geminialchemist

[geminialchemist]

Request Idea - Tangle regularly beats Whisper at video games, but Tangle makes a mistake challenging Whisper to a board game. Checkers, Chess, or whatever Mobius equivalent they have. Basically just show tangle activating her one neuron trying (and failing) to best Whisper in a battle of wits.

She is very smart I swear

[geminialchemist]

I recently made a collage of all of the maps from Gravity Rush, one of my favorite games. I included all of the assets I used to make the maps that were from the game, as well as a few pictures I took ingame to put over the incomplete pictures that are attached to the maps.

[geminialchemist]

Pretty neat theory, and entirely plausible, too! I’ve got my own theory about Ansbach and his age I felt like sharing.

I think Miquella was in his cocoon the entire time he was with Mohg, and Ansbach cut that open and wounded him(hence why Miquella’s s arm is out when you find him during Mohg’s cutscene), and Miquella cast his charm on Ansbach to save his own life. So it wasn’t that Ansbach was a skilled fighter at the time(he was and still is), he just managed to wound Miquella because Miquella couldn’t really fight back.

I always took his attacking Miquella to be because he got old. As in, Miquella held back Mohg and his ambitions of lordship for so long, Ansbach can no longer fight as well as he could as a knight for his lord, since Mohg wanted to wait on Miquella to become a god to properly start his dynasty. When you think about it, Mohg has one of the stronger factions currently active in the Lands Between, they could have taken over by the present if Mohg just acted. Instead, they sat on their thumbs for however many centuries or even millennia while Miquella laid in that cocoon, waiting for someone to kill Mohg for him.

So Ansbach was forced to wait. And wait. For ages, until he was too old, and could no longer serve as a proper knight. Still a skilled fighter, but nowhere near his prime. In that way he felt he failed Mohg, and so was spurred to act and finally attacked Miquella, only to fail in landing the killing blow and got charmed himself for his trouble. I always thought that was why he brings up his age a lot. Perhaps he felt if he had acted sooner, when he was younger and stronger, that blow would have ended Miquella, and he could have helped Mohg become ruler of the Lands Between as he had sworn to.

I’m playing the DLC a second time. And I’m pretty sure Miquella charm on Ansbach goes deeper than making him forget his loyalty to Mohg. Miquella literally made Ansbach forget how to fight. He repeats several times that he’s no fighter. He’s too old, lost his faculties, blah blah. But he also managed to wound Miquella in his challenge. Miquella saw Ansbach as a serious threat, and took away his prowess.

Again, I stand by the one post I made that Miquella thought he was doing a kind thing for Ansbach by allowing him this ‘second chance’. But it’s so clear he also altered Ansbach a significant amount to make him non-threatening to his plans.

It’s so interesting. The foresight that reads as nearly malicious mixed with that kindness and forgiveness. Love this part of the story.

[geminialchemist]

It’s been about a month since I beat Shadow of the Erdtree. Thinking it through, especially the ending, I think my thoughts have changed.

I think I hate that final boss and the lore around him even more than I did before.

Call me a Godwyn Stan, but I will die in the hill that he made far more sense than Radahn, and I’m gonna explain it.

Building up to the dlc, we know Miquella is close to three people in particular. His sister, Malenia, his father, Radagon, and his half brother, Godwyn. After Godwyn dies, Miquella becomes obsessed with bringing him back, or granting him a proper death. He tries an eclipse to bring him back, it doesn’t work, implied to be because the eclipse just will not happen. Now why would a heavenly body not move into its proper place again?

Oh yeah, Radahn! Guys got a hard on for holding back the stars. So it made sense that him being dead was a dlc requirement, on top of why Malenia would have fought him in the first place. It just fueled the idea we were going to see Godwyn even more.

Yeah, Godwyn is dead. I keep seeing that argument thrown around like it means literally anything. He’s super dead, prince of death, lord of the undead, blah blah, this argument is nothing but noise. The Realm of Shadow is where all things that die pass through. It’s basically the land of the dead! This argument that Godwyn is dead, to me, is the single dumbest argument against his return when you’re in a place all dead things go. That’s like saying Godwyn’s soul is trash, so you shouldn’t expect to find him in a garbage dump. If there was a single narrative way to bring that beautiful idiot back, it would be in this dlc because of where it takes place. If they had brought him back this way, no one would have batted an eye at its inclusion.

So, the dlc takes place in the land where all dead things pass through that is super hard to get to through by any normal means, so no one could really try to revive Godwyn this way. It has a plot where Miquella, who is obsessed with bringing Godwyn back, is trying to revive someone from death by shoving them into a new body, and then they don’t do it? They bring back Radahn like that made any form of narrative sense? Like two missable lines of dialogue from two separate NPCs can satisfyingly explain this stupid idea?

I don’t know if it was Miyazaki or GRRM who wrote this, but maybe next time they should let the intern with no writing experience do the plot for the next game, they might do a better job at crafting a sensible narrative.

There is so much to love about this dlc, and I’ve said it before in a previous post that I’m just better at airing out my grievances at a thing than my praises. But when I replay it, I have such a hard time finding the motivation to finish the second half of the dlc, knowing that is what waits me at the end. It feels like such a waste.

Rant over. I hope you have a nice day.

Edit: you know what, rant is not over(but I still hope you had a nice day)! This entire mess of a plot could have been avoided if they just… didn’t have Miquella resurrect anyone! Have an original boss! It’s almost as if this plot was designed with online discourse in mind because there is no way to not think of Godwyn when you think of Miquella trying to bring someone back from the dead!

Okay, now I’m done.

[geminialchemist]

This is a theory I crafted up about the Golden Order, the Crucible, and the Frenzied Flame shortly after I beat the dlc the first time. I wrote it down, and forgot about it until just now, so it’ll be a little bit less well researched, seeing as it’s from waaay before the wiki had info to pull from, and so is probably shaky by our understanding of the dlc today, but I still wanted to share.

Spoilers for Shadow of the Erdtree below!

The Golden Order, the Crucible, and the Frenzied Flame are all the same thing.

So, this is one of the wilder theories, though hopefully not Pepe Silvia levels of conspiracy. If Marika can be Radagon, and if Miquella could be St. Trina, why can’t the Greater Will be the Frenzied Flame?

Throughout Elden Ring, we find out that that the Golden order assimilated a lot of things into it, even things that seem contradictory to the teachings of the Erdtree, like Carian sorcery. One of its primary teachings is that all things can be conjoined.

(Mirial dialogue upon getting a book o’ miracles)

“Oh, what have we here? Very well, let us both learn together. Heresy is not native to the world; it is but a contrivance. All things can be conjoined."

Now, this alone doesn’t mean much, the Golden Order is just branching out and adopting other cultures teachings like a lot of religions do to assimilate more followers, rather than fusing everything by melting it down with flame.

One more thing to keep in mind for later before we leave the Golden Order side of things, the DLC revealed something interesting about the Two Fingers, and the Golden Order. That even before the time Marika became a god, the Fingers had stopped receiving word from the Greater Will to guide them. The entire order is built on a lie, and no one in the Lands Between have communed with the Greater Will in a very, very long time.

Meanwhile, the DLC has the Hornsent, people who worshipped the Crucible, which came before Marika’s Golden Order. Anyone who has entered the various gaols knows the horrors they inflicted. The Hornsent believed that blending life together was a holy act, and massacred Marika’s people to put them into jars as saints, because of how easily their flesh melded with others. Now we’re getting closer to the premise of this theory. But take a look a this:

(Aspect of the Crucible: Breath description)

This is a manifestation of the Erdtree's primal vital energies - an aspect of the primordial crucible, where all life was once blended together.

The Erdtree seems to have some ties to the Crucible’s energies, which ties the two together on some level. Conjoining all things, and blending life together. And do you know what a crucible is? A crucible is a container used in smithing that you melt things in to blend them into one, heated over an open flame.

Hyetta has some interesting dialogue as well at the end of her questline:

(Hyetta dialogue)

"All that there is came from the One Great. Then came fractures, and births, and souls.

But the Greater Will made a mistake. Torment, despair, affliction... every sin, every curse. Every one, born of the mistake.

And so, what was borrowed must be returned. Melt it all away, with the yellow chaos flame. Until all is One again."

Note that she says the Greater Will made a mistake, in a way that implies that it’s something the Greater Will is fixing. It broke one into all, now it has to be made one again through the yellow chaos flames. The same Greater Will that the Two Fingers can no longer contact. Except for the Three Fingers, who seem to have found a different god to listen to. Or perhaps they found the same one, and are just doing what they were made to do, follow the Greater Will’s orders, and help burn down the world.

The Greater Will is order, and the Frenzy is Chaos, and I think they came from the same place. Two sides of the same coin, two halves of a whole being, and one of them isn’t listening or reaching out anymore. Much like Miquella stuffed St. Trina in a cave at the deepest part of the world, The Frenzied Flame has cut off the Greater Will to fix their mistake and melt it all down, back into one. It just needs a way to worm its ideology into the minds of men. Perhaps a religion is introduced that familiarized people with the concept of conjoining things, until it gets more and more extreme, and the frenzy appears, ripe in their minds. In the Shadow Lands, a place where physically conjoining flesh is the norm, the Frenzied Flame seems to have considerably more influence in comparison to the Lands Between, infecting an entire region of the map of the DLC, and even having a failed Lord of Frenzied Flame as a boss.

I swear I’m not a conspiracy nut, but if I come off as mad, well… MAY CHAOS TAKE THE WORLD! AHAHAHAHA!

[geminialchemist]

More Shadow of the Erdtree discussion, because I seriously cannot shut up about it.

God damn, my posts must make it seem like I loathe this dlc, when it’s one of the best I’ve played in my life. Screw this just being a good DLC, this was an amazing Fromsoft GAME with the title of DLC attached to it.

With that said… I still have complaints to air, because I’m a whiner baby, and I find it easier to construct my thoughts around my criticism of things rather than my praise for them.

I’ve seen the idea floating around that some people think that some other people don’t care for the ending because they don’t like that Fromsoft made Miquella a villain. I’d like to utterly dash that idea. I don’t dislike that they made him a villain, I dislike that they made him a bad villain.

What’s Miquella’s motivation? We know his end goal. Become a god, make the world a compassionate place via brainwashing. We know how he put his plans into motion, convoluted and brow raising as the writing choices for that was. But what is his reason for doing it?

Messmer’s motivations, we know. He is, at least outwardly, a brutal tyrant. He leads a genocidal crusade against the Hornsent and any Tarnished he crosses paths with. We also know his motivation. To take the blame off of his mother for these actions. He doesn’t particularly like being so brutal, but has become the figurehead for the worst actions of his country, and has faced a willing exile with his loyal followers to shift the blame way from his mother, who he loves and cherishes, even after she has abandoned him to his fate. His villainy is his complacency in his mother’s conquests. This actually makes him a sympathetic antagonist, which is why everyone paints him as a soft boy in need of hugs. I’m simplifying this a lot, because outside of no plot for Melina, I have no major issues with Messmer’s side of the story in this DLC, it’s good stuff, great writing.

What’s Miq’s motivation? What made him wake up one day and decide he was going to be a god, and use mind control to pacify the entire world? I realized as I was theory crafting that I… don’t really know? I certainly have headcanon and ideas, I just can’t remember it ever being stated in canon. Just that he wants to do it. Did I miss something? I can’t have missed something, could I?

Was he evil all along? Is he doing this to control everyone just for laughs? Is he a broken person, who witnessed the horrors of war during the Shattering, unable and unwilling to fight due to his body and pacifism, showing up after battles to tend to the wounded but knowing that for every living person he found, a hundred more were corpses, and that for every one he did manage to save he was forced to leave a dozen others to die in agony and so decided to end the cycle of violence by any means necessary?

Did he simply want power and a complacent population? Did he want to fix all of his mommy’s mistakes(no, couldn’t be that one, fans would have woobified him to the same level as Messmer)? Or was it overpowering grief that drove him to tear his too-soft heart out and cast it aside? We don’t even know! Or at least I don’t. I’ve scoured the wiki’s for NPC dialogue, and item descriptions, but unfortunately those are still incomplete, and are missing huge chunks. I’m in the middle of my second run of the dlc, too, but haven’t come across anything yet.

Can anyone tell me what I’m missing, if I did miss something? Or is this just another example of the second half of Miquella’s questline being terribly written? If I did miss something, let me know, and make sure to shame me and call me an idiot, it’s the only way I’ll ever learn!

EDIT: Thanks so much for giving me some answers! I’ll go look more into Ymir’s dialogue, I’m curious to if reversing Marika’s Sin is his motivation, or just another endgame goal to add to the pile to ensure “World Peace(tm).” For instance, Hornsent still doesn’t trust or accept anyone in the group for what Marika did, even under Miq’s charm, so fixing that could make his charm sink in easier for the Hornsent population? I’ll go check it out in my NG+ run, I actually haven’t spoken to Ymir yet in that run.

[geminialchemist]

Man, I had the weirdest dream last night. I dreamt that Fromsoft and GRRM had the Miquella parts of the plot of the DLC ignore basically everything we knew previously about him, from his attempts to revive Godwyn, his close connection with his sister, Malenia and wanting to heal her, basically everything about unalloyed gold that was his trademark, and the once close bond between himself and his father, Radagon, and instead they wrote him as Mohg’s Miquellester instead of the other way around, and that he planned Mohg’s death so that he could marry his other half brother, Radahn, who he also tried to kill, all of which is only loosely connected to his reasons behind(but given much more emphasis than) him ascending to Godhood!

Thank Gwyn that didn’t actually happen though, right? It was just a dream, right?

[geminialchemist]

Shadow of the Erdtree’s Ending discussion here, spoilers below.

Some people will act like any criticism of a Fromsoft title is too much criticism. I Love Shadow of the Erdtree, I’d say it’s an easy 9/10, and I love a lot of the lore surrounding Marika, Messmer, and parts of Miquella, but the finale falls flat, and it’s not JUST the Radahn stuff.

Yes, I’d say Radahn was poorly foreshadowed and poorly implemented into the story, but that is only one little part about it that sucks about the story and lore. Let’s take a look at a few other questions surrounding it.

If Mohg was charmed by Miquella, why did he take Miquella like he did, tearing him out of the Haligtree while Malenia was away?

If Miquella planned for Mohg to take him, why did he put himself into the Haligtree, an act he did to help the tree and the people living near it flourish? He could have just not put himself in there.

How did Mohg have a way to get into the Shadow Lands when no one else did? Why did he have it? What even was it?

If Mohg had a way there, and was charmed by Miquella to help, why did Radahn have to die in order to go there himself? Couldn’t Miquella have just had Mohg send Radahn there the same way Miquella went?

If Mohg was charmed and had a way into the Shadow Lands, why did Miquela wait so damn long to go there himself? He sat for centuries in a cocoon, refusing to even speak to Mohg(according to Mohg’s Remembrance), instead of leaving. If Miquella was taken by Mohg while Malenia was fighting Radahn, he’d have to no reason to assume she had failed and Radahn had lived, so he has no reason to wait and not meet Radahn on the other side.

If Mohg took Miquella from the Haligtree when Malenia was fighting Radahn, how was Miquella in Caelid to heal Freyja from her injuries and scarlet rot?

If Mohg didn’t take Miquella away while Malenia was fighting Radahn like it had been assumed before, when did he take him, since Malenia didn’t seem to know where Miquella went? Why didn’t Malenia seem to know anything about the Mohg parts of this plan, despite knowing other parts of the plan like killing Radahn to send him to the Shadow Lands?

Why did Miquella choose Radahn, who seems to heavily differ in opinions on the best way to rule, with Radahn’s allies saying he wanted a forever war to fight in, counter to the eternal peace Miquella offered?

If Radahn made a vow with Miquella, why did Radahn seemingly renege on it like he did, rather than outright dismiss it when originally asked? Or did he? Was he charmed during the boss fight, or just very quiet? Was Malenia charmed the whole time, too?

That’s a lot. Even from Fromsoft, the kings of vague storytelling, that is a ton of missing information, and obvious retcons that just raise more questions and give no answers. We have the retcon of Mohg being charmed by Miquella, and we have conflicting information about where Miquella was when Malenia fought Radahn, on top of a thousand other questions that have piled up that seemingly have no answer, like what Mohg’s source of entering the Shadow Lands were. I can deal with having a few vague answers, but I am drowning in them over here. It’s not just Radahn being Miquella’s Promised Consort, it’s all the stuff leading up to it that makes it the disappointing, downright head scratching conclusion.

The DLC is still new, people are still combing over item descriptions and locations for lore, and maybe updates will change some of those descriptions to help fill in the blanks. Maybe this info was more clear in Japanese, and us in the English speaking audience won’t learn about it for another 6 months when the loretubers put some comparisons together. Hell, maybe I’m just wrong and missed stuff, there is so much to still pour over and maybe I’m the dumb one. But acting like there aren’t legitimate criticisms of the story is just as bad a take as the finale was.

[geminialchemist]

I made this originally as a comment on a post on Reddit, but it seemed well liked, so I thought I’d expand on it a little and make it a post here on Tumblr.

Spoilers for Shadow of the Erdtree abound, don’t read any farther if you don’t want the ending spoiled.

I really loved a lot of the lore about Miquella up until the big reveal that he Miquellested Mohg, and was bringing back Radahn as his consort. I remember finding the crosses across the land, and then finding the one in the fissure, and seeing that he abandoned his love there, and man, that was so good, so chilling to see that Miquella, known for his compassion and kindness, had thrown that away. We were going from cross to cross, learning just how much he was willing to mutilate and change himself for godhood… only for him to cling to a childhood crush he had on his older brother. That’s lame. Like, really lame. And gross!

And Mohg. I know we joke about how he beat the allegations, but remember that he needed to wed an Empyrean for his plans to work out with the Formless Mother. These plans he already had in place before Miquella charmed him, since Sir Ansbach was already a Pureblood Knight working under Mohg before Mohg was charmed, meaning Mohg had already established the foundations of his dynasty. That means Mohg was going to go after either Miquella or Malenia, since they were the only Empyreans left, and tell me, which one sounds like the easier target, the small child, or the undefeated champion? Miquella was always going to be taken by Mohg, the retcon just exists to make Miquella look more morally questionable while stripping Mohg of a bit of his agency and villainous identity. The entire Mohg portion feels like a rewrite when the entire reason he was charmed by Miquella is because he had some unspecified way into the Shadow Lands, and it’s never really talked about ever again. Mohg’s entire purpose in this plan comes off as an afterthought, with no specifications as to why he was needed, other than a vague “he was needed.” Even the use of his body to resurrect Radahn is unexplained as far as I know, though I headcanon that it’s due to Radahn’s body being too rotted after the centuries of Scarlet Rot infecting it, and they needed a demigod’s body, so Mohg was the only one to use available, but it would have been nice if that had been explained.

Godwyn would have been better as a final boss, and it didn’t even need to be actually Godwyn to work, since I know some people don’t think that would work from a lore perspective since his souls is gone, and his full return would wreck the Duskborn ending. Of course, “gone” is weird way to put it, since his soul isn’t destroyed, it’s in whatever afterlife exists in Elden Ring and just not being reincarnated like everyone else who dies after the rune of Death was removed, so Miquella could maybe work a way to get him back. The DLC is in the Shadow Lands, where all things that die pass through, after all. Get rid of Mohg being brainwashed, but keep his body being used so that Sir Ansbach, one of the best NPCs, still has a quest to follow in putting Mohg’s body to a proper rest. It also makes sense, Godwyn’s body is really messed up, bloated, and multiplying all over the Lands Between like a cancer, and can’t be used for ressurection.

Still, I think a failed Godwyn would be better. Maybe we skip the whole Promised Consort part, and just have it be the first act of Godhood Miquella does, because ew, am I tired of the incest surrounding Miqella’s character. Godwyn The Golden starts the fight off back in his prime, doing loads of attacks infused with Holy damage, coming off as the perfect and powerful Demi-god he’s always stated as being in the lore. Then he starts falling apart at phase 2, his phase 1 attacks being switched to being ghostflame infused rather than holy, Miquella now on his back and any new attacks added to phase 2 take on the holy affinity due to his presence. Then phase 3 hits, no holy infinity at all, all attacks do ghostflame or deathblight buildup. Deathblight is already so underused, so it would be great here. Godwyn is falling apart faster the more we fight, and Miquella, holding on, is getting hurt by the ghostflame and deathblight while desperately trying to keep his beloved brother together.

Have the fight set during an eclipse, too, sorta like the final boss of Dark Souls 3, the Soul of Cinder. Really tie it into the lore of Miquella trying to bring Godwyn back, like we find out at Castle Sol, where he had hoped to use an eclispe. I’d even say to make the light from behind the eclipse change color as the fight rages on, starting off bright and holy, and change it to the horrid dark grey and sickly yellow that deathblight has by the third phase, so rather than the arena getting brighter than a flash bang like it is in canon, have it get darker and gloomier. And of course, after the fight, the eclipse has faded entirely.

Instead of a cutscene that is nothing but information we already know(Seriously, what was even the point of the cutscene we got? It gave us not a single piece of new information), Miquella is lying on the floor, mostly dead, much like Morgott after we beat him in Leyndell. He isn’t dying because of us(honestly, I don’t even know why he died in the DLC, he’s so high up on Radahn’s back we never really get a chance to hit him directly, but he dies when Radahn does for whatever reason), instead he’s dying from clinging so tightly to Godwyn and trying to hold him together, burned by ghostflame and deathblight. He laments that even as a god, he wasn’t able to fix anything. Not his sister, not his brother, not the Haligtree, none of his plans ever work. No matter the sacrifices, personal or otherwise. He’s a failure in every way, and the knowledge breaks him as he sobs and dies.

However, if you visited every cross before the boss fight, you can absorb the essence of Miquella’s discarded body, and if you beat him then, you’ll get the option to return his discarded flesh and emotions after the fight. Doing so heals him, and gives him back everything he discarded, like his love, his fears and doubts. He fades away into light particles, and if you sit at the grace in the arena, he’ll appear like Melina does, sitting across from you and with a healed character model. This gets a few bits more dialogue, some exposition, yadda yadda. He’s a god without a consort, you’re a lord without a throne. He’s unsure, and not confident it will work, but maybe if you work together, something good can come of this tragedy? Giving up now would just be spiting in the faces of everyone he’s hurt. You’re strong enough to stop him if he loses his way again. (I think the reason he chose Radahn in canon was because of his strength and kindness? He trusted Radahn to do what was right after he threw away his love and compassion, entrusting Radahn to lead him down the right path when he lacked those things, and to be strong enough to resist his charm. That’s again entirely headcanon due to our lack of knowledge about their vow, but I’m adding it here because this is MY fanfiction and I can do whatever I like!)

(This part is more of a personal bit I’d have liked added because I find it amusing, rather than because I think it would make it better. Remember when you go through all that trouble to find Fia, and she asks if you’ve come all this way to kill her, and you can just say “No, I want to be held,” and it’s the funniest chunk of text you get in game? I really wanted something like that with Miquella. He wants to know why you came all this way, entered the Shadow Lands, a sealed off region of the world where only death awaits, where you fought against insurmountable odds, all to get to Miquella, presumably to stop him, only to heal him at the last moment, in which you can straight up tell him to his face you want to be his consort, and he’s just as confused and amused as Fia was. He knows you aren’t under his charm, but still he questions if it’s possible you are if you went this far just for that.)

This unlocks a new ending for the base game, the Age of Compassion. You summon Miquella like you would Ranni after beating Elden Beast, and together you usher in a kinder world, this time without the brainwashing. Or maybe with the brainwashing. Or perhaps it’s vague about the brainwashing, and if this is a good or bad ending in classic Fromsoft fashion. I’d prefer no brainwashing, and Miquella still unsure if things will work out, with it ending ambiguous if the Age of Compassion lasts, or fumbles and falls to a world blind to it. All you and Miquella can do is hope it will be better.

That might be a lot to ask, but look, it’s the only way I’ll ever get to live out my fantasy of being fought over by a cold, goth witch gf and a soft femboy twink with hair longer than I am tall, okay?

[geminialchemist]

Elden Ring is just Dark Souls II 2.

[geminialchemist]

Whose idea was it to put the two socially anxious introverts together and hope they could have a conversation?

I’m knee deep in Komi Can’t Communicate’s anime, and I’m enjoying it a lot so far, so I wanted to make something to show that appreciation.

You’d think I’d be able to write dialogue that doesn’t sound weird and stilted after all the fics I’ve made over the years, but apparently that doesn’t translate to comics.

Oh, and a cursed bonus. I’m sure someone ships it.

[geminialchemist]

A comic one of my long time friends writes for recently got an update! You can check out the rest of the series at @weirdtimes! And be sure to check out the artists other work at @mollyjames, too!

The moon is such a beautiful shade tonight. Wouldn't you agree?

First // Previous // Next

[geminialchemist]

Long post with Hazbin Hotel S1 spoilers!

While I don’t think it’ll happen, what I’d love to see from season 2 of Hazbin Hotel is an episode set in Heaven, directly after the events of S1E6 “Welcome to Heaven.” Preferably, this episode will be either the first or second episode of the season, with Adam still alive and kicking as Heaven prepares for the next Extermination Day.

Why do I want an episode like this? Simple. Because after what happened in S1E6, Heaven has to be in a lot of turmoil. I’m talking total chaos, protests in the streets kind of stuff. Think about it from the perspective of one of the winners. Hell, think of it from the perspective of Angel Dust’s sister in Heaven, Molly.

You’re Molly, and you’re dead, and end up in Heaven. Score! So you go searching for your twin brother, who died before you(probably, canon is unclear right now). You two were close, and you had the best relationship with Anthony out of anyone in your family.

You search for a while. A very long while. Heaven is a big place, after all. You don’t find Anthony anywhere. You ask around, and no one has seen or heard of him. Doubt builds up, as this can only mean one thing and you dread getting that answer. Finally, you go to the big name taker himself, St. Peter, and ask politely if your brother has been through the pearly gates, and you hear the worst news since you got to Heaven, he didn’t make the cut and is in Hell.

So now you’re asking around to find out if anyone has ever made it up from Hell and into Heaven. Surely someone has, right? But as you ask the angels and other winners around Heaven, you get a variety of replies, ranging from pity to some straight up laughing in your your face over the very idea that a sinner can be redeemed. The answer, no matter who you ask, is the same. A resounding “No.”

So, Hell is forever(whether you like it or not), and you’ll never see Anthony again. There doesn’t even seem to be a way to message sinners, or visit them. You don’t think he deserved his fate, but you can only hope that Hell isn’t as bad as everyone says it is, and that he’s doing well down there.

Then one day, someone from Hell is visiting Heaven, which is unheard of and is causing a ruckus. The Princess of Hell herself is here! After a song and dance number, you discover she’s here for a trial hearing about if a sinner can be redeemed or not. This is the best news you’ve heard in decades! You might have a chance to reunite with Anthony! You go to the trial, take a seat in the gallery of the courtroom, and what you find out is horrific.

Hell is worse than you thought. Your brother, Anthony, of all people, is the example the princess of Hell is using to make her case, and now he goes by Angel Dust, and is forced to be a porn star. Despite unknowingly passing every test that Adam and the Seraphim place on him, they still deem Anthony unfit for heaven, even as Emily argues against this, siding with Hell’s Princess. Why is the princess of Hell more concerned with your brother’s fate than Heaven, who are supposed to be the good guys?

And even worse, you find out that every year, Adam and a bunch of angels under his command go down and kill sinners, just like your brother. Adam slaughters them, and doesn’t hide his enjoyment of his actions, even proclaiming his intentions of attacking the very hotel that is trying to rehabilitate sinners as his first target for the next extermination. And the head Seraphim, Sera, says and does nothing to stop him. She absolutely condones his monstrous actions.

Heaven has been killing people, committing genocide, for who knows how long? Denying your family, friends, and loved ones who didn’t make the cut a chance to change, and then murdering them? Anthony has only managed to survive by luck or skill, and now his head is directly placed on the chopping block after he’s gone through all this effort to get into heaven in the first place?

And now the courtroom is in shambles, angels arguing over this earthshattering news that Adam and Sera have been hiding from them. Even some of your fellow mortal souls are torn into two camps, one who thinks the sinners deserve whatever is coming to them, and the other like yourself who don’t want their friends and family in hell to suffer even more.

You decide to Hell with Heaven. Torches and pitchforks all around as over the course of a month you do everything you can along with your fellow likeminded angels and Winners to get the extermination canceled. Protests, threats, petitions, you try everything, but it’s all in vain as Adam gathers his troops and goes down.

Thats what I wanna see in the start of season 2, with the Heaven focused episode ending with Sir Pentious arriving in Heaven, proving a sinner can redeem themselves, and putting an end to the conflict. But just because Heaven decides to end the exterminations and work to redeem sinners now that there is undeniable proof walking/slithering among them, doesn’t mean it washes away their own sins. Sera can’t bring back the millions who were killed by Adam and his legions, who now will never have a chance to be redeemed and reunite with their loved ones in Heaven. Molly wouldn’t even know if Anthony survived the last extermination.

Let there be a shake up in heaven, let there be lingering resentment towards the angels for what they’ve done, let there be some kind of conflict or consequences for the actions Heaven took. I always hate when a show glosses over stuff like this. I want the final shot of this hypothetical episode to be Sera and Em sitting in that room, with protests right outside their door, discussing what needs to be done. Sera wanting to continue the exterminations, even if if it angers the winners because she believes its in their best interests, and Em trying to get Sera to change her mind, and call off the attack, only for Sir Pentious to pop in like he did at the end of season one, ending their discussion because now Sera doesn’t have a leg to stand on anymore.

You can even keep a comedic angle by having the Winners be terrible at civil protests because they’re all so goodie two shoes. They don’t want to throw a brick through a window, that would be rude and mean!

[geminialchemist]

If you love video games and care at all about their preservation, watch and share the video, and make sure to visit Stopkillinggames.com to do something about it.

To try and sum up the video for those who don’t have the time: Ubisoft is a French company killing their video game “The Crew,” a game that needs online access to play, despite having plenty of single player content.

There will be no patch to make it playable offline. This is not a subscription based game. Ubisoft is breaking something you may have legally purchased.

France has some of the best consumer protection laws available. This is a chance to establish legal protections of games you own so that no company in France will be able to kill/destroy a game you legally own.

If this passes in France, gaming companies will basically be forced to not do this anymore worldwide. You have the chance to help get this taken to court, even if you are not French. There are even options if you never even owned the game. Do your part, please.

If there is no options for you to take, share the video, reblog the post, just getting the word out helps.

[geminialchemist]

I know that by this point, I’m super late to the party when it comes to opinions on the Live Action Cowboy Bebop, but I was thinking about it recently, so I figured I’d shout into the void while it was on my mind.

I liked it.

Was it a good adaption? Nah, not really. I’ve seen worse, but this wasn’t a very good retelling of the story or the characters. They changed a lot that didn’t need to be changed, and it pissed a lot of people off. But I frequently hear it touted as one of the worst of the worst when it comes to LA adaptions, some even saying it’s just as bad as Dragon Ball: Evolution and the Last Airbender movie. And that just isn’t true.

DB:E and TLA weren’t just a terrible adaptions. If you removed Dragon Ball and Avatar from them, stripped that from their identities, they would still be terrible movies. Where LA Cowboy Bebop would be good, dare I say better, if you stripped away the Coybow Bebop from it.

If it had been set in the world of Bebop with a different cast of characters, or “inspired by Cowboy Bebop,” or didn’t have anything to do with Bebop, it would likely have been regarded as a fairly good, 7-8/10 show. But it also likely wouldn’t have been greenlit if that were the case since it seems everything needs to be a remake, adaption, or reimagining these days.

TLDR: Live Action Cowboy Bebop is not a great adaption, but is a decent enough scifi series in a void.

Case in point, while I went in knowing about Cowboy Bebop, and loved the anime, my Dad, an old school scifi nerd who doesn’t watch anime(outside of whatever I watched on Saturday mornings as a kid, so mostly Yu-Gi-Oh) and had never even heard of Cowboy Bebop before, really enjoyed the show for what was there when we watched it together, and was really disappointed it got canceled.

So, I’m glad it got made, because even if it was a terrible adaption, I still had a good time, and anyone who hadn’t seen the anime already probably would as well.

The anime is still better, though. Do not get me wrong. But I can like both, for different reasons. Should I have started with that? I feel I should have started with that…

[geminialchemist]

As someone who always plays as Luigi when I have the option, this is honestly what it feels like.

[geminialchemist]

I watch a lot of anime with my sister, and this was something we had a revelation about the shows we had gone through that week.

I don’t remember which one of us yelled out “girl!” Just as the other said “overactive imaginations” for Bocchi and Anya, but I couldn’t not add it.