#which defeats the whole purpose of the game imo

[icedvanillas]

Hot take but a game about the intricacies of free will and how any one decision by any character can impact all aspects of the narrative because choices don't exist in a vacuum and will have consequences on the outcome should not have had a "best ending" where everyone survives at all.

[thealias0]

I might have came up with alternate resolutions for both The Giggle and Empire of Death in the shower

I think that those resolutions are both really underwhelming and deserved more. So, let's start what i came up with The Giggle.

Originally, The Toymaker was defeated by him just messing up. No clever play from anyone. 14 and 15 haven't displayed one of their biggest traits, which is their Time Lord super intelligence. They only displayed their ability to play catch, which is just such a waste imo. My proposal: Game of catch goes just like it did in the episode, but eventually 14 and 15 look at each other in understanding. They have cooked a plan. 14 catches the ball and throws it to 15, but he misses and ball falls off the edge of the rooftop. Both act shocked and 15 immediately sprints into the building. Toymaker looks at what just transpired and laughs and screams. "Go ahead, run if you wanna play hide and seek next. You will not escape me anyways." Turns to 14. "Are you proud? Your next incarnation revealed himself to be a coward! I expect many things from you, Doctor, but that sure surprised me. Now, you lost the game, so now's time for me to collect my reward." 14 smirks. "I wouldn't be so sure, as I believe... it is still falling" The moment he said that, the ball hurling from the entrance to the building hits The Toymaker and falls to the ground. In the way stands none other than 15 visibly exhausted from running and expression of relief on his face. Toymaker visibly angry, scared and confused asks: "Wh- What?! How did you... No... don't tell me-" "That's right, Toymaker" 15 expeled. "There are no rules forbidding the usage of time machines" 14 finished the thought. Then the flashback plays out showing the whole thing from 15's perspective. He runs as fast as he can straight to the TARDIS passing himself on the way, travels to the time and place where the ball is supposed to land, catches it, travels back and runs back to the rooftop passing himself on the way back. The rest transpires as it did in the original. I'm not claiming it's the best, great or even good alternate ending, but i think it would be more satisfying than what we got.

The resolution for Empire of Death is one of the most disappointing events I've ever seen in Doctor Who. It made Sutekth into a complete joke. Are you really telling me that the supposed most powerful being in existence. A god so powerful and terrifying that even The Toymaker ran in terror, wasn't able to handle a fucking rope? I don't care if it's a "smart rope" whatever that means. Toymaker was able to turn bullets into confetti, people into bunch of bouncy balls and implied he could turn galaxies into figet spinners or whatever. Sutekth is supposed to be more powerful than that and he couldn't do anything about it? Sutekth deserves much better than this. So this is what i came up with. It isn't nearly as detailed as the toymaker stuff, but i hope you'll enjoy the concept. So, i decided to actually use the spoon to save the universe in hopefully interesting way. I didn't think of any good scenario yet, but here's my idea for the concept itself. What if Doctor defeated Sutekh by using his power against him using the spoon. By that i mean that The Doctor could psychologically manipulate Sutekh into believing that the spoon through some classic Doctor Who technobabble, power of love and fairy tale salt spilling mumbo jumbo became an actual weapon capable of defeating him. Sutekh being a god and having power over reality itself could subconsciously make that story a reality and unknowingly empowering the spoon with his own power, which then Doctor could use to defeat him.

So that's what i came up. I am not a writer, so i apologize if that's an unbearable slop of a read. I'm not claiming that the dialogue i wrote is any good, as im just not experienced in writing. All i did here was not very thought through and only served the purpose of conveying my core ideas about the alternate resolutions for those stories. Hope you enjoyed and have a nice day

[lyssala]

The Sun & The Moon: On the FFXVI Ending

Throwing my thoughts on the ending into the void.

Aka I keep seeing posts about the ending so I need to type out my thoughts to validate myself.

For reference, we played on release and did two full play throughs.

First of all, I am a happy ending person. I want desperately to find the happiness because there was so much suffering so much loss. Saving the world or not, the thought of Clive having come so close to his own happy ending, of having the family and the love he never got to have, so damn close and then still ending up dying alone on a beach leaving the people waiting for him wondering if he would ever come back to them seems so cruel.

But, Lyssa, you played XV too, and Noctis legitimately sacrificed himself in the end to save the world. You’re right, he did, and that ending still makes me ugly cry because I also didn’t think it was fair that he had to do that. The thing were XV and XVI differ is, we see Noctis in the after with Luna, in their wedding attire, finally together. It’s immensely bittersweet, but we see them at peace. We do not get that in XVI SO point by point let’s GO.

(Warning for spoilers, including character death, in other Final Fantasy games as well)

Why I Don’t Think We Can Assume Any of the Three are Dead

1. The Ancient Rule of Storytelling: No body, you say? THEY AIN’T DEAD.

Usually used when a villain “is defeated” but then they can never find a body - guess what, Luffy is going to have to beat their ass YET again. Final Fantasy has never shied away from character death. From Minwu (FFII) to Tellah (FFIV) to Aerith (FFVII) to Zack (FFVII:CC) to Haurchefant (FFXIV) to Noctis (FFXV), heck even other character death in XVI.

Dion to me is the iffiest one, and I say it with a heavy heart because I loved Dion. He fell early and he had death flags on him BUT we didn’t even see him hit the ground so I still standby that if Clive could survive falling from Origin, Dion could too.

Joshua we actually did see die, and it was terrible - both when it happened and when Clive went back to mourn his brother (again for that matter and thanks I’m crying again). The thing is, we also explicitly watch Clive use Phoenix’s power to heal Joshua. Yeah we don’t see him wake up, but literally what was the point of that action if Joshua was just gonna…you know still be dead. They could have just left him as he was. The whole purpose of showing that action, imo, was to finally give Clive the chance to save his brother, which was all he wanted for so much of his life. I don’t believe that was done as just “well you tried but he really dead, bro.” To me it was to show, no, Joshua has a chance to live the life he always wanted too.

Clive, despite all his dang death flags, is still the most secure to me because the last time we see him, he’s still alive. We know he survived the fall, we know he was conscious on the beach, we only saw the curse spread to his hand. If they really wanted to hint he would die there, we easily could have seen the curse spreading to his face. We didn’t though. He was tired, and weak but he was alive. They made an effort to show him alive. If they truly wanted an ambiguous ending they didn’t even need to show him on the beach, just showing Origin fall would be enough. They didn’t though. They showed the man alive, calling out to Jill, not as apology for breaking his promise but a “I can see the moon same as you, I’m still here.”

2. The Ding Dang Themes of the Game

We spend the whole game determined to fight fate, and while yes, fate was defeated when Ultima was defeated, because the human will won…then didn’t because the man who was determined to fight and escape those binds still ended up lost those everyone who loves him…which was part of the fate he was trying to escape? Final Fantasy games have had dark elements before, and they’ve been heartbreakingly sad. They’ve shown loss of all sorts some self sacrifice, and some because the world can be just so cruel. However, once thing Final Fantasy isn’t is loss without hope.

Noctis got to say goodbye to his best friends (yes I am crying again don’t you dare mention Stand by Me in my presence) because he knew what was coming and they knew what was coming. It gutted me, but they all knew and had come to terms with it. It was Noctis’ choice to walk in there knowing he was not coming back. Clive was not the same. He didn’t say goodbye, he said, I’m coming back. While everyone knew there was a risk which is why it was so emotional to say goodbye, he had a life he wanted to return to, one he spoke of returning to. It was never, “You’re coming back right?” And then they skirt around giving a firm answer because they just don’t know. Clive was firm about it, he was coming back, it was his will to come back and guess what won against Ultimia? You guessed it, human will.

Having Clive die alone on a beach after all of that? After all he went through and after all he still wanted? That to me is just cruel, and Final Fantasy has never been cruel. Ren also made the good point that if Clive was to die, Joshua would have fallen with him, so it ended in a reversal of beginning with Joshua watching Clive die instead of the other way around. That didn’t happen either though. He was on the beach, again, still alive (see point 1 as a reminder), additionally, if he thought he was dying, I’d imagine he’d be apologizing to Jill for breaking his promise. In fact that’s what I SWORE he was going to do, but he didn’t. His will to survive was still intact when we left him which to me fits far more with the theme of this game then dying alone on a beach.

3. The Sun and the Moon (It’s Clive and Jill, It’s Just Literally Them)

So yeah I know that the sun and moon imagery is usually used to describe star crossed lovers, never meant to be as the sun and moon rotate. The game already proved that was untrue, they were always meant to be. By all odds they survived and somehow found one another again.

Jill, the moon of course, always said it was because of her prayer to Metia, that every time she prayed for him to return to her, Metia granted her prayer. I say this as someone who grew up religious but now am not, Jill believed it I’m sure but I think it was Jill. Love has also been a huge theme in Final Fantasy, and Jill’s heart filled prayers to keep Clive safe, always had. Not necessarily because a god deemed it so (again, defying gods a huge Final Fantasy theme lol) but her complete and sincere love for Clive, that always kept him safe to come home to her. She prayed for him as he was leaving for origin, just as heart felt as she always had. Why would that fail now the time she probably desired it more than any other time? That also seems so cruel. For him to be torn from her when they were so close to finally being able to have the life they dreamed of together. What purpose does that serve? It wouldn’t except for Jill to have yet another thing in her life to break her heart and leave her to pick up the pieces. I think she would, for Clive’s memory, but again, it feels like loss for no reason but loss. Jill deserves her happy ending too.

You find out later on even more so why Jill cherished the moon, because it brought the sunrise (or you know Clive in the metaphor here) and with the sun the promise the Clive would always come for her. One he never broke. They literally went out of their way to say “the sunrise meant you’d always come for me, I know this.” It was a direct setup for the ending. It was her seeing the star she always prayed on for Clive flicker out, and in that moment I think she did lose all hope because that was the one thing she could always count on to bring him home (to which again, not a god, but her love that brought him home). She is distraught (and so was I so we have that in common LOL) but then, the sun rises, and she smiles. It’s hope. It’s her hope because Clive has never broken a promise to her, and the sunrise has always brought him to her. I have no reason to believe the sunrise didn’t bring him home to her like it always has. Not a single point in this game has given me reason to believe it so why would I?

4. They Did the Thing! The Name of the Game!

A smaller point but one none the less. I sure hope you all played every single side-quest. One particular one, leaves you with a quill to add to Clive’s wall of treasures; one with the sole purpose of when (not if) Clive puts his sword down, that he writes his story. What do we see in the after credits? Literally, a book that is telling his story. Idk how more clear they gotta be that Clive is gonna be okay (tbf I WISH they would have just told me he was gonna be okay too LOL)

Granted, Joshua Rosfield is the author to which, it really could have been him writing Clive’s story in his absence or it could have been Clive and using the name to memorialize his brother’s name. Or it could have been the both of them and they used Joshua’s name because Clive is content living his life behind the scenes. He’s never wanted attention or praise. I don’t think he ever would have used his own name.

Additionally, the ending lines that equates to as my journey ends another one begins to me never meant journey = life. His journey was over, he did what he set out to do. The new journey? Traveling the realms with his wife in a world without the burdens of magic and doing what they do best, help the people who need it.

5. Doggy Knows Best

And finally, my last point is, Torgal knows what’s up. Technically, this is Ren’s point so I give him the credit here but animals, especially Torgal who is more than just a dog (literally an Eikon himself bonded to Jill and Clive, something acknowledged in the game), know when their master is hurt or worse. We’ve seen Torgal when one of them are hurt or in danger or not coming home. Yet at the end of the game, when Jill is absolutely breaking Torgal simply howls.

You know where else he did that? When he was trying to find Clive after Phoenix Gate and he would sit and howl. They were already bonded, he knew Clive (and Jill) were alive but he didn’t know where so he howled for his people until he could find them. It’s the same thing he does at the end of the game. He knows Clive is alive out there, and they are just separated but they’ll find another again because just like Jill, Torgal has no reason to believe otherwise.

And honestly I’m going to believe the dog.

Final Thoughts…For Now Cause I Always Have Thoughts its the ADHD

If you read all this, I hope it brought you some peace <3 I don’t believe a cop out everyone died ending is indicative to the wonderful storytelling this team has brought us in FFXIV. If anything, it reminds me of the ending of A Realm Reborn when you are convinced all the Scions are dead and then ope nope they’re fine just scattered and we’ll find them yeah SOUND FAMILIAR LOL I think they left it open to let people come to their own conclusions but in my heart of hearts I believe they had no intention to let Clive die on that beach because nothing in the story leads me to that conclusion.

If they try to tell me otherwise, well then I’ll go full denial LOL but unless Yoshi-P calls me up and says girl stop you’re wrong, I’ll continue to push my Clive finally gets his happy ending and travels the realms with Jill like he promised her <3 (ONE MORE THING: why the heck would they have Jill just be like mmmm think I wanna leave this realm when its over, lets see the world if they had no future content planned YOU CAN’T FOOL ME she could have easily said anything but she said something that would directly give us more content okay I’m done lol)

[demonsfate]

This is kind of a Hot Take, but I don't care about Miguel, and I don't get why people (mainly on the tek subreddit) are fascinated by the idea of Miguel showing up to beat Jin. I stumbled upon ANOTHER post about this yesterday and saw people saying that they would love to see Miguel face the "villain turned messiah", as opposed to the other characters that supported Jin. Which is funny, because I don't think Miguel would last a fight against Jin in his current canon state. Also, this is a result of the horrible writing on 6 so not addressing the whole thing with Miguel's sister is mainly on the writers. Don't get me wrong, I think it's fine if there's a character that is against Jin and still can't forgive him. Tek8 didn't do a good job on addressing the issues 6 left behind, (it was an "Okay" job tbh but anyway, I take it). Still can't help but think the "Miguel should come back to murder Jin now that he's happy" crowd is mostly made of Anti-Jin than Miguel stans

I'm always conflicted with Miguel lmao. The thing is... I do like his design a lot. In fact, outta all the Tek6 characters, he may have the best design. He's the one that I could see being in like the older games (Tek4 or older) than I did the other Tek6 designs. And I seem to have a thing to hot - headed characters lol. But like... obvs the main problem with him is his story. LIKE. It's hard to like a character whose story is perhaps the biggest insult to your favorite character.

I'm sorry, but other than Tek6 itself, Miguel's existence is the biggest insult to Jin's character. Like the whole purpose of Jin's character is that he was indeed the first Good Mishima (sorry fans who actually fell for the "ALL Mishimas are bad!! That's the point!!" Y'all just fell for the lazy and obviously inaccurate excuse they made to justify his sudden turn in Tek6.) Kazuya was created to be the anti-Ryu, to be an unconventional protagonist for a fighting game 'cos that hadn't happened yet. But after Kazuya was done with being the protagonist, they went on to give us one that was actually good, therefore to be different from Kazuya. They even said the point of Jin was that he was supposed to be Kazuya's OPPOSITE. A possibility of what Kazuya might've been had he been raised by somebody who loved him. The Tekken 4 endings even hammered in the idea that Jin woiuld never be like Kazuya and Heihachi. Because every one of the trio's endings were all set during the same time (Jin's kidnapping in Hon-Maru), however - both Heihachi and Kazuya would've ended with them killing everyone. It's only Jin's ending where nobody dies. This is because Jin will always be a better person than them. Anyway, my point I'm gonna make is that Tekken 6 ruined everything that Jin was supposed to be. And Miguel is, perhaps, one of the biggest insults by being a victim of Jin. Jin lost his family to a monster, in Miguel's story - Jin is the monster who took Miguel's family member. That is fucked up, and no, it's not poetic nor clever. It just further destroys Jin's character and everything that was good about him. Jin should've NEVER hurt anyone else in the way he's been hurt.

And yeah... I mean, Jin has defeated Gods, he's defeated Heihachi and Kazuya (defeating Kazuya TWICE now). Miguel... hasn't really reached any of those feats, and plus... there's nothing really special about Miguel. (He's no Mishima, he's no Kazama, he's no devil gene carrier). And like, people are just talking as if Miguel would ONLY be going against Jin alone somehow???? As if... y'know, Lars, Lee, Alisa, Leo, Eddy, Xiaoyu, or many of the OTHER allies would let that shit fly. If some RANDOM GUY tried to kill Jin, they're not.... they're not gonna let it happen lmao, they're gonna stop it. Like sorry, but with Jin having accomplished these incredible feats, and has a ton of powerful friends, I don't see how Miguel can even be seen as much of a threat lol.

Imo, Tekken 8 did a horrific job at addressing Tekken 6. They didn't even inform the player as to why Jin did the War in the first place (which was for complicated reasons, but supposedly "good" ones). They just had characters say "YOU KILLED THOUSANDS" and then Jin says "shut up!!! I feel bad about it so that's something!!!" And like... who's to say that Miguel would even hate Jin if he were in Tekken 8? I mean, think about it. In Tekken 7, Lars wanted to kill Jin. He only stopped the Narrator from brutally killing Jin with a screwdriver simply because they needed Jin, and that's it. Yet suddenly in TK8, Lars is pals with Jin, and might as well be his cheerleader. The thought of what Jin did to Alisa was enough to bring her to tears in TK7, yet in TK8... she's also buddies with him, now holding his hands and everything. Eddy acted like he wanted to oppose Jin in his TK6 ending, yet... that was retconned to have him be mad at G-Corp / Kazuya instead??? Hell, Lee KILLS Jin in his TK6 and Tag 2 endings!!!! Although they've never canonically interacted prior, Lee still hated Jin in the noncanon moments. Like I get they needed Jin, but them being buddies with him was never properly addressed either and just came from nowhere. So, who's the say they wouldn't do something similar with Miguel???? Like, Eddy, he suddenly decides to drop the Revenge Plot off screen because uhhh revenge darkens the soul and isn't worth it man!!!!

Honestly yeah. Jin seems to have a lot of haters. I mean, Hell, it's hard to even look at Jin posts without seeing someone hating him or joking about him being a war criminal. It's been a while since I used Reddit last but MY GOD, before TK8 came out, there were a PLETHORA of people who were saying Kazuya should be the True Good Guy, that Kazuya is in the right, that Kazuya has never done anything wrong, that they hope Jin is revealed to be the main bad guy and is killed by Kazuya in the end. And like, this isn't an opinion of only a few ppl. After the demo came out, there was legit a post that said Kazuya is only a bad guy because he has the devil gene that Jin hates and that post had almost 100 upvotes!!!! With people agreeing!!! Completely ignoring EVERYTHING Kazuya has done. Like I made a post in my drafts but deleted it 'cos I thought it sounded too emotional, but it was me pretty much saying that people hate Jin for things they praise other characters for. Or the things they hate him for, they ignore the same in other characters. (Seriously, what makes Kazuya worthy of redemption but not Jin?) It really does feel like that. I understand some people may find Jin boring due to his stoicism, or may be critical of him due to his inconsistent writing (and character assassination) but I wish people would just be frank about that instead of hating him for every small thing. So yeah, I do believe that a lot of the "we wanna see Jin get beaten to death by Miguel" crowd really are just Jin haters. They get fucking wild at times. It's quite exhausting.

[swallowtail-ageha]

hey i saw your post about vaatividya and i was wondering if you could explain your reasoning? i already kinda disliked some of his interpretations but i wanted to see your evidence before just confirmation biasing myself into believing you blindly.

Eeeh, it's not really about liking/disliking his lore interpretations (i think that every interp is valid as long as it doesn't explicitedly contradict the few confirmed canon elements) it's just that his videos have really... gentrified the lore community?

I think the beauty of soulsborne games is that you make your own lore interpretation and said lore interpretation is going to be different from the one of another fan, making the fandom very varied and keeping it alive. However this has kinda died down since the rise of big lore channels like Vaati because nowadays when someone searches for the lore other people in the fandom are just going to point you to him or repeat what he says without a dash of own interpretation or without encouraging the new fan to make their own spin on the story which imo defeats the whole purpose of the way the story in soulsborne games is told

And tbh i can't even blame him for doing these videos and people for following his interpetation, because soulsborne lore is obscure and hard to understand if you are more of a casual player, but my main issue is that usually (mostly on reddit) people see his lore interpretations as the set in stone truth and what miyazaki interpreted, and you get downvoted to hell and back whenever you try to have a more lax or bizzarre or out of fandom approved canons view of the lore

[bestworstcase]

Do you think Jaune is gonna be stuck like this, or is it a thing that’ll only last until he gets his character wake-up call?

been marinating on this for a few days because like. fundamentally i’m not sure lol i think we need to get a better sense of how he got here first; if he’s just been here for a few decades and aged naturally then i doubt they’ll de-age him because that is a whole lot of life experience to symbolically regress but on the other hand i’m very doubtful at this point as to whether that is actually what happened, firstly because of the allusion at play and secondly because aging the guy thirty years off screen would be an odd way to follow up on his role in penny’s death—eliding his own feelings about himself + his choices and how he reacts to this intense trauma for the sake of making it in effect something he did to ruby, which imo would be uncharacteristically disrespectful to jaune as a character—in that he is often the butt of the joke yes but he has also always been afforded interiority and like, autonomy, as a character, from being a prop in anyone else’s story. either he spent thirty years down here stagnating to such an extent that fifty-year-old jaune is functionally interchangeable with nineteen-year-jaune (in which case, why bother except for shock value), or he’s healed and grown past what happened entirely off-screen (in which case he’s been demoted from main character to supporting cast, which seems doubtful), or something else is going on (in which case, revealing the rusted knight as fifty-year-old jaune is a misdirection). door number three feels the most likely given how rwby has handled him up to this point and how the narrative is constructed generally, but it’s also the hardest to speculate on except by resorting to allusion because it’s the biggest unknown.

the most critical variable to my mind as far as door three is whether fifty-year-old and nineteen-year-old jaune are separate entities or if the latter has been artificially/magically aged as a consequence of emotional ‘manipulation’ of the ever after’s reality (i.e. a teatime purgatory situation).

that rusty is revealed as fifty-year-old jaune in the same episode that introduces the concept of ascension is enticing, although as per usual for me i have come to a very different hypothesis than most of the fandom in that i think the rusted knight may have ascended to ‘become’ jaune. i am thinking here of how alyx cheated to win the game vs the red king, and the red king ascended and became a child who cheats to win. and likewise there is some harmony between the herbalist’s purpose of “helping people on their journeys” and his ascension after meeting four huntresses whose stated purpose is to “protect those who cannot protect themselves”—note that the herbalist’s final action before he ascends is hurting someone who cannot protect herself and the last thing he says is “huntresses, was it? peculiar things.”

ascension remakes you into the you you wanted to be when you were still you, but there is also an element of reflection and recognition of the self (or the desired self) in others in both of the examples we have to hand. thus, if the rusted knight’s purpose is to be a guardian or protector who defeats the jabberwalker (as it seems to be) then the potential for an encounter with a grieving and guilt-stricken jaune to incite an ascension seems, well, obvious. further, the rusted knight’s apparent recognition of the girls as ‘team rwby’ is just as easily explained by familiarity with jaune as it is by actually being jaune himself—because jaune knows that all of team rwby fell and would certainly ask for help finding them, a request that necessarily involves describing them—and if jaune incited the rusted knight’s ascension in a similar way as the girls did with the herbalist, then it stands to reason that jaune, who is extremely sensitive about losing/not being able to save people, would try to find him again in order to ‘make up for’ having ‘killed’ him (<- the denizens do not conceive of it that way but jaune certainly would).

emotionally there is a lot of interesting stuff to work with here for jaune himself in that inciting the ascension of the rusted knight repeats the trauma of his part in penny’s death but also provides an opportunity for closure and healing because the rusted knight comes back; also something perhaps in the rusted knight ‘inheriting’ the broken crocea mors, lifting that burden from jaune’s shoulders restoring the sword to its original status as a symbol of protection; and also something in the reflection of jaune’s personal history, with the ascended knight becoming in effect a surrogate for the father who was a warrior himself but either couldn’t or wouldn’t support jaune’s desire to follow in his footsteps.

so presently i’m leaning toward “the rusted knight is not jaune himself but was inspired by jaune when he ascended,” with the corollary that jaune is a) still around somewhere and b) not aged significantly, making the question of whether jaune gets un-changed moot; but if the rusted knight is truly jaune then whether he gets de-aged or not depends, i think, entirely on whether he’s genuinely thirty years older (in which case, no) or if he only looks that way because of a teatime purgatory situation (in which case, yes, but loosely i would expect not all at once; gradual backwards-aging correlating to gradual clambering out of the pit of guilt and grief that put him in teatime purgatory strikes me as the most natural way to do it if his current apparent age is a side effect of his emotions influencing the ever after).

[alethiometry]

rating roasting all the ubisoft store assasin's creed odyssey armor sets

note: i am commentating based entirely on personal preference (i prefer a scruffy, salt-of-the-earth, scrappy mercenary look) and own very few of these pieces so i can't speak to their stats. so my ratings are based off of looks alone.

tl;dr most of them are flops and all of them are wastes of money. fuck microtransactions. but some of them are at least kind of pretty, or worth grinding orichalcum to unlock the transmog option.

myrmidon set: 4/10. dislike the massive shoulder pieces and the gold lining. the bracers are alright though and the belt is decent (although it does look a little plain/similar to in-game lootable belts).

ikaros set: 3/10. the helmet is tacky and so are the red lightning bolts. the chest piece looks alright but doesn't seem like it would mix&match well with anything else in the game. the fabric pattern is cool but again hard to coordinate a good look with imo.

lawgiver armor: 7/10. i like blue armors and the wold pelt is a badass detail. i'm personally not a fan of the single-sheet-of-metal look of the chestplate or the massive assassins logo slapped onto the bracers. but otherwise it's a good-looking set.

helios set: 3/10. chestplate and bracers are too busy. the circlet would look cool except i hate the hair/eyes changing color and the halo effect, it takes me completely out of the game. i would rank the set as a whole much lower if not for the waistband, which looks very pretty.

sacred oracle armor: 6/10. cool hood, cool tattoos. i like the sweatpants. i don't like that there is zero boob support for kassandra. also docking some points because i personally prefer to play with a hidden helmet, which kind of defeats the purpose of this set imo; the hood ties everything together.

mighty herakles set: 5/10. hate the helmet and bracers, love the chestpiece, the belt is alright. the tattoos you get with the chestpiece also look ok.

sphinx mane: 6/10. overall it's a very cool-looking set, but i don't like the facepaint, and there's so many feathers covering the whole thing that it again looks difficult to mix and match so you're kind of stuck with the whole set.

abstergo suit: 2/10. if i wanted to look like like i would not be playing assassin's creed. but the eagle bearer's ass does look great in those pants, so i'm awarding one point per asscheek.

shark armor: 5/10. as much as i love sharks and everything to do with sharks, i have to admit that this is a very mid-looking set. my main issue is that there's just too much going on. a lot of the pieces look cool individually, i.e. the shark jaw collar protector, the netting, the seaweed/algae. but overall it just kind of looks messy. cool intention/vision, lackluster execution.

wild boar armor: 1/10. looks like something that an intern would have designed for an ac valhalla enemy.

athena's blessing: 4/10. LOOK I GET THAT THIS IS A POPULAR SET, I JUST PERSONALLY FUCKING HATE IT. i'll give it points for a very well-executed aesthetic, it's very pretty, the pleated texture of the fabric is nice without doing too much, and it's just overall very regal and goddess-like. but it just doesn't look like something the eagle bearer would wear, and again i know that kass doesn't have huge tits to begin with but the complete lack of boob support annoys me to no end. i would rank this lower if it wasn't so well-executed. it just feels so out of place.

celestial suit: 0/10. i fucking hate everything about this set.

armor of dionysos: 7/10. at the risk of sounding like a huge hypocrite based on my rating of athena's blessing... i love this set. i love the gold filigree, i love the leopard pelt, i love the purple!!! unfortunately it once again feels out of place, and the fact that this is i believe the only purple armor set in the game makes it impossible to coordinate with other pieces. but damn it looks so good.

odysseus armor: 9/10. i'm docking a single point because the shawl covers odysseus' head on the chestpiece and i think that is a laughably egregious oversight on the part of the design team and it bothers me a lot. but other than that... beautiful, stunning, gorgeous, breathtaking, brilliant. i love all the chestpieces in the game that have a little shawl draped around them, and i love that this one differentiates itself with the blue and white stripes. it pairs nicely with the white trim on the waistband piece, but would also look nice with some of the lootable in-game belts. (as i write this i am actively contemplating spending real-world money on this armor set; the only thing stopping me is that i am currently in the middle of doing a playthrough in full mercenary gear in order to record consistent cutscenes.)

hades' champion: 1/10. the only reason i'm not giving this a 0 is because i don't hate it as much as i hate the celestial suit.

nemean lion pelt: 6/10. too much white, but otherwise a good-looking set. again, i like that the individual pieces look like they would mix and match well with the gear pieces you can loot in-game. maybe a little too chainmail-y on the chest piece though.

pegasos armor: 2/10. too much white again, too medieval fantasy paladin-y for a game that takes place in a non-medieval setting where paladins don't exist. also the horse and wings look pasted-on. overall just kind of lazy.

spartan renegade armor: 8/10. hate the chains and the massive cheesy-looking lambda belt buckle. love everything else. excellent ancient greece sports bra aesthetic. luckily the sports bra matches nicely with other gear pieces from the game so i can enjoy it without the stupid chains. the chest piece is one of the few armor sets i own because i obsessively checked oikos of the olympians for it every weekly inventory refresh for a longer stretch of time than i care to admit.

armor of kronos: 5/10. idk what it is about this set but i just don't like it very much. i think maybe the palette is just a bit boring; i get that it's leather armor but there's so little going on visually that i just don't see why anyone would opt for this armor. it's very forgettable.

aegean pirate: 7/10. this is what i wish the shark armor looked like (except with the shark jaw collarpiece added). unfortunately the helmet is ugly as sin. i get what they're going for with the kraken aesthetic but it just looks silly. also the bracers are ugly. and considering it's only a blue-tier armor the stats are probably bad and definitely not worth spending money on.

herald of dusk: 3/10. if the kronos set has too little going on visually, this one is just the opposite: there's way too much going on here. there's some nice detail in the armor, but i just don't understand what they were trying to achieve with it overall. the top half of the hood (with the stripes) looks nice, but the bottom half is giving chainmail. overall it's just very.... weird. and again, as a blue-tier armor set it's a waste of money.

[phantom-of-notre-dame]

No one asked, but here are my thoughts on the three Carrie adaptations now that I've watched all of them and finished the book. Under the read more cause it got a little too long, lol (Edit: this post has been in my drafts since August of 2023 but Carrie has been in my thoughts today).

One thing that surprised me the most was that none of the adaptations did Carrie's prom dress correctly. Stephen King doesn't mention a color until Margaret calls the dress red. Every adaptation makes a point in Carrie saying the dress is pink, but in the book she doesn't say anything. All we know about the dress is that it's made of crushed-velvet "with its princess waistline, juliet sleeves, and simple straight skirt." I think there's something to be said when all the adaptations give Carrie a pink sleeveless dress (also all the actresses have been thin which is WAY off the mark but that's a whole other post. Not a fan of King using the word "chunky" to describe her).

Another surprise from the book is that after Carrie is drenched in blood she walks (more like stumbles) out of the gym for a few minutes before coming back. It makes the whole thing more calculated and maybe a little more terrible than the heat of the moment that the adaptations bring.

1976 is definitely my favorite of the three. Sissy Spacek gave an incredible performance. Margaret's zealot nature is more abrupt/manipulative and like the book than the subtler manipulative versions in the other two. But I don't appreciate how they made Tommy a jerk too. That defeats his whole purpose.

2002 is technically the most book accurate, in my opinion. It has the most directly lifted from the book (the inclusion of the stone scene as well as the physical toll telekinesis takes on Carrie was well done). Sue definitely comes across as a bitch during the police interviews which felt very OOC but that's because in the end it's revealed that Sue helped Carrie fake her death and run away (which yeah is a major deviation from the source material but whatever). Billy is also the cruelest in this version which shocked me a little bit. The jump from dumb abusive boyfriend to sociopath was surprising.

There are things I like about the 2013 version. Sue's remorse feels the most genuine here and the hatred Carrie feels for others is more apparent (if only at the end). But even as I watched the prom scene it was... meh. The arm moving is so so dumb. If you're going for horror then mind powers are scarier when the person is still, imo. I also don't understand the Sue pregnancy storyline. Also for someone with an IQ of 140, Chris sure is dumb (I know IQ tests don't really mean anything but since they make a point of it in the book and the 2002 movie I thought I'd try and crack a joke). She didn't think to delete the video she took on her phone and then decided to get suspended rather than caught. It also seems like Billy came up with the pig blood plan rather than Chris? Especially when in this version Billy doesn't even go to their school so he has absolutely no skin in the game. I also don't appreciate how they tried to make Margaret a sympathetic character. She's also the least convincing as a religious zealot.

[icharchivist]

ICHA ICHA I HAVE A THEORY, the next boss seems to be tiamat but they say it's something from the creation myth, which doesn't make sense right? If the creation myth was 6000 years ago and primals were concepts and "gods" given form by the astrals 2000 years ago BUT WAIT what ifgods had a shape before? A lot of people have already been theorizing the there are two phoenixes around, the one of thedeck and the primal we defeated not being the same entity also cause lyria didn't sense it and here's where it gets interesting what if WHAT IT Primeval Gods were actually a thing and Lilith and Astraeus used the name to gain skydweller's faith cause they ALREADY believed in them? LIKE- where do we find Abramelin? somewhere within the Rafale Alliance meaning he was in Zegagrande where they still use the term primeval god so what if the tiamat we will fight and that most likely downed wilnas is not port breeze's tiamat but the original True Primeval God??

how on earth is the new boss supposed to be Tiamat DKLFJDLKFJDLKFJ unless they mentioned something i missed in interviews and stuff??? (but if it's because of leaks please i avoid those)

Also we know that some primals were created to take control over the realms of other forces, and that's what the Primarches especially were. When Lucilius created the Archangels to control the elements of the Skyrealms, the pull their control put the skyrealm too pushed the Wedges to be in deep slumber, which is why it's only when the Archangels let go of their powers and "let nature take care of the elements again" the 6 dragons actually woke up. (that's mentioned in the Lindwund quest)

So the whole things with primals is that they're created with purposes by the Astrals (Lucilius first, Cosmos's creator around the same time, and then there's a gap of about 1.5k years before the rest of the Astrals did the same). Some purposes were more specific and didn't need to pull on nature exactly (exemple: Noa as the primal beast of ships), but Primals that where created to represent an element were meant to show control over a natural phenomena.

In Created by the Stars, Loved by the Skies, we actually see that Tiamat wasn't originally made for Port Breeze though. It's Cosmos and Lucifer who encouraged her post-war to make a pact with Port Breeze because it would be a nice place for her to settle, and that if Skydwellers could see Primals as part of nature to respect then there wouldn't be a needless slaughter of the primals after they were left there after the war.

It's not impossible Tiamat was created to emulate an actual god/being that lived in the skyrealms before though. Again this is what the Primarches were created for, so we know it happened before, and then we have case like Sylph who's both supposed to look like the Astral's lover AND replace the Fairies of Feendrache who then went into slumber for a long time as well.

There is a major subtext in the primals' purpose as to how it's the Astrals colonial way to replace the way the world worked with their own creatures they controlled, erasing the traces of what was previously there.

I do actually believe that the Phoenix we fought in the first event is a primal that was made specifically to capture the essence of the Real Phoenix - i think i mentioned it when i was liveblogging this part of the story. It makes a lot of sense imo since we did see it happen.

As for Relink i would be careful about using it as a reference point due to the fact it's not canon to our current timeline (even if Phoenix does mention everything was real and all). The Rafale connection is a stretch, sorry, the Crew Alliance Rafale has been in the main game for about seven years since we're introduced to them via the co-op quests, it doesn't mean anything specific about Zegagrande ALHDLFKJDFLK. especially since in the mobage storyline people don't go from one skyrealm to the next easily because of the Grim Bassin, and that exploring Zegagrande has explicitly been written off in the main game.

In the Avia notes/Astareus' journal you get in post game in Relink, there is an explicit mention that yes they used the belief the Skydwellers had for the primeval gods and encouraged it to see the impact of faith on them. Astareus' journal mentions though that those were primals all along.

(honestly i'm a bit scratching my head over the Relink's timeline in term of the Astrals since Lilith mentions Lucilius was a project rival for her, because it would mean she started Avia stuff about 2k years ago, and it doesn't actually make a lot of sense that there were primals to even comment on at this point without the Astral invasion. Another thing to make Relink difficult to explore as a lore point.)

Personally i wouldn't really see Primeval Gods as anything more than another names for Primals since we already have more lore information on what the primals were meant to emulate to start with.

but yeah i do believe in the Primal Phoenix being an attempt at capturing the power of the Real Phoenix of myth, and that others primals may have been created to echos actual natural phenomena from the creations days.

I'm dubious about the whole Tiamat thing though. That'll be to see when we get there.

[raxistaicho]

Spoken better than I could have done

Saw an interesting exchange between a couple folks that really explains the issue with everything concerning Byleth’s backstory quite well. Quoting with permission and anonymity:

If we strip the whole game of its fandom context, remove the urge to be charitable to Rhea so as to distinguish ourselves from the antis, then we have a game where a character is told they were stillborn by a character whose entire story is about spinning a web of lies so that she can experience her mother's love once again. And then after defeating said character, the ostensible stillborn has their heart start beating as soon as the unwilling surgery is undone.

They then asked me to post:

I never really noticed how it looks like the Crest Stone was snaring Byleth’s heart in such a visceral way. It looks like what you see from Resident Evil monsters.

She literally also tells Byleth that she knew they would make the perfect vessel for being the child of a homunculus she made to be a vessel for Sothis and her crest stone and a man she gave her magic blood to. Just like how Thales said Edelgard was perfect for the crest of flames because she had Rhea's blood for it to "catch and ignite" on. Rhea knew Byleth would be the perfect vessel before they were born.

If we look at what is actually being communicated here, it's that the heart is healthy on its own, in a part of the story that parallels humanity being able to live on its own without being leashed to immortal masters. The only reason to argue Rhea is being 100% truthful imo is to treat her nicer than haters treat Edelgard - which is a worthy endeavor in fandom, but when we're analyzing game text we should look at only the text.

So we're supposed to trust a person who created a web of lies so massive as to swallow an entire continent for over a thousand years all to keep her and her people's power over another people, kill to protect those lies, established as willing to do basically anything to revive her mother including creating living sentient vessel to sacrifice and kill, knew Byleth was going to be the perfect vessel before birth, had Sitri give birth alone with no one else besides her, knowing she could've given Byleth her magic healing blood or one of the many crest stones she has in the Holy Tomb if Byleth really needed one, and says that everything was truly innocent and consensual? Like I can't understate how much I don't trust that explanation from Rhea in SS.

A third person then jumped in;

Both Byleth and Edelgard are Crest of Flames experiments of opposite factions. The difference is their "purposes", as the purpose of Thales was to create a second Nemesis capable of wielding the Sword of the Creator against Rhea, destroy the church and die shortly afterwards.

Meanwhile, Rhea's purpose was to create a vessel for her mother to eventually inhabit, erasing the vessel's personality. Rhea's ideal outcome would have been to keep Byleth in the monastery for all their life and groomed from the beginning into the "glorious purpose" of becoming Sothis's new body. Which is what Jeralt stopped when he took Byleth and ran away.

Jeralt is the BEST fire emblem dad, because he suspected that a trusted authority figure was being weird around his baby, that his baby had strange symptoms (not crying, not emoting) got proof that said authority figure actually had done something physically disturbing to said baby, and then he took the baby and ran for the hills.

[unmeiokaemasu]

The morphs are humans, full stop: cliffnotes edition

ok I said I wanted to write a full mini-essay on this but I need to get this out of my system NOW and I don’t have time for even a half-assed analysis, so here’s a...quarter...assed....here’s some bullet points:

BASIC PREMISE: Nergal is an abusive parent/guardian who controls the morphs by making them feel powerless and/or gaslighting them.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE HUMAN?: In this case, have full autonomy and regular human emotions. I think all the named morphs shown apply but I’ll get into it.

WAIT DOES THAT MEAN NERGAL’S GOD??: No, Nergal’s a Bad Parent. I know there’re a bunch of nameless morphs that get mowed down as fodder but this is obvs not a 1:1 allegory. Case and point, you mow down endless nameless morphs the same way you reap human bandits and frankly enemy soldiers in other FE games, or, like, other maps in this game. We’re all clear that we’re smart enough to play the game and go ahead and defeat the nameless enemies knowing that we’re not equivocating them with hypothetical real world human adversaries, yes? good. So yeah Nergal’s basically the bad dad to all the named morphs. Moving on.

Ephidel: So I have the least to say about this dipstick, but yeah, he’s just a sadist from all evidence. Takes pleasure in other’s suffering. He’s the simplest one, which is why we meet him first. Nergal keeps him around because he follows orders easily and doesn’t cause trouble. Also easy to dismiss in this thoughtdump. NEXT.

Boss morphs: I had a whole section on this and it actually got so dark that I decided to cut it. Basically any implications of beings who smile when they die is Not Good, and “they are zombies” is the best case scenario.

Denning: I’m ranking this on level of pathos, and imo while Ephidel ranks up there with any bandit boss that spits at you and tells you you’ll never win even as he dies, Denning is more sympathetic than that. Yes. Denning. And I think that’s on purpose. I think this was a deliberate move to show us a morph who was unable to express personality. And yet, when they die, the way the message fades out...I mean think about it. Nergal sent a living being to serve the purpose of like, a bot in your dms. They can’t say anything other than their predetermined message, and they can’t emote that we can see. I definitely think this is a commentary on Nergal’s attitude towards life, and not meant as a statement of “morphs feel nothing by default.”

Kishuna: Explicitly described as being very sad. And then, we see how Nergal treats them: all put-downs, all the time. There is a sense both that they feel like they are inadequate as a person, and that they feel earning Nergal’s favor will give them purpose, which is why they still work for him. Kishuna is explicitly here to make you realize that morphs feel things.

Sonia: Do I. Do I even need to tell you that Sonia feels emotions? Do I even need to describe her constant existential dread? The reason she shit-talks Limstella is that she knows she’s a morph, but, like Limstella, she’s been convinced (by Nergal, duh) that human lives are worth more than morph lives, so she keeps calling herself a human, and at the very least has convinced herself that as long as she has Nergal’s approval, she’s worth as much as a human. And I can get into all the icky implications of Nergal forcing her both into a relationship with a human man and to be a mother to a human child, but. I’ll save that for later. Yes, she’s an unequivocal villain. I think that is part of her personality. But she has a personality, part of it involves ruthlessness and a willingness to utilize other’s suffering for her own gain, and part of it is the constant terror that if she doesn’t prove herself worthy, she will be killed, or used as a tool until she is killed. It is both.

Limstella: ...so. well. I said I didn’t wanna write too much but I’ve already written a bit. Short story: taking all that into account...Limstella the most powerful and most loyal of Nergal’s minions. So they get constant assurance that they are fulfilling their purpose. That’s...pretty damn human, I think. That they would never challenge their position because they constantly get overwhelming validation for their actions. *sigh* I want to go into this more later, but...yeah that’s why their death quote fucks me up so much. They’re sad to die, but so is anyone else who’s told to die for a “great cause.” And uh. Their story is the most moving tragic tale in all of FE for me? Not that it’s an objective competition, it’s just...idk. Their story moved me. I wish it could have ended differently.

OK WELL that’s out of my system now. That’s...777 words, yeesh. I could probably write a 2500 word scree on this no problem, and that’s even before starting to do research and site real-world psychology.

Anyway, I’d love to hear other’s thoughts! To me all of this seemed like obvious authorial intent, but it was never explicitly spelled out, so I’m sure lots of people have different reads!

[dmclemblems]

I know a lot of people are saying they don’t really like a lot of the things in this game’s timeline and so they’re taking only bits of lore and ignoring the rest.

To that I want to say: I think that’s part of the point?

Aside from the fact that obviously Nintendo is just capitalizing on the success of Three Houses and milking all the money out of it that they can, if they want to do that they have to create something that isn’t exactly the same as the original game.

In other words, they couldn’t just rerelease the game full of the lore we kept asking for and wanting. They had to give us some other timeline and means of getting that lore out.

What I take away from this game is basically that it’s a means to fit in all the missing lore from Houses, like background information about the characters and their families as well as their lives prior to the start of the game. The change in timeline only begins when Shez meets the lords instead of Byleth, so everything prior to that is still the same in both games. The lore is the same, and that’s the stuff we all wanted.

Of course, like I said, they can’t just give us the same game, and it’d be difficult to really make a proper sequel because they’d have to make a sequel for every route, and it would pretty much defeat the purpose of what Three Houses was (because for example all the main characters die in every route except Claude and, in the event you S supported her, Rhea in SS. You effectively lose what the plot was even about, so either way all we’re left with for a sequel is a new story with the same characters, but following a path that directly reflects the route. Again, that would mean making three, or four if they included SS, new route stories. In Houses, the route stories aren’t that different because it still follows the same general direction).

Basically what I take away from this game is that yeah, some of the writing really was bad and I know a lot of people don’t agree with some of the major choices that were made, but I think this game did its part in filling in all the lore gaps that we needed. For example, we learned more about TWSITD which was severely lacking Houses despite them being the backdrop of the entire plot, we learned more about Almyra’s relationship to Fodlan, we learned more about the span of time between the Tragedy of Duscur and Dimitri enrolling in the Academy, etc).

Since they couldn’t really give us all this lore any other way, I think this was the best way to do it. Ultimately I don’t hate Hopes as a whole game. I do hate some of the bad writing choices they made (almost all of which are in the second half of the game for every route honestly), and I don’t really prefer that this is a Warriors game since it’s not my cup of tea for gameplay compared to standard FE gameplay, but I think for a spinoff it more or less did its part in filling in the empty spaces we wanted from Houses.

Obviously this game isn’t the canon depiction of the story, but for those of us who want to take some of the lore and use it in the mindset of the canon Fodlan story, imo that’s really the idea of Hopes! It’s just a lore fill in that couldn’t be done with the exact same story without them just doing a full on remake, which they wouldn’t do after having just released Houses as the last mainline game. Even if they did have a remake that filled in all the gaps, that wouldn’t happen for many more years, the same way the other FE games don’t get remakes for a very long time.

Really my advice is to enjoy the lore and try to think of it in the context of Houses, because I know some of the choices in this game were frustrating to play through. Have fun with the new information we’ve learned! We’re all going to wish there was more when we love a group of characters like this, but the good part about it is that now we have more background information to keep in mind the next time we all play Houses.

[dangan-meme-palace]

As much as I dislike it, I do understand why what happened with Kaede happened and what point it was. From chapter 2 on, Kaito seemed to replace her for the worst. Kaede got punished for being reckless and attempted murder, yet Kaito gets a pass for being overall horrible? (PS. Out of both the training and survivors, I like Maki the most, but she has the same problem as The rest of the Training trio)

"Shuichi, the protagonist, is planned to be friends with Kaito so we should just excuse anything he does." – The writers, probably

But more seriously, I want to believe that the writers meant for us to figure out that Kaito isn't as perfect or good or wise as the cast makes him out to be, ingoing with the whole character subversion thing that V3 had going on, and that they weren't giving Kaito a pass but rather they were trying to keep up his hero facade while showing us how much he doesn't deserve to be called a hero.

Some examples of subversions:

Gonta isn't harmless and innocent, he killed someone and has anger issues

Kokichi isn't sadistic and evil, he always tried to protect everyone from the worse outcome because he cared about them

Kaito isn't wise and helpful, he's a dick and causes more problems than he fixes

Tsumugi isn't boring and plain, she's the mastermind and still boring imo

Kaede isn't just some wholesome/weak protagonist, she tried to kill the mastermind in CH1

Tenko isn't just manic and irrational, she's actually really wise at times and wants improve herself

Etc etc etc

I've just been thinking about everything lately and honestly I think that V3 was trying really hard to make players think about the game outside of the scope of Shuichi, who seems to be a biased narrator.

There are moments in the game (CH4 especially) where you're really forced to see characters (like Gonta, Kokichi, Kaito) –that you thought you knew from Shuichi's feelings about them– in a different light, but I guess the fandom didn't really pick up on it???

Like when Kaito says that he's willing to let everyone die for his own beliefs & abandons Shuichi, or the end of the CH4 trial where Kokichi's mask very obviously breaks, or when Gonta admits to his responsibility in Miu's murder... these are all pretty clear signs –clear as day, even– that what we thought we knew about them was wrong and that there's more to them than their pretenses. It's about as obvious as you can get without outright saying "you were wrong about them" but it seems like it flew under the radar for some reason...

With moments as clear as that I don't think I can really hold the writers responsible for the subversions not getting across fully, like I just can't think of a way they could have been more obvious without just dropping all pretense and blatantly telling us what to think about these characters, which defeats the entire purpose of getting us to think imo.

I really do think they wanted us to figure out these characters without holding our hands and walking us through it step-by-step, letting us figure things out on our own while giving us all the necessary clues, but maybe I'm being a crackhead and that's just me.

[goldie-claws]

Sooo Dragon’s Dogma means quite a lot to me, I started playing it when I was recovering from a pretty rough uni year, having played the game three times now and I’d love to make a review video on it because I’d like other people to know it exists and appreciate it.

However, I feel like a lot of people are going to have their first exposure to the game via the Netflix adaptation and, as much as I hate picking things apart before they’ve been released, I do have my issues that I’d like to get off my chest.

First off, there’s the main character having a dead wife. Normally, I’d just roll my eyes and move on, but I get the sneaking suspicion that they’ll use that to make Grigori more evil than he actually is (one line from him in the trailer is even ‘does thou hate me?’, proving he acknowledges the action). As in, he did it with intention and not the wife being caught in the crossfire, which defeats the whole point of Grigori’s character imo. When he attacks Cassardis in the beginning of the game, he is doing so as a feral beast UNTIL the main character strikes him, proving their worth as the Arisen.

From then on, Grigori doesn’t taunt you, but speaks to you like a friend, an equal, not even commenting on his attack on Cassardis to mock you with it. He even kills an actually evil character when he first talks to you: Elysion, and comments how Elysion’s methods are ridiculous (‘the rantings of an upjumped zealot make for tedious listening’).

Grigori exists to continue the cycle of the Arisen and he knows that is his purpose, nothing more, nothing less. The monsters that joined him were simply an unfortunate byproduct of him entering the world.

The other thing I don’t like, is the implication that the pawn in the anime is going to have a romantic relationship with the main character (there’s a moment where it looks they’re about to kiss and I can feel my body cringing through the floor), when it is established MANY MANY times that that is a BAD idea, as pawns obey their Arisens without questions, do not have a mind of their own (!!!) and it just enters massive no-no territory. The only time pawns really ‘become human’ is if the Arisen gives up their body for them and it’s clear this isn’t the case.

The pawn has a nice design, yes. Imo it’s unique and eye catching, but it’s freakishly obvious they did so so that she is conventially attractive so she can enter a relationship with the main character.

[casualtheoriesandthoughts]

The role of memories in Kingdom Hearts

I recently replayed KH Re:CoM and I have to say it’s one of the more brutal entries in the series, with very little light-hearted letup on the action of the main story. Marluxia and Larxene, more so than nearly any other antagonist (even more than Xemnas imo) in KH, are incredibly cruel. Ansem SoD is literally a ghost haunting Riku and taunting him with his grief (and honestly made me think this is why a lot of fans came to support Riku in the first place). 

The scene where Larxene flings Riku Replica to the side? Positively gut-wrenching. Sora being uncharacteristically angry? It honestly made me slightly uncomfortable. Naminé accepting her fate to be forgotten by Sora (despite him promising to meet her again) was super tragic.

But more than anything else, I feel like Re:CoM is a somewhat overlooked entry in the series for its influence on the meta-universe of KH (even if it is a bit of a ridiculous game with the card system). Especially since Melody of Memory has been released (spoilers ahead!), I felt the need to revisit Re:CoM for its lore on the role of memories in KH. Memories are an intriguing dimension of what I’m going to start calling the metaphysics of the KH universe. In this post, I’m going to cover things that memories do in Kingdom Hearts, and the implications it has for Melody of Memory and the ending of Re:Mind (last warning: SPOILERS AHEAD). 

Re:CoM - Memories and connected feelings shape the heart

As Sora enters Castle Oblivion, we are told that the deterioration of his memories has already begun. Naminé is actively altering the links in his memory to insert her presence therein (all at the behest of Marluxia, who is manipulating her desire to meet Sora and her loneliness). Despite the creation of false memories in Riku Replica and Sora, however, they still induce people to experience very real feelings. Before his final battle with Marluxia, Sora still feels a responsibility and desire to protect Naminé in spite of the fact he has no personal relationship with her in reality and that she manipulated his memories. He also goes out of his way to tell Riku Replica that his own feelings are real, and that even if the memories are false, his experiences are his own and even possesses his own heart. For Sora and Riku Replica, all feelings are genuine even if they arise from false memories.

It’s worth noting the way memories are referred to in Re: CoM, starting with the title: Chain of Memories. A chain can be either shackling or connecting, as Marluxia and Naminé allude to when speaking about Sora’s memories. Marluxia orders Naminé to control Sora by way of his memories, in order for the latter to do his bidding (help him to take over the Organization, that is). Naminé, on the other hand, refers to Sora’s memories as that which tie him to his friends and loved ones, especially Riku and Kairi. His feelings of friendship and love towards others never fade in spite of his memories being changed, and is even willing to allow Naminé to destroy his heart by erasing his memories.

But that’s where it gets complicated. It is highly implied that memories have the ability to shape a heart, but only at this point is it suggested that the erasure of memories can actually destroy a heart. Marluxia states that if Naminé were to erase Sora’s memories, he would become an empty shell incapable of feeling (which coincidentally describes a Nobody). That said, she doesn’t actually do it, and when she destroys Riku Replica’s false memories, his heart does not disappear. This is why Riku Replica is able to return right before Sora fights Marluxia, his heart intact. This seems to indicate that Marluxia was either speaking in hyperbole, or simply did not know the true relationship of memories to hearts. 

It may then be more accurate to say that the destruction of memories traumatizes and numbs a heart rather than destroys it. Larxene comments during Reverse/Rebirth that Naminé’s magic almost remade Riku Replica’s heart by changing his memories, but not quite. In the KH universe, memories seem to be inscribed on a heart rather than fundamentally altering it. Yet, memories also bind hearts to the world by giving them meaning. 

Remember that as Sora journeyed through Castle Oblivion, people outside apparently forgot about him and remembered him spontaneously when awoke from his pod in Twilight Town. It’s not just the individual memories that make up a person, but the shared memories and experiences which connect hearts together in a “chain” of memories. In the presence of others, characters acquire purpose and senses of self. In Reverse/Rebirth, Riku rediscovers himself after falling to darkness and battles against his insecurities by rekindling his connections to people like Sora, Kairi and Mickey. This is how he maintains the light within, by dwelling on his memories of his bonds to his friends.

In that context, we might see how memories play an important role in giving rise to new hearts later on. 

358/2 Days - The case of Xion

Xion is one of the most curious and earliest cases of a heart being generated seemingly out of nowhere in KH (I’d say possibly even before Riku Replica). Just like Riku Replica, Xion in 358/2 Days is derived from the memories of her original persona (in her case, Sora). She is not a true Nobody, though Vexen muses that his replicas are a special kind of Nobody in the Day 23 Report of 358/2 Days’ Secret Reports. In addition Xion, unlike Riku Replica, actively embodies many of Sora’s qualities while being distinctly aware that she is not truly Sora. It is this crisis of identity which eventually leads her to believe that she must return to Sora, and forces Roxas to defeat her. 

After that, people cease to remember Xion after she returns to Sora, a fact about which I’ve always wondered. Consider that Riku Replica, upon returning to Riku (or at least residing in his heart), does not fade from Riku’s memory or anyone else’s. Axel repeatedly doesn’t remember Xion even when hints of her come up (such as the fact that Roxas wields two Keyblades, his knowledge of the Replica Program and his many interactions with Kairi, even during KH3). Yet he clearly remembers Riku Replica as evidenced in the Day 194 Secret Reports from the 358/2 Days. This is well after the events of Re: CoM for both Sora and Riku’s stories, as Xion had already met Riku in his Organization XIII coat. 

In theory, one might assume that Axel shouldn’t remember either Xion or Riku Replica because they have both returned to their original forms. Yet objects that belong to them or are about them remain in existence (ex. Vexen’s reports about the Replica Program). Even Xion’s personal memories and those attached to her are sealed inside Roxas’ heart. Presumably because Sora never actually met her or Roxas (a crucial difference from Riku and his replica), and Roxas lost his own memories in his fight with Riku, memories of her became doubly compromised when he returned to Sora. So this begs an important question: what do memories do when it comes to having a heart? 

I would say that memories, especially independent ones, allow for the arising of new hearts. Riku Replica may have acquired a heart (and therefore a distinct existence) when he decided to defend Naminé and claim his memories of her, even though they’re not real. In contrast, it is not clear whether Xion has a heart at the end of 358/2 Days, and it is implied that she has one by KH3, and essentially confirmed in Re:Mind.

From where, one can only vaguely guess. Let’s look at other KH beings: darkness is the source of Heartless; nothingness of Nobodies; negative emotions (or rather Vanitas) of Unversed; dreams of Nightmares ,Dream Eaters and Spirits. It would seem that hearts arise from light, or perhaps Kingdom Hearts itself (seeing as it appears to be the bedrock of reality). It makes sense since Kingdom Hearts is composed of all hearts that exist. But crucially, it is memories which give hearts their forms. Xion returns to existence when Sora liberates her memories/essence from within Roxas’ heart during Re:Mind. 

Memories clearly play some role in generating an existential niche for hearts. They also may very well be the reason that people can be re-completed: Axel recalls his memories as a kid as he spends time with Roxas and Xion (Day 118 Secret Report). He even says that he feels like he has a heart in the presence of Roxas, Xion and Sora (and very critically, is unsure if he in fact doesn’t have one in a conversation with Roxas). Marluxia seems to recall his memories as Lauriam from KH Union Cross, right as he is defeated in KH3. Terra’s memories occasionally surface in Xemnas, and his feelings of loneliness come up as he dies in KH3. 

Sora states in KH Re:CoM that he was able to return to being whole after becoming a Heartless by holding on to his memories of Kairi, and her own ability to free him from the darkness. Roxas, Xion and Riku Replica all develop hearts distinct from their original personas as they experience the world and forge new memories. Xion is primarily able to return to the world because people’s memories of her are restored. Her true consciousness becomes freed through Sora’s actions, not unlike the way Sora’s friends and allies suddenly remember him at the beginning of Kingdom Hearts 2.

From this, we can deduce that memories are critical for three things: 

existing as a unique, complete individual

returning from states of incompleteness (such as being a Heartless or Nobody) 

verifying that someone actually still exists in a reachable place

The last one is the kicker with Xion, and bears on a working theory of mine about Melody of Memory and Re:Mind’s endings (which I’ll put in another post for clarity). Hope this interests some people, and inspires some discussion about the possible connections between Re:CoM and Melody of Memory!

[vynnyal]

Throwing random thoughts, headcanons, and a variety of pasta at the wall (but only those having to do with vessels and/or their biology this time): The Thrilling Third Installment™

...aka pretending i can be dark and dramatic jskhdfd

Thk's larger form is not the standard, but the exception. Thk was cited as being "raised and trained to prime form", which people take to mean pk assisted in the vessel's natural growth. However, that conclusion leaves a lot of unanswered questions, most important of which being “then what about Ghost?” In short, I think that train of thought is backwards. Vessels can't grow- they are ageless, and immortal. We know this due to Ghost, despite living as long if not longer than thk, being completely unchanged over the years. The only thing pk trained into "prime form" was thk’s mind and fighting prowess. Their body... well, I think it was mutated. Most likely either directly by pk, or ordered by him- and with the shenanigans happening over in the sanctum, I wouldn't be surprised if Soul was involved, too. In any case, it was in no means natural. Vessels are corpses reanimated by void; neither corpses nor void tend to make drastic changes on their own all that often. Whether pk predicted the vessel’s “issues” and intended to manually “upgrade” them from the beginning, it's hard to say. But... yeah. Unless Ghost goes out of their way to make themselves grow- if its even possible, now that pk is gone- its fairly safe to say, they never will.

...with that in mind, we are promptly gonna ignore that for the rest of this post lmaooo

Grown-up vessels wouldn't look like thk; while they are described as being raised into "prime form"... prime form, to whom? Rather than looking like an idealized pk soldier, it sounds much more fitting that they’d have an entirely different, natural adult form. Consider: their cloaks being longer and fuller, perhaps filling out into something with a more practical use to their “species”. Better yet, they could even grow up to be more beast-like. Feral vessels, YEhaW

The black egg temple is cited as being "built to sustain [vessels]", yet it can't be their lifespan that is sustained. Rather, it seems the egg is specifically designed to keep the radiance from tearing thk apart, physically and/or mentally. Ngl its p obvious, but worth noting.

Sorta-au where Ghost’s shade has 8 eyes, and/or is generally all-around more cryptid-looking.

@ the sharpshadow charm and the strange, 6-eyed creature their shade turns into: kudos to this post, they bring up something super interesting- the creature not only resembles the Shade Lord, but the lord outright becomes it during the Embrace the Void cutscene.

makes me respect the ol’ civilization a whole lot more if a single charm can turn a baby shade into a baby lord.

The concept of finding ghosts unconscious body, laying next to a corpse, while they battle in their dreams. Alt: when ghost enters the dream realm, their shade leaves their shell... And protects their body from harm.

If steel soul mode is taken as canon, just how did ghost and the shade meet? Alt: Ghost may never have “met” it at all, as it technically doesn’t exist in that mode- instead, its more of a metaphor than an actual entity.

What the vessels looked like- or were supposed to look like- before the void. Alt: a story following a child, alive and untouched, that somehow managed to be spared. They could even have a gender. Alt alt: the void intentionally spared them for some purpose, or even out of simple kindness- or at least, something that resembles kindness.

Re: the shade inexplicably having a nail: all the vessel's swords are crafted from “will-bearing rock”- of which i’ve come to lovingly call living stone- and as such, are of void themselves. That's how the shade seems to conjure up its own copy; it merely shapes it, from the ground, using void. And, while more of a stretch, Ghost’s nail being some sort of living stone/pale ore alloy could explain just how Ghost can do seemingly pretty crazy things with an otherwise ordinary nail. Better, while 100% a baseless hc, its material might actually enable Ghost to build it up and modify it to suite their size as they grow older. finally, a logical reason adult Ghost has an adult-sized nail-claymore. hdsfghjfghdsjf

On that same thought: Ghost outright invented the "art" of manipulating- or creating- living stone to make their nail. ...gimme a sec. The other escaped vessels have nails, too, right? Either meaning they also discovered this ability... or that theres some legitimate ground for the “vessel gang” hc. Or, yanno, i’m reading too much into Ari’s sprites but sHHhh

How did all the vessels know to race to the top? They seemed to be falling merely because they had just been born and had literal, actual baby strength; yet not only did they inexplicably risk everything competing to the top, they somehow knew death was waiting if they lost. Alt: pk just, bringing a fucking megaphone and telling them like a sports announcer.

What if Ghost made it, and instead of falling, they managed to joined thk at the lip? What would pk do? Push them off the edge??? Or just adopt them both?? Oh fuck au where they're raised as twin sacrifices. Or worse yet, they’re raised unequally, and one is trained only as an afterthought. As a backup.

Alternatively, pk keeps all the vessels au, only a few years later when they're grown. Pk now has a literal army of pure knights. Radiance is fucked.

Hm. If vessels were fully coherent entities from the moment of birth, why was there a crib in the white palace? Did... did they use it? I have a feeling team cherry made that asset before the abyss scene lmaooo alt: they did, uh, use the crib. Cue a very awkward scene of thk, clearly not a normal baby, staring at wl with like... idk, the poofy baby hat and pacifier. I can’t tell if the image is more funny or more sad rn shdfgfjsdgg

The og notes that inspired this post, in case my rambling makes more sense (and w/o the awful comic hjsfgjsdfhj): Oh oh OH i GET it now. The void is all about "will" and whatnot, right? And shades are "fragments of a lingering will"- will, like the one you leave after your death, but instead of inheritance its the vessels' desires...last regrets.... DAMN team cherry, that symbolism is clever as heck. That took me a while. Kinda funny how a will is, technically, a person's last regrets Like I knew they were last regrets but I didn't understand WHY. Duh, it's because they're literally Made Of Will. They are the vessel's "wills". I'm so stupid.

Ghost, walking thru the abyss, getting increasingly fed up / freaked out, ducking into a crack in the wall. They follow the crack into the Scream Chamber, pause, then exhale in relief that this was EXACTLY what they needed.

Ghost's shade rolling up its void-sleeves like “fuck it, ima defeat thk myself”

Why was thk's sword there? Was its pedestal decayed? Did it fall from their body? Was it place there as an afterthought, or hurriedly? alt: taking thk's sword before freeing them, but doing the mom thing like you're grounding them hdhfjchjch

I can’t believe it just occured to me now, but... as objectivley stupid as the vessel’s test was, Ghost... technically came in second place. What if that whole scene was a metaphor? Because really, it’s just too silly to take seriously. To do so isn’t too far fetched, either; many other elements in the game’s story are better taken as symbolic or metaphorical, anyways. Take the PoP cutscene- while it could’ve been a literal moment, where they just happened to find themselves standing around and took the moment to appreciate each other... imo it makes much more sense to read it as the concept of their faint ~forbidden love~ and parental pride itself. Or, better yet, the scene at the end of the 4th pantheon. Sorry, but I severely doubt that was an actual event. What I’m trying to get at is the significance of “second place” in the cutscene. My brain is too fried to chase down any other possible connections to this theme rn (if thats even what the theme is), but even without proof, the theory smooths out a few interesting tidbits related to just how Ghost could tough it out when all others failed. All except for #1, anyway. Either way I’m just happy to take this as an excuse to pretend that cutscene didn’t literally happen because like, l m a o

The story of a small group of vessels as they work together to escape hallownest. (aka the aforementioned vessel gang hc... im sure theres a more formal name but you get the idea). Its impossible to tell how long it took them to discover that near-invisible hole, the last exit remaining after the king ordered the abyss to be sealed up. Once they did, however, the remaining vessels were quick to make a desperate scramble to escape- only for the entrance to suddenly crumble shut, far, far too soon. The remaining 8 slowly made their way through deepnest, their numbers quickly dwindling as the jouney started to take its toll. The group was nearly wiped out by those terrible, spiney-legged creatures that used their own kinship against them. Only three finally escaped the deep, yet only two made it through the basin- the third, largest sibling, left to fight alone againt a hopeless battle, just to buy the others time. It was in greenpath, so close yet so far to their goal, that the second succumbed to the infection. It was a mercy killing, that nail through the heart. The last, after all of that, finally made their way to the very precipice of howling cliffs, hesitating for just a moment to gaze out upon the still-fresh ruins of hallownest. But only for a moment, before Ghost jumps down to begin their journey beyond this wretched place.

A vessel running from its shade as it tirelessly pursues them, the vessel refusing to put it to rest.

tw: suicide, + personal on main

Ugh ugh ugh ugh Either thk was fully conscious and in terrible pain for all those years... or they couldn’t feel anything at all. The former is horrible, but imagining thk waking up, chained, unable to do anything but wait for Ghost to heed their call? Did they turn their nail on themselves to help Ghost, end the pain, or some awful mix of both? For someone who has personally dealt with close friends and family that struggled with suicide themselves, hollowknight is one of the worst horror stories I've ever seen. And the fact that the story is so personal, so open to interpretation? The fact that each character is so genuine yet vague enough to be read completely differently to someone else’s biases? Its why hollow knight- the game, and the character- will forever be one of the most powerful stories to me.

in short, good LORD THIS GAME IS SO FUCKING SAD