lapinaraoflimbo

[lapinaraoflimbo]

The Asura vs Augus fight in Asura's Wrath is one of the best fights in all of video games and there's really barely any competition because it's just that good

[lapinaraoflimbo]

FLCL is a show that’s not about anything in particular. It’s a show about robots, about space pirates, about fighting with guitars, about comedy and heavy stylization and the joy of experimentation. But it’s also about trauma, the ways that broken family situations leave people vulnerable, the way that people who don’t fit conventional molds get excluded, the way those people try to reach out and connect with other people and the ways and reasons that they’re unable to find that connection they so desperately crave.that they’re unable to find that connection they so desperately crave.

FLCL does not feel like a heavy show when you watch it. The style and flair and speed of it helps all of these themes come and go without weighing heavily. But these themes are present, all throughout the show you can pull away the wrappings of excess and what you’re left with in the end is a heartbreaking story about a child who gets caught up in things he never should have had to deal with.

It’s the way that FLCL plays this game that makes it so special. Playing along the lines of what it’s saying, never explicitly saying it but never shying away from it either. The themes are present and they add up when looked into. Mamimi’s begging for scraps and her hesitancy to go home, the lack of her talking about her family life and the soreness that comes up when it is mentioned. Evidence of her being bullied at school. The conflict between her idea of a relationship with Tasuku and the actual evidence of what Tasuku thought of her. All of this comes to help us understand why she attaches to naota. Why she is never seen spending time with anyone else, and maybe why Naota lets her stick around when she seems to make him so uncomfortable.

It’s rare for any piece of media to explore in depth the sort of harmful relationships that stem from the lack of protections provided to children, and if FLCL did not present its story in the way that it does, with its layers of robots and space wars and secret organizations and anime powers we would certainly be left with a show that would be almost impossibly difficult to watch. The themes and the story would put this show in the realm of something akin to goodnight punpun. A cycle of trauma and abuse that leads to more trauma and abuse. A failing of adults to protect the children around them. The system excluding and preventing those same kids from success just in the way it’s intended to.

When watching FLCL one has to ask what the benefits of obscuring heavy themes in this way is. Certainly if the themes were explicitly shown they would be able to deliver themselves with less confusion. Just take a look at all of those who claim that FLCL has no story, no themes, and no sense to it. There are many who watch this and see that flair and think it’s a show about random robot fights and secret organizations working in nonsense ways all adding up to nothing more than a fun lasershow. But media should never be judged solely by its worst critics.

It’s also true that FLCL has managed to reach out to many. To find the types of people it is written about and give them a space to safely explore what they have gone through. There must be some value to this approach when it has found so many who adore it.

One could consider FLCL to be aa surrealist show. It certainly leans heavy into surreal elements. Strange animation styles, abstract visuals and random cuts between different times and places. But contrary to a lot of heavy surrealism FLCL stands out for its simplicity. It is a show about things. Picking the pieces of this story up is difficult, on a first or second or even third watch. But slowly with more watches more pieces fall into place. More of the unexplained gets explained, more coherence forms underneath the surface. There is rarely a point in FLCL where one has to guess what happens, or rarely a point where something is only implied or symbolic.

The story straddles this line of complexity and simplicity. It becomes difficult to discuss when the story can be so simple to address but the themes of that story have limitless depth. Every action a character takes in the show shows some aspect of who they are. Everything is intentional in FLCL. Everything adds up to create something greater than the sum of its parts. Snippets from conversations can lead to greater understanding of a character, from Naota’s playfulness when he lets his guard down to his father’s love of evangelion to Ninamori’s excitement over the school play

These sorts of small little snippets will re-contextualize earlier scenes, adding to the narrative created and helping to explain the motivations that led to character actions. It’s rare to ever have something presented without greater context for it appearing somewhere else in the show.

It’s this complexity of the characters that comes back into the themes of the show. The themes get explored in a similar way, one small fragment of them at a time but with the full depth of their complexity explored throughout. The contradictions of the harm and the benefits of these relationships all add together and no statement gets made on them. The fragmentation means that no statement can be made. Choices and outcomes and motivations are never framed with judgment. All characters are treated as if they are trying their best with what they have been provided.

There is no actual villain, in FLCL. One could point to medical mechanica, but the organization plays a relatively small role in the story. Nothing is driven by them as a threat, and fighting against them is rarely framed as the actual purpose of climax of an episode. The fights with the robots certainly create a visual and sonic climax, but it’s always triggered by something else happening. Usually a confrontation between two people. Both of them getting overwhelmed, emotions boiling over until they can’t hold themselves together anymore.

Nothing evil causes these instances. It’s not presented as an attack, or anything aggressive or even intentional. This framing is likely one of the core things that makes FLCL so difficult to understand for those who aren’t familiar with it. You expect an antagonist, something that the characters will fight against, will triumph against. But nothing interesting ever happens in FLCL. There isn’t really anything to fight, just some fireworks every so often.

This is essential to exploring the themes of FLCL. Relationships and harm done by them cannot be understood through the framing of evil. Harm in relationships is complicated, made even more complicated by the fluid and changing personas that we try to embody. There is depth and compassion that can be found for everyone, and through its framing FLCL provides compassion for those that rarely get it.

[lapinaraoflimbo]

Link's Awakening is really a special game. I think that the remake is missing something that the original gameboy version had. The frustration of the characters over how limited they are feels more palpable when they were so heavily constrained by what a gameboy was capable of.

Marin in the original game, finding a way to converse with you using the few words and the few animations the game had. So desperately trying to reach into the real world and find a sense of permanence anywhere she could. But she did not have the means to do it. The gameboy couldn't express her full emotions, couldn't explore the entirety of who she was. Marin's acceptance was not just her accepting that she would cease to exist, but also that she would never be able to fully express who she really was. That so much about her wouldn't be remembered by anyone.

The remake doesn't have this struggle. The constraints of the switch do not limit what is possible in the same way a Gameboy would have. And so Marin feels more like a character. The frustration she has never felt as real to me on the switch and I think it's because the frustration at the limitations of the gameboy was coming from a real person, somewhere. And the remake just doesn't convey the frustration in the same way. The remake loves the original game more than the original game loves itself.

[lapinaraoflimbo]

I think a lot of something called "F.O.O. strategies" or "First Order Optimal" strategies because from what I can tell it's not really a widely used term despite being so important to game design and playing games. I only have really come across the term in a meaningful way from a really old extra credits episode and a few handful of responses to that video (which I guess I am also guilty of adding to at this point)

The basic idea behind them is that when new players pick up a game they are going to have a difficult time learning the more complex aspects of the game. Players will naturally gravitate to the strategies and techniques that have the best difficulty to reward ratio. That is strategies that are easy to pull off but are comparatively more rewarding to many other strategies. There's a lot of really interesting design space to be had within and around FOO strats, ranging from how to introduce friends into games to drawing in new players to a game to balancing learning curves and skill ceilings.

All games should have FOO strats because it's in human nature to use FOO strats. Any game that intentionally deletes any sort of strategy that could help a new player get into the game is most likely going to be a very bad game. Even games that are intended to be obtuse and difficult to pick up like Dark Souls or Dwarf Fortress have a large number of FOO strats that can help players develop the skills to engage with the more complicated strategies present in the game.

I think this is particularly interesting in games that don't require the player to ever engage with the full complexity of the mechanics of its systems. The most major example of this that comes to mind for me is Mario games, and specifically the kaizo romhacks made of them.

Mario 64 is a game with an incredible depth to its FOO strategies. Backflips are easier to pull off than triple jumps, and triple jumps can be easier to pull off than side flips. Wall kicks are a particularly challenging thing to pick up when you're a new player to Mario 64- the 5-frame window can feel very small especially when coming from other mario games that let you wall-slide before a wall jump. Long jumps are a particularly easy trick to pull off with a wide range of movement options, while doing a jump dive is significantly more complex and technical but can allow for much greater distances to be covered in a single jump. Even the more simple moves like punching, kicking, and diving can have very complex interactions with mario and his momentum.

This interesting balance between a very complex movement system and a very simple movement system is one of the reasons that I love Mario 64 so much. It is a game that is so simple it can be somebody's first video game, but it also has so much depth that thousands of hours will still leave you discovering new and interesting interactions with the physics. It's really a perfect balance of how to approach a game so that everyone can play it. Systems that truly transform to match the player are very rare in even the best of video games, and it's a wonder how they managed to find that in one of the earliest steps into 3D design.

I don't think that it's just Mario 64 that this balance between FOO strats and complex-technical strats exists either. Almost every major mario game has some amount of complexity to dive into it. It is not an accident that Super Mario World is what popularized and created Kaizo as we know it today. Super Mario 2: The Lost Levels (not to be confused with the english release of Super Mario 2) was a sequel to the original NES game that attempted to cater to master players, with very difficult levels that weren't intended to be played by beginners. That design philosophy sticks around today with the most recent mario games as well. Mario Odyssey has so much freedom of movement and tricks that are possible that it can open up entirely new ways to play without sacrificing the experience that casual need. Super Mario Maker has such a wide variety of difficulty it's almost nauseating. From levels that are near impossible to lose to some of the hardest challenges in all of video games. Mario Wonder also has this adaptive difficulty, with the badges and the range between the challenge levels and basic levels.

It's not just the complexity of the systems that enable this adaptability either. The systems being easy to pick up is an important part of it as well. There needs to be a balance between the easy and the difficult. The easy must be possible, and it must be good enough. But there needs to be a reason to learn the more complicated tricks as well. It's this balance that FOO strats really need to be focused on to achieve in any game. Make a strategy too powerful and simple and there will be no reason to learn the complicated tricks. But if you make the simple strategies too weak then the player won't be able to meaningfully engage with the system enough to learn the complexities.

Let's go back to Mario 64 though, since that is the one I am most familiar with.

If we break down Mario 64's moveset from this angle we can start to see how the game's FOO strategies look. To a brand new player, there is going to be a very limited moveset compared to that of a veteran player. To list off what comes to the top of my head: The player will be able to run, to crawl, to punch, to single jump, to backflip, to ground pound, and long jump... and that's mostly it. Wall kicks will be very difficult for a brand new player to pull off. Double jumps require tight timing that can be difficult to learn for players unfamiliar with video games. Triple jumps have even more difficult timing along with a significant amount of complex interactions with mario's momentum. Kicking in the air is going to be very difficult for a new player to pull off because of the precise momentum and speed mario needs to not dive. Side flips are probably one of the easier of the complex tricks to learn, but still require knowledge about speed and momentum that will take a new player a while to properly learn. Dives are likely going to be done mostly by mistake with new players, as the precise momentum needed to turn a punch into a dive is hard to learn. All of these are just the basic moves. When they are mixed in together, the complexity only rises. But let's just focus on the FOO strats for now and forget the ceiling that exists.

A new players is going to learn how to run as the very first thing they do. Running is often taken for granted in games, but for a brand new player it can be difficult to learn how to make a player character move properly. If the player character starts running slowly before hitting a top speed, like in Mario 64, it can be even more difficult to learn. So a player will have to learn that it takes time to run, and it takes more time to run if they are moving up a slope, and less time to run if they are moving down a slope. None of these things requires a large amount of skill to be able to achieve, nor do they require much technical knowledge despite actually being very technical. It's this very low skill floor that can allow players to start to experience with mario's momentum in a way that is easy and importantly not frustrating.

If a player tries to run up a gentle slope they will still be able to make it to the top of the slope. The technical aspects of slopes and mario's momentum will not be a barrier to a player who's using this particular FOO strat. However, the FOO strat also has some in-built limitations: mainly mario has difficulty jumping when running up a slope, and he moves much slower than if other strats were employed. Mario will have particularly hard time doing triple jumps and wall jumps if he is running up a slope, limiting his movement options rather severely.

It's the way that all of these come together that the player can start to experiment with more complicated movement strategies. Even without adding any moves in players can start to experiment with various strategies. For example, when a player is on a slope and wants to start moving, they can move down the slope and do a gentle 180 degree turn. This will help the player build up momentum quickly to run up the slope with. However, if a player attempts to turn to quickly they'll skid, removing all of the build up momentum so that mario has to build up speed again. Players can also explore complexities of running to the side on a slope, or the complexities of how mario's run is distinct from his speed.

Playing around with new moves can help introduce even more technical systems of the game. When mario is running up a slope, kicking can help give him a small speed boost. When mario is running up a slope, jumping and pressing the B button will result in a dive regardless of mario's actual speed, even though mario will typically kick when he's in the air moving at slow speeds. Diving on a slope will result in mario getting stuck in a belly slide animation, which the player may or may not be able to escape depending on the steepness of the slope and the angle and speed of mario. Players may start to learn that jumping onto a slope instead of running onto a slope will result in different effects on mario, or they might start to experiment with the differences between long jumps and regular jumps and side flips under different speed and momentum states.

All of this experimentation is found because of how easy the game made it to run. It might seem overly simple to look at something as simple as running with this much depth, but remember that automatic running is not something that every game has. Many games require a button to be pressed to run, or will switch into two completely different physics systems based on a player's speed, while other games may have extremely complex and technical systems to enable running. Mario's run is automatic, based off of a number of factors and has large changes to his moveset. There is little technical knowledge or skill that is required to run but it's still a deeply technical movement mechanic that only seems simple because it's made to be easy to engage with. There is no need to understand the complexities. It's a mechanic that is given to players to introduce them to and allow them to explore the existence of other forms of movement. In a game like mario 64, the running mechanics are more than just a way to get around, they are the game itself. And the way that this simple strategy enables beginner players to engage with more complex mechanics is part of what makes it such an easy game to pick up but such a difficult game to master.

Almost every good game will have a mechanic like this, though it isn't always going to be the movement. There are games out there that do not have complex movement. Those games will likely have other systems that are just as easy to pick up, that have complex interactions with the rest of the game. Whether that's basic damage calculations or aiming or basic combos or skill cooldowns or unit management or menu-ing, every good game will give players a way to pick it up that leads them into the other skills they need. FOO strats are easy to It's useful to be able to identify these early strategies because it can help you learn more about what makes games work by showing you the edges where the different mechanics merge together. Every game will have more depth than what you can see on first glance, and every game needs a way to show you that depth.

[lapinaraoflimbo]

going to do a bit of a character outline to help me gather my thoughts on Steph. It will probably be incoherent.

Initially inspired by one of my bloodborne characters named "Kpop Steph". Kpop steph was my bloodtinge character, wearing a mixture between the Doll set and the Cainhurst set. She had blue hair and wore red goggles

Also took heavy inspiration from the Modest Mouse song "Styrofoam Boots" The specific lyrics and verse go "well some guy comes in looking a bit like everyone I've ever seen / He moves just like crisco disco breathing a hundred percent listerine / he says lookin at something else but directing everyone to me / "Anytime anyone gets on their knees to pray well it makes my telephone ring- and you were right / No one's running this whole thing" / He said "god takes care of himself and you of you"

The dialogue from the song happens in heaven, it's meant to come from Jesus christ. Crisco disco is the name of a famous gay club. Listerine is a reference to the act of drinking listerine for its alchohol content when you can't aquire or can't afford actual alchohol.

In many ways this idea of "athiest jesus" is the most central and important aspect of the entire world of BABBAL. The idea of jesus going to heaven, realizing that it's all true but losing faith in god anyways. To know that god is real and to deny him anyways.

BABBAL is a science fiction story that is intended to be heavily critical of science and the institutions that arose because of science.

BABBAL is also intended to be full of trans allegories, with many characters fully rejecting their humanity and place in wider society to get what they personally feel is right for them.

These two themes would ideally intersect heavily- expressing and discussing the way that science is often at odds with revolutionary ideas like gender abolition even when being against them is unscientific.

Steph is the oldest human in the wound- and the only character in the story who seems to be completely unaffected by warp.

While steph is eccentric and seems to barely be holding on to any semblance of sanity this is not due to warp. He was like this before. There's no reason for it. He's just weird.

Steph is meant to be the connecting lens between the hard science fiction of the greater universe and the eldritch fantasy-horror of the corpse.

Steph has complicated relationships with the rulers of the wound but none of them hate him except for Xanadu. He's generally the one who helps resolves conflicts. He is bad at resolving conflicts, but he's better than any of the other rulers.

Xanadu hates steph because he sees in steph someone that has overcome their human nature. Xanadu- despite his appearance and claims- is still human.

Steph is a scientist. It is how he describes himself when asked to describe himself. He takes great pride in being a scientist and adores science for what it is.

Because of his love for science, Steph despises institutions that call themself scientific without being "scientific enough" in his eyes. He believes that science should only be applied to find objective truth of the world and everything else is a mockery of true science.

He values non-scientific empiricism as a way to gather knowledge that can eventually lead to scientific theories and hypothesis. He does not consider simply gathering information to be scientific in nature.

Because of his belief in a heavily limited application of science he values folk wisdom and folk wisdom heavily. He believes that it's more accurate to rely on folk wisdom in cases where science is not a perfect fit.

steph is seen as a christ figure throughout much of the universe for his original discovery of the existence of reincarnation. proper reincarnation and memory-recreation was considered to be the basis of "modern science" in the setting. (futuristic science from our perspective)

the nature of warp means that scientific experiments are difficult or impossible to replicate. Personal wants and beliefs can influence outcomes, and the only way to come to understand warp and the corpse is to personally experience it for yourself. There is no collective scientific knowledge that can be drawn on.

[lapinaraoflimbo]

I feel like many attempts at trying to write about the short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas", which was written by Ursula K. Le Guin in 1973, will run into the problem that their analysis of Omelas is not going to be as complex as the analysis provided by "The Dispossessed", Which was written by Ursula K. Le Guin in 1974.

Omelas is a thought experiment. It's easy to pick up and read and even easier to set down and move on from. Le Guin asks a few questions, but doesn't answer them. It posits the idea of a utopia and how suffering inside of it would manifest and what people would do about it. But the story itself is not one that cares too much about Omelas. It's not one that has love for Omelas or disdain for Omelas. Omelas is just there, like the child, like the people of Omelas, like the ones that walk away.

The Dispossessed, then, is a story about a man who leaves an anarchist utopian society for a world that he does not understand and cannot comprehend. A man who is fed up with the flaws of the world he lives on and decides that he needs to leave for reasons he can't fully articulate. It is so similar in nature to Omelas. But where "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" ends asking us to imagine ones like this "The Dispossessed" begins with us leaving alongside him.

The world of the Dispossessed is given much more care than the world of Omelas. In Omelas we are asked to imagine our own utopia- while in The Dispossessed we are presented and shown a Utopia of Le Guin's creation. But the Utopia follows the rules of Omelas:

"They did not use swords, or keep slaves. They were not barbarians. I do not know the rules and laws of their society, but I suspect that they were singularly few. As they did without monarchy and slavery, so they also got on without the stock exchange, the advertisement, the secret police, and the bomb. Yet I repeat that these were not simple folk, not dulcet shepherds, noble savages, bland utopians. They were not less complex than us."

The Odonians of Anarress do not use swords or keep slaves. They are not barbarians. They do without monarchy and slavery, and also get on without the stock exchange, advertisement, the secret police, and the bomb. But they are not simple folk, not dulcet shepherds, noble savages, bland utopians. They are not less complex than us. The only difference is that we know the rules and laws of their society. That, and the Odonians do not have a suffering child that helps make it easier for us to believe in them.

What starts to become clear when these two stories are put next to eachother is that Le Guin was not creating Omelas for petty reasons. It was not- to her- a story that should be read and debunked and forgotten about. She took the questions posed- "Why is it so hard for me to imagine a utopia with no suffering." "Why is it that suffering always feels like it falls on someone else" "does leaving when someone is being hurt really do anything?"- and she thought about them. She wanted to understand them. Eventually, we ended up with a book that has those answers.

What so many of these analyses of Omelas fail to see is that Le Guin did not ask these questions in darkness. She did not expect them to be unanswerable or impenetrable. These things were never meant to stay in an area of complete abstraction. She herself came back to the questions, and thought about them, and found answers to them, and explored those answers and those ideas in more sophisticated ways.

Though I suppose in a way, that is what the story is about. Le Guin is one who has left Omelas behind. She has moved on to other things- to ideas and philosophy and politics that is far, more complex than what Omelas is. While the story is named after the ones who walk away- the story isn't about them really. It's about the ones who stay behind, the ones who dwell on Omelas. And so we are stuck, left behind in Omelas. We are hoping to find happiness and understanding and meaning through the suffering of the child- but none ever comes. And those that have left have gone on to some place incomprehensible to us. We claim that Le Guin wanted to leave the child to suffer because we don't want to acknowledge we might not understand the world. We do not want to leave Omelas because we are afraid- not afraid of what will happen to the child, but afraid the child may have never existed in the first place.

re that omelas story yesterday - decent enough read, but on some thought i don't think it really offers much that the original didn't. thesis basically seems to be "shit's fucked up yo". however, the bar is so far in the floor for 'omelas response' after that abomination jemisin put out a few years ago that I was willing to give it a lot of (perhaps too much) slack lmao

[lapinaraoflimbo]

Technomancy

Technology as we understand it does not function inside of the corpse. Warp makes electrical machines malfunction and fine mechanisms will easily break due to fluctuations of the laws of physics. Despite this fact many inside of the wound use technology as either a convenience in their daily life or incorporated into their self and body in some way. From cyborgs, full robots, once-human A.I.s, to the iconic Space Marines and Warpers found all throughout Xanadu it can be easy to forget that technology itself breaks.

To put it simply, Technomancy is a form of magic that mimics the utilities and appearance of technology by using warped technology as a catalyst. In the hands of the most skilled technomancers it functions like an extension of their imagination- Magic and technology used in tandem to create the sort of retrofuturistic fantasies that have long been proven impossible.

However technomancy for most people is a limited school of magic. Without significant alteration of the fabric of the world what is possible with any given spell is based almost entirely on what piece of technology is used. A lasergun can be warped to shoot out magical bursts of energy but it still must appear to work as a lasergun would. Meanwhile a laptop won't be able to suddenly manifest an attack simply because its user wishes it to.

If one wishes to truly embrace technomancy as a form of utility and combat they must use many different catalysts each with a different function. How these catalysts look and manifest can be different for each technomancer. Cyborgs choose to integrate many different catalysts into their body so they have quick access whenever they might need one while the Street Rats from Xanadu are known for creating and modifying catalysts on the fly to best suit what's called for in the moment. The catalyst created doesn't have to follow the rules of the outside universe but it must still be interpreted as technology in the minds of those around it.

[lapinaraoflimbo]

I think a lot of people are quick to dismiss Neo Yokio as just a nonsense comedy, this scene being among the reasons. But I would argue this scene is in fact a parody of americanized anime dubs.

It's clear if you were too look at the way this is animated that the Toblerone looks out of place. In a way, it feels almost as if it's edited in after the fact. Almost like there was something else that should have been there, but for some reason it was deemed unacceptable and had to be changed.

If you think back to Americanized Saturday Morning cartoons it becomes clear what Neo Yokio is trying to do in this scene. This is the Pokemon gang pulling out "Jelly Donuts" in the middle of their hike. This is the Yu-gi-oh scene where the giant sawblade is sending someone to the shadow realm (and definitely not killing them we promise). This is 4Kidz dub sanji holding a lolipop instead of a cigarette.

What makes this scene *feel* so absurd is that it's intended to be absurd. Kaz is clearly giving Helena flowers. That's a typical custom of what you do when someone gets injured and is staying in the hospital. But the scene has been edited to make him give her a giant toblerone instead. We're meant to imagine a world where a country deems the tradition of giving flowers too complicated for kids to understand, and instead tries to replace it with their own tradition of giving chocolate instead, only for the scene to end up even more confusing to everyone involved.

Neo Yokio is full of things like this, complex and intelligent satires and parodies of Saturday morning cartoon censorship and the way we handle complex social issues in media aimed at children and how children's media isn't meant to fully and properly show other cultures. The absurdity is almost always meaningful and referencing and critiquing equally absurd aspects about how Americans consume anime while also celebrating the joy and entertainment that came from them despite that

anyone else remember the jaden smith big toblerone anime

[lapinaraoflimbo]

Sa'lil entered into the office. There was no real head of the guild, it was a decentralized organization. The central guild simply audited various local guilds and organizations. All official guilds had to go through the process, being judged on various things ranging from how the local guild hired its employees to how it graded the difficulty of its quests to how it funded itself. While there was no one specific way to do these things the central guild still had a very specific and difficult auditing process. There were a large amount of unofficial guilds out there, many of which were held in high regard even by the central guild. The auditing process was not one of quality, just one of specificity.

So it could not be said that there was a "head" of the guild in the traditional sense. Any head of the central guild would have no authority over any of the local guilds and very little authority over the central guild itself. But there was still an office for the guild master.

In truth, the guildmaster's job had absolutely nothing to do with the way that guilds were run. Her job was much closer to that of an information broker's. She was simply stationed within the central guild to make it easier to inform others when an immediate threat was present. Her title was given to her out of a sense of trust and appreciation for what she had done in the past.

No one knew how she gathered information. She spent most of her time in that office. She knew about disasters the moment that they happened, and seemed to be able to watch the entire world all at once without ever needing to leave. Everyone believed that she was a god, and to have a god as even an unofficial head of an orginization was considered a great blessing indeed.

Sa'lil was one of the few that knew the truth, or at least part of the truth. Sa'lil had been around gods. Her title was "Sa'lil the Godslayer" for a reason. So Sa'lil knew that the guildmaster was not a god. But if she was not a god, what could she be? It was possible she was a human, although if that was the case she had been warped by strange rituals no one else knew about.

Whatever the case was, her information was always helpful, important, and accurate. She was a mastermind pulling far more strings than just the guild. how far her influence actually went was something Sa'lil didn't care about. Over time, the guild master had shown herself as being trustworthy and had helped prevent many disasters from occurring in the past. When she asked for help there was always a good reason for it.

"Sa'lil. I need you to station yourself in Ma'jick for a while. I can't say for sure if something will happen there, but even if it's just a chance I need someone like you there."

Sa'lil was a little taken aback. She was used to the guildmaster not having all the information about a situation, but she had never been told she was needed just for safety. Sa'lil took this how the guildmaster intended it: The threat is larger than anything she's dealt with before.

"What could be so dangerous that I'll need to be on standby?"

The guildmaster looked at her in thought for a moment, then sighed. "It's something from outside of the world. I don't know if it will be dangerous, but it could destroy the entirety of Ma'jika if it wanted to."

"are you familiar with this thing?"

"you mean personally?" the guildmaster looked up. "when I say outside of your world, I don't mean it's from the outer reaches of the world. I mean that it's not a part of the universe, those outer reaches included. In a way you could consider it to be something older than the universe itself. That's all that I can say about it to you."

Sa'lil smiled. She had never seen the guildmaster so willing to talk about herself. it meant the danger was something outside of anything she had seen before. She felt excited.

"And why can't you say anything more about it, guildmaster. Is there some authority that you have to answer to? Something above even you?"

the guildmaster sighed again. "If you want to know the answer head to Ma'jik. If danger shows itself then I'll tell you more, but not until then."

"That's all you needed to say. I'll head there with the Muzen Troupe and we'll wait around."

"With the troupe? Are you sure that all of you can get into Ma'jika..."

Sa'lil laughed "Don't worry. We can force ourselves inside the city if it comes to it."

The guildmaster opened her mouth to say something, but Sa'lil was already gone. She sighed. Guild mages were always rash and independent. But at the very least, the Muzen Troupe were a powerful piece to have on the board.

[lapinaraoflimbo]

In the world there were four major schools of magic. Of these, two of them were considered to be combat magic: Blood magic and Clerical magic. In the hands of talented mages the two of them formed a fragile but powerful bond. A blood mage had one weakness: Their reliance on a limited and always diminishing reserve of their own blood. Any blood magic- be it one of the pure elements or mixed specialized fields- had a cost.

Blood mages always strived to be as efficient as possible, as little blood to cast each spell as possible- as little waste with each spell cast- no excess used at all. That was the ideal of a blood mage. But there lied the problem in fighting as a blood mage- Blood was also used up in battle. A meaningless scratch for an ordinary man could mean multiple spells that were ripped out of a mage's reserve. A blood mage could not afford to get hurt- and so the clerics fought alongside them.

Selfishness is the foundation of all clerical magic. It can be considered a manifestation of one's inward emotions. But that emotion cannot reach out to another person. Indeed, while clerics were known for being healers they could not heal anyone else through their magic. All they could do was steal.

Selfishness to want to feel the pain- selfishness to bear the burden for others. All clerics thought of themselves. They were their own sacrifices. Some of them were unable to see others in pain, some of them found purpose in shouldering the burden. Many clerics deceived themselves with ideas of noble desires. But the truly great clerics understood. They wanted to feel the wounds because they delighted in it.

A good mage and a good cleric formed an inseparable pair. One of them could not stand the waste of pain and injury, and one of them could not stand to see another suffer in their place. Their desires were united, and on the battlefield they became a destructive force like nothing else.

~~~~~

Charlotte was quick to adapt the moment he realized what had happened. He had struck the mage but no blood came out, which meant the girl in the back was a cleric. He clicked is tongue in annoyance. A simple gimmick, nothing more than an annoyance.

The mage had fallen back and looked over at him. Her face had grown colder. "Hey... my friend doesn't like having her clothes stained by weak people. Do you understand what I mean? We're going to have to make you pay if it turns out you're a weak person who stained her clothes."

Charlotte barely had time to react before the cleric had drawn a sword and closed the distance between them. Her movements were superhuman- far to fast and far too strong to be done without magic. He couldn't tell if it was the mage's magic or her own- it was possible it was a mixture of both.

It was the kind of annoyance that constantly plagued him. Always there was something in the way. Always something out there that kept him from relaxing. And this time the annoyance had the gall to taunt him. Rage built up inside of him. They dared to call him weak, well they've shown their hand he might as well show his and shut them up for good.

He willed the rage to consume him. The emotions welled up from deep within him. He strengthened them, built them up. The rage spread throughout his body- into each of his limbs and through his weapons. He would end this quick- target the mage.

There was a clear weakness in the way that mages backed by clerics fought. A lethal blow was still a lethal blow- whether the lethality was stolen by the cleric or kept to the mage one of the two would still die. Sure, what counted as a lethal blow became more limited when dealing with healing magic. But decapitation or annihilation of the heart were things that couldn't be recovered from under any circumstances. He swung for the mage's neck- and his sword froze in the air.

[lapinaraoflimbo]

Dylan was trying to stay calm. He knew how to fight, he had been in all sorts of fights before, lawless street fights and chaotic brawls and boxing matches with rigid rules about exactly what was and wasn't allowed. He knew how to fight. He was skilled enough to know the girl in front of him had her own share of talent with brawling- but talent alone wasn't enough to explain what was happening to him.

He had already identified multiple openings, and effectively went to punish them. Each time he did, his body felt like it stalled, always moving slower than he expected it to. Always moving slower than it was supposed to. The truth of the matter was slowly beginning to dawn on him- this had never been a fight about martial arts, it was a magician's fight, and he was nothing more than a defenseless child.

The barrage against him picked up. Each hit landed quicker than he could comprehend, and each of his movements was slowed down. It felt like the air itself was fighting against him. His energy was draining from him. Hit after hit made his ears start to ring, his focus start to fade. There was no helping it, he was simply outclassed.

He held on for as long as he could. Healing the damage done to his body through clerical magic was all he could do. It was nothing more than stalling for time, but despite knowing that he couldn't stop trying to fight back. It wasn't just out of pride, he knew there wouldn't be any shame in conceding when a loss was this apparent. It was just that the longer he could stay conscious the more of that beautiful boxing he'd be able to see.

Each punch of hers was quick and precise, each punch of his was slow and easily countered. Every time, his body would be moved- almost as if the air itself was trying to hold him in place. Even when he tried to throw her off with unpredictable movements she was quick to adapt.

A few times he had managed to get the best of her- to push through her magic and throw a real punch- but every time she managed to avoid him. Her own body moved in ways that shouldn't be possible. Falling back or sliding to the side- her body could stop moving faster than what should be humanly possible. Slowly, he started to understand what was really happening.

"It's wind" he thought to himself. "She's controlling the air itself. I had become so used to the pressure of the air I forgot it existed, but she's mastered it all. Oh, how lucky I am to be able to fight against someone like her. If only it could last forever."

As he thought this, his vision started to fade.

"Just a little bit longer, body. Let me fight just a little bit longer. I haven't been this excited by a fight in ages. I don't want it to end so soon!"

The darkness soon overtook him, and his mind went silent.

[lapinaraoflimbo]

Beatrice had an air of elegance around her. There was a playfulness to it, and it drew everyone into it. She was known across the world by her first name- Beatrice, The Witch of the West- but next to her, the second name starts to bring itself to your mind- Beatrice, the Water Princess.

It wasn't that Beatrice was an actual princess. There was nothing about her demeanor that really felt like that of real royalty. She was a princess in the same way that a child holding a tea party for her stuffed animals would be a princess. It was a form of play, and nothing more. It was all too hard to not get sucked into that play whenever one was around Beatrice.

It was the kind of presence that seems like it would clash with Sal'il's wild personality but the two of them almost seemed to mix together. A tea party had started, and the bloodthirsty wolf had sat down at the request of the princess. The Princess was the first one to speak.

"So what have you drawn me here for, Sal'il? It's been quite a while since you've requested my help."

"Have you ever fought a god before?"

"You need my help to fight a god? You are known as the scourge of the gods. Certainly you'd prefer to fight it on your own if that was all it was."

The smile on Sal'il's face faded, and with it the fantasy of the two mages faded. The room suddenly felt colder. Darker. "This is something that comes from outside the boundaries. You've been out there. You know what those things can do. The gods told me about it, but they were afraid to speak openly about it. You know how they are when it comes to things like this. It's being summoned here, that's all I really know about it."

"I understand. Do you know anything about the group that might be summoning it?"

"Only guesses, and you know more about those sorts of groups than I do."

Beatrice sighed. She looked older and far more tired than she had at the start of the conversation. Her smile was no longer the infectious one from before. Now, it came across as the smile of an elder. Wise, and weary, and full of understanding. "I assume you've attempted to reach Holrick and Vicck too?"

"Yes, but they likely won't help until they're forced to. I've contacted a small number of other mages I trust, and the rest of the Muzen troupe is here in Ma'jick. We're using what connections we have here."

"I'll pull strings in the places you can't. Reach out to me if you figure anything out, and try to keep a low profile while you're here."

"No promises"

Sal'il stood up and stretched. "We have some food if you want to stay. It's a Sweet Berry stew tonight."

"That sounds wonderful, I'll be happy to stay"

[lapinaraoflimbo]

Opening up, Dead Mount Death Play presents itself as a generic edgy Isekai. As far as the edge goes it's pretty good. Lots of blood and fodder, the big villain is a giant skeleton with a brain in a jar where its heart should be. The hero has a tragic past but is doing the right thing for the world.

The pivot comes like it would for any Isekai. The protagonist dies and gets resurrected in a different world- only this time the new world they come to is our world. The second twist, is that the protagonist of the story is that giant skeleton monster who's heart is a brain in a jar.

The third pivot of the series is a much more subtle one. But it's one that becomes more noticable if you are familiar with the other works of the author- Ryogo Narita. You see it in the way it starts to drop these characters throughout the story. Every one of these characters becomes fleshed out in a way so few characters get to be fleshed out. Every one has complex motivations and lives that move at a breakneck pace and all of them are wound up tight and ready to break into a grand cacophony that will consume them all.

The twist then, is that this is not an Isekai or a reverse Isekai. This is a Ryogo Narita story where one of the characters happens to be from a different world. This twist may seem like it would be a bad one. After all we have other stories from Ryogo Narita. Certainly after a point this same story format told over and over would become boring, and would adding in a slightly different shade of magic and some slight tweaks to the characters of the story really be that exciting?

Well the answer to that is that no, Narita is good enough at storytelling and character writing that nothing feels like it is copied over. Sure, there might be an assassin in Dead Mount Death Play and an assassin in Bacano and an assassin in Durarara. And from the surface it feels like they occupy the same niches. They are assassins, they all tend to be a little bit insane- typically in "you gotta love them" or at least a "you gotta love to hate them" sort of way. But the nuances and complexities go so deep it colors them in completely different lights. The same character could be copy and pasted from one story to the next, but the people they're surrounded by, the organizations they work for, the hits that they have to kill, the activities they get up to after work. All of them would branch out to make it seem like the characters were entirely and completely different in a fundamental way.

That is not to say that any characters are copy pasted versions of any other characters. It's to say that the way characters get written by Narita makes them all connected. Durarara itself is a character comprised of characters and the webs of those character interactions. There is no true individuality in these stories. Nobody can be isolated and analyzed without acknowledging the affect they have on others and the effect that others have on them. Each story by Narita is a testament to how complex the world we live in truly is and how beautiful and ugly those complex webs of connection really are.

It's this reason why Dead Mount Death Play doesn't come across in the same way other edgy anime do. Narita understands and writes characters in such a brilliant way that no matter who those characters are or what world they inhabit it becomes a reflection of our own lives and the disparate connections we are constantly making and losing- and the way that we are constantly changed by it.

[lapinaraoflimbo]

Everyone regards the boneyards as lifeless. The name itself is meant to convey a skeleton. Stripped of everything until only a husk is left. But out there in the boneyards there is life. There is beauty and there are sights so breathtaking you won't be able to find them anywhere else. The boneyards just don't have people. That's why the church gets so defensive whenever it comes up. You head out there and you see the beauty that happens in the places where people can't live and humanity meshes with everything else. It puts you in your place, as some insignificant part of something even more insignificant. And when you start to think that you just end up wanting to keep being insignificant. It's comforting to be insignificant.

The beauty of the boneyards is the hostility it has towards us. the way it doesn't seem to care or acknowledge what humanity has done. That's why it's important to protect it. Important to remind people that even the houses and the factories and homes and roads that we use now will fade away and be left without caring about us at all. We remember them, but they don't remember us.

[lapinaraoflimbo]

Wilwit opened his eyes. His head was blurry. He remembered flying in his ship, and encounter and then... He crashed.

In fact, he remembered the crash quite clearly. And the days leading up to it- The jailbreak and the hijacking and the straight shot to the corpse of that ancient god where he'd surely be able to escape the gaze of the law for some amount of time.

It's not like this was his first time dying, but usually it was more sterile. Waking up in whatever lab they had recreated you inside of. It wasn't like it was a particularly bad experience. Maybe annoying and disorienting are the words he'd use to describe it. The memories came back slowly and foggy, like ones that came from years in the past.

But this time he just woke up, like he had closed his eyes to nap but never actually fell asleep. He steadied himself as he tried to stand, only to find his body fully capable of balancing itself. If nothing else, that was enough to confirm to him that he hadn't died. New bodies always take time to acclimate to adapt to new gravity or nutrition or whatever else might have changed. Somehow he must have survived the crash.

[lapinaraoflimbo]

Modest Mouse is one of those bands that makes me feel seen. I put it on and all of the sudden I'm just looking at myself. Scared little girl trying to understand what living in the west really means. Growing up with everything around you dying. Ghost towns appearing from places you never thought about. There's something about the West that gets to you. Driving and seeing nothing. It's cold, there's snow on the ground. You can always see a mountain. It's always far away. The sage is pretty and sparse and looking at it too long fills you with a rage that makes you despise yourself.

Nobody was meant to be out here. Not like this. It's meant to be better than this. There's still an hour until you reach the next rest stop. Nothing is going to be there either. You're going to have to confront your anxiety and deal with the people there even though they don't exist. Their entire lives have been spent somewhere so far away you can only imagine it and now you're pissing next to eachother and then you'll both forget about eachother.

The sun's going down. The sunset is pretty. It should make you feel inspired. Golden grow against that somewhat cloudy sky. Words can't express how pretty the sunsets are out there in the middle of nowhere. Nobody can appreciate them. Anyone who could wouldn't be traveling through the West like that. It's so empty, always. Sometimes you pass a house. There's an entire generation of lives that have lived in it. Who knows how much more. Those are just the houses by the interstates. How many are hidden behind the hills and the fog. waiting under the horizon for strangers you'll never be able to meet.

You're still driving. Your body is going limp and numb from sitting in the car so long. You don't want to get out. It only means more time spent in the car. There aren't going to be any inns to stop in. Even if there were they'd be too expensive. The West isn't hospitable to those that don't live in it. It's barely habitable for those that do.

You have a place you call home there, somewhere in the West. It's some backwater place that you can't really hate. It's why you can't bring yourself to hate the rest of the west. It's all going to be as shitty as the place you're from but it's still somebody's home. Even if nobody wants it to be their home.

You've arrived at the rest stop. It's empty but there's grass despite it all being in the desert. You would sit on it for a bit if it wasn't cold and dark. Rest stops aren't really the type of place that you want to stay at for long anyways. There's a restroom and a vending machine and some information board made out of plastic that the Idaho Bureau of tourism put up 10 years ago when the place was built. Someone must come by and clean it but nobody has put in any effort to maintain the place outside of the bathrooms. One of the doors doesn't even work, but at least you can still get in.

The lights are harsh and you walk around for a bit. You forgot what it was like to be able to see around you. You're not sure how to feel about it. It's not like you could stay even if you liked it. Your legs are sore but stretching them feels good. The air is fresh, and the stars in the sky are starting to shine. Out in the desert they're gorgeous. Seeing them like this makes you think about the people in cities who grow up without stars. It's time to get in the car and drive again. 2 more hours until your destination. You won't be stopping until you get there. The headlights of cars are the only lights for miles. You'll never be able to meet anyone in them. You hope that the next 2 hours go by quick.

[lapinaraoflimbo]

Xanadu is a really interesting character. In my head he is "absolutely hated" but that's not true at all. He's just hated by the two characters I've written about the most.

I think the most interesting part of Xanadu is the "he". He is a mess of wires the size of a city. He isn't human- doesn't even have a body. He's one of the only original rotted that I've even given a gender. Hellfire isn't actually gendered outside of her surface persona. (maybe one day I'll actually explore what lies underneath in a story) Steph is actually based off of a Bloodborne character called "Kpop Steph" and was female at one point- his gender is only masculine insomuch as he feels like it. The Shadow mother seems gendered on the surface but that title comes from the types of people that she protects and the role she plays there. She doesn't have a name or a "real" gender outside of the roles and relationships she has to others (also an interesting character that I really need to explore more in writing) The centipede king has a biological gender but it's a centipede. What is a centipede's gender to a human really.

So for most characters I use gender just to simplify things. Steph is a he, Jacket is an it. But I don't feel like these pronouns or genders are core or central to the character. They're mostly there to simplify things so the story isn't confusing.

But Xanadu is a "he". Xanadu isn't *male* but he is a man. He has a gender. And yet he's one of the most inhuman rotted I've written so far. So I'm circling around the question. Why is Xanadu a man. What is Xanadu really. What does he represent.

He is efficiency. He represents capitalism. He cut out all of the parts of his body he didn't need and morphed himself into a super-computer. He thinks faster than anyone else, he can process things purely logically. He is a supercomputer the size of a city. But he's also the city itself. The people who live there play a part of the processes and calculations that go on inside of Xanadu.

I find that the most interesting parts of the BABBAL story for me is the contradictions. This is a science fiction story with magic and no science. This is a horror story told as if it was a Utopia. Xanadu is an impersonal machine with his human ego intact.

if you ask Xanadu if he is a man or if he has a human ego he would be insulted by the question. He has shed all of that petty stuff. There is no need for emotion or sentimentality or ego or personhood. Yet there it is, right in the open. Is it really there? Is it an illusion? Is Xanadu really "He" or does he call himself that because the routines he's processed and data he's stored state that people call him that. Is it a bit of both?

It's things like these that make BABBAL such an interesting world to build for and write for. The abstraction of the characters and the humanity found within that abstraction. What are people's real desires, deep down and why do they have those. Where are the contradictions that can't be resolved.