate's antics.  The sweet, childlike innocence in those round, onyx orbs of his was as sincere as a tray of fucking cheese. Sasuke knew better than anyone that she was mad at him. 

She was always mad at him. 

"Sa-ku-ra..." he cooed, trying again for her attention, speaking her name at a low and chilling octave, knowing she hated when he did that.

The Fourth Hokage's daughter only snorted at the sound of her name rolling seductively off his lips, before pivoting her entire body away from him, crossing her legs with a steely grace.  

Sasuke rolled his eyes, unable to repress the smirk that had been playing at the corner of his mouth. "Well, I must have really hit close to the mark this time, you're even pulling out your age-old Ice Queen persona." 

Sakura simply glared at the written text in front of her, refusing to get in yet another spat with the arrogant boy. However, the young Uchiha had not quite given up yet, he knew one particular trick that would get to the cold young woman.

"You know, no one has mastered the silent treatment quite like you, Sakura-chan."

"Don't call me that." Sakura hissed quickly, shooting him one of her nastiest looks. She never let him call her that.

Sasuke's smirk deepened. "Seems there is still some room for improvement though." 

"Look, there is a pair of breasts right over there, Sasuke!" she exclaimed with feigned excitement, pointing to a fairly pretty brunette who was making her way down the street. "Why don't you go bother them for a while?"  

Sasuke eyed the passing young woman thoughtfully, mildly interested, before shaking his head and turning his attention back to the spunky rosette. "Shouldn't do that, you might get jealous, then you'd be even madder at me." 

Sakura stood then, abruptly, closing her book with a resounding snap, as she put distance between herself and the young Uchiha. 

"Come on, Sakura!" he called after her, growing annoyed as the kunochi went to find another place to wait for the rest of their squad. She was secretly pleased that his voice had an agitated edge to it instead of the usual carefree ring that usually resounded from his mouth. "Are you going to be like this the whole mission?" 

Silently, with her unparalleled grace, the kunochi leapt up several branches of a nearby oaktree, before settling back down with her book.  It was all of nine seconds before Sasuke was perched behind her, peering over her shoulder. 

"...how's your latest 'Kiss Handsome Boy' book?" he asked coyly. 

"The hero is not handsome, he's deformed," Sakura replied with a roll of her eyes.  "What's compelling about him is how deeply he loves and how loyal he is... Something you wouldn't know anything about." 

"Deformed as in one side of his otherwise attractive face," Sasuke rolled his eyes. "Oh, is there a scar over one of his eyes? Or is he missing a limb?" 

Sakura looked skyward in agitation. 

"Heh." Sasuke smirked. "He's just missing a limb isn't he?" 

"Would you just leave me alone, please?" Sakura asked him with a sigh, shifting down the branch. 

"Oh, come on, aren't you going to tell me more about your hero?" the Uchiha asked smugly. "I bet he's all brooding and tortured with a tragic past, and I'm sure only you can save him." 

Sakura growled in agitation before closing the book once more and placing it in her back pouch before turning her jade orbs on the Uchiha playboy.

"Okay, Sasuke, you win," she said, crossing her arms. "You have my attention, now what the hell do you want?" 

"Hey," Sasuke put his hands up in surrender. "I'm just trying to find out why you're mad at me, Sakura-chan, it's not good for a team to go on a mission with unresolved issues." 

"I'm not mad at you, Sasuke." she said evenly. "I just genuinely can't stand you." 

"Aw." Sasuke chided, swinging his legs over the branch to let them swing. "We both know that's not true, we used to be friends once, you even used to call me Sasuke-kun, remember?" 

"I was just a stupid kid back then," she replied. "Now, would you leave me alone, it's bad enough I have to spend a whole week with you." 

The infamous playboy placed a hand over his heart. "Ah, you wound me, Sakura-chan... Don't you care at all about the importance of teamwork?" 

"Oh, are you going to lecture me about teamwork?" she asked him. "You, the one who abandoned the team to flirt with that busty nimrod last time?" 

"You're so high and mighty, you know that?" He scoffed. "Sorry that I like to enjoy myself once in a while and talk to people, unlike Menma who can barely form coherent words around women, and you, because you're too busy trying to keep up you're frigid bitch facade." 

"Wow, Sasuke." Sakura gave him a mocking grin. "And you wonder why I don't like you." 

"That's your problem, you don't like anyone," Sasuke explained matter-o-factly. "That's why you're so lonely all the time." 

She felt her breathing hitch and her whole body stiffen at the word. 

What did he just say?

Lonely...

"How would you know?" she asked lowly. "You don't know a damn thing about being alone."

"Sakura..." he began, realizing he had gone a little overboard.  She was just so harsh sometimes, he couldn't help it. "I didn't mean it like that, I just..." 

"You're so damn annoying! Acting like you actually know me!" she exclaimed, so angry she didn't know what to do with herself. "Why don't you just keep your mouth shut about things you don't understand!?"  She stood up and leapt down from the tree, unwilling to wait around with him a moment more. 

Luckily, Menma appeared, walking up the cobbled path, giving her a shy smile. "M-morning, Sakura-chan."

"Hello, Menma." she replied with a sigh of relief. "It's so good to see you." 

"It really is," Sasuke replied, jumping down from his perch. "I'll have a witness in case Sakura-chan tries to do me in." 

Menma sighed to himself. It seemed this would be another mission of tension between his two teammates.  "Hey, Sasuke... M-my mom made cookies for the journey if you guys want some," he told them, holding out a brown paper bag where his mother had drawn a lopsided smiley face.  It was an immature tactic to make peace, but it was effective more times than not. 

"Ah!" Sasuke exclaimed, helping himself. "Let me at 'em! Kushina-san's cookies are always the best!" 

"Sakura-chan?" Menma encouraged her to take one, trying not to blush. 

"No thanks, Menma." Sakura replied, putting up a hand.  "I'm on a cleanse, but they smell delicious." 

"A cleanse?" Menma asked. 

"Probably for the best." Sasuke nodded. "They’re too sweet to share with someone so bitter. Not to mention you've been growing a little thicker around the middle." 

Menma cringed in fear. Did Sasuke just call her fat? Did he dare? So much for his peace cookies. Maybe he should try dumplings next time.

A sort of dark shadow fell over Sakura's eyes as she shot a deadly glare up at her raven-haired teammate. 

Sasuke smirked in response. "Sorry, koishii, that doesn't work on me." 

Sakura had a talent for scaring off her many admirers with that dark look alone, however, that frightening attitude of hers had an opposite effect on Sasuke.

 He wasn't afraid, only amused. 

"Heh," she replied, startling him a bit and switching gears as an easy smile spread across her face, mirroring his own. That may not work on him, but she knew something that would. "On second thought, I would love a cookie."

She strode past him then, with a little extra swing of her hips, purposefully knocking her shoulder with his own as she did so, and took a large round cookie from the offered bag."Thanks, Menma-kun, you're so sweet!"

Surprising both her male teammates, the kunoichi leaned up and brushed her lips against Menma's cheek as a token of her appreciation, making the blonde turn seven different shades of red and Sasuke's smirk diminish a little. 

"Da...uh... N-no problem, Sakura-chan." the poor boy stuttered, his hands clenching around the cookie bag, lost somewhere between pure joy and mortification.  His mom was right.  Sweets were the way to a girl's heart! 

Sakura turned and smirked triumphantly at Sasuke, glad to see his own had melted into a displeased frown, as she took a slow enticing bite of the cookie.  "Mmm... you're right, Sasuke, these really are the best." 

"Hn." he hummed. "Careful you don't choke, Sakura."

"Good morning, students!" Kakashi greeted, interrupting the spat. 

"Ah, right on time as always, Sensei." Sasuke waved before shoving his hands in his pockets. "Where are we off to today?" 

...

"Tell me." 

"No, go away." 

"C'mon, just tell me what's bothering you." 

"No! Stop that! Get the hell away from me!" 

"Sakuraaaaa."

"Sasuke." 

"Look, I'll stop bugging you for the rest of the journey if you just tell me." 

"No!" 

"Please, Sakura," Kakashi begged from where he was leading the three teenagers. "For all our sakes, take him up on that offer." 

Menma nodded in agreement.  It was hard to focus on reading the map with those two bickering behind him. 

"I'm not giving in to his whining." the rosette replied angrily.  "...I'm going on ahead to scout." 

With that, she leapt away into the trees and disappeared from sight.  Sasuke moved to jump after her. 

"Sasuke, give her some space,"  Kakashi commanded.  

"Heh, she's not getting away that easily." was the ninja's careless and insubordinate reply.  

Whether she wanted to admit it or not, Sasuke knew Sakura. He had known her his whole life and she really wasn't the icy, badass bitch she made herself out to be.  She had been putting up with his normal bullshit for years with the usual scoff or roll of the eyes, whatever he had done most recently must have really upset her.  

And, truth be told, he wasn't all too happy with her either. 

"I can't really be sorry for something if I didn't even know what I did, you know?" he told her once he caught up with the angry kunoichi.  "Come on, I genuinely want to know what's wrong." 

"You, genuine?" she scoffed. 

"Okay, I don't deserve that," he told her. "We're not thirteen anymore, your lousy attitude is not going to send me into the corner feeling bad about what I did. I'm human, I make mistakes.  Not all of us can be perfect like you..." 

"You see, that's exactly what gets on my nerves." she turned on him then, her finger pointed right into his face. "You think everything is about you." 

"Well, isn't this about me?" he asked. "Isn't that why you haven't spoken to me for days, this morning, and that stunt with Menma you did to try and get me jealous." 

"Ha! Don't flatter yourself." 

"Well, you were." he laughed. "Unfortunately, I'm not the jealous type like you." 

That earned him a glare. "Whatever makes you feel better, Sasuke." 

"Look," he sighed. "Is this really going to be the whole mission? Can we just..." 

"Ino is not one of those girls!" she exclaimed. 

"What?" Sasuke asked, dumbfounded. 

"Ino," she remarked. "You know, my best friend? She's not like those girls you hang out with, the ones who enjoy flirting with you as much as you enjoy flirting with them.  She's shy, even more so than Menma, anytime a guy gives her any attention she takes it to heart. She took you flirting with her seriously." 

"Who are we even talking about?" he asked, confused. 

"INO!" Sakura exclaimed.  "She's been in every class with both of us since the Academy. Blonde haired, blue-green eyes, wears five layers of clothing." 

"Ohhhhh." Sasuke realized. "The stuttering girl... she's your friend still, huh?" 

"Kami." Sakura hissed, turning and jumping to another branch.  

"Look, Sakura, wait," Sasuke called after her. "I'm sorry... I didn't mean anything by it, it was Shikamaru's idea, it was all just a joke." 

"Just a joke?" Sakura asked him. "Hurting a girl's feelings and making her feel foolish for believing you were actually genuine is not a joke... do you know how hard it was for me to tell her what you're really like, that you didn't actually like her, you were just messing with her?" 

"Look, it was stupid," he sighed, jumping and landing beside her once more. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, well, you tell her that next time you see her," she quipped. "Maybe she'll forgive you." 

"Fine, mama bear, I will."  he sighed, placing a heavy hand on her shoulder. "As usual, you're blowing this way out of proportion." 

She shoved his hand away and crossed her arms. "I told you what was bothering me, wasn't that the deal? Now stop bugging me for the rest of the trip." 

With that she jumped away again, not slowing down, leaving Sasuke to stare after her. 

Kami, that girl. She drove him absolutely crazy. 

... 

They set up camp and Team 7 had fallen into a not so easy silence.  Sasuke had been true to his word and let Sakura alone, but the tension from before was still sizzling in the air as they went about their tasks. It was all standard teenage shit for Kakashi, but Menma was always uncomfortable with any sort of discourse, especially between his only two friends, and found himself actually missing their bickering. This competitive silence was somehow worse. 

Once they all settled around the fire, Menma had calculated that no one had spoken for an hour and twenty-three minutes. While he was a quiet fellow, himself, this was just ridiculous. He turned to Kakashi with a pleading look. 

Do something, Sensei! 

But the silver-haired jonin was looking over their map, planning for the next morning, quite content with the silence, no matter how awkward it was. Menma turned to his right to see Sakura at the farthest end of the fire, her nose in her book, legs crossed and body pivoted away from them all.  To his left sat Sasuke, sharpening his kunai, a full pout on his face as he watched Sakura's back. Menma had never seen him so grumpy. Though bothering Sakura was his lifeblood, being cut off for even an hour seemed to have negative effects. 

Menma, knowing it was up to him to break the ice, squeezed his cookie bag in dread. He hated bringing attention to himself, but if it was for the good of his team, he would do it.  He glanced around before choosing the member of his squad he currently liked best to try to engage with.  While it was a wide known fact that Sasuke was his best friend, Sakura-chan was very pretty. 

Plus she had kissed him that morning, he still felt it burning beneath his skin.  

"How is your book, Sakura-chan?" he chirped, feeling blood rush to his cheeks. The sound of his soft, raspy voice was like a piano crashing from the sky on top of them all. He felt Sasuke's glare burning a hole in the back of his head and realized that he may have betrayed a rule of comradery between them that he had been unaware of. Apparently, if the Uchiha wasn't talking to Sakura, he wasn't allowed to talk to her either.

Forgive me, brother!

Sakura lowered her book and gave him a rare sweet smile over her shoulder. "It's a work of genius." she sighed dreamily. "The hero just proposed to his dying lover." 

"Oh, that's um... nice," Menma replied, though he wasn't sure if it was. He wasn't one for reading, and certainly couldn't manage a thick romance novel without dying from secondhand embarrassment, but Sakura never went on a mission without one. It was the funny riddle of her being for her teacher and teammates, that someone as cold and crass as the village Ice Queen read sappy paperbacks. 

Sasuke scoffed from behind, but Menma didn't even dare to face him. "There's one more cookie, if you want it, Sakura-chan." he offered, holding out the crumpled bag once more. If he was going to have to speak, he might as well try and get another kiss for his efforts. Sakura beamed and not only accepted his offer, but set aside her book before rising and coming to sit beside him. "Thanks, Menma." she beamed, making him turn a full shade of scarlet. "You are so thoughtful." 

That set the Uchiha off, he tossed his kunai aside and rose to his full height. "Why does she get the last cookie?" 

"I-I uh..."

"You don't have to explain yourself to him, Menma." Sakura told him firmly, placing a hand on his shoulder, making his soul leave his body a little. "Despite what he thinks, he's not the boss of you." 

"Oh, wow," Sasuke started to laugh, thoroughly pissed off now, but refusing to acknowledge her before she acknowledged him. "Real nice, Uzumaki, leaving me high and dry for a pretty face." 

"Sorry..." the blond began, feeling awful. 

"Don't apologize to him!" Sakura exclaimed. “Like he’s one to talk.” 

“Look, here’s a little free advice, Menma.” Sasuke went on regardless. “Cute as she is, she’s just going to chew you up and spit you out, there are a lot of way nicer girls around.” 

Menma felt Sakura’s hand squeeze his shoulder unintentionally and knew that comment had more than stung the kunoichi. He felt something foreign in his chest flare up all of sudden. 

“Sakura-chan is nice!” he told him, taking a tone with his friend he never had before. “She’s always nice to me!” 

“Only cause it serves a purpose.” Sasuke rolled his eyes, unsure how the kid could be so clueless. 

“Kami, you really are the most arrogant, hypocritical, egotistical, delusional fuck boy to ever grace the planet!” Sakura all but screamed at such an accusation. It was all she could do to not send a fist into his nose. 

“Ah, there she is!” Sasuke grinned triumphantly.  

Kakashi sighed, looking toward the heavens. It had been such a glorious hour and a half.  Perhaps he had summoned some sort of karma for foolishly hoping to finish his work before they both started back up again. 

“You’re such a horrid friend to him, do you know that?” she stood up and strode right up to the boy that loomed over her about a good seven inches. “You’re always telling him what to do and making him feel like he’s second best to you.”

“Yeah, well it’s better than you not even letting him speak up for himself.” he pointed out. “Stop trying to be everyone’s mother.” 

“Excuse me?” she asked, placing her hands on her hips. 

“Look, if you’re so concerned about Menma and his feelings, then why don’t stop using him as fuel to get to me?” 

“Oh, get over yourself, Sasuke!” 

“That’s enough!” Kakashi intervened. He considered himself an even-tempered man, but he could only take so much of the ongoing saga of Sasuke and Sakura. Honestly, he’d come to wish they’d get it over with and just fuck or do each other in. The older they got the more their bickering and sexual tension was getting out of hand. “Both of you, go blow off some steam, Sakura go North, Sasuke go South, I don’t want to see either of you back here until you can both be amiable comrades to one another and stop pulling Menma into the middle of your immature spats.” 

“But, Sensei…” 

“Now, Sakura!” He commanded, pointing his finger, making her huff as she grabbed her bag and leaped off. 

“Whatever.” Sasuke shrugged, turning and taking her leave as well, leaving the silver hair ninja with his remaining student. He ruffled his blond hair tiredly. “What are we going to do with them, huh, Menma?” 

“Don’t know, Sensei.” he shrugged. “They really hate each other, don’t they?” 

Kakashi’s mouth formed a line. “If only it were that simple.” 

…

Sakura knew it was stupid to think that Sasuke would, for once, listen to Kakashi and actually put some distance between them, but she would have liked at least a second to herself. 

“You’re really something else, you know that?” he asked coming up behind her. 

“Didn’t you hear Sensei? You’re supposed to go South.” she shot back heatedly, storming off faster, knowing it was pointless. If there was one thing she’d admit that Sasuke had on her it was speed. He was soon walking alongside her. 

“Who cares what he says?” he huffed. “I’m not done with you yet.” 

“Yeah, well I’m done with you.” she retorted. 

“No, you don’t get to call me out on leading your friend on, when you’re doing the same thing to Menma, and then call me a hypocrite,” he told her. “That’s not how it works.” 

She stopped abruptly and turned to face him. “I’m not leading him on.” 

His face went deadpan at that, before taking on a persona that she assumed was herself. 

“Oh, Menma-kun, I’d love a cookie!” he gushed as high as his deep voice would let him go. “You’re so sweet! You’re so thoughtful! I’m not just using you to get under Sasuke’s skin at all!”

She turned and kept walking at that, enraged that he would make such an accusation, and even more so because he was not completely wrong either. 

“Ever thought about how that will make Menma feel?” he asked. “You know how he feels about you.” 

“What are you talking about?” she stopped and turned around. 

“He’s in love with you!” Sasuke exclaimed as if she were an idiot. 

Sakura felt something snap like a twig somewhere inside her. “No, he’s not.” 

“Yes, he is.” Sasuke nodded reassuringly. 

“No, he’s not.” 

“Yes he is!” he nearly yelled in exasperation “Most men are! Have you seen yourself?” 

“...Kami” she whispered slowly, wishing the earth would just swallow her up right then and there. She hadn’t realized that Menma had a crush on her, let alone loved her. How could someone who spent so much time with her be in love with her? That was insane. 

She thought of all the times she had sent him attention just to spur Sasuke and never felt so low. While it was not often and never harmless, it was flirty and could have easily made him feel that she was interested in something more than friendship. She was no better than the Uchiha, 

“Yeah, it’s true, so stop playing with his feelings.” 

As guilty as she felt, she couldn’t bring herself to admit defeat to him, not three times in one day. She’d make things right with Menma, but Sasuke didn’t have to know that. “Maybe I’m not playing.” she shrugged coyly, turning and continuing on her way. 

“...what?” Sasuke muttered in confusion. 

“Maybe I’m in love with him too,” she suggested with raised palms. “I mean…” 

Sasuke was suddenly in front of her, making her almost walk head first into his broad chest. “You’re not in love with Menma,” he stated as if it were the most basic fact of life, like the rising and the setting of the sun. 

“Why not?” she asked with a raised brow, genuinely asking herself as much as she was asking him. Why hadn’t she ever thought of Menma as something more? “He’s handsome, considerate, sensitive and always good to me, why wouldn’t I be in love with him?” 

“Because you’re in love with me,” Sasuke told her just as simply. “That’s why.” 

She stared up at him, lips parting wordlessly at such a claim. Where there was a snap before now felt like she had been struck by a bolt of lightning. To her surprise, as well as his, she began to laugh. She laughed so hard she bent over, hugging herself around her middle. Sasuke remained stoic, emitting only a small smile when anyone else would have been more than wounded. 

“I’m not in love with you, Sasuke.” she told him when she straightened up and caught her breath. Where had the clueless bastard got that idea? He was just watching her with a knowing, adoring look in his eye, his hands tucked snuggly in his pockets. She tilted her head up so that she was looking directly into his eyes. “I hate you.” 

Honestly, what planet had he been living on? 

Suddenly he took her face gently into his hands and made her still, all mirth and smugness abandoning her. She stared up at him in shock, eyes wide and sparkling in the darkness as he kept her there, not two inches from his face. Blood rushed to her face so fast that it felt as if she were burning alive from the inside. Why was everything so quiet all of a sudden?

“What was that, Sakura?” he asked with an easy smile, seeing everything he needed to see, rolling her name around the way he knew drove her crazy. “I didn’t quite hear you.” 

“I-I said,” she breathed out shakily, wondering what the hell was wrong with her voice. It sounded so soft and unsure. Like it was someone else’s entirely. 

He had caught her off guard with this play. Nothing in her body was working like it was supposed to. Damn it! Why did he have to be so fucking beautiful? And tall? And sexy? 

It wasn’t fair. 

But, it didn’t prove anything, she assured herself. He was Sasuke. Everyone was attracted to him one way or another. That’s the only effect he had. Attraction wasn’t love. She wasn’t in love with him. In fact, this only made her more angry at him. If she could feel her hands she would have sent a fist straight into his perfect jawline. 

She swallowed thickly. “I said, I hate…”

Kami, was he going to kiss her?

She stiffened as she felt his thumb brush along her cheekbones as he loomed over her all the closer, his hot breath spilling over her face. 

“What?” he hummed softly. “Go on, say it.”

She stared at his lips, contemplative for a moment of what it would be like to kiss someone, but quickly remembered just who she was dealing with and snapped her gaze back to his dark eyes, so close now she could count his lashes. 

“I hate you.” she whispered, her eyes darkening, it was hard to breathe at this angle he held her. But, she did it. She got it out. 

She won. 

He smiled then, looking so pleased that for a moment she wondered if she had said the wrong thing. The opposite thing. 

He leaned forward ever so slightly, hands slipping down to her neck, and she nearly jumped out of her skin, but his lips took an alternate route gently and brushed over the hollow of her cheek, the same place she had bestowed a kiss to Menma for his sweets. 

He pulled back and she watched him, flushed and frustrated by his brash action and by the burning in her face centering around the focal point where he had touched her.

“You too, Sakura-chan.” he told her with a wink before turning and going on his way, leaving her alone like she wanted.

[losangelesvalorant]

interesting things from tactical crouch’s interview w fusion assistant coach chrisTFer on 1/21

christfer talks abt hero bans, why fusion underperformed in s2, and why their roster is what it is. ill update this post w the youtube link once its out

On hero bans

Christfer thinks hero bans would change EVERYTHING, every team would have to be able to think on the fly, strong ingame leadership, makes coaches' jobs a lot harder, have to practice every hero on every map. you'd have to coach fundamentals into players a lot more and more focus on quickly IDing win conditions and the enemy gameplan. very seriously hopes they aren't gonna drop it this season

if the goal is to have genuine diversity in hero pool, bans is the way to achieve that, but christfer thinks itll fuck up the competitiveness, level of play will go down. but any aspect that helps spectators is better for league overall

volamel thinks hero bans will excite and drive the audience bc banning players specific heroes would be hype as fuck. lotta strategy, lots of analysis. however he's skeptical bc if it happens midseason it's gonna fuck over coaches

christfer thinks if theyre gonna do it they gotta do it today. there's no other good time

yiska thinks it would be bad to implement it midseason bc the # of games teams play across the season is sooo spread out. teams have different amts of games every month

on why fusion underperformed in s2

Internally, fusion was kinda "naive" coming into s2, thought they were the 2nd best team and acted as if they were 2nd best. rarely felt happiness after scrims bc theyre "supposed" to be winning all the scrims. losing scrims also was hugely negative for the same reason

smaller roster makes it harder to kick people into gear, so lack of motivation was a big thing. they were just waiting for goats to die

thought goats wouldnt continue into s2, stage 4 was where they finally got motivation, fusion never completely understood the goats style of play or the fundamentals goats taught teams, they lost games they shouldnt have as a result. Not one big issue, lots of small issues

fusion held themselves to such high expectations that when they failed them and weren't enjoying the game as much so morale fell. (paraphrased) "as long as my players enjoy playing the game, it makes my job easier"

Christfer says fusion changed a lot for playins, changed coaching structure, overwhelmingly positive result. best theyd looked all season

shanghai had very particular strengths on certain maps. fusion was winning brawl comps vs brawl comps. got nervous and dropped maps they were supposed to take, but theyd given away too many of "their" maps to be able to lose shanghai's maps. 

felt like they hit the ground running on playins, but other teams levelled up across playins and christfer believed other teams wouldve developed more than they would have

even if coaching wasnt problem if team is in a slump you need new coaches to re-fire everyone up, which is what happened w fusion. 

on carpe and sado

carpe was able to play heroes he excelled at in s1, in s2 zarya was entirely different in elements of what makes a player good at the hero. carpe holds himself to a very, very high standard and playing zarya killed his morale because he wasn't so good at it. christfer considers it a failing of himself as a coach that he didn't help carpe work through that more

nobody on the team is worried about carpe’s performance. Christfer confirmed carpe wont play if he isnt up to standard (in response to reddit worrying abt how long his contract is and how much sway he has over coaches)

christfer is very upset about how people treat sado. sado is the "single nicest person you will ever meet." every single player/coach had 1 on 1s with tucker, everyone said they wanted to keep playing with sado. yiska emphasized how important it is that every player on the team wanted to keep playing sado bc for example eqo and carpe want to win more than anything and if they thought sado was the problem they absolutely wouldve said so

Other teams came to fusion wanting to sign sado

christfer said sado wasnt the greatest main tank player last year, but playing rein in a "dysfunctional" team makes the rein player look bad. 

christfer thinks this is the "season of sado." has complete faith in him

the complaints abt sado’s rein "[he] can understand," says to remember sado had never played pro before s1. he doesn't have as much competitive exp which hits him hard but he's grown wildly in the last year. 

sado's ability to hit every halt at the right time is incredible. compares him to alarm in how good his instincts are. excellent player in a team environment, kinda a big brother to some of the players on the team, sado is very important to the team

christfer agrees that if meta shifts and sado is sick, theres a problem, but says this is not a problem unique to fusion

on fusion’s new acquisitions

heesu surprised christfer the most. he’s ��very, very, very very, very good.” hungry to learn, easy to talk to, they got a very good deal and christfer is surprised more teams didn't try to get him

heesu has a lot of respect for carpe, heesu said its a + for him to work under carpe

theyre trying to scrim w heesu daily, sounds like they intend to play him if the opportunity presents itself. excellent signing theyre very happy abt

the point of the chipsa signing was that they didnt need a 5th dps, their lineup is already perfect, they had to find someone that "made sense" from many levels. wanted a specialist. Christfer thinks chipsa understands the raw mechanics of doom better than any owl players, thinks he could legit play in a doom meta. also thinks chipsa could teach eqo doom in a doom meta. chipsa provides advertisement, no need for scrimming with him. if the situation is right he can play and if he's not playing he provides income, publicity, etc. christfer again restated he was originally against the signing. when tucker explained why hed be signed, christfer came around to the idea

having 2 way players is a headache in christfers opinion, so that was another reason why they didnt pick up a contenders player instead of chipsa.

chipsa has not had a scrim yet because he’s not in philly bc visa stuff, but christfer did not clarify whether or not he will scrim. 

of all players signed, funnyastro was by far the most in demand. they had to fight for him, almost every team wanted him. he's a "sponge" where he remembers whatever coaches tell him, incredibly coachable, very mature for his age, needs to adjust his playstyle a bit to fit into the team (bc he's going for plays he shouldnt sometimes) but if they can "tune him back" a bit hes great. want to find a middle ground bc astro's ability to kill everything and doing his job (brought up moth as the "glue guy" who enables everyone by doing his job perfectly)

alarm has insane awareness, has natural affinity for positioning, understands ovw instinctively. zero attitude issues, the nicest/perfect teammate. "the whole package."

yiska said ivy has a "special type of character," quickly clarified that it’s not a “problematic” character, but needs a dif type of coaching (christfer agreed)

thinks things got difficult for ivy on toronto bc he was moving roles so much, kdg puts a lot of stock into him, a lot of kr players do too. people from toronto think ivy is insane mechanically. volamel thinks ivy should have been toronto's standout

fury wasnt signed bc of bad synergy btween sado and poko. poko wasnt the problem. fusion is very serious abt winning everything and fury is a statement of that intent. fury/poko cover every base

on new coaches

Christfer really respects seita and kdg, happy to have gotten them. has worked w both of them in the past, considers kdg similar to crusty. they signed kdg like the second he became available, christfer asked for him specifically. 

seita will stay remote 

yiska says mobydik is nuts in terms of game knowledge. Christfer agreed, says he thinks abt the game in a very unique way, outside of the box

misc

Fusion has a system where all 3 supports are rotating in the current meta. nobody is benched. had main support play bap originally when bootcamping, but theres places u can play 2 flex sups, so fusion has a lot of flexibility. who plays depends on situations where you can always play zen/bap vs where you might have to flex to lucio

Christfer thinks main sups doing calling/single caller system is a bit outdated and more of a western concept, trying to build comm system where everyone communicates, everyone calls their own ults. can have ingame leaders, but wants everyone to call what they need to call. in this meta everyone has to make the plays and call their own ults bc its split second and only the person w the ult can see the optimal situation

Christfer thinks the positions where you need stability in ovw is main tank and main support. subbing dps players in and out is fine but you need consistency at mt and ms. 

really really think they dont need to fill their last roster spot

Christfer calls this season a "rebuild season" for fusion. if they dont do well this year christfer thinks it would be the fault of the coaches. too much talent to fuck it up. 

not taking home a title is not exactly a failure, but anything within the top 4 fusion is happy with

[xb-squaredx]

Pokémon Sword and Shield: A Franchise Turning Point

The Pokémon franchise has been around for over 20 years, and in that time it has proven to be more than a passing fad and has carved out a massive multi-media empire. Outside of some rare spinoffs like the Pokémon Stadium games or the likes of Colosseum or Pokken Tournament, the series has stayed primarily on handheld consoles. For years fans dreamed of what a true, mainline Pokémon game could be like on a home console. During E3 2017 when Game Freak announced that such a title was in development for Switch, people got excited. The resulted games, Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee were not quite the main leap people expected, instead being a strange hybrid of Pokémon GO and remakes of Pokémon Yellow. However, the announcement that a true new generation of Pokémon would hit the Switch in 2019 reignited that hype. While at first excitement was high, over time a dark cloud hung over the titles, Pokémon Sword and Shield. Controversies erupted over the announcement that not every little critter would be featured or transferable to the game, and as time went on any new announcement was met with pushback. Everything from visuals to new features was criticized all the way up to launch day. Now that Sword and Shield are in players’ hands, at the end of the day…how did it all turn out?

A WHOLE NEW WORLD

This time around, trainers embark across the Galar region, basically the Pokémon equivalent to the UK. I do like Galar as a setting; it has a ton of character, with probably the most interesting aspect to it that Pokémon battles are treated as a major spectator sport. If you want to join in the Gym Challenge, you need a sponsor, and your Gym battles take place in massive stadiums filled to the brim with roaring fans. It’s an interesting deviation from past games, even if the basic formula is about the same. The characters within Galar also have a fair amount of charm from your main rivals to the Gym Leaders, to the undefeated Champion. A lot of people give Hop, your main rival, a lot of flak, but I found he had a lot of hidden depth to him and he has a satisfying arc as the story goes on. As he loses to you again and again, he doubts himself and subsequent battles have him throwing in random Pokémon and strangely his signature partner, the adorable Wooloo, is absent. Once he gets his act together, however, he forms a pretty balanced team, and Wooloo’s back front-and-center. It was a neat moment of character growth shown off through gameplay. As far as Champions go, Leon has a lot more presence throughout the game than a lot of past Champions. His flair, his awful fashion sense, his inability to follow directions…it all made him a bit more endearing. Most of the Gym Leaders are pretty much just there as stepping stones, but they all are fairly memorable either for designs or flashes of personality. It helps that everyone gives you neato trading cards too!

Galar’s main claim-to-fame is the Wild Area, a huge collection of different biomes located smack in the middle of the map. It has far and away the largest collection of Pokémon within, with different monsters appearing depending on the weather or time of day. It’s a place you’ll be returning to time and time again, and it made a big impact. It’s the only area in the game with a controllable camera, for one, and rather than follow a linear balance curve, the Pokémon you encounter in the Wild Area are often far too strong to handle. You’re even forbidden from catching Pokémon if you lack a certain number of Gym Badges, so the place is full of Pokémon you can only really admire from afar until you’re “worthy” of getting them.

Take the Wild Area away though, and Galar feels pretty small. With only ten Routes in the game, Galar is among the smaller regions. Most Routes are very straightforward, not many branching paths or hidden goodies, and there isn’t any neat new areas opened up after beating the game either. The Wild Area, from a franchise standpoint at least, is pretty impressive, but looking at the game on the whole it feels a little lacking. That’s not to say Sword and Shield don’t bring in new mechanics to mess around with, but whether they make up for what’s been taken away is going to vary with people.

GO BIG OR GO HOME

Since the games went 3D, each region tends to have its own core “gimmick” to differentiate it with older titles. X and Y had Mega Evolution, Sun and Moon had Z-Moves and for Sword and Shield we have Dynamax. Something in the air in Galar can allow Pokémon to grow to colossal size for a short time, granting them extremely powerful Max Moves for its duration. While Dynamaxing seems cool at first, the spectacle kinda wears off after your first few uses of it (not to mention the animation lasts forever), and upon further inspection it’s not as great of an upgrade as you’d think. For one, a Dynamaxed Pokémon only gets a health increase, and all other stats stay the same. Abilities and their elemental types stay the same too, so it’s not a game-changer like Mega Evolution was and it really has more in common with Z-Moves. The Max Moves can be nice, as they’re usually a good deal more powerful when it comes to raw damage, and can come with nice side-effects, but it’s kinda inconsistent. The stronger Fighting-type moves actually become weaker as Max Moves, for one. On top of the base Dynamax ability, some Pokémon can use “Gigantamaxing” instead. This changes their look overall and grants them a unique G-Max Move, though considering how hard they can be to acquire I’m not sure it’s all that satisfying. It doesn’t help that rather than having a certain species of Pokémon capable of Gigantamaxing, it comes down to unique Pokémon themselves that have the trait and it can’t be passed down through breeding either. Overall, Dynamaxing has its uses but I highly doubt it’ll become a staple of the series and will likely be replaced with something else for the Generation 9 games, and I can’t say I’ll miss the mechanic much.

One big addition to the series is Max Raid Battles, found in dens littered all over the Wild Area. Teaming up with up to three other players, locally or online (or team up with awful CPUs if alone), your goal is to take out a permanently Dynamaxed Pokémon. You get a limited amount of turns and if you suffer more than four knockouts, the Raid will end in failure. Victory, however, enables you to get rare and powerful Pokémon, some even coming with really great stats and difficult-to-obtain Abilities, and it’s practically the only way to get Gigantamax Pokémon. The difficulty of the Raids increases as you progress through the game, however, and the Five Star Raids can be brutal. The rewards are great though, getting a lot of extra loot. Bonus moves to teach Pokémon, EXP candies that eliminate a lot of grinding, and more, even if the capture attempt fails. The one real issue with Raids is that some Pokémon can be pretty stingy with appearing in Raids, and you’ll have to use somewhat rare items, Wishing Pieces, to kick some Raids off. There are also the occasional connection issues, but I have more to say on that later.

Outside of these new features, there are the standard quality-of-life changes that each game has, though some can be harder to notice and appreciate than others. You can send Pokémon in storage out on Jobs, to get some neat rewards and some EXP for them, though I find them to be a bit underwhelming. Being able to swap Pokémon on the fly now is a godsend, and together with the EXP Share built into the game, it allowed me the freedom to switch up the monsters in my party and get newcomers up to speed quickly. Most games I barely bother with more than the maximum six, but the sheer variety of Pokémon in Galar let me feel more comfortable with constantly swapping around. On that same note, no National Dex aside, there’s a LOT of choices in Galar. Route 1 alone has over ten Pokémon you can catch right at the start, as opposed to the common mammal, common bug and common bird. It was nice to see some under-represented Pokémon make the cut, but I won’t argue with anyone bummed that their favorites aren’t allowed in. It is a regrettable decision overall, even if it might have been unavoidable here.

Now, you’ll notice I didn’t mention the story much at all because…there isn’t much of one. Pokémon as a franchise isn’t known for its storytelling, despite the Black and White and Sun and Moon games existing and having very well-done stories. Overall, Sword and Shield seems to focus more on characters than an overarching plot and that isn’t too bad overall, but it makes the eventual climax more than a little disappointing. Team Yell, our villainous organization this time around, are just a bunch of hardcore fans for another rival of yours, a girl named Marnie. The conclusion to their story felt very flat, and the eventual main problem involving the Legendary Pokémon is tacked onto the end of the game with little build-up. It doesn’t help that the main villain’s motivation doesn’t make sense. He wants to avert an energy crisis that’s 1000 years from actually happening, and for some reason he refuses to let you get your shot at fighting the Champion because apparently putting things off for one day is unacceptable. It’s just very sloppy. And honestly, “sloppy” can describe a lot of this game, sadly.

WHY Y-COMM WHY

No game is without flaws, and Sword and Shield are far from the first Pokémon games to have their fair share of issues, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that these games in particular are a victim of compromise. Game Freak doesn’t have the luxury of delaying games and polishing them up to a fine sheen, not when the multimedia empire has merch and anime to launch at the same time. I’m also certain that working on this game alongside the Let’s Go games AND Little Town Hero did them no favors. So there are areas in the game that lack polish. The story’s abrupt conclusion, the visuals in general, and Galar itself feeling a tad empty; these are all compromises that had to be made to get this game to ship on the date decided well in advance. I can sympathize with the developers here, and really they’re in an un-enviable position. But at the same time, I’ve been playing Pokémon games for over twenty years, and I kind of expect better, you know? Far too many times I have to shake my head and question why something is designed the way it is, or why it feels at times like the games are going backwards in quality. Problems that were solved several games ago rear their ugly heads again, and for this being a brand new generation and the “proper” debut on a powerful home console, I can’t help but feel that this is just a 3DS game that’s been blown up onto my TV.

NPC character models and the Pokémon themselves look fine, as does the sleek UI, but environments look kinda rough. The Wild Area itself, I say with no exaggeration, looks like it was ripped out of a GameCube game. Those trees are a meme, but at the same time, they also look that bad. Some of the main towns are pretty grandiose, be it the giant castle theme of Hammerlocke, or the steampunk designs of Motostoke, while others feel incredibly barren. It’s kind of intentional with Spikemuth, but I was more than a little disappointed with how small towns feel. While it’s great that HMs have been officially retired (starting from Sun and Moon), Galar itself feels like it has little to offer those that want to explore. You don’t get access to a way to cross water until near the endgame, but there are only a small handful of areas you’d need to backtrack to with that ability. There’s not even a Victory Road in this game, or a rough equivalent.

Sword and Shield, from a competitive standpoint, seems to be trying to make strides in breaking down barriers and allowing more casual fans to dip their toes into competitive play, which I really appreciate, but I think there’s still room for improvement. While on the one hand, it’s never been easier to tweak and customize your Pokémon to your heart’s desire, the game is still not as transparent on certain subjects. You can view a Pokémon’s Effort Values, extra points you can place towards stats, on their stat screen, but only if you hit the X button on that screen, and there’s no indication that’s a thing you can even do. I was more than fifty hours into the game before a friend even told me that! There have been some pretty major strides to reduce the time commitment however, so I have to give the game credit there. As far as game balance goes, having less Pokémon to choose from does inspire creativity, though from what I hear, a fair few Pokémon are a bit of a problem, but that’s no different than any other game. Honestly, even attempting to balance a game with so many moving parts and possible strategies is pretty admirable. I’m not deep into the meta of competitive Pokémon though, so I feel there’s not much I can add to the conversation. If there’s one thing I can’t defend however, it’s this game’s connectivity features.

Starting from the DS era, Pokémon has had online features, but Sword and Shield marks the first time that the Global Trade Station, or GTS, has not been available. This means it’s impossible to put up a posting for a desired Pokémon, or fulfill other’s requests. This wouldn’t be so bad if the way to trade with friends wasn’t such a chore. Rather than being able to freely select a friend and initiate a trade or battle with them, players must enter four-digit codes and HOPE the game pairs them up. This is in every way a downgrade from the past several games. X and Y released over SIX years ago and solved this very issue with the Player Search System. Y-Comm, as it stands, is an awful replacement and there’s not one thing about it that other systems didn’t do better.

If you connect online, the game will have “stamps” appear that show you what friends are doing, alongside broadcasting trade or battle requests from random people, but often those requests are out of date, and trying to join in will result in error messages, the requests fulfilled long ago. Trying to join friends in Raid Battles is an exercise in trial and error, and if online in the Wild Area, other players constantly appear within it and as a result the game begins to chug along. What could have been a neat way to interact with other players across the world results in the game becoming worse to play, so I mostly left it off. Connecting with others has always been a franchise selling point, way back to the days of the Game Boy Link Cables. To see this game drop the ball so severely is worrying. I care about this far more than the graphical issues, far more than the National Dex, and it makes me hesitant to try out the next titles if they can’t solve these issues and KEEP them solved.

AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE

Pokémon Sword and Shield are not bad games; they’re in fact filled with charm and fun. I’ve logged over 80 hours into the game over the past few weeks and the hours flew by. There’s a lot of work that’s clearly been put into the game. The Pokémon designs and concepts this time around are really creative, for one. There’s the Applin line, dragons that hide in apples, and the abominations that are this game’s fossils; carelessly stitched together pieces of incompatible fossils resulting in a freak of nature. I love them. My heart goes out to Game Freak, because it’s clear people worked hard here, but this simply can’t be the game they wanted to make. I think Sword and Shield are turning points for the series, but it’s unclear if that’s a good thing or not.

For all the backlash and negativity surrounding these games, they’re still the fastest-selling Switch games ever. Many fans are pretty satisfied with the game as-is, and the real bitter pill disgruntled fans need to swallow is that…these games have no real reason to improve in quality. Think about it; sales aren’t down, and there’s not a true rival to these games anymore, so why would the hire-ups at Nintendo and The Pokémon Company give these games more time and resources? On top of this, remember that these games are only one part of the massive whole that is the Pokémon brand. Pokémon GO makes a frankly disgusting amount of money, the anime has been going strong for two decades, merch is in no short supply, and now we can likely add major Hollywood films to the list as well. If Game Freak was any other developer, behind any other franchise, they’d likely be able to delay the games to polish them up and add in content that would otherwise be cut, but they can’t do that when they MUST launch simultaneously with the anime, the card games, the merchandise, etc.

The series has been around for so long now as well, while many fans have likely moved on from the franchise, new ones are lining up to take their place. On top of that, there are Pokémon diehards that will likely always support the series. Pokémon is a constant for them; it’s almost like comfort food in game form. They’re not WRONG for feeling that way, and I’m kinda in that same boat. I knew going in that these games were going to be somewhat disappointing, but I still bought the thing! For all the rage directed at these games, many people still gave them their money, and I think the message has been read loud and clear: Pokémon can get away with cutting Pokémon, so it’s unlikely Game Freak will change course any time soon.

Now, of course, that’s one way to look at things. A negative way to be sure. It’s also possible that Game Freak can learn from issues they had with developing these games and push past them. As they get used to console development, to HD development, and get a better idea of what fans want, the next games might actually surpass all expectations. Pokémon as a franchise has always had feature creep to deal with, and Sword and Shield is clearly where it all boiled over. So maybe if they don’t have to worry about accommodating nearly 1000 critters in every single game, they can make larger strives towards higher quality. I don’t want to count them out, but at the same time, I won’t hold my breath either. I’ll always be open to what path this franchise takes, even if they stumble a bit to get there.

In the end, Sword and Shield feel more than a little rough, but there’s some real bright spots glimmering in what might be the franchise’s Darkest Day. The Pokémon themselves are still fun to use and capture, the characters and world of the games are still wholesome fun, and I’ll reiterate that pumping over 80 hours into this game didn’t feel like a chore and I was largely engaged for the entirety of that time. Here’s to hoping that brighter days lie ahead, and a few years from now we can look back at the Dexit controversy and laugh.

-B

[artemis-entreri]

[[ This post contains Part 4 of my review/analysis of the Forgotten Realms/Drizzt novel, Boundless, by R. A. Salvatore. As such, the entirety of this post’s content is OOC. ]]

Genre: Fantasy

Series: Generations: Book 2 | Legend of Drizzt #35 (#32 if not counting The Sellswords)

Publisher: Harper Collins (September 10, 2019)

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Additional Information: Artwork for the cover of Boundless and used above is originally done by Aleks Melnik. This post CONTAINS SPOILERS. Furthermore, this discussion concerns topics that I am very passionate about, and as such, at times I do use strong language. Read and expand the cut at your own discretion.

Contents:

Introduction

I. Positives   I.1 Pure Positives   I.2 Muddled Positives

II. Mediocre Writing Style   II.1 Bad Descriptions   II.2 Salvatorisms   II.3 Laborious “Action”

III. Poor Characterization   III.1 “Maestro”   III.2 Lieutenant   III.3 Barbarian   III.4 “Hero”   III.5 Mother

IV. World Breaks (you are here)   IV.1 Blinders Against the Greater World   IV.2 Befuddlement of Earth and Toril   IV.3 Self-Inconsistency   IV.4 Dungeon Amateur   IV.5 Utter Nonsense

V. Ego Stroking   V.1 The Ineffable Companions of the Hall   V.2 Me, Myself, and I

VI. Problematic Themes   VI.1 No Homo   VI.2 Disrespect of Women   VI.3 Social-normalization   VI.4 Eugenics

VII. What’s Next   VII.1 Drizzt Ascends to Godhood   VII.2 Profane Redemption   VII.3 Passing the Torch   VII.4 Don’t Notice Me Senpai

World Breaks

There's a reason that Salvatore's dark elf books are more popular than his works in his own settings, and that reason is only partly due to the Drizzt books being around longer. A fair number of people who actively like the Drizzt books don't much care for Salvatore's Demonwars books, and I suspect the reason is that the Drizzt books piggyback off of a greater world built by better creatives. One would think, then, that Salvatore would respect the foundation that has helped lift him to his height, but sadly, the opposite is true. Instead, Salvatore seems chagrined by, even resentful of, the fact that what makes his work in the shared world as popular as it is is the fact that the world is a sum of the efforts of many. Salvatore's earlier books were much better, in part due to his significantly more humble attitude, but also due to a greater care in respecting what others have woven around him. With each new Drizzt book however, it seems Salvatore is puffing out his chest more, intent on writing his name in a giant sharpie over the tapestry that many hands painstakingly wove together before. The Forgotten Realms may not have some facets as developed as other fantasy worlds like Middle-Earth, but nonetheless, even while missing complete languages, FR has enough self-consistency to at least maintain the feel of the whole. With each new book however, Salvatore turns his nose up at the Realms a new degree. Even if a reader doesn't care about the world outside of Salvatore's take on it, I would hope that they're reasonable enough to see how disrespectful and petty it is to disregard and, at times, erase the work done by others in that same setting, especially when even the creator of the world himself is not exempt from this treatment. 

Blinders Against the Greater World

Salvatore's corner of the Realms has always been very insular, but Boundless takes ignoring of the wider world to a whole new level. To Salvatore, it is as though all there is to the Realms is Faerûn. The planet that is Toril has been reduced to a single continent. Even the great Gromph Baenre, whom Salvatore has fought to elevate to the levels of Blackstaff if not Elminster, doesn't seem aware that the planet is round. When Gromph tells Penelope Harpell to take Catti-brie far away from danger, he states, "send her away, far away, to the ends of Faerun, to another plane, even." This presentation is as silly as the flat earth theory of our world, perhaps more so, because to put it in perspective, if this happened in our world, Gromph basically said something alone the lines of, "take her to the ends of North America, to another dimension, even," when he meant, "take her to the ends of the earth". So, again, there are two possibilities here: one, that Gromph isn't as great as he's made out to seem and actually believes that all of his world is the continent of Faerûn, or two, Salvatore is working very hard to erase the rest of a world that he has no use for. Both possibilities are equally bad.

I think that Salvatore's hubris prevents him from fact-checking, even when it is exceedingly easy for him to do so. Ed Greenwood routinely answers questions from fans about the Realms, only holding back when something is blocked by non-disclosure agreements. Salvatore would be spared that block, and it would be a simple matter for him to just ask Greenwood through the myriad of available instant messaging methods and ask for a quick fact check. It's very evident that he doesn't, however, nor even so much as bother Googling something like "map of Waterdeep", as is evidenced by his incorrect nomenclature of one of the city's wards. Entreri and Dahlia have made their home in the Southern Ward of the city, but Salvatore calls it the "South Ward", despite every map of Waterdeep throughout the editions specifically labeling it as "Southern Ward". Even in the recent D&D module, Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, Volo's Enchiridion notes that, "It is called the Southern Ward, not the South Ward. Waterdhavians are peculiar about this, and if you insist on referring to it as the South Ward, expect to be corrected or thought a fool." I suppose that Salvatore is a fool then, for Dahlia, and most certainly Entreri, wouldn't be foolish enough to erroneously call the area they live in the South Ward, especially since they're performing undercover reconnaissance, which would entail not standing out like a sore thumb as foreigners.

Befuddlement of Earth and Toril

One thing that Salvatore did manage to do better than some Realms authors is that, at least in the past, his dialogue read like speakers in the fantasy world rather than in our world. He's been slipping more and more in the recent books, with Boundless hitting a new low. For instance, Salvatore uses the word "okay", despite it being specifically stated by Ed Greenwood as not existing in Common. The etymology of "okay" is very specific to our world and, just as it's unlikely for Common to have come from Latin, "okay" wouldn't have independently evolved into existence in the Realms. Furthermore, while in Forgotten Realms canon there exist portals connecting different realms in the multiverse, including Earth to Toril, which has allowed for the interchange of language and ideas across worlds, such transmission is rare. Even more unlikely is for an already low probability word making its way into the depths of the Underdark, into a very xenophobic Menzoberranzan, meaning that Jarlaxle actually knowing the word "okay" in past Menzoberranzan is next to impossible. It's lazy writing, Salvatore isn't even trying anymore. The same is true for "salty", which, although is less specific to our world, did come into prominent use in recent times, a fact aligning with Salvatore's usage of it to beg the question of if he's actively trying to dumb down his writing to appeal to a wider audience. 

Unfortunately, Salvatore's regression in staying true to Common isn't limited to individual words. In Boundless, there's a glaring instance of the usage of a phrase that is specific to Earth. Specifically, during one of Entreri's melodramatic monologues, while he ponders all the analogies of death, one of the things he specifically thinks is, "the ring around the rosy". While this isn't an exact replica of a line from a well-known nursery rhyme, knowing Salvatore it was most likely a typo of "rosie" to "rosy". There are several issues with the reference. First, it's evident that Salvatore was referencing the hypothesized morbid nature of the rhyme, when it was believed that it was about the Black Death, with the "ring around the rosie" specifically referring to the swollen red rings around the plague victims' eyes and/or the the black circles that would appear on their bodies. The Black Death is specific to our world, with no indication of anything similar having happened in the Realms. Even if there was a plague similar to the Great Plague, it would be curbed way before it developed into a pandemic in a world with as much magic as exists in the Realms. Thus, it's unlikely that a nursery rhyme would develop, especially as plagues are nasty business, bards and the like would much rather extol heroes and heroic deeds. Second, it'd always been weird that a children's song would be so dark, but it was recently disproven that the rhyme is about the Black Death at all. The plague explanation was one concocted a long time after the appearance of a rhyme with no definite origin, and while a number of different theories exist for the meaning of "ring around the rosie", folklorists pointed out evidence such as the plague explanation not appearing until the mid-twentieth century and the symptoms supposedly described by the rhyme not fitting with those of the Black Death. Perhaps most tellingly, the Black Death interpretation is based on the modern (and usually American English) form of the rhyme, which is not the rhyme's original form. This particular phrase that Salvatore uses demonstrates both a world break and a failure in research. 

Another world break also happens in that same monologue, specifically, when Entreri thinks, "No existence... no existence... that, so I learn too late, my only heaven." Salvatore could've easily avoided this instance by using the word "salvation" or "peace" instead of "heaven". As it is, the concept of heaven is unique to the religions of our world. In the Realms, there is no "heaven", unless one is referring to Mount Celestia. After death, souls go to the realm of the deity they worshiped in life, and if an individual didn't worship a deity, their soul would go to the deity whose portfolio most closely aligns with how they lived their life. Those like Entreri  who reject the worship of any deity would've ended up in the Wall of the Faithless, but even that eternity would've been better than that of the cocoon. Since Entreri is defining his eternal peace as nonexistence now that the cocoon has shown him the potential horrors that await him, the Wall of the Faithless should feel pretty welcoming to him. The Wall is by no means a pleasant fate, for one's soul is eternally mortared into it, but neither is it eternal suffering either. However, there's another world break here in that Salvatore doesn't seem to want to acknowledge the Wall of the Faithless' existence. He'd go so far as to create a nonexistent "demon" that will torment those that it deems evil for eternity. The "demon" could actually not be a demon at all, but its human-faced wasp minions certainly don't seem like the kind of critter that would belong to a goodly creature. 

Self-Inconsistency

A consistent problem that occurs in the Drizzt books is the lack of self-consistency. Salvatore often seems to forget and/or mix up which of his characters have done what. This was better in Timeless, but worsened in Boundless again. One example of this that is also a disregard for the shared world as a whole is, "Dab'nay stirred from her deep slumber". Such a simple statement, yet one forgetting something as fundamental as drow having ebony skin. Elves of the Forgotten Realms, which includes drow, don't typically sleep, unless they are extremely injured. Their equivalent of rest is reverie, which they only need half as much of as creatures needing sleep, and it's a state in which they are perfectly lucid. I suppose elves can choose to sleep, but it's illogical that Dab'nay would do so even as comfortable as she feels in that moment. Dab'nay is relatively safe in her hideout, but fundamentally, she is in Menzoberranzan, in the Underdark after all, and there, no place is truly safe. Unless a drow has a death wish, they wouldn't relinquish the advantage afforded them by reverie unless they had no choice, i.e. when they're seriously wounded, which leads me to conclude that Salvatore simply forgot, yet again, that drow don't sleep. It's really a shame, and also somewhat embarrassing, given that one of his more memorable and evocative lines is, "They sat there under the stars and let the Reverie calm them" (The Two Swords). And that's not taking into account the War of the Spider Queen series that he supposedly oversaw, in which reverie is referenced in a non-insignificant way. 

Another example of self-inconsistency in Boundless is:

This is deserving of a John Stewart baffled look. Drizzt, Jarlaxle and Entreri were allowed to walk free from Quenthel's dungeons, but Zaknafein was never there, not during Quenthel's rule anyway. I suppose we don't actually know where Yvonnel the Second brought Zaknafein back from, it is conceivable that she resurrected him in Quenthel's dungeons. However, this is super unlikely, because Yvonnel had already left Menzoberranzan behind by that point with no intention of looking back. 

Yet another inconsistency in Boundless is Guenhwyvar apparently losing one of her oldest abilities, specifically, her capacity to carry others with her to and from the Astral Plane. This ability initially appeared in the first Drizzt book Salvatore wrote, The Crystal Shard, in which Guenhwyvar whisks Regis away to the safety of her home while the final Cryshal-Tirith crumbles about them. She does this again in The Halfling's Gem, stealing Regis away again right as things were getting hot for him in Pasha Pook's guild. In that same book, she later returns to the Prime Material Plane with other astral panthers to obliterate the wererats in the Thieves' Guild. Just the circumstance of Regis going on a joyride through the Astral Plane not once but twice should've led to Drizzt  learning about this particular special and powerful ability of his wondrous companion. However, if for some strange reason Regis was tight-lipped about both of his extraordinary experiences with the panther, the spectacle of a pack of panthers materializing to help the Companions rout their enemies should've definitely drawn enough notice to inspire some question and investigation. It's simply inconceivable that Drizzt wouldn't be aware of Guenhwyvar's ability to transport passengers to the Astral Plane, unless he were so dense as to not notice, or so oblivious as to not wonder. In Boundless, Drizzt demonstrates himself to be either exceedingly forgetful or exceedingly stupid to not think of this most convenient ability of Guenhwyvar's that may have solved the Retriever issue right away. Of course, since what Salvatore "created" isn't a standard Retriever, it’s possible it gained immunity to most everything and incomprehensible cosmic power, but lost its ability to track and travel to other planes?  Perhaps that’s its form of an "itty bitty living space"? Yet, in increasing Salvatore fashion, this inconvenient fact is conveniently forgotten, as even Drizzt's most trusted companion Guenhwyvar isn't immune to being nerfed so that the golden boy is elevated to new levels. After all, if Guenhwyvar simply took Drizzt to the Astral Plane and lost the Retriever that way, how could Salvatore make Drizzt do that awesome discorporating thing at the end of the novel?

Perhaps the biggest recurring issue in the Drizzt books is the arbitrary impermanence of death. Even putting aside the fact that the Companions of the Hall are immune to permanent death, always finding some way to come back even if it entails a hundred-year time jump imposed by D&D's edition change, Salvatore seems to blatantly ignore that the resurrection mechanic exists in the world. Resurrection magic might be difficult to access in remote villages as well as being prohibitively expensive for the common folk, but Drizzt and the companions are far from common folk. Bruenor is one of the wealthiest people on the continent, and the companions have allies in advanced, magic-rich cities such as Silverymoon. This isn't accounting for the fact that even in their midst, Catti-brie should be more than powerful enough to perform one resurrection a day. Pikel, too, is represented to be very powerful, and while he might not be able to resurrect, reincarnating a lost friend in a different form should certainly be within his magic arsenal. Why is none of that being employed to bring back Ambergris when she was slain in Timeless? Why was it not used when Pwent was killed, which would've had the bonus effect of also curing his vampirism? The fact that even the endlessly resourceful Jarlaxle doesn't have some sort of death-defeating spell on hand, even during the Spellplague era, is a gaping hole of an incongruity that'll never be rectified. Putting that aside, Salvatore treats death even more whimsically than Realms authors who do acknowledge resurrection magic in their books. It really feels like Pwent is revealed as not dead due to popular request, whereas Ambergris is killed off to build drama. Similarly, I question if anyone still draws any tension from any members of the Companions being in "mortal danger". It doesn't matter that Drizzt can't escape the relentless Retriever pursuing him, because we know that he's not going to die in any permanent sense, and that everything will work out all right for him. This is perhaps not something that can be laid at Salatore's feet though, as it is intrinsic to most novel series (at least those not written be George R.R. Martin).

Dungeon Amateur

Another thing that's evident from the Drizzt books is that, despite Salvatore styling himself as a D&D expert, his actual understanding of D&D mechanics is very poor. His stats for Drizzt are so laughably optimized that a properly min-maxed character could easily defeat him in one-on-one combat while being as much as ten levels lower than him. However, Drizzt has the thickest plot armor of possibly any fantasy character, so there's no need for Salvatore to understand the game system that his books borrow from and are based in. Still, it's very cringe-worthy to see, especially as with each new book, Salvatore is flagrantly disregarding D&D even more. For instance, in Boundless, Jarlaxle's bag of holding is described as being able to “hold a roomful of goods”. I suppose this is true if it was a pretty small room or if it's a room full of not very heavy goods, because bags of holding can't exceed a capacity of five hundred pounds, and if we're speaking in terms of pure volume, sixty-four cubic feet is the limit. Based on the way that Jarlaxle is pulling forth pouch after pouch full of gold from that bag of holding though, Salvatore makes it sound like he's got a dragon's hoard stored in that magical container. Gold and treasure is heavy, so if Jarlaxle indeed wanted to fit a roomful of goods in his bag of holding, he surely must stock some lightweight junk amidst all of those coins.

The above example admittedly isn't all that bad, especially when considering that since multi-classing into monk, Drizzt's plot armor thickened exponentially, giving him a bevy of awesome new abilities even though his previous awesomeness meant that he's high enough level such that he should only have one level to spend into monk. In Boundless, it seems as though Salvatore is reassigning Drizzt's levels, perhaps taking out those levels in those ranger abilities he never uses and putting them into monk, or perhaps simply by removing the level cap for him. With his sole level in monk, Drizzt kicks a balor in the head for massive damage, even though that one level would've only granted him proficiency in unarmed strikes, an alternate low amount of damage (d4), or the possibility for an extra attack. Yet Drizzt is kicking that balor for the damage of all of his fighter levels, as well as being able to remove poison from himself, an ability that monks don't even have anything similar to until level ten in the form of poison immunity.

At times, Salvatore seems self-conscious about the world and mechanic breaks he performs, and appears to try to make up for them. However, the way that he does so is clumsy and inspires one to facepalm. For instance, a guard "crumples to the floor as if she had been stomped by a tarrasque" after receiving a strike from Dahlia's nunchaku. The tarrasque is a creature that is unique to the Forgotten Realms, however it is also fifty feet long and seventy feet wide, weighing a whopping value of one hundred and thirty tons. Any medium-sized humanoid, which the guard that Dahlia strikes is, would be little more than a bloody smear even if the tarrasque gently put its foot on them. Yet, the guard didn't die immediately from such a strike, was even groaning afterwards. The vast ridiculousness of the analogy aside, it's very unlikely that the guard would be alive at all, for Dahlia's un-tarrasque-like strike nonetheless was enough to splatter the nearby Regis with "blood, bone, and brain". 

In the same vein as not making sense is:

Since when is "what in the Nine Hells" an old dwarven cliché? As far as I can remember, this is the first time it's mentioned in a Drizzt book, and I don't recall seeing that phrase categorized as such in any other Forgotten Realms novels or sourcebooks. It hardly makes sense to and reeks of poor and lazy worldbuilding, While all "facts" in a fantasy setting are made up, this detail is just so random and doesn't fit with dwarf lore. Dwarven souls can end up in the abyss and Baator (the Nine Hells) as readily as any mortal soul, but dwarves as a race don't mingle with devils as much as, for instance, humans or even elves do. As such, it's unlikely that fear of the hells would come from the dwarves. Besides, Bruenor would certainly know the difference between demons and devils, and would thus know that the lawful evil devils would not be marching aside their hated enemies, the chaotic evil demons besieging Gauntylgrm.

One final piece that makes little sense, a tidbit that breaks both D&D rules and Salvatore's own consistency, is Regis lifting Entreri's cocoon. Regis doesn't drag the cocoon, but actually lifts it, gets it on his shoulders, and carries it across a room. Sure, his legs were shaking, but the feat shouldn't have been possible for him at all. We know from Salvatore's own text via The Sellswords trilogy that Entreri weighs one hundred and fifty pounds. Assuming that's with armor included, although it's unlikely since a man that is five foot five inches tall and as muscular as Entreri is would weigh that fully nude, the cocoon itself should add at least fifty pounds, although more likely much more as it's described as being thick and made of sludge-like material. As a halfling, Regis would weigh around thirty pounds, and from what we've seen, he's more of a dexterity-based character than strength-based. He shouldn't have been able to lift the cocoon at all. 

Utter Nonsense

There are a number of things that aren't just inconsistent with the rest of the shared world, they're not even consistent with our world. A carry-over from Timeless is what was supposed to have been a nightmarish fate left to the priestess who failed, Ash'ala Melarn. The climax of the awful punishment was supposedly "when the maggots hatch in the filthy tub all about [her], that [she] can feel every bite and every squirm over the days as they devoured [her]." As I pointed out in my analysis of Timeless, maggots only eat dead flesh. They don't eat live flesh, which is why they can be employed in medical treatments as a form of biotherapy. Because they specifically target dead tissue, maggots are effective in preventing infection that is promoted by the presence of dead tissue. Thus, unless drow possess the capacity to maintain sensation in dead tissue, Ash'ala wouldn't feel the maggots' bites. It seems that Salvatore just kept compounding his mistake, for in Boundless, we're reminded of how Ash'ala is "being slowly eaten by maggots". I suppose that can be true enough if more and more of her tissue is dying and the maggots move on to consume the newly dead tissue, but it's not really a horrific image because, fundamentally, all dead things are going to be eaten by maggots. I get what Salvatore is trying to go for but if the maggots in their world is the same as ours, it wouldn't work the way that he's describing. 

Another example of something that just doesn't fit in either world appears during one of Entreri's monologues: 

I can't find anything for what "piffy" might mean here. There's an entry in the Urban Dictionary that states that it means "sexy", but that definition hardly fits in this context. There's also an explanation that it's a British saying that means to be conspicuous but left out of an activity, but that hardly fits either. Is this Salvatore's version of Trump's covfefe, or a truly epicly bad spelling of pithy that doesn't really fit either? Perhaps its an attempt to show us that language is "Boundless".

[taiblogcomics]

Not Harpering on About Roy’s Death

Hey there, hardcore skyblock map. So, we've had a good run of Suicide Squad. Quite enjoyed that, really. So let's see what the other series that we weren't enjoying so much is up to, eh? Red Hood had been building in a stupid new direction, so let's drop in on that, shall we~?

Here's the very shiny cover:

Yep, DC's infatuation with '90s cover gimmicks continues, though this was always an actually cool one. Since it doesn't come across in the scan, here's the thing. All the red parts on this cover? They're holofoil. It's very metallic, and honestly looks quite striking. It's a gimmick, but unlike those lenticular 3D covers from a couple years ago, this is one that works. Also, despite what the wiki (and the issue number) indicates, the title has officially changed to Red Hood: Outlaw. I thought it was just a fun gimmick on the previous cover, but no. According to the copyinfo in the back of the issue, this is its actual title. There’s probably an irony in Jason of all people using a crowbar as a weapon, but he’d never pick up on it himself~

Once again, the comic starts by informing us that this is "'Merica", thus not filling us with any hope regarding the depiction of the individuals within. Indeed, we start at a small-town diner, where a large man in a beige jacket is harassing the youthful waitress for her phone number. To her credit, she is plainly telling him no forcefully. Jason Todd enters the diner, sits with the man, and orders a coffee, which the waitress is glad to take as an excuse to get away. The large man is grumpy that Jason is here, as is the reader, and asks if he can find somewhere else to sit. Jason retorts that he has a particular question for him--one regarding his involvement with Underlife (the shadowy cabal organisation that Jason's tracking).

Surprisingly, Jason turns out to be dead-on that this redneck is part of Underlife, because he immediately starts going for his gun. Jason decides this guy's not sweet enough, and so hits him in the face with the sugar dispenser. This is just as the waitress returns with his coffee, so Jason throws it in the face of his next assailant. For indeed, the entire diner has decided to attack him as well. And of course, someone goes out through the diner's front window. The brawl is largely in Jason's favour until an extremely large man comes out and hits him from behind. And of course this guy is wearing a trucker hat, a blue jacket over a pink button-down shirt with rolled-up sleeves, and blue boots with a red-and-white stars-and-stripes pattern across them. His jacket says "Tiny", but I'm going to call him Cap'n 'Murrica.

So Cap'n 'Murrica tells Jason that they ain't jus' backwoods hicks out here, son. (Yeah, if you're not down with phonetic rural American accents, this comic will drive you up the wall.) See, they're all united under Underlife here. And Underlife is bigger than anything he can imagine. Y'know, how do these shadowy cabal organisations recruit these hundreds of thousands of members without anyone ever finding out about them? He's about to squash Jason flat when suddenly his eyes roll back in his head and he collapses. Cap'n 'Murrica falls over to reveal Bruce Wayne standing behind him.

So with the rest of the diner deserted because of the fight, Bruce and Jason sit down to have a chat. Jason even passes Bruce what's left of his coffee. Bruce has two pieces of news for Jason. The first is that Penguin didn't actually die from the gunshot to the face. But it wasn't for lack of trying, so Bruce still forbids Jason from ever returning to Gotham. The second is the badness we all knew is coming. Bruce tells Jason that, due to the events of Heroes in Crisis, his best friend Roy Harper is dead. We've ranted about this before, but here is where Jason actually receives the news.

Surprisingly, both Bruce and Jason agree that Jason doesn't need to be there. There's a lot of people going to be looking for revenge (Roy wasn't the only death, you see), and they don't need him around screwing with that. Bruce offers him a supportive hand on his shoulder, and Jason replies that death is a revolving door in their business. He's died, Bruce has died, Damian's died. Everyone who puts on a mask is living on borrowed time. So of course he's going to miss Roy. He's even going to grieve for Roy. But he's not going to sit around moping, because that's not what Roy would want. Bruce offers to drop Jason off somewhere, and he says he's fine. He does, however, accept a hug from Bruce.

Jason thanks Bruce for telling him in person, which must be hard since he hates him and all. Bruce replies that even on the worst days, he's never hated Jason. Sure, he thinks he's an ass who needs kicking sometimes, but at the end of the day, the both of them have each other's backs and they know it. The pair of them part, and Jason walks off down the road. He stops and leans against a fence, and pulls out his phone. He calls up Roy and leaves him a message, presumably on his voicemail or something. The gist of it is some gentle ribbing at Roy's superhero credentials, but full credit for being his best friend. He then deletes the contact and moves on.

Well, tarnation. Jason's wanderin' seems to have led him to the little ol' town of Appleton. This place is downright the epitome of small-town America. The people always stop and say hi on the street, and even the local sherrif stops Jason on his way into town. Since Jason's just passing through, the cop points him to a local bed-and-breakfast to sleep at. Jason takes his advice, and soon he's checking in. He pointedly declines to let the owner take his bag for him, and excused himself to go have a bite at the diner. He thinks it seems like a nice place, and it'll be a shame when he has to dismantle it brick by brick. And as he heads out, the view switches to a noticably mechanical view that scans all his biometrics and even x-rays his bag, declaring that they have a problem...

You can refer to my previous reviews if you’d like more ranting on Heroes in Crisis (or if you send me the whole miniseries, I’ll rant about the whole thing~), but this being the moment Jason actually learns of Roy’s death... This is well-written. He’s not in denial about Roy’s death because of how superheroes come back (I can point you to an X-Factor story involving that concept, if you like), but he accepts both possibilities: his best friend is dead. But superheroes don’t always stay dead. If he sees his friend again someday, that’s great. If he doesn’t, he’ll keep kicking bad guy ass in his name, because that’s what he’d want.

And again: here’s a great Batman. He never once raises his voice or acts upset with Jason. Not even over the “you intended to murder the Penguin, and the fact that he survived doesn’t absolve your intent” thing. Bruce is sympathetic and almost downright friendly. He offers Jason the time he needs, and even mentions Alfred telling him not to bottle it up. And when Jason wants space instead, he gives him that too. I like this whole thing. The fact that Jason is kind of the screw-up and black sheep of the Bat family doesn’t mean Bruce hates him. It’s just really good. Shame it’s sandwiched between some goofy smalltown crime empire antics~