#the one on the compilation I had was an incomplete story and I initially thought that it was an underwhelming

[maganne-studies]

"My father said it looked very sad: a stairway in a field of ruin, going up to nowhere."

- The Woman Who Had Two Navels by NIck Joaquin

[sabrinatvband]

Fat Evil Women devlog 1

I'm working on a new comic and I thought it would be good to share some notes on its production. I think this will be the only devlog I share publically for this comic; I'll probably include a start-to-finish log with all of the concept art and layout roughs as a tier bonus when I sell this on itch.io later. But, here's a very generous taste.

This comic is eventually going to be sold as a CBR file on itch, but I'm also doing to try printing it on A3 paper [which will be folded] and making a small batch of physical copies to give away. It will probably be 32 pages long. It's going to be an anthology [with one particularly long story]. In other words, it's going to be a complete comic, like one you might buy in a comic shop, rather than something more "informal" in shape. In the future, I plan on making enough of these to collect them in trade paperback form, perhaps as a print on demand book?

So far I've done a couple of layouts and compiled a ton of notes. Work on this project began with a simple two-page layout for a bimbo sequence.

I did all the pencilling, inking, and coloring in between two and four hours I think. The first panel on the second page uses an old drawing of the bimbo character I'd drawn several months ago.

I then made a sequence using a Goblin Queen character I'd created around a year ago. Here's the sequence and the original illustration I'd done. The second incomplete panel is from an old drawing I started but never finished.

Yes, the Goblin Queen who looks nothing like a goblin is meant to be a reference of sorts to the Goblin King from Labyrinth, if you were wondering. Except my Goblin Queen mostly hangs out with dark elves.

These sequences are only meant to be rough guides for the final drawings, but I put way more efforts into my layouts than I actually need to. After making these two page sequences, I decided to do something a little more ambitious.

I illustrated a woman wearing a shiny black dress, and she reminded me of an old indie porno producer character I'd created a while ago named Demonia [please ignore how terrible the old three part sequence looks; I didn't know how to draw fat women yet].

When I started plotting this sequence out in my notebook, it was only four pages long. But I added a bunch of extra panels in later and brought it up to six pages [The numbers are original panels, and the letters are ones I added in after making the first complete rough layout.]

I made some concept art for characters I'd mentioned in the script that didn't have designs yet, as well as a few locations. I then compiled all of that into a CBR file I can refer to while working on the final art [the blacked out bits in the thumbnails are photo references].

I then started work on another sequence that quickly grew beyond the six pages I was initially planning on doing.

A few years ago, when I first started using my Wacom, I illustrated an androgynous spider creature. Much more recently, I started moving overseas and started designing new characters in my sketchbook that I was planning on making digital pieces with later, and I revisited my spider concept. If you overlay the rough spider drawing from the sketchbook page with the digital WIP below, you'll notice I did a whole bunch of warping and stuff to the individual limbs to make it look better.

This WIP will appear in finished form in the spider comic somewhere; look out for it.

Anyways, I decided this spider would be perfect for a weight gain sequence, and so I started making concept art.

This is just a fraction of the concept art I created. I've done at least 15 pages of work for this comic, and a lot of it is exploratory work. In the beginning, I had basically no idea what the plot of the sequence would be, and designing new characters and illustrating scenarios gave shape to the story.

After making maybe three or four pages of sketches, and writing a list of elements I wanted to be in the story in my notebook, I made this rough synopsis of the plot. I then started working on a CBR file for the spider sequence that includes photo references, sketches, old designs I want to repurpose, scans of my notebook, etc.

Work was slowing down in my notebook, and so eventually I made a text document and started writing down panel-by-panel bullet points. Of course this all needs to be adapted into rough visuals, but I covered a lot of ground with this after building my foundation.

You might be wondering what the point of all this pre-production work is. The problem with comics as a medium is that it's extremely time intensive, and so you have to get all of the iterative stuff done long before you put pencil to bristol board for the first time [assuming you only use bristol board during the very last stage of your process].

[Old comic artists were sometimes drawing upwards of 40 pages a month, and they didn't have time to think things out so thoroughly. But for people who aren't drawing multiple books a month, it's been common to do multiple waves of layouts for decades, and this pre-production stuff has only gotten more common. Which is good; quality > quantity. The video on layouts below is a great overview.]

While I was doing layouts in my notebook for this spider sequence, I started working out a page that ended up not hitting all of the notes it needed to. If I'd been drawing by the seat of my pants, it would've been a big problem, but when you're doing layouts with illustrations only two or three steps above stick figure drawings, re-doing a page is not a hassle.

You might be wondering what my actual workflow is for producing finished art. Once I got very used to the feeling of using an Intuos Wacom, I told myself I was going to draw comics entirely digitally. It made a lot of sense; I could use layers, perspective work is a lot easier digitally, and I can fix mistakes and/or warp things a lot more easily.

Over time, I realized I hated doing everything digitally. There are many things that are better digital, like coloring. I prefer drawing pin-ups digitally. But I really don't like drawing an entire page digitally, and I realized my previous serious comic attempts had all petered out when it was time to start doing the final work in the computer, after the layouts and stuff had already been completed.

Of course, I'd tried making professional quality work without computers before. But it's nearly impossible to do that inside of a sketchbook [although I'd drawn many joke comics in highschool using a sketchbook], and using only bristol board I had problems with things like perspective; I have a lot of respect for older artists who couldn't use any digital tools.

So, I've resolved to buy a scanner and printer. I'm going to make final layouts in my art programs that have skeletons laid out where I want them, perspective grids, panel layouts, etc, and then I'll print them onto bristol board using light blue ink [which doesn't get picked up by a scanner]. I'll then do the final pencilling and inking on bristol board, scan those pages, and do any touch-ups and coloring in the computer.

I forgot to mention that none of these comics have words. Perhaps future issues of Fat Evil Women will have dialogue and stuff, but as a conceptual thing this first issue is basically completely silent. When I was making panel grids digitally to start working on some final layouts, I noticed that, when you don't have any speech bubbles, a traditional six panel grid looks way too square and vertical. So, I've decided to make my spider sequence on a four-tier grid, which shouldn't be a massive change. The entire story uses uniform rows, and so it just means moving stuff back. There are no dramatic page-turn moments that will be compromised by this change.

I might have to alter the Demonia sequence as well, but probably not. Since the height of the panels in the two page sequences are variable, I think I'll leave them exactly as they are.

I was planning on including a giantess sequence in this first issue as well, but if I reach 32 pages without it then I'll have to push it to a later issue. But since I'm moving to four-tier layouts, I might end up with a lot fewer pages than expected.

[unaffiliatedbird]

It took a whole month to read one book this year so I'm off to a bad start.

Dry Store Room No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum, by Richard Fortey

It didn't take a month because the book was bad. It just has long-ish (~40 page) chapters and I was never in the mood to read them. Especially with non-fiction I prefer more bite-sized chapters so that I have more frequent natural breaks. It's harder to get into it if I have to commit to reading that much before stopping.

The content of the book was good though.

I thought initially it might have been a memoir of Fortey's life spent working at the British Natural History Museum, but it isn't really that, although it contains some parts about himself. Rather, it is the larger story of the museum itself, told through his eyes. It's a patchwork of anecdotes about events and people and gossip, both during his time there and before it. It's about the value of natural history museums in general, and the role they play in biological/geological/paleontological research by housing collections of specimens.

Fortey emphasizes repeatedly that the work done using these collections contributes massively to our understanding evolution and biodiversity, and that this is particularly important as ecosystems are under ever more pressing threat. As all scientists must, he gestures vaguely to the fact that these collections could contribute in unforeseeable ways to drug production, agriculture, etc. But being a true naturalist, he points out that our ecosystems possess innate value in themselves, not just potential commercial value for humans, and he tries to drive this point home.

Some of the book is a lament about the bygone days of old-school taxonomy as the forefront of biology; stories of towering figures who could name every species in so-and-so family (or genus if it's beetles) by eye or microscope, and spent their lives compiling grand compendiums of such knowledge. In the era of ever more precise labwork, such individuals are fading away, perhaps never to be replaced (in part, Fortey points out, because naming all the beetles isn't a research endeavour that's likely to draw funding). Significant sections of the book discuss DNA identification versus anatomical identification, both of which have value for biological understanding. Towards the end of the book, Fortey suggests that the kind of anatomical taxonomy of the past could become more the domain of the amateurs, supported by the internet, while career scientists are driven to the shiny realm of molecular taxonomy.

Since this book was written in 2008, there are a few parts that read a bit dated. The few lines Fortey writes about feathered dinosaurs, for example, imply a murkier picture of the prominence of feathers than we have now. Slight anachronism rather fits with the rest of the book, though, which also dredges up debunked theories of the past, such as Randolph Kirkpatrick's Nummulosphere, the theory that all rocks had been derived from Nummulites, which Kirkpatrick supposed had once covered the Earth. The incompleteness of scientific knowledge is part of the greater story.

Balancing Fortey's serious message about the importance of museum collections are his tales about the colourful figures of the museum's past. A collection of drunks, thieves, plain assholes, and bureaucrats help to lighten up the pages. Alas, the truth of whether there really was an illicit still inside the museum's blue whale model may be lost to time.

I like museums, and I like natural history, so I liked this book. It was fun, and very informative about the behind-the-scenes stuff of these institutes.

[hexadecimalmantis]

Argonaut Games Research

This post was originally going to be an absurdly long documentary video, but I realized it would have been a bit boring, so I ultimately decided on making a glorified blog post. 

When I joined BioMedia Project last year, I was tasked with researching Bionicle: The Game and its sequel Bionicle 2: City of Legends. I have talked about both games in great detail many times before, and I think we all know about the issues that plague both of them by now. Bionicle: The Game is seemingly incomplete, and filled with content that was cut early on, and Bionicle 2: City of Legends never made it past a private movement demo. For context about Bionicle 2: BioMedia Project managed to obtain an Xbox build of the movement demo a few years ago. It has a few issues, such as broken audio and some missing graphical effects. I began reaching out to former developers in an effort to piece together the entire story of Argonaut Games, and uncover more secrets about both games. (Initially) With the assistance of Liam Robertson of DidYouKnowGaming?, I began contacting some of the developers. For those of you that are unfamiliar, Argonaut Games was split into two different facilities during the development of Bionicle: The Game. The first being Argonaut London, and the second was Argonaut Sheffield. I decided to reach out to the former developers from the London branch first. I initially didn’t get any replies, but I remained persistent. After waiting a few weeks, I eventually I got a reply from a former artist. Keep in mind that personal details about the former developers I contacted will be expunged in order to protect their identities and to prevent harassment and spam.

This is the first message I received after I inquired about Bionicle: The Game:

“Hi, yes I was lead artist on Bionicle. I'd say that it was a game that we cared a lot about, and to be honest we had high hopes for, at least initially. As always with game dev there wasn't just one cause of the games problems, but probably the biggest was we fell in love with the games setting and bit off far more than we could chew. We should have started with far more cautious goals, but we wanted to tell the whole story. I'm surprised if there was that much unused content on the disc TBH but the original scope of the game is definitely visible in naming conventions etc. we had intended each character to have toa levels and toa nuva (if thats the right term?) their powered up versions - before adding the 7th. Given that they have different abilities that was a huge ask of the team.

(Redacted)”

This message was about what I expected, the devs were a bit too ambitious and were unable to complete their ideas during the given development time. I later asked about the developer signatures stored within the BIGB archives, and asked them if they had worked on any of the Kopaka areas, since I found their signature within a subset of those files:

“the 'signatures' probably just refer to the designers - which is a relatively small subset of the team as a whole. I oversaw the project from an art perspective, so characters env, frontend etc then I ended up doing some animation work on the bull, onua, the weird door thing. I didn't work on Kopaka - that work was done up in Sheffield, I used to visit their studio to review stuff & sign it off.”

I’m sure the Bull was probably the Kane-Ra seen in Onua Nuva’s level. There are some pre-release trailers that show a Kane-Ra attacking the player with unique animations too. After that, I asked him about Argonaut Sheffield and their work on Bionicle 2: City of Legends. To my surprise, I got this:

“No, I didn't I thought they were disbanded alongside Argo”

This essentially meant that nobody from Argonaut London was aware of the development of Bionicle 2: City of Legends. With this information, it was easy to conclude that Bionicle 2 was created solely by Argonaut Sheffield as speculated. After failing to get more replies from former developers from Argonaut London, I shifted my focus to Argonaut Sheffield, intrigued by the messages I received from the former artist.

After a bit of waiting, I got a reply from another former artist.

“Hi,

Yes, I worked on Bionicle as a character artist along side artist (redacted). He was my mentor back then as it was my first industry job. I think we modelled about 130 odd characters/modular models back then between us. The character concepts we're drawn up by (redacted).

Argonaut Sheffield was previously Particle Systems who made I-War, the PC Sci Fi game and some other iterations. It was a technically adept small team and great to work with. I didn't have much to do with the London branch. We went on to try and make some failed movie tie-ins alongside them at a later date. Catwoman, Zorro, Star Wars, Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and also Bionicle 2.. which was going to be a fluid parkour type platformer. Which never materialised as after being there just shy of two years, London shut us down.

I'm actually working back in the offices where it all happened now. Which seems strange. I did work at Sumo Digital as a lead Char artist for ten years in between. I know there's a basement full of hard drives still here as one of the old directors still rents some space here.

(redacted)

(redacted)

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

(redacted)”

I received concept art for both Bionicle: The Game and Bionicle 2: City of Legends in this message. The art was later posted on my Twitter: https://twitter.com/HexMantis/status/1099883979942084608

Aside from the plethora of art, this message provided some insight about how Argonaut Sheffield came to be. It was previously known as Particle Systems before it assimilated into Argonaut Games. After this exchange, I reached out to a former programmer from Argonaut Sheffield. This time I provided a set of questions for the developer to answer in an effort to obtain specific information. After waiting for nearly a month, I got a reply:

The questions I asked will be enclosed within [ ] to avoid confusion.

“Hey!

There's some incomplete credits here (redacted)

but you could try contacting (redacted) as he was the lead programmer there. He used to work at PKR too, also owned by (redacted).

(redacted)

[Asked about the main development platform for the games]

1) Yep it was PS2. The PS2 version was handled by Argonaut Edgeware and programmers in Sheffield did ports for the other platforms

[Asked about the cut content from Bionicle: The Game]

2) Sorry, I wasn't involved with that bit. I was responsible for adding the hyper threading features on the PC (redacted)

[Asked about interactions with the London branch]

3) Yep, we worked together on it. Designers and Artists in Sheffield were working on assets for the main game.

[Asked about I-Ninja’s compatibility with Bionicle: The Game]

4) I think they should be compatible with each other. I-ninja came out a bit later though.

[Asked about Bionicle 2: City of Legends]

5) Maybe, not sure as it was a long time ago and I then moved to the Edgeware studio. If they did I guess it was just a prototype for a pitch

Good luck with your fact finding!“

I later asked if they knew of any early builds of either game, and I got this reply:

“Hey!

Sorry for the late reply. I believe everything was archived by Argonaut and EA. I'm not sure if anyone archived it personally at Argonaut or not but there were a lot of people working on it. They created archive PCs with everything you need to make the game from the source assets.

Thanks,

(redacted)”

The concept of the supposed “archive PCs” was interesting, but I doubt any of them are still around after all this time. After this, I contacted another former programmer from Argonaut Sheffield. This time with a focus on Bionicle 2: City of Legends:

“Hi William, I must admit, I'm curious where you found my name in the demo. Do you have a source code drop to go with it, or did I leave my name in an error message in the binary package itself?

Either way, yes I did work on the demo, albeit briefly. The engine the demo is built on is largely the same engine used in Bionicle (the original PS2/Xbox/PC game), Catwoman, and I-Ninja. It has an older pedigree than that too, but those were the games it was used on while Argonaut Sheffield was part of the Argonaut group. I was one of the programmers who ported the engine over to PC & Xbox for the original Bionicle, which is why I was involved in the demo in some capacity.

I'm still in touch with a lot of the designers who worked on the movement demo; the lead designer, (redacted), has said that I can pass on his contact details if you'd like to get in touch with him. You can contact him at (redacted).

Cheers,

(redacted)”

I was not surprised to get confirmation that Bionicle 2 used the same engine as Bionicle: The Game, since most of my existing programs I wrote for Bionicle: The Game were compatible with the Xbox demo. I asked if a PS2 port of Bionicle 2: City of Legends ever existed, since the Xbox demo we have has DualShock button mappings present in the game:

“Ah, I'll bet that's because I'll have compiled and built the disc image, so it's embedded my PC's name into the image. The level select would have just been for test levels where I was looking at specific bugs, performance problems or new features.

I really can't remember if we did PS2 or PC builds of the demo, other than the development binaries the design team would have been using. It's unlikely we'll have done a full ISO for the PS2, because the spiders caused real performance problems and we'd have wanted to show it to the publishers on the fastest available hardware.

By the way, the Xbox version will have reference to PS2 hardware because the original engine was PS2 only. The easiest way to port the engine was to, as far as possible, just get the Xbox and PC versions to pretend they were doing exactly the same thing as the PS2. For example, the game scripts don't need to know that when they get a button press from Cross or Circle, they're actually getting button presses from A or B. So although the names are going to be PS2-centric, they're still doing Xbox specific stuff.”

I was surprised to find out that the Morbuzakh Spiders were the primary reason for shifting Bionicle 2 to the original Xbox. I guess it makes sense, given how little time Argonaut Sheffield had to optimize the game. Switching to the original Xbox appeared to be a quick and easy way to avoid the hassle of optimization.

I later asked about the audio issues present in the Xbox demo, and for some general information about Bionicle: The Game.

“Hi William,

I'm afraid I've got no idea why the demo would be silent - it's been far too many years for me to remember the exact details, and I have no idea which version of the demo is the one which has been circulated. The full code for the audio system will have been present, because it was just a continuation of the engine used on Bionicle, and I'm sure the designers would have had at least some placeholder audio to hook up.

Audio is habitually the last thing to get hooked up in any game development, and since most developers prefer to have a silent build and listen to their own music while they work, it's not unusual for it either to be neglected in early internal builds, or for it to have been hacked to be silent (assuming the demo was one built locally rather than for showing to a publisher).

In terms of the development situation on Bionicle, although we weren't directly in the body of main developers, I think most of us were aware that the game wasn't progressing as well as it should. As well as the code team doing the porting work, our design and art teams were making the 'adrenaline levels' - which were the short lava/ice/tree surfing levels. They were only supposed to be short breaks between much larger levels, but it became increasingly obvious towards the end that these relatively small levels were still a large percentage of the actual content, and the other larger levels weren't coming online as fast as they should. QA in particular do full play-throughs on a regular basis, so they have a very good view of how fast the game as a whole is coming together.

I'm not 100% sure on all of the reasons for the delays in development, having been a relatively junior developer in a satellite studio at the time, but the reasons discussed at the time with leads and producers are fairly common ones that I've seen and heard about on other projects since. Inexperienced publishers or IP holders who haven't worked with game developers before often don't understand the lead times involved in producing content.

It's very hard to explain to customers who are used to working with companies like advertising agencies, who can turn around a complete change of direction in a matter of days, that you need to make and lock down decisions months or even years in advance. I think the penny finally dropped for Lego about three months out from submission that if they kept holding up approvals and kept requesting changes, they weren't going to get any game at all on the shelves - which of course meant we all had to crunch like hell to get the content in good enough shape to ship!

Cheers,”

An example of the aforementioned “Adrenaline sections” is the Tahu Nuva level from Bionicle: The Game. This level is actually internally named “Ta Adrenaline” as well. It’s obvious at this point that Tahu Nuva was originally going to have more than just surfing sections in his level, given the evidence in this message and the fact that he has a full set of unused walking animations.

I eventually contacted the designer mentioned by the former programmer, and got a reply after a month. (This designer was kind enough to restate my questions in his message):

“Hey,

I'm so sorry it's taken so long to get back to you. I was launching a game and I completely forgot about this.

1. What was your role as a designer like when working on both games? What kind of work did you do?

I was lead designer at Argonaut Sheffield, and we were brought in to help out on Bionicle the Game. We were responsible for what was known internally as "the adrenaline sections". The game was split into third person. exploration and combat levels (which were developed by the main Argonaut office in London), and the fast moving on rails sections that we created. As well as leading the team on these sections I was directly involved in the Tahu Nuva Boss Race near the end of the game.

2. Were you aware of content being cut or removed when working on Bionicle: The Game? Did you work on anything that didn't make the cut?

Like with any game there's work that involved that never sees the light of day. There were a lot of changes to the design over time, sometimes for practical reasons, other times because Lego wanted them.  I seem to recall that in the original design you would play as each Toa normally and each one again in their Nuva form in large open levels - with the platform adventure and the adrenaline sections seamlessly blending into each other. Quite soon after we were brought into the project a much clearer separation was made between the two, but I'm sure there was lots of the preparatory work for that ended up on the disc.

3. Do you know if any other character models aside from Matau (The green character) were created for Bionicle 2?

No other characters were made for that demo. I think we had a matter of weeks and everything had to be done very quickly.  That build represents a build that we sent to Lego (And Giant who eventually became TT Games) for approval and hopefully for more funding for the company. And we spent a lot of time agreeing the visual look of the character, as it was very different from what we'd done in the first game.

The work done on Bionicle 2 was entirely done up in Sheffield so we had a lot more control over the content. We knew that the Bionicle audience was getting older, and their gaming needs were becoming more sophisticated and we wanted to do something that would appeal both to that audience and be an interesting game in its own right. We felt that the first game had been so compromised by production issues that it ended up being very disappointing. We wanted to make something fluid and interesting that was a joy to play as a platformer, and had the dynamism and the sense of scale that the Bionicle world deserved.

4. Do you know if any other builds of the Bionicle 2 movement demo exist? Like a build that has working audio?

I don't remember for sure if we ever ended up with a build with audio. But it feels a bit unlikely that we would have got to the stage that we did without their being something in there, especially if the audio assets were on the disk. Somewhere in the depths of my home I think I have a PS2 version of the demo, so I may see if I can get that up and running and find out. As I think - so far - the only people who have had access to the game have played on Xbox, right?

Thanks”

Of course LEGO was being difficult during Bionicle: The Game’s development. They did something similar with Bionicle: The Legend of Mata Nui, and that certainly did not end well. This message was a big deal for us at the time, not only did we get a lot of information about both games, but we also got confirmation that a PS2 build of Bionicle 2: City of Legends actually exists! Unfortunately, this developer never replied again, and I was beginning to lose motivation.

I decided I had enough of Argonaut Sheffield at that point, and shifted my focus to Argonaut London once more. After waiting a bit, I got another reply from a former AI programmer.

“Hi William, sure thing, although it was a long time back so may not remember too much :)

probably easier to use my email (redacted) though as I rarely login to Linkedin.”

We later communicated via email:

“Hi William,

on the unused level front, it’s entirely likely that a bunch of the designers and strat coders ’play areas’ would have ended up in the build. Not sure if you’ve had any background info on how a lot of the Argonaut games were built, but here’s a brief rundown :)

So, when I started at Argonaut in 1997 , I joined the Croc 2 team, who were using the first updated iteration of the engine they built for Croc that had its own scripting language written (originally for the level designers to use) to write all the gameplay elements, while the engine coders focused entirely on the main engine for the PS1 (and a separate small team handled porting the engine to GameCube/Dreamcast, PC etc.). The idea being that ASL (Argonaut Strategy Language) Strats would be cross platform as they were just interpreted by the engine.

As it turned out, ASL strats were a bit too complex for the level designers to write themselves without coder assistance, so Argonaut let them focus on the actual level design itself (using the editor that just became known as the Croc Editor) and got gameplay specialist coders (like myself) to work on the strats. This worked out great as we could focus on individual items or groups of them independent of what was happening with the engine and we could quickly tweak a strat and run it on the devkit without doing a full build of the game (which took *AGES* back then ;) ) as well as some basic debugging capability.

This meant that most of the level designers and strat coders usually had a level slapped together with all the bits they were trying out. I don’t know if my one with all the Matorans following you in a chain still exists, but there were some pretty strange ones. In theory these wouldn’t end up on the disk but the build system was pretty clunky, so it’s entirely likely that some ended up there.

So by the time I got drafted onto the Bionicle PS2 project, I’d worked on Croc 2, Aladdin Nazira’s Revenge, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and Bionicle Matoran Adventures on GBA. All but the last one using revisions of the Croc Editor and ASL.  (The Emperor’s New Groove, Harry Potter 2, Malice, Catwoman & iNinja also got written with the engine). I say revisions as not a lot was actually added to either over time. Also, by Bionicle PS2 I was kind of an emergency response coder for strats, as I got parachuted in after the project started to help fix a lot of problems with how ASL was being used and design issues with the levels.

There were a lot of issues with Bionicle (not as many as Aladdin or Catwoman started with and my 4 days on Malice were certainly interesting, but they’re entirely different stories ;) ). Mostly from inexperience as the team working on it had a lot of new hires or ones that had been drafted from other teams that didn’t use ASL or the Croc Engine, so they weren’t familiar with its limitations. There were some HR issues going on too, but I’m not going to get into those. The team were mostly all professional and good at what they did, but struggling with a relatively clunky engine. By this point Argonaut had split off most of the engine coders to the “Tools” team and we had to officially request any engine or editor changes we wanted through their chain of command (and they weren’t interested in working on the ‘old’ engine).

There were also some issues with inexperience in games from the Lego UK side too. So a lot of the overall design rules were a bit flaky and lead to a lot of levels and gameplay getting changed. The “No Weapons” rule was one we thought was pretty odd, considering the swords, pikes etc. in use. Apparently they’re tools, not weapons. So we weren’t allowed to use them as direct combat weapons for gameplay, only for magical ranged effects. There was also a lot of issues of really big levels being designed without consideration for what could actually be rendered on screen at the required frame rate on PS2 with the old Croc engine. Even updated to PS2 and with everything the engine coders could do to optimise it, the engine and ASL were struggling to do what the designers wanted.

I don’t think it’s a case of biting off a bit more than they could chew (we successfully wrote Harry Potter from scratch in 9 months in time to release with the film using the engine but that was very much a dream team of all the right people with the right skills and a publisher working well in sync). More a case of it being a new team of people not so experienced with the system and a publisher that wasn’t entirely sure what it wanted. So things were that bit harder to get done in the time available.

In theory, some older gold disks are likely still around. (redacted) was one of our engine guys on the project and “Master of the Build” (he was the only one who had enough tasteless Hawaiian shirts for the numerous submission build days). I’ll have a dig through my CD collection, but it’s unlikely I’ve got any Bionicle builds surviving. I *might* still have some strat code floating about on an old hard disk. I do seem to have some of the Catwoman build code that used mostly the same (although slightly updated) engine though.

One thing that I think got axed was my chain of Matorans. The idea was a level where you’d be picking them up from around the level and they’d follow you to a rescue point. Normally this wouldn’t actually be that difficult to code, but ASL never actually had any arrays! I’d been asking for them for a couple of projects by that point but they never got added, so my Matorans were each working as their own array elements and frantically messaging one another in a chain, which never quite worked reliably enough with ASL, so we shelved the idea.

(redacted) was one of the strat coders working with me on Bionicle. I think he’d just joined Argonaut then, but luckily, knew his stuff.

(redacted)”

I guess a few of the unused levels I found in the PS2 port of Bionicle: The Game are examples of “play areas” given how small some of them are. This message also provided some insight about ASL, the proprietary language both games were created with. This gave me a good idea about how difficult ASL was to use as well. The fact that Arognaut also had many new hires that couldn’t handle ASL’s idiosyncrasies certainly didn’t help Bionicle: The Game at all.

I later reached out to another former AI programmer affiliated with the previous one. They had some interesting things to say:

“Wow, I'm really surprised that anyone is that interested in Bionicle, because I didn't think it was a very good game, but I'm happy that you felt strongly enough to do this, I guess. That's quite an impressive bit of digging.

[Asked about ASL]

Q1) ASL wasn't a great language to use, it was being developed at the same time as the engine so it was constantly changing and was occasionally broken as well. The turnaround from making a change in code to testing it on the target device was quite slow. And coming from C++ the lack of modularity was frustrating. There was some talk in the team about wanting it to be object oriented, but anything that made it cleaner and less prone to repetition would have been good. My memory of it isn't that good since it was 20 years ago. I remember the collision and animation systems being awkward and crude as well though. Do you know about the other games that the system was used for? Catwoman took the animation engine a bit further, but it was really horrible trying to program the animation blending for finite state machines with a language that was so hard to debug.

[Asked about scrapped content in Bionicle: The Game]

Q2) I don't remember much about what was scrapped. There were different teams working on different levels and playable characters, I mainly worked on the Tahu levels and the final boss. I think there might have been some stuff scrapped from the other characters. One or two of them were developed by the team who were doing the cross platform conversion for us, and we didn't see much of what they were doing and only saw it quite late.

[Asked if any early builds of Bionicle: The Game still exist]

Q3) I have no idea - perhaps Sony or EA have archives of the earlier builds. Someone on the engine team might do, I can't think how or why a strat coder would have one.”

The issues with the collision system they mentioned are definitely present in Bionicle: The Game. It’s quite easy to glitch out of bounds, as speedrunners have demonstrated many times. We later talked about general programming concepts and discussed ASL further:

“Reassuring to know that I'm not imagining Bionicle being pretty bad! I think object oriented was just flavour of the month in 2003, Java was a highly respected language at the time and we thought it was the future. It would have been nice to work in a language that was used in other places, because having ASL on your CV was a pretty crappy prospect for seeking other work. At least if you used Fortran or Pascal it was recognised by employers as a mainstream language. WTF is ASL? I worked in two other organisations that had proprietary languages and it was annoying. The good thing about starting work at Argonaut at least was that ASL was a proven language that you could make games with, and it did let you get down to the relevant bits of gameplay you wanted to take control of. Before that I worked at Phase 3 studios where they had never made an action game before, and we spent a lot of time programming systems that had hardly any effect on gameplay. So I was grateful for ASL and the toolchain for making it easy to do some limited things. I was very impressed by someone on the iNinja team for getting ropes to work with a vertlet algorithm, we stole that later for the green Bionicle to use. I think the High Voltage Software studio might be using a different language with the same initials? I can't see how it could possibly be Argonaut's language. I'm pretty sure there was some talk about opening it up as middleware to sell other studios but I don't think we ever got there. Many of the staff from Catwoman went on to work at Rocksteady, Sony and Ninja Theory, but I think they just started using whatever engine was in place there. You could find hundreds of people who had brushes with the language.”

I asked about other studios using ASL for their games:

“What release date were the games? Argonaut folded in 2004 I think, so the creditors might have managed to sell off the technology as cheap middleware of last-gen consoles

or perhaps they were licensing the tech while we were using it, and I just hadn't been aware of it”

I sent him some notable examples of games using ASL from other studios, such as The Conduit and Ben 10: Protector of Earth:

“That fits the picture then - liquidation in 2004, sell the technology in 2005, two years of learning the systems and developing content, release in 2007

The PS3 would be the current gen console by then, but the PS2 had a large enough user base to make it a viable market, especially for movie tie-ins and children’s games”

I later asked if there was any possibility that Argonaut received parts of ASL from other sources:

“That's an interesting question... I don't know but I think Argonaut were using strats since 1993 and the language gradually evolved from Starfox to Croc and so on. I think it was around before High Voltage existed. It does seem like a massive coincidence that the header is VOLT but there aren't many words that sound cool to programmers so I still suspect it is just a coincidence. Programming was Argonaut's strongest suit, it doesn't make sense that they would buy tech in like that. I was only at the company for two years or so, ask someone who was there longer.”

Then out of the blue, another former designer from Argonaut Sheffield reached out to me about Bionicle 2. After that, I asked them a few questions:

“Hi William,

Great to hear from you. Let me see what I can do to answer your questions!

[Asked about the development process of Bionicle 2]

1. Designing the demo was a bit of a break from the usual licensed Dev. We had creative control so got to decide what direction we'd like to take things in (hence a departure from the 'standard' platforming fare of the time!) My role was predominantly as a technical designer - that was, creating ideas and prototyping/building in the tools. For the demo I was responsible for populating and scripting some of the functionalities in the level.

[Asked about the broken audio in the Xbox port of Bionicle 2]

2. Not sure on the silence in the build tbh... I seem to remember doing some work on creating and implementing some spot FX and seem to remember we put some audio track on the front end screen. With this being a closed pitch demo, I honestly can't remember if we'd created the track or sourced it from elsewhere!

[Asked if they knew about any other builds of Bionicle 2]

3. I believe a have a variety of unreleased games and demos on various formats somewhere. Most of them will be PS2 from that period.

Thanks”

When they mentioned owning a variety of unreleased games and demos, I was immediately intrigued. I later asked if they had a PS2 build of Bionicle 2 and offered to send him a copy of our Xbox build of the game in exchange for it, and to my surprise I got this:

“Hey William,

Cool, I'll have a search when I get some time and attempt to extract it for you!

Thanks”

I was ecstatic. Finally, after months of searching, I was about to get something tangible! But the days passed, and those days turned into weeks. I was beginning to lose hope until I got this message:

“Hey William,

Quick note on my progress - I've not forgotten! I delved into my garage over the weekend and came away with 3 CDs labeled bionicle 2 with various dates on!

I'll attempt to create an ISO of the latest date and share with you when I get a mo (most likely the weekend again!)

Thanks”

Not only did he have a build of the game for the PS2, but THREE of them! After seeing this, I decided to wait for the weekend to arrive. Unfortunately I would be very busy on this particular weekend, but Bionicle was still my top priority! So I proceeded to bail on my friends to wait for an obscure as hell prototype game from a discontinued children’s toy line to show up in my inbox. However, on Sunday, the weekend was coming to a close, and I had heard nothing from the former designer. My waiting and persistence later paid off after I got this message:

“Hi William,

Give this a go - no idea if it works - let me know!

(redacted)”

At last! I finally got it! The latest known PS2 build of Bionicle 2: City of Legends! But there was a problem. The game didn’t boot. Just my luck. But I wasn’t ready to give up. I ended up rebuilding the entire iso with some proprietary tools, and by some miracle, it booted up in my emulator. It’s about what you would expect: It’s similar to Xbox build in many ways, but it is also different. Unlike the Xbox port, the audio works, and there are some extra graphical effects and animations. I was also able to get the game to boot up on a real PS2 without issue.

I can’t say exactly when BioMedia Project will release this build to the public, but I'm sure it will happen soon. Until then, feel free to watch some gameplay footage of the demo on my Youtube channel: https://youtu.be/Dvmzz92F3oo

These past couple of years have been pretty crazy for Bionicle. The Legend of Mata Nui was found TWICE, and there has been so much more activity within the community as a result. I’m glad I was able to make my mark and get this unreleased build of Bionicle 2: City of Legends into the hands of the Bionicle community where it belongs. If you made it this far, Thanks for reading. If you liked this post, don’t forget to share it. I spent a lot of time researching this, and I would really appreciate it. Special Thanks:

BioMedia Project

Liam Robertson

Fraug L. Coolman

[kingofthewilderwest]

Hi! I loved your leitmotif analysis of HTTYD2 and I wanted to know if you had one similar but for the first movie. I'm making my own color-coded map of all of the themes and mostly I just want to know what the themes should be called, not necessarily every instance of each melody (I'm going to find those myself). It would be helpful if you could answer, but if not, I can analyze the music and then find those instances in the film and name them myself. Thanks!

Hello there! Thank you so much! I’m glad you enjoyed that analysis and it means a lot to me! I will admit that old leitmotif analysis was something I wrote in 2014 when HTTYD 2 had barely entered theatres, I’d only seen the movie once, and thus I based many musical analysis claims on memory. Thus, the analysis is in some ways inaccurate or outdated.

However, I do have a few other analyses in which I’ve gone through some of the other themes, both in the HTTYD and HTTYD 2 expanded scores (not just the officially released soundtracks, since those are incomplete). In those analyses I made near-comprehensive compilations of that theme throughout the movies and discussed what that leitmotif means. I planned to do that with every single motif in HTTYD, and had it all mapped out……… but then tumblr became stricter with audio posting requirements, it didn’t allow me to post any of the music, and that project puttered out unfinished. I know the soundtracks well enough I could probably give you all the instances still, but it would take time I don’t have in life anymore, not to mention it sounds like you’re doing that project yourself anyway. ^.^ It’s interesting to see someone else doing a project that I started but never finished… I wish you the best of luck in your endeavor! That sounds great!

So I’ve made a quick video chatting about the themes as I remember them - that should help you with what to name them. I’ll quickly toss down the relevant links from my previous analyses (My blog’s #music analysis tag might get you a few more link… there’s a reason I tag shit so thoroughly for ya’ll so you can independently find this stuff yourself!), update comments where necessary from outdated posts, give preliminary thoughts on what I feel the remaining themes could mean, and leave you to your project! ^.^ Let me know if you post it anywhere because I’d be interested to check it out!

[Me playing “For the Dancing and the Dreaming” is here]

And uh, if you quote or cite or take any ideas from me, please give the credit and link to me where it’s due! Perfunctory and rushed as this admittedly is, this still took lots of work! Thanks!

How to Train Your Dragon’s Leitmotifs

Alpha theme

Prime example: Two New Alphas 2:56-3:52

This grand theme is about the great dragon leadership position: the alpha. It is first applied to Valka’s Bewilderbeast… but in the end of HTTYD 2, to the new alpha Toothless.

Astrid’s theme: [1] [2] 

Prime example: Romantic Flight 0:00+

This theme is often called by fans as “The Romantic Flight” theme. While there is a romantic element attached to this theme and it occasionally manifests in that connotation apart from Astrid, this theme is focused less on romance and more specifically on Astrid herself. 

Berk theme

Prime example: This is Berk 0:24-0:41

The theme most closely associated with Berk and the identity of the island itself. For instance, it’s always played at the start of HTTYD when Berk is being introduced/reintroduced. It’s paired with a sense of high-strung adventure, such as we hear in “Astrid Goes for a Spin.”

Berk at peace

Take the title of this theme especially with a grain of salt. My impression is that it’s a theme which is played in relatively calm, peaceful, or day-to-day moments. It’s Berk at peace, it’s characters having casual interactions. That’s what I recall, but I could be wrong.

Dragon protector / Toothless’ theme (HTTYD 2) [1] [2] [3]

Prime example: Flying with Mother 0:25-0:44

I’ve talked about this theme a lot, down to analyzing Flying With Mother as its own separate track. This is the theme of the protector of dragons - it’s what I called The Vigilante’s Theme at one point before I realized John Powell said he wrote a theme specifically for Toothless in HTTYD 2. This is the central theme of HTTYD 2 and it’s a theme that Toothless grows into. By the end of the movie, Toothless is able to adopt this melody as a dragon who protects all.

Drago’s theme

Prime example: Meet Drago 0:08-0:31

This menacing theme is about Drago and the threat Drago’s army possesses over the Barbaric Archipelago and dragonkind.

Hiccup’s relationship with Toothless

Prime example: Test Drive 0:22-0:39

This theme focuses on Hiccup and his interactions with Toothless. The music highlights how his opinions of Toothless (and more broadly, all of dragons) change - from something mysterious and feared, to something powerful, bold, and beautiful. In the end it becomes an anthem for how How to Train Your Dragon is a story of… well… flying on dragons!

Progress theme

Prime Example: New Tail 0:00-0:44

Not going to lie, I’m actually just sort of making an uneducated stabbing at this theme. I’d need to rewatch the movie and think about it more. This is more or less a placeholder name. But you never know. I could be right?

Stalka theme

Prime example: For the Dancing and the Dreaming

It’s For the Dancing and the Dreaming, essentially. This is the anthem of Stoick and Valka’s love for one another.

Toothless’ theme(?) (HTTYD) 

Prime example: Test Drive 0:00-0:22

I’ve called this the “Toothless in Trouble” theme in the past, like in that analysis you read from 2014. And it’s true we hear very specifically quoted when Toothless is in danger - for instance, in “Downed Dragon” 3:10-3:36. However, that’s actually just part of what the theme is for, because we also hear the theme in instances like the start of “Test Drive” - which is obviously not Toothless in danger. It’s also the prominent theme that plays when Toothless stares Hiccup eye-to-eye shortly after Hiccup has freed the dragon from his bonds in the woods.

Please, please, please take my comment here with a grain of salt, as I haven’t thought about this leitmotif in depth, but it could very likely be the case that this is Toothless’ general theme in the first movie. Given as it’s played when Toothless is in danger, and played when Toothless is being ridden in “Test Drive,” it could just be the dragon’s theme. In which case… you could talk about some cool motif melding, where the Berk theme and Toothless’ become played well together. Like that doesn’t say something about the melding state of this island’s civilization! But PLEASE take my idea with a grain of salt… it’s a preliminary thought of what this theme means in full.

Undeveloped as a boy

Prime example: Together We Map the World 0:00-0:34+

How to Train Your Dragon 2 focuses much on Hiccup’s sense of identity. At the start of the movie, he is unsure of himself. This here is a theme that demonstrates his lack of understanding in himself. It’s a wandering theme, just as Hiccup’s heart is a wandering heart. He travels the world because he feels unsettled inside of him about what his identity is. It’s to note that the last time we hear this theme play is when Stoick dies. Once Stoick dies, Hiccup can no longer question what his identity is, what his role is to Berk. He has to step into the role of chief. That is now his place and he is no longer an uncertain boy.

Interestingly, you’ll notice that what I’ve called Eret’s theme in the past is actually just a specific way of expressing this theme. It’s played in a very gallant and bold flavor which is why I initially mistakenly separated it off into its own theme.

War theme

Prime example: Ready the Ships 0:00-0:15

A theme focused on when the Vikings are at war or preparing for war, especially war against the dragons. Usually this theme is played in a heavy, dark matter. What’s interesting is we also hear a rather meandering, good-natured version of this theme even when Hiccup is wandering Berk’s forests attempting to find Toothless… so he can kill the dragon.

These aren’t all the melodies in HTTYD but these are most of the main and meaningful ones.

[aki-chan2014]

Amaranthine: second generation headcanon list

And after what feels like forever, here is the Amaranthine second-gen list. I had a lot of ideas for this beyond what I covered in the story, and compiling the list gave me yet more, so as a result there's a bonus section of second genners here that have no role or mention in the story here as well.I might or might not write more fics around this AU that might or might not end up including them, but if you want to know more about a particular kid (or their 3E parent, for that matter!), feel free to drop me an ask or whatever :)

Anyway, I hope you find this list (starting under the cut, as always!)interesting, and here's the link to the original story:   https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11912649/1/Amaranthine

Note 1: Though I've given birth years for all of them, only Kaguya has a birthday listed, because she's the only one who I assigned a specific birthday to.

Note 2: There are some death dates listed for children here, but though there are quite a few in the bonus section that I imagine to have premature deaths, I’ve only made a point of listing the death dates for those who died as children/babies rather than just generally young. This is because for the ones whose premature deaths occur in adulthood, I haven’t decided a year/age they die at, just general circumstances.

Note 3: Something weird happened when I copy-pasted this from word to the post, so though I've tried to neaten it up the fonts and format may be weird.

Main

Rinka Hayami and Ryuunosuke Chiba

Kaguya Hayami, born 20th May, 2031. She is named Kaguya because of her mother’s fear that somehow, she’d turn out to not really belong to her, that she was a loan from the gods to make up for their cruelty in killing Chiba, and that one day she’d have to give her back. Though Kaguya is a warm natured person who gets along with others and expresses her emotions easily, she is as reserved and quiet as both her parents are/were. Though mother and daughter have always gotten on, the night Hayami revealed everything about the past to her marked a new, deeper closeness between them.  Kaguya’s closest childhood/school friends are Iruka and Ageha Akasaka (see below).

  Hinano Kurahashi

Masami Akasaka (former surname Tachibana), born 2023. Her bio parents were childhood friends of her father, and they made him and Hinano her legal guardians, which is how they came to adopt her when she was four and her parents died in an accident. Though she calls them ‘Papa Shinji’ and ‘Mama Hinano’ all her life, she considers them her parents as much as her bio ones, and loves them deeply. Masami is cheerful and happy-go-lucky, and has a wide variety of interests. She goes on to have a large family herself.

Suzume Akasaka, born 2027. Elder twin by fifteen minutes, she’s basically a brown-eyed version of Hinano, except more sparky and argumentative. In elementary and early middle school, she gets into a lot of fights-though usually with good intention-but she grows out of this before she can be labelled a delinquent, much to everyone’s relief.  She adores dogs most of all and thus ends up running a dog shelter.

Tsubame Akasaka, born 2027. Despite being the younger twin, she tends to be the bossier, take-charge one in a way more befitting an older sibling. She loves pranks, especially twin-switch ones, and would have probably gotten along well with Rio in another life, and later on life this translates to a general carefree attitude about life.

Iruka ‘Iru’ Akasaka, born 2030. He often despairs at being the only brother in a bunch of sisters, but on the other hand it means that he is well acquaintance with the quirks and foibles of females and is rarely fazed by anything (though he tends to be the straight man in most social interactions).  This makes him a bit of an oddity amongst his classmates and friends throughout his life, but also leaves them in awe of him. He tries on a variety of careers and eventually settles on training as a teacher and working for The Sanctuary (the school that Megu, Hinano and Hayami eventually make from the old 3E campus once Gakuho Asano dies) once it opens. He goes by his nickname because he finds his actual name a little dorky (“seriously, who wants to be named ‘dolphin’?”)

Ageha ‘Acchan’ Akasaka, born 2032. A precocious reader and quick to pick up mathematical concepts, she ends up skipping a year near the end of elementary school, and ends up in the same year as Kaguya for middle and high school. Physically speaking, she’s the one who resembles her father the most.

 Megu Kataoka

Misa Watanabe (former surname Takechi), born 2036. The elder twin by ten minutes, Misa is fierce and overprotective of her two little brothers, and has always been mature for her age. She is the one that remembers the most of her old parents, and though she has no wish to reconnect with that aspect of her life, she bears the scars in the form of having trouble in letting herself be helped. She develops a passion for the stars and pursues this to become one of the most influential astronomers of her generation.

Manabu Watanabe (former surname Takechi), born 2036. Though he’s technically the quieter twin, Manabu is no less protective or dedicated than his sister is. He eventually goes on to be a policeman and values the justice system highly, so when his mother dies and he receives her letter, the contents don’t sit easy with him. He does eventually reconcile it though, and goes on to work closely with The Sanctuary afterwards.

Yuuma Watanabe (former surname Takechi, no first name before adoption), born 2037. Sweet and imaginative, Yuuma can seem as gentlemanly and kind as his namesake, but a lot more dreamy and sometimes more innocent. He struggles in school most of his life, but works hard and makes it through, and becomes a relatively successful novelist-many of the squad, Isogai included, become fans of his works.

Bonus

 Squad members

Touka Yada

Eriko Sakakibara, born 2020. The unplanned, unwanted consequence of a mission when Yada was 20, Eriko was abandoned and eventually adopted, and knows nothing of her biological mother’s background. Her adoptive parents were not very loving or warm parents and as a result Eriko had a rough, rebellious adolescence which ended in a teenage pregnancy that resulted in her beloved daughter, Marika (who eventually ends up in the first 3E that Megu, Hinano and Hayami teach). This gave Eriko a purpose, and she pulled herself together worked extremely hard to be able to bring her up alone, giving her the love and nurturing that she herself never experienced and eventually becoming the co-owner of a successful cat cafe.

  Takuya Muramatsu

Natsuya Muramatsu, born 2027.Though his brash behaviour and relaxed attitude to dress code make him seem a lot like the stereotypical delinquent in a similar way to how his father appeared, in truth he is a lot more shrewd, sly and smart than that, which makes him the perfect candidate to take over Takuya’s role in the squad when the time comes. 

Shin’ya Muramatsu, born 2028. A quiet guy who goes with the flow and prefers to stay out of conflict, Shin’ya is more than happy to stay behind the scenes and be the cook while Natsuya takes the lead and does most of the squad-related things.

Tomohito Sugino and Yukiko Kanzaki

Nanako Sugino, born 2024, deceased 2027. Though she was unplanned and initially seen as an inconvenience by her parents, she was loved deeply and her death due to a sickness and medical negligence hit both her parents hard. Her memory is often used as a driving motivation behind the squad’s targeting of corrupt medical industries and hospitals (things that contributed to Nanako’s death). Nanako was basically a typical happy three year old who loved fairies and unicorns. She was also notably pretty.

Yuuma Isogai

Megumi Isogai, born 2027. She would have been named ‘Megu’, but her mother thought that was an incomplete name and argued for other alternatives-‘Megumi’ was the compromise in the end, but she is still definitely named for Megu Kataoka. Anyway, she never seems to fit in with her family despite being very much her father’s favourite (she even looks a lot like him, minus the ahoge), and after a childhood of railing against a sheltered upbringing, she runs away from home at the age of 17 and is never heard of again. It is unclear how much she knew of her family’s activities prior to this.

Mayuri Isogai, born 2030. Probably the most docile and compliant of the three Isogai daughters, she is basically the other extreme of having such a sheltered, insular childhood. She goes on to take on a job in one of Yada’s legitimate business ventures, reporting back relevant information to her family and the rest of the squad but otherwise keeping on the right side of the law.  She’s pleasant enough and fiercely loyal to her family, but doesn’t have much of a personality.

Tsumugi Isogai, born 2032. Though she tended to get a little restless from being so coddled, being a Tsumugi never actually minded it that much. She’s generally a chill person, though with a slightly cold streak-she tends to be hurtful in her words and rarely shows much compassion to others apart from her family (except for Megumi, who she always dismisses as ‘causing drama’ whenever she’s mentioned). She goes on to become one of the squad’s main assassins.

Saki Isogai, born 2033. Probably the most relaxed and ‘normal’ of the Isogai siblings, Saki decides on a law-abiding life, though she always stays close to her family-she takes the option of pretending she knows nothing. After all, her upbringing was such that such a thing is plausible. In taking this approach, she proves herself more strategic and calculating than most people around her would give her credit for, especially as she seems so straightforward. Saki is also the only sibling who has inherited the Isogai ahoge.

  Hiroto Maehara

(Note: All of these kids are the result of reckless flings/affairs/one-night stands that occur during, but not related to, various squad missions)

Yuka Yamada, born 2022. Abandoned by her young mother as a toddler, Yuka has a rough, abusive childhood in care and winds up gravitating towards crime as a teenager and running away. Various tricky life events occur before she eventually cleans up her act and gets work at a florists. During one of the rough years, she meets and helps Megumi Isogai, and though their friendship lasts only a few months and they never kept in contact, that time helped to contribute towards Yuka’s subsequent decision to straighten out.

Kimiya Satsuki, born 2025. The result of an affair, Kimiya has no idea that the person he calls ‘Dad’ is not actually his father. He is the second of four children (one older brother, one younger brother, one younger sister), and has a happy childhood in a coastal town, and grows up to run his family inn.

Kazunari Taira, born 2031, deceased 2040. Small for his age, Kazunari was hyperactive and funny and full of plans and ideas. The only child that Maehara actually had a  (distant but still fond) relationship with, Kazunari died in what was disguised as an accident, but was a murder made as a threat to the squad (his mother is oblivious to this truth, thankfully). After his death, Maehara vowed to be a lot more careful in the future so that he didn’t have any more children who could come to such harm.

Anna-Louisa ‘Ally’ Warren (nee Harding), born 2039. Raised in America, Anna had a slightly tough but generally loving childhood, and though she always wondered about her father (especially as her mother couldn’t give many answers beyond the vague), it was not until well into her adult life after a bitter divorce that she was motivated to go to Japan to try and track him down. She did not succeed, but ended up seduced by the culture and decided to make a fresh start there. She ended up working at one of Yada’s legitimate business ventures, and Yada instantly suspected who she could be, but decided to keep it secret from both of them.

   Other non-squad members

Taisei Yoshida

Seiko Yoshida, born 2026. A pretty, popular girl, Seiko always sensed that there’s a part of her father that comes from another sort of world (as she thinks of it), and is the only one of her siblings who is interested in it. As a result, she ends up often helping her father pass on cards from Isogai and things like that, and ends up working for Yuzuki Fuwa in her quest to become a private detective (which she achieves). Childhood friends with the Itou kids (see below), she dates and eventually marries Ichiro, the eldest.

Taichi Yoshida, born 2029. Loud, annoying but ultimately well meaning, he’s basically a typical annoying little brother towards Seiko, and a protective-but-teasing older brother to Ema. He becomes part of a boy band in his late teens until his mid-twenties (he’s quite the good singer), but then when they disband goes to work for his dad’s garage.

Ema Yoshida, born 2032. Otherwise super-girly and basically tiny and sweet and adorable, she surprises everyone by showing an aptitudes for mechanics, and seems to take a little too much pleasure from subverting expectations. She ends up going to the same university as Ageha, and though they end up in a lot of the same classes during their degrees and know each other well as a result, they don’t connect enough for them to realise any connections between their families.

  Sumire Hara

Ichiro Itou, born 2026. A brotherly, caring type who charms everyone he encounters, the handsome Ichiro is pretty much as popular as Seiko and in high school they’re basically the golden couple. He has an odd but deep interest in different types of tea.

Asahi Itou, born 2028. Eldest of the triplets, Asahi is a headstrong, fierce girl who knows what she wants and just aims for it, with little hesitation. A feminist, she’s radical enough in her views as a young girl to rail against the fact that her mother is a housewife, and does not understand why she would be happy with that or how she could choose that. She only gains that understanding as an adult, and thus for a lot of her life her relationship with her mother is tense.

Mahiru Itou, born 2028. Headstrong like Asahi, but more measured than fierce, Mahiru is generally considered the more sensible of the triplets. She eventually goes on to be a criminal lawyer, and has several close brushes with the squad, which causes her mother no end of anxiety, though Sumire never tells her precisely why she keeps begging Mahiru to find another job.

Yuuhi Itou, born 2028. The youngest of the triplets. He’s close friends with Taichi Yoshida, being the quieter, more anxious straight man to Taichi’s impulsive, reckless goofball, and he also joins the band that Taichi joins as a late teen (he plays the drums). When the band splits up, he goes into music production. He struggles with anxiety for a lot of his life, but manages it.

Kaoru Itou, born 2030. Very interested in fashion, Kaoru is flamboyant, imaginative and creative, and loves to make clothes and accessories for his nearest and dearest, and makes a successful career out of it. He moves to Australia as an adult, but visits Japan constantly.

Mirai Itou, born 2037. A surprise child, he’s very much coddled and adored by the rest of his family, and acts a little spoiled because of this. However he’s a hardworking, passionate person, and as someone who never really fits in with the strict educational system (though he does well), he is eventually motivated to also work for The Sanctuary.

  Kirara Hazama

Shiki Nakajima, born and deceased 2027. A stillborn son, his name is written to mean ‘poem’. Though his parents think of him pretty much every day and he is still thought of as part of the family (his name is still on the plaque listing the family’s names outside the Nakajima’s front door), he is not talked about.

Bunko Nakajima, born 2033. A sunny faced, sunny natured girl, nobody can believe that she and Hazama are related when they look at the two of them together. The only feature they appear to share is curly hair, and even that’s a stretch. However, Bunko is just as book obsessed as her mother (and her father, for that matter) and has a similar dark sense of humour and interest/knowledge in the occult and she can be creepy when she wants to be. She starts a book-critique blog called ‘Literary Child’ (which is what her name means) that becomes a hit in the book world.

  Taiga Okajima

Kiyomi Okajima, born 2031. Brash, down to earth, overly blunt and not easily fazed, Kiyomi is not someone you want to challenge. A lesbian, she finds it hilarious that her father’s reaction to her coming out in her teens is to be happy that he can pass down his own porn collection from his adolescence instead of having to find male porn to give to her. Though she does turn it down anyway.

  Karma Akabane

Saito Akabane, born 2028. Physically resembling his father, he is nothing like him personality wise, being a straight-laced, overly serious sort of person who goes onto become a doctor. It horrifies him when he learns of his father’s past and the sort of people his former classmates became, and his struggle to understand it causes a rift in their relationship for a while, but they reconcile when Saito has his own children.

Toshiko Akabane, born 2029. A bit more cheeky and relaxed, Toshiko does seem a lot more like her father, personality wise. Though she’s generally someone who believes in the law, for some reason she finds it easier to accept her father’s past. Witnessing horrible experiences classmates and friends go through, she is eventually motivated to open a women’s shelter, walking away from a shiny government job to achieve this. She allows the squad to refer people they rescue to her.

[sol1loqu1st]

2017 creator tag meme

Rules: It’s time to love yourselves! Choose your 5 favorite works you’ve created this year (fics, art, edits, etc!) and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you’ve brought into the world in 2017. Tag as many writers/artists/etc as you want (fan or original!) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome works. <3 

tagged by @greed-the-dorkalicious! thank u friend

i can’t actually link to very many things (i don’t like to post unfinished projects and i dont??? have very many finished projects) but ????? a chance to gloat about stuff i’ve created?????? h e l l y e a h

1. obviously i have to mention the adaptation of a novel i was writing, sunless (as well as its prequel, technophobia), into an audio drama, which is????? frankly the biggest and most challenging thing i’ve ever written?? some things ended up not working and i still have to rewrite some stuff, but hopefully i’ll be able to start releasing content sometime in 2018

2. the inventor, which is a song i wrote earlyish this year i think (.....if i wrote it in 2016 it was like. late 2016 and tbh i feel like it’s almost a completely different song by now so it still counts, probably) and unfortunately cannot link to because im an idiot who didn’t save any of my demo recordings off of my old phone and the ones on my tumblr are like. bad

3. these are both fanmixes and i had more than 5 things i wanted to talk abt so: the world is quiet here, an asoue fanmix, which i first posted sometime in january i think ? it’s one of my favorite fanmixes i’ve done in a really long time tbh it really captures the Vibe of asoue (here’s the original post, i think the link is playmoss and almost definitely doesn’t still have all the songs bc i abandoned playmoss but yknow) (and here’s a spotify link that definitely works) AS WELL AS my taz fanmix, which has gone through a billion different titles but for now i’m going with you’ve solved my fanmix puzzle, which i recently redid (i was planning to post the new version on the anniversary of the day i started listening, but apparently that was in february, not january as i’d initially thought, so ??? who knows when it’ll go up, probably soon) anyways you can find the original post (with the incomplete version that goes up to the episode with arms outstretched) here and a spotify link here and i’ll be posting an expanded/completed version really soon ghskdghl

4. i started rewriting a different novel (untitled but usually referred to as “foi”, which at one point stood for “for our innocence” but that’s not. the title of the book anymore) earlier this year and forgot about it while i was adapting sunless, but i went back and read some of the chapters i was writing and they were Genuinely Pretty Well Written and i intend to return to foi in 2018 so ??? Yes (no links bc it’s super unfinished)

5. The 2017 Playlist, which i started compiling in i think june? it mightve been may, i dont remember, but it was supposed to be a fun playlist full of songs i liked that came out this year and then it ended up being like, an extremely emotional and personal playlist about the shitty state of the world and also, hope, full of songs i liked that came out this year lmao. i’m not gonna link to it because i’m literally posting it tomorrow but Yep,, i am not generally a sentimental person but i got in touch with that side of myself to make this hgkdsghlsd

honorary mentions go to this oc theme, which i literally wrote yesterday and am still not sure if i should be proud of or not, and this improvisational song written as a joke, which was inspired by a true story that goes “i was hyperfocusing and then my dad interrupted me and i couldnt get anything done for the rest of the night because i was too busy writing this song about how pissed i was”

uhhhhhh not tagging anyone but if you wanna do it go ahead and say i tagged you!!

[autobiographyoftheavatar]

"Bhagavad Gita Decoded" is a single volume abridged edition containing talks of His Divine Holiness Bhagavan Sri Nithyananda Paramashivam on the timeless Hindu scripture "Bhagavad Gita" delivered by Bhagavan Sri Krishna, the Incarnation who walked the Planet several thousand years ago in the pre-historic times.  POST  #4 - Extract from the book:                   (Opening Pages X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV of the book "Bhagavad Gita Decoded") Introduction To Bhagavad Gītā Decoded Bhagavad Gītā Decoded book is not a commentary or a modern interpretation on the Bhagavad Gītā. It is the re-speaking, the revival of the supreme secret of the Gītā from the consciousness of the rare living incarnation, Paramahamsa Nithyananda, who embodies the very science and experience of the Gītā. A pure, absolute revelation of the happening of Gītā presented in its original spirit and body language that only an Enlightened being can radiate through the inexpressible energy veiled within His expressed words. To read this book is to obtain an insight that is rare. It is not mere reading; it is an experience; it is meditation. He takes the reader through a inner world tour while talking on each verse. It is believed that each verse of Gītā has seven levels of meaning. What is commonly rendered is the first-level meaning. Here, an Enlightened Master, an Incarnation takes us beyond the common into the uncommon, with equal ease and simplicity. The power of the Living Master’s words, the confidence and energy of Enlightenment, the space of Advaita that He radiates can directly become the experience in us, when we authentically study this book. The absolute truths of life are to be listened and internalized from the direct source, the living presence of those truths, who can also transmit the experience unto us. His Holiness Paramahamsa Nithyananda explains the inner metaphorical meaning and the deep spiritual insights of the Mahābhārat and the Bhagavad Gītā: Understand, this whole history is such a beautiful happening. Mahābhārat is actually your life! Every character in the Mahābhārat teaches so much! We don’t need to go anywhere for our life success or fulfillment or for anything else that we may desire. We don’t need to study any other book to learn the human psychology or the science of living and leaving. Whether we seek righteous living—dharma; or we want to learn business or administration, economy or abundance—artha; or we want to create the best rich lifestyle—kāma; or we want to be a leader and want the enriching life of being enlightened—mokṣa, for all these purposes, we don’t need anything other than the Mahābharāt! Study each character. We will not find any more characters in our life than the characters described in the Mahābharāt! Any character we see in our life is mapped to Mahābharāt’s one character. They are either half or full representation of some character. To know how to handle them and even handle yourself, just see how Śrī Kṛṣṇa handles them and handle them the same way. The Mahābharāt war is a representation of life as it was lived in that age. Vyāsa, its author is an unbiased historian who recorded the whole history as it happened without trying to apply any makeup. People ask whether the Mahābharāt war happened at all! Let me tell you this: If the Mahābharāt was a story and not history, Vyāsa should receive multiple Pulitzer prizes for his highly creative work! The Mahābharāt is the longest literary work in the whole world with hundred thousand Saṃskṛit verses—the longest poem ever written with such delicate harmony of unmatched poetic perfection. It is larger than the Greek epics. Vyāsa had no computer, no tape recorder with speech-to-text capabilities. He dictated and Lord Ganeṣa wrote it down! The Mahābharāt is like an ocean. It has at least 10,000 stories woven into it. All of these are seamlessly woven into the main text even though each is an independent event. Just imagine the effort required to create hundreds of thousands of characters and maintain the integrity of these characters throughout the epic without the help of editors. Do you think anyone could do it today? Because it is impossible to create such a work of fiction, one needs to accept this as a compilation of true incidents that reflect the lifestyle in what is referred to as Tretā yuga, third quarter of Time, in our scriptures. This is how people behaved then and how people behave now. What happened then repeats itself now, again and again! The Great War of Mahābhārat is the fight between the positive and negative thought patterns of the mind called the saṁskāras or the root thought patterns—meaning the deep identity or the earliest memory you carry and create about you and others. Please understand, don’t think you carry only the identity about you, you also carry an identity of the world inside you and look at the world only through that. That is what I call root thought pattern—the identity through which you see you and the world. The positive thought patterns are the Pānḍava princes and the negative thought patterns are the Kaurava princes. Kurukṣetra or the battlefield is the body. Arjuna is the individual consciousness and Śrī Kṛṣṇa is the enlightened Master, the supreme consciousness driving and guiding the individual consciousness. The various commanders who led the Kaurava army represent the major incompletions of root patterns and conflicting patterns that the individual consciousness faces in its journey to Enlightenment or liberation, mokṣa. Bhīṣma, the grand patriarch of the Kuru clan who embodies dharma, represents the pattern of parental and societal conditioning. Droṇa, the teacher of both the Kauravas and the Pānḍavas, represents the conditioning from teachers who provide knowledge including spiritual guidance. Śakuni, the maternal uncle of Duryodhana embodies the pattern of self-hatred, which is cunningness personified. Karṇa represents the restrictive influence of good deeds such as charity and compassion done out of incompletion from the pattern of feeling deprived. Finally Duryodhana represents the ego or the self-denial pattern, which is root of the root patterns and is the last to fall. Parental and societal conditioning has to be overcome by rebelling against conventions. This is why, traditionally, those seeking the path of enlightenment are required to renounce the world as Sannyāsi and move away from civilization. This conditioning does not die as long as the body lives, but its influence drops. Droṇa represents all the best knowledge one imbibes and the teachers one encounters, who guide us but are unable to take us through to the ultimate flowering of enlightenment. It is difficult to give them up since one feels grateful to them. This is where the Enlightened Master, the incarnation steps in and guides us. Karṇa is the repository of all good deeds and it is his good deeds that stand in the way of his own Enlightenment. Śrī Kṛṣṇa has to take the load of Karṇa’s puṇya, his meritorious deeds, before he could be liberated. The Enlightened Master guides one to drop one’s attachment to good deeds arising out of what are perceived to be charitable and compassionate intentions. He also shows us that the quest for and the experience of enlightenment is the ultimate act of compassion that one can offer to the world. Finally one reaches Duryodhana, one’s ego or root-pattern, the most difficult to conquer as it leads one to self-destruction. One needs the full help of the Master here. It is subtle work and even the Master’s help may not be obvious, since at this point, sometimes the ego makes us deny and disconnect from the Master as well. The Great War was between 180 million (18 crore) people—110 million on the Kaurava side representing our negative root patterns and conflicting patterns (saṁskāras) and 70 million on the Pānḍava side representing our positive patterns. The War lasted 18 days and nights. The number eighteen (18) has a great mystical significance. It essentially signifies our ten (10) senses that are made up of five jñānendriya—the senses of perception like taste, sight, smell, hearing and touch, and five karmendriya—the senses initiating action like speech, bodily movements, etc., added to our eight (8) kinds of thoughts like lust, greed, etc. All eighteen need to be dropped for self-realization, completion or liberation, mokṣa! Mahābhārat is not just an epic history. It is not merely the fight between good and evil. It is the dissolution of both positive and negative saṁskāras (root patterns) that reside in our bio-memory or body-mind system, which must happen for the ultimate liberation. It is a tale of the path of living advaita, the process of powerfully living, radiating enlightenment and causing enlightenment for humanity. READ MORE HERE Bhagavad Gita Decoded - Nithyananda University Press Bhagavad Gītā Decoded book is not a commentary or a modern interpretation on the Bhagavad Gītā. It is the re-speaking, the revival of the supreme secret of the Gītā from the consciousness of the rare living incarnation, Paramahamsa Nithyananda, who embodies the very science and experience of the Gītā.

http://hdhnithyanandaparamashivam.blogspot.com/2019/08/bhagavad-gita-decoded-is-single-volume_33.html

[the-sapphire-general]

My Thoughts and Feelings on Final Fantasy 15

Hi guys! As I promised, I decided to make a post about my thoughts and feelings I've had as I played Final Fantasy 15. Before I get into it, there will be spoilers throughout this post of the game and the movie (Kingsglaive). Now let's get started!

Prior to this game, I didn't consider myself a Final Fantasy fan. Sure, I got into Final Fantasy 7 and developed a major crush on Sephiroth, but the truth is, I was a fan of just that game and the compilation. Also, I never played any of them...It's true. lol I didn't play FF7 because there's a remake coming up (and I watched an entire walkthrough online), so I feel no need to play it. As for Crisis Core and Dirge of Cerberus, I had no choice but to watch walkthroughs online. I don't own a PSP or PS2 (the latter was sold a few years back), and that was before I found out about game emulators. So I can play them now (my PS2 emulator sucks, and I want to play DOC, but I can't get the game to run properly >_<). I did see Advent Children though! Anyway, I may have gotten into Final Fantasy via FF7 first, but FF15 is the first Final Fantasy game that I've actually played. I'm a late bloomer, so I got into the series not too long ago. Over a year, I think?? Maybe two? I honestly forgot when I learned about FF7. XD Moving on then. I do know about Kingdom Hearts, which I started prior to getting into FF via FF7, and I'm currently playing through the series. So I was familiar with some FF characters at the time, and I do know them now (Aeris, Cid, Yuffie, Cloud, and of course, Sephiroth) except for Squall/Leon. He's from FF8, so I'll play that one next to get to know him better.

Final Fantasy 15 was a great gaming experience for me. No wonder my friends and boyfriend enjoy the series. They're fun, exciting, have compelling characters, interesting storylines, and there's a lot to do that keeps me intrigued. And Chocobos! They are so cute! I've known about this game months before it came out, and I would have gotten my hands on it when it did, but because of money problems, I didn't get it until a few months ago. I'm glad I finally got it and played it! I've had such a great time along the way, there were times where I really wanted to play, but I was too busy with school or errands or whatever. I was that into it. I think I played over three hours at one point, which is extremely rare for me. I can only manage to play between 2-2 1/2 hours. 

Now that I finished the game, I did some research and took note of people explaining that the story was incomplete or that it was missing a bunch of stuff. I do agree, actually. A lot of stuff took place off-screen. I've heard Square Enix were running out of time, and wanted to release it right away, so a lot has been either cut or left out, such as Lunafreya's own side of the story (really, what has she been doing before Altissia??? I must know!), Cor's own activities (where did he go??)), the events leading to Ignis' accident, and Ardyn's past. I wouldn't say the story was terrible. People exaggerate! I enjoyed the storyline regardless if a lot of content was removed or absent. Lucky for me, my friend even advised me to watch the movie, Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy 15 to understand some parts of the game. And I did, so I knew what took place when Insomnia fell. It's all in the movie. In addition, any future DLC can fill the holes in the story and answer unexplained questions. I know I have a lot of them, and one DLC will explain most of them. More on that in a bit. Let's see, anything story-wise...Chapter 13 is the notorious chapter people have been complaining about? I see that this came from longtime Final Fantasy fans. I'm still a newcomer in a way, and I had no problem with that chapter. Except for the jumpscares! >_< I've never played Resident Evil, but I do know a tiny bit of it to realize the chapter had a similar vibe. All in all, the story had me engaged from beginning to end, and the last chapter was the most emotional one for me. I will discuss it shortly in some sections.

I will focus now on the characters. I won't go through every single one of them in great detail, but I will comment on each of them.

Noctis Lucis Caelum: Noctis is a prince unlike one I have personally seen before. He didn't seem to be the typical prince, all proper and stuff. He is a real person besides just being a prince, and very relatable. He has a good heart, but also bottled up a lot of his feelings. I can relate to that. Oftentimes, I tend to do that myself, and like Noctis, I used to be a lively person until I got older and had bad experiences with bullying and such. Also, Noctis didn't want to deal with his duties as a prince and later as a king, but later accepted it even if it meant losing his life. He couldn't cope with things and handle emotional turmoil, and would rather avoid the issues. That's also like me sometimes, so I've noticed a lot of myself in Noctis, and this quote further describes his character. 

"In the Final Fantasy XV Collector's Edition Guidebook, Director Hajime Tabata describes Noctis as having experienced isolation in his youth, and having a fear of losing those close to him. According to Tabata, Noctis's words and actions often stem from a fear of being unable to meet the expectations of those around him, but as a counterbalance he has a desire to please them." 

Source: http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Noctis_Lucis_Caelum

That's me in a nutshell. I always feel like I have to reach expectations, and I want to please them, but I know I can't please everyone. I show it more than Noctis does, but nevertheless we are similar. We also hate vegetables. XD Another character shares similarities with me as well, and he's another one of my favorite Chocobros, and the cutest one. Prompto Argentum.

Prompto Argentum: Prompto is adorable! He's funny, cheerful, and a complete fan of technology. He's playful, sweet, and loves animals, just like me! We're such techno nerds, I love it. At first, I considered our personalities to be different no matter the few similarities we have until I discovered his hidden feelings. I found out about it online because I skipped the cutscene in the game, but Prompto felt like an outcast, even with his own friends. He also used to be shy (the Brotherhood anime confirms this), so he had a lonely childhood. Once I realized all of this, I knew we were more similar that I thought. I always feel like an outcast too, like I don't belong anywhere, not even with my own friends and family, so I understand how he feels. Even more so when I found out he's an MT. Prompto wanted to feel like he fit in, and that's what made me connect with him. Prompto is cute and adorable, but he sure is a deep thinker.

Ignis Scientia: "That's it! I've come up with a new recipe!" That's one of my favorite lines from Ignis. Ignis has a cool and serious personality, and I saw some of myself in him as well. We also wear glasses. XD He's the brains of the group just like how I'm the brains of my group (my boyfriend is intelligent too, but I'm just as important lol). I love his sarcastic comments, and how he acted like a mother towards Noctis. It was hilarious and sweet! Men can be nurturing and motherly, and Ignis is proof. I admit I did my utmost best to keep the entire group safe as I played FF15. You can see the lengths I took just to protect them. Ignis later became the one I wanted to protect a lot when he lost his sight. I was considerate when his pace became slow, and it made me feel like protecting him at all costs. Of course, at the same time, I knew he could learn to handle himself, and he did as time passed. Heck, he saved the entire team from the Malboro! That was badass. Ignis is an example of a character who doesn't let his disability become a burden. It was a respectable portrayal of a blind character. I wish people in real life could do the same and respect disabled people.

Gladiolus Amicitia: Gladio, the man I have done so much fan service throughout my posts for a certain friend of mine. lol Gladiolus is tough on the outside, but cheerful on the inside. As Noctis' shield, Gladio is a loyal bodyguard, despite how I disagreed with him during his arguments with Noctis and his impatience towards him when he's not taking his duties seriously. He meant well, however, but still, no need to give Noct a bad time, especially after he loses his beloved.....More on that shortly. Gladio is the tough guy that expresses his opinions and does his best to keep the team focused on their goal, but like his friends, he doesn't shy away from emotions. Even Gladio had his fears about not being strong enough to protect Noctis. On a random note, I've gotten so many shots of his butt, some intentional and some way unexpected. lol I found it funny, and I saved all those screenshots for my friend and any other Gladio fangirls out there. My friend is madly in love with Gladio, so it was a pleasant treat for her. 

Lunafreya Nox Fleuret: Okay, my feelings as I got to know her went from hating her to later loving her. I blame Kingsglaive for my dislike because Luna barely did anything, so that made me not like her. I wouldn't say she's passive. She is determined to follow her goal to protect Noctis, follow her duties, and do what she must to help him. It was not until I started playing the game that my opinion on her changed. Luna did her own thing outside of the narrative, and I have the feeling she's more capable that how she appears. I mean, Noctis wasn't there when she confronted the gods. We didn't know what she was going through when she left Insomnia. We did manage to see her confronting Leviathan, and just when I think she would be a damsel-in-distress, she uses the staff. Before that, Luna impressed me with his she remained calm even with guns pointing at her. I would have freaked out if I were in her position. I rewatched the movie a while ago, and she does act her own initiative. She's strong-willed and compassionate, I grew to love her...a little too late, story-wise. She does in Altissia because of Ardyn, and I honestly felt more for her than for Aeris (who I didn't like at first, but now I do. But her death hardly made me feel anything.). Just when I start to like Luna, she dies. Now I wonder what she was up to prior to her tragic death. I cried a little when she died, but Noctis took it harder than me. I am officially a NoctisXLuna fan because of the game, and I'm glad they got together in the afterlife.

Gentiana: Gentiana is a mystery, which is why I was (and still am) curious about her. Calm and elegant, I wish I had known more about her. She’s the alter ego of Shiva, which came as a surprise for me. So she wasn’t just a Messenger to the humans from the gods. She’s Shiva! Out of all the gods, she’s the one I like the most. And I kind of ship her with Ifrit (wtf? XD). If she gets her DLC (along with Ardyn, Luna, basically any of the characters in the FF15 survey), I will be so excited!

King Regis Lucis Caelum: He wasn't shown as much, but he came off as a father who deeply cared about his son, and wished for him to find his own way. He cared for his son but didn't have a lot of time to be with him, and had him depart so he wouldn't know what was happening in the kingdom. He died too soon, and I liked him.

Ravus Nox Fleuret: Like his younger sister, my feelings for Ravus started off with not liking him. He sought for revenge against the Caelum bloodline since he blamed King Regis for the death of his mother and Tenebrae being lost to Niflheim, and wanted to become the King of Light to replace Noctis. Despite his bitterness, Ravus cares for his sister, knowing the risks she would take, and tried to protect her while serving Niflheim, but knew she had to fulfill her duties as Oracle. He later accepts her goal, and eventually believes that Noctis is the True King. It was a shame that he died because I grew to like him too. Man, there's so much death in FF15. I wouldn't mind a DLC episode of Ravus.

Cor Leonis: Cor is stubborn, stern, and strict, but watched over them as it was his duty. Like Regis, Ignis, Gladio, and Prompto, he swore to protect Noctis. I liked him, and I wish I could have seen him more.

Iris Amicitia: Gladio's cute little sister. Her crush on Noctis was adorable, but it also hurt because it was unrequited love. I've been there myself. Gladio truly cares for her, and their relationship was sweet. I wish I had seen her after the time-skip. She became a daemon hunter??? They better show that in a DLC. It would definitely give me Devil May Cry vibes like certain battles of the game. Also, I ship older Iris with older Talcott. Maybe they got together. lol

Aranea Highwind: Ever since I first saw her, I took a liking to her free-spirit and sassy demeanor. We could get along real well if she existed. She is a badass during battles! Why couldn't I see her before the final battle???? She's my favorite FF15 girl.

Talcott Hester: He was a minor character, but he was cute. I had fun getting the Cactuars for him, and it was nice to see him all grown up.

Cindy Aurum: She was alright, bright and lively. Her outfit was distracting. Don't get me wrong, she's pretty and I don't have problems with sexy women, but the outfit...I wouldn't wear that, not even for money. XD Nevertheless, her upbeat and friendly attitude makes up for it.

Cid Sophiar: I looked up Final Fantasy stuff and I do know that Cid is a common character in each installment. He's just like Cid Highwind from FF7! But he swears less.

Dino Ghiranze: Dino is a minor character I loved instantly. His passion for jewelry caught my attention, and if I had known about his fate, I would have done all his sidequests before finishing the game. When Noctis returns ten years later to Galdin Quay, Dino's clothes were on the bench. For my own sake, I want to believe that he stripped naked to swim or whatever and when daemons came, he ran off. >_< I want to believe he survived, so please don't ruin it for me!

Nyx Ulric: He's from the Kingsglaive movie, along with Libertus and Crowe, but I felt like talking about him. Nyx is one of my FF15 crushes (besides Ignis, Prompto, and one I will not say yet). Heroic and loyal, he did everything he could to protect Insomnia but later died. The sad part is Libertus never found out his fate. Maybe as time passed, he did.

Libertus Ostium: Like Nyx, he was a great guy who only wanted to fight against Niflheim, but later took a different path when Crowe Altius died.

Crowe Altius: I swear, she did far too soon. I liked her right away! Laid-back and cool, she could have been great if she had remained alive.

And finally, the character I saved for last, my #1 FF15 crush...

Ardyn Izunia: Ardyn...I have so much to say about him and him alone. Ardyn is a complex man, polite and flamboyant, sassy and humorous, and later deranged and cruel. When I first saw him even before FF15 came out, I fell in love. Yes, I loved him even though I knew nothing about him. He instantly caught my attention, and he captivated me even more when I saw him in Kingsglaive, with both his personality and his unique attire, which I'm crazy about nowadays just like Sephiroth's clothes. lol My feelings for Ardyn from the start were "love at first sight". Unlike my other fictional crushes, however, as I progressed in the game, I started to have doubts about liking him. He started off as a guy who seemed to help Noctis and his friends, and I looked forward to seeing him whenever he showed up. But once I made it to Altissia, he went from the sassy man I have loved even before I got to know him to being a ruthless and insane man with a desire for vengeance after what he had endured 2000 years ago. That's right. 2000 years ago. Ardyn Izunia, or Ardyn Lucis Caelum, is an immortal man and a former Lucian king. He absorbed the Starscourge, which transformed people into daemons, and he saved thousands only to be rejected by the Astrals and demonized by a jealous future king. There's a theory that this king is Ardyn's brother, Izunia, which can explain the jealousy thing, but I would rather learn more about Ardyn's past in his DLC episode, which I hope is soon!! I really want to play as Ardyn so badly! Ahem. Sorry about that. Ardyn swore revenge against the Lucian bloodline.

  What does this have to do with my mixed feelings for Ardyn? Well, everything. Ardyn was frighteningly evil, even he scared me on certain scenes. His sassy side became twisted, it just wasn't amusing to see but creepy. He plots revenge for two millennia, he murders Lunafreya, he stalks Noctis and his group on the train leading to Tenebrae, tricks Noctis into attacking Prompto and pushing him off a moving train, kidnaps Prompto, taunts Noctis during Chapter 13, turns Ravus into a daemon, plunges all of Eos into infinite darkness and turns it into a world infested with daemons that kill so many people, creates an illusion of the corpses of Regis, Luna, Ravus, and Nyx when Noctis and his friends arrive to the throne room, and actually wins in the end after Noctis...kills him. The final battle confirmed how insane he was, and that whatever sanity he had was gone. I mean, his maniacal laugh and comments during the fight caught me off-guard. It just shows how everything he had been through screwed him over during those 2000 years. *sigh* I confess that Ardyn creeped me out with his sadistic side and everything he had done, but he also intrigued me. But I also confess that killing him made me cry. Not like bawling, but crying. I really liked Ardyn, and despite my mixed feelings for him, I grew to love him. I love him because he was a compelling villain that managed to succeed in being a great one (like Sephiroth), and I wish I didn't have to kill him. But during his final moments, that daemon-like sound he did right before Noctis ended his immortal existence so he could finally rest in peace made me realize he had to die. He suffered too much, and it had to be done. 

Like Sephiroth, I sympathized with Ardyn regardless of everything he had done. Both characters descended into madness to have revenge on those who hurt them, and were both cruel, cold, and calculating in their own respective ways. Rumor has it that Ardyn beat Sephiroth and Kefka. Now, Kefka comes off as a Joker clone to me from what I've read, so I don't care. But Sephiroth????? I love Sephiroth, and I'm in denial if Ardyn did beat him, mainly because I'm a huge Sephiroth fan. FF15 did a great job developing a complex villain that had many layers in him. Ardyn is the kind of villain I grew to hate, and then later love. He was a broken man that my friend and I both love, and we would have done anything to save him. I know I would because I took his death pretty hard. Call me overemotional, but I don't care. I even heard that FF15 may or may not have a sequel. Personally, I don't know if that's possible. FF15 had a pretty solid ending, albeit bittersweet. Where would it go? Also, who would the villain be anyway??? Ardyn was an amazing villain, and nobody can top him in the FF15 universe. It just wouldn't be the same without Ardyn. Ardyn, you have won me over, and I'm officially one of your biggest fans.

Phew! This has been one of the longest post I have ever done. Final Fantasy 15 is a wonderful game, and I'm glad I played it. I laughed and cried with the characters, I identified with them, the story kept me engaged from beginning to end, and it introduced me to a series that I'm looking forward to enjoying as I move on to the other installments. The Final Fantasy 7 remake won't be released until who knows when, so in the meantime, I'll try out other installments. My FF15 playthrough may be over for now, but there will be more to come with future DLC, and I'm going to do some post-game videos later. I'll see you guys later!

The complete playthrough is right here on my channel. Stay tuned for more FF15 gameplay!

Final Fantasy 15 Playthrough