#<-(pressed enter too early) begin to help the protagonist with training

[warriors-ideas]

AU/fic where an apprentice (oc or canon) is trained in the dark forest and tries to take over the clans in the dark forest cats’ images but they are the protagonist we see most everything from and maybe root for a bit who knows?

🌑

[the-huntress]

Little Moth - Chapter 1 - The Beginning Is The End Is The Beginning

[Hi guys, welcome to my fanfiction. This is a Resident Evil inspired fanfiction, I wanted to incorporate a number of my favourite characters, and especially our beloved Magnet Daddy. Slow burn, soft smut impending, beyond that who knows… But to be safe I will say that this is for 18+ years of age only. Let me know if you’d liked to be on a tag list for future chapters. Masterlist is pinned. Thank you to everyone that has read so far. <3]

Masterlist

Trigger Warnings: Mention of menstruation, swearing.

Y/N Protagonist, female. Reader X Karl Heisenberg [18+]

Summary:

Your lifelong friend, Leon Kennedy, has mysteriously gone missing two years after the events of Racoon City. You make a discovery that could lead to his whereabouts; dare you enter the Village?

[Photos are my own] You weren’t sure exactly what you were looking at for a moment, arching your back forwards over the desk in the dimly lit room, the glare from the laptop the only source of light. Several windows had been left open on the screen, and despite the turmoil that Leon’s apartment had been left in, this was what had really grabbed your attention.

The most notable of which was a photo, the resolution was grainy, a scan from a black and white film photo, it looked almost like a foetus, but you couldn’t be sure. Was somebody pregnant? It was almost akin to the sort of photograph that expecting parents would show at a baby shower, but this was… different. You had a feeling of impending doom just by looking at this thing.

Next, another very grainy photo of a town, it almost looked like some of the places from back home in England; a church steeple, a castle or maybe a mansion in the distance? A quaint looking village in the snow. And lastly, a very cryptic email;

                                               10/10/2000

Leon,

Know not what I have done, but what I believe must be done now.

Half of the results of good intentions are evil; half of the results of an evil intention are good.

You have the information that you need, please make haste.

A friend.

Well, that’s ambiguous as fuck. You thought to yourself, pushing the chair back and pulling the lighter from the little band on the side of your cap. You reached to your shoulder and cursed. That’s right, you’d given up, “for health reasons”. Putting the lighter back you reached instead for your camera, a notepad and a pen. You’d been tempted to just take the laptop and the scattered papers, but after several years in the police you knew it was beneficial to leave things as they were. Your eyes flitted from paper to paper, taking notes of numbers, flights, times, place names, anything that you could until you’d filled a couple of pages. One page for practical info, and one page, now that you looked at it almost sounded like a fairy tale;

A village, four kings, four lords, and a mysterious ‘Mother Miranda’. You bit the end of the pen and pondered. It was like nothing you’d ever heard of before, what had he got himself into…

Several days ago you had received a text from the man himself;

‘Y/N I am going to be out of

town for a while, something has

come up. Please don’t worry,

will explain soon. Leon. X

P.S. I’ve left Timesplitters in

your mail box, play you again

when I get back! :] ’

And now here you were. You scoffed knowing he’d have had to pay double to send that one, but he was mad to think that you wouldn’t worry, he was like a brother to you, hell, the only family that you had. After a childhood growing up in rural England you had moved to the states with your father and stepmother when you were in those vulnerable years of your teens during the early 90s, but were lucky enough to have met Leon in school. The two of you had become best friends quickly, and even graduated from the same police academy. It was Leon that saved your butt two years ago when all hell broke loose in Racoon City, him and Claire.

You shifted on the collapsible chair in front of the usually neatly tidied desk which was now strewn with various papers and articles. Your thoughts of Claire continued, and you pulled out your Nokia, opened a message and then faltered. It was late. Later than late you realised, seeing the time; 02:08 AM. What am I doing? You didn’t want to wake her, so you put the phone back into the pocket on your belt.

You swept a strand of your hair behind your ear, the outgrown bangs jumping back in the way and you blew at them irritated. You heard a grumble and moaned, looking down at your stomach. Padding across the shiny, tiled floor you left the desk and headed to the kitchen, opening the fridge where you knew there would be left-over pizza. Sure, it was from over a week ago when you were last here hanging out, but hey, it’s pizza, right?

‘Ugh dude, always with the anchovies, why?’ you mumbled, flinging a small fish into the bin and mentally backhanding the back of Leon’s head. Of course, it was his side of the pizza that was left over, probably trying to stay in shape in case he bumped into ‘Ada’ again. You weren’t keen, but then, you didn’t trust her. You looked at your phone again, left on the desk besides the laptop, Leon would be much better off with Claire, but sadly you felt perhaps that ship had set sail long ago.

You went to sit yourself back down at the desk. CRUNCH “Shit!” Your eyes darted to your right knee. “Fuck… you’re not giving me a break are you.” Letting out a sigh you closed your eyes for a moment. Since you were a child your knee had given you problems. A few dislocations, hospital visits, insteps, braces and physiotherapy. You’d had to grit your teeth hard through every physical training session during academy, but you’d made it. Fortunately for you it wasn’t something that many people would be able to notice or spot. You could run for miles with no problem; it was the recovery time in the days that followed that was tough. You knew it was getting worse, and had been reading about how much longer you might have before you’d need a full replacement, but you knew that it could jeopardise your job, you knew you’d likely not get put on the jobs that you wanted, and the thought of being put into the office answering calls made your heart sink.

And then you spotted it, the corner of another window was sticking out from under the others, exposing the corner of a third photograph. Instantly recognising the symbol you felt as though you were falling.

“What…”

Dragging the window and clicking it to full screen you could see this photograph clearly; some kind of mural, was it in stone? It looked as though there were four crests, family crests maybe. And at the centre; “Umbrella.” You breathed. You stared at it for several minutes and quickly took a photo of the screen on your camera, no point trying to get that old thing to work, you thought, looking at the printer at the other end of the desk. You couldn’t help but smirk, memories of Leon trying to print page after page of game walk throughs, whilst trying to find all the secrets in your favourite action/ adventure game, and laughing your head off at him, mouthful of noodles spilling back out into the carton as a hundred pages shot out at him, flying all over the room with cheat codes for a scantily dressed version of the playable character.

You looked at the clock again, time to go. If you were going to do this, you needed sleep and to get going as soon as you could the next day. It might drain your bank account, but it would be worth it. You didn’t have a good feeling about any of this, and more often than not, your gut instincts were right. Grabbing your R.P.D jacket at the door, you took one last glance at the room. It really did look like a whirlwind had hit it, not like Leon when he was in a better mental state at all. You knew that when he wasn’t his best he’d reach a for a drink and then some, but you could see that nothing was broken, and it was mostly clothes scattered, some bits of equipment and where he’d clearly got the luggage bag down from on top of the wardrobe. Nothing to worry about in regard to kidnap or a break in at least; as if that was enough to stop you from worrying about whatever lay ahead in this ‘Village’.

It started to rain just as you got into your apartment building, and you smiled. You’d always liked the rain. Stopping to quickly check your pigeon-hole for mail and seeing nothing you felt something press up against you calf, rubbing itself against the tops of your boots. You looked down and grinned, scooping up a slender, black cat in one hand and kissing the top of her head. “I’m going to miss you Boo, keep an eye on my mail for me while I’m gone, you know how crammed that thing gets.” You winked at her as you set her back down outside Mrs. Little’s door and fished a sandwich bag full of the leftover pizza anchovies out of your R.P.D. bag. “You didn’t think I’d forget you, did you?” Leaving Boo hastily munching into her treats you jogged up the stairs, your knee twinged, but it wasn’t too bad. It just had its moments.

Your apartment was pretty standard for this part of the city; both you and Leon had left Racoon city some time ago, though it wasn’t far from here. It had been destroyed and bordered off and that was all there was too it. You had to tell it to yourself that way to cope. Leon’s apartment was slightly swankier, but then again, he did like his gadgets and liked to keep things tidy, when his thoughts weren’t somewhere else. You on the other hand were happy to know that while everything had its place, sometimes that place would be on the floor… next to the thingy and nestled safely under a cereal box; and that was okay! You picked up the thingy, and looked at it fondly, before folding it up and putting it away with the others.

Stretching and yawning you looked around you, making a mental note of what needed to be done; pack, shower, sleep. You’d get the tickets the next day, and some money too, you’d have to stop off at the currency exchange. What currency did they even use there? Equipment, keep it simple; knives, pistol, rounds, lighter, fluid, compass, torch, camera, medi-kit. A couple of spare pairs of clothes, and you had your light armour that also fit into the case. You knew the contents would raise suspicion, but you had your badge, at the end of the day another cop had gone missing, and your team knew too.

You whipped off the remainder of your uniform and jumped in the shower, the bathroom filling up with steam and bubbles quickly and you sang along to a few songs on the radio. Wiping the mirror to see yourself more clearly you felt all your insecurities flood to you at once, as well as seeing yourself for the natural beauty that you were. You pursed your lips, staring into your own eyes and promised you’d find him safe and bring him back. He’d yell at you for going in the first place, but you knew this wasn’t right. Something wasn’t right. Traipsing out from the bathroom, you felt the cool air attack your flushed skin. You liked it, you were always a window open kind of person, no matter the weather, the fresh air just soothed you. Of course, that meant the odd moth now and again, like now as you heard the tiny body plummet time and time again against the spherical glass shade of the dim lamp besides your bed. Snuggling up into the loose blankets you smiled at the little creature and pulled the cord on the lamp, smiling again as you felt the moth settle on the side of your head.

After that you actually fell to sleep very quickly. It had been a long day after all; a 6AM start, patrol, arresting some juvies for petty crimes, followed by yet another zombie scare, (false alarm thank God), before filing up all the paper work and heading to Leon’s. Sleep fell like a veil of cool clouds, taking you in and raising you up into the inky blue skies of the night. The next thing you knew, you were butt naked in a dark green forest, dew drops shining on moss like a trillion tiny emeralds. Mist hung thick in the air, and thousands of tiny moths flew up from the ground? No. From you. You were raising your arms up to the skies, the moss covered forest floor moist under your bare feet and between your toes. Behind you the silhouette of a deer… antlers, but much, much taller. In front of you a pair of cold silver-gold eyes in the dark. You felt drawn, ever so drawn, taking one step forward, and then another, your arms coming down now, hands outstretched in caring caress, your heart swelled, your lips bloomed, taking in a short breath, and then; blood. Gushes of it, soaking into the moss, reddening Earth’s green carpet, and dripping down the trunks of the trees, the moths falling from the air around you, their wings sticking and stopping in the thick, red mess.

“Shit!” You fell back down onto your bed, several items around you also crashing down. Hand to your head, you looked wildly about. It happened again. Whatever had fallen this time had been heavy. You turned to see half the cutlery that had been lying on the kitchen tops now on the floor, and the knives and pistol that you’d placed earlier on top of the luggage bag were now in the middle of the floor. A sudden feeling of loneliness washed over you. The same dream, but longer, and this time with blood. “Shit” again, you put a hand to your pants, pulled the covers back and saw red. “Well, that’s one more thing I need to bring with me.” You mumbled, rolling your eyes, and throwing yourself back onto the bed.

Song Suggestion: ‘The Beginning Is The End Is The Beginning’ by The Smashing Pumpkins

[anniekoh]

This Indian Country: American Indian Activists and the Place They Made by Frederick Hoxie (2012)

Frederick E. Hoxie, one of our most prominent and celebrated academic historians of Native American history, has for years asked his undergraduate students at the beginning of each semester to write down the names of three American Indians. Almost without exception, year after year, the names are Geronimo, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. The general conclusion is inescapable: Most Americans instinctively view Indians as people of the past who occupy a position outside the central narrative of American history. These three individuals were warriors, men who fought violently against American expansion, lost, and died. It's taken as given that Native history has no particular relationship to what is conventionally presented as the story of America. Indians had a history too; but theirs was short and sad, and it ended a long time ago.In This Indian Country, Hoxie has created a bold and sweeping counter-narrative to our conventional understanding. Native American history, he argues, is also a story of political activism, its victories hard-won in courts and campaigns rather than on the battlefield. For more than two hundred years, Indian activists���some famous, many unknown beyond their own communities—have sought to bridge the distance between indigenous cultures and the republican democracy of the United States through legal and political debate. Over time their struggle defined a new language of "Indian rights" and created a vision of American Indian identity. In the process, they entered a dialogue with other activist movements, from African American civil rights to women's rights and other progressive organizations.Hoxie weaves a powerful narrative that connects the individual to the tribe, the tribe to the nation, and the nation to broader historical processes. He asks readers to think deeply about how a country based on the values of liberty and equality managed to adapt to the complex cultural and political demands of people who refused to be overrun or ignored. As we grapple with contemporary challenges to national institutions, from inside and outside our borders, and as we reflect on the array of shifting national and cultural identities across the globe, This Indian Country provides a context and a language for understanding our present dilemmas.

Image 1

15: My informal quiz is intended to prod students to look beneath the surface of the popular beliefs that define Native people as exotic and irrelevant. I also ask students to consider why it is that Americans so easily accept the romantic stereotype of Indians as heroic warriors and princesses? Why don’t we demand a richer, three-dimensional story? I pose a Native American version of the question the African American writer James Baldwin often asked white audiences a generation ago: “Why do you need a nigger?” My question is the same: Why do Americans need “Indians”—brave, exotic, and dead—as major figures in national culture?

17: This book counters that preference by presenting portraits of American Indians who neither physically resisted, nor surrendered to, the expanding continental empire that became the United States. The men and women portrayed here were born within the boundaries of the United States, rose to positions of community leadership, and decided to enter the nation’s political arena—as lawyers, lobbyists, agitators, and writers—to defend their communities. They argued that Native people occupied a distinct place inside the borders of the United States and deserved special recognition from the central government. Undaunted by their adversary’s military power, these activists employed legal reasoning, political pressure, and philosophical arguments to wage a continuous campaign on behalf of Indian autonomy, freedom, and survival. Some were homegrown activists whose focus was on protecting their local homelands; others had wider ambitions for the reform of national policies. All sought to overcome the predicament of political powerlessness and find peaceful resolutions for their complaints. They struggled to create a long-term relationship with the United States that would enable Native people to live as members of both particular indigenous communities and a large, democratic nation.

The story of these activists crosses several centuries. It opens in the waning days of the American Revolution, as negotiators in Paris set geographical boundaries for the new nation that ignored Indian nations that had fought in the conflict and had been recognized previously in international diplomacy. Native activists take center stage in the 1820s, when nationalistic U.S. leaders abandoned an earlier diplomatic tradition and pressed Indian leaders to surrender their homes to American settlers. The Choctaw James McDonald, the first Indian in the United States to be trained as a lawyer, is the protagonist of chapter two. McDonald became his tribe’s legal adviser and drew on American political ideals to defend Indian rights, thereby laying the foundation for future claims against the United States.A generation after McDonald, the Cherokee leader William Potter Ross developed and widened the young Choctaw’s arguments. During the middle decades of the nineteenth century he traveled among Indian tribes in the West as well as to Washington, D.C., to recruit other Native leaders to defend tribal sovereignty. Among those who followed in Ross’s wake were Sarah Winnemucca, a Nevada Paiute who in the 1880s became a nationally famous writer, lecturer, and lobbyist, and a group of remarkable Minnesota Ojibwe tribal leaders who battled both at home and in Washington, D.C., to preserve their tiny community on the shores of Mille Lacs Lake.In the twentieth century the leading activists were often polished professionals like Thomas Sloan, an Omaha Indian who became an attorney and established a legal practice in Washington, D.C. The first Indian to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, Sloan helped found the Society of American Indians in 1911 (serving as its first president) and encouraged other community leaders to create similar networks of support. In the 1930s, when Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal offered those leaders opportunities to speak out in defense of their tribes, these networks brought forth tribal advocates such as the Seneca Alice Jemison and the Crow leader Robert Yellowtail, as well as a new generation of intellectuals and thinkers, among them the Salish writer and reformer D’Arcy McNickle and the visionary scholar Vine Deloria, Jr., who by the time of his death in 2005 had become the leading proponent of indigenous cultures and tribal rights in the United States.

..

Vocal opposition to Indian landholding in Mississippi began in 1803, after Napoleon had suddenly decided to sell the entire territory to the Americans. The French emperor’s decision immediately transformed the Choctaw homeland from a distant border area to an inland province that boasted hundreds of miles of frontage on a river that was destined to become the nation’s central highway.15 Secure borders and the lure of plantation agriculture triggered a surge of settlement. The American population in the region doubled between 1810 and 1820 and then doubled again by 1830. New towns clustered along the east bank of the Mississippi as well as on the lower reaches of the Tombigbee River, two hundred miles to the east.The American immigrants were soon calling for the creation of two territorial governments in the area. Congress had first organized Mississippi Territory in 1798 as a hundred-mile-wide swath of unsurveyed land hugging the east bank of the great river and then in 1803, had expanded its borders so that it stretched south from Tennessee to the Gulf. Finally, in 1817, the region took its modern shape when the Tombigbee settlements became the Alabama Territory, Mississippi’s eastern neighbor.Events on America’s northwestern frontier echoed those along the Gulf. Secure borders, a surging settler population, and aggressive local leaders encouraged the rapid organization of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois into territories and states during Jefferson’s presidency. (Ohio became a state in 1803; Indiana in 1816; Illinois in 1818.) Jefferson championed both traditional Indian diplomacy and westward expansion. He understood the value of traditional diplomacy, but he also understood the rising power of western politicians and was far more likely to accommodate them.In 1808 Jefferson supported a major purchase of Choctaw land. He noted that while it was “desirable that the United States should obtain from the native population the entire left (east) bank of the Mississippi,” federal authorities were also determined “to obliterate from the Indian mind an impression . . . that we are constantly forming designs on their lands.” The Choctaws’ current debt of more than forty-six thousand dollars, he explained, provided a solution to this dilemma. Owing to “the pressure of their own convenience,” Jefferson reported, the Choctaws themselves had initiated this sale of five million acres of their land. He wrote that he welcomed this “consolidation of the Mississippi Territory,” and the Senate quickly ratified the agreement.16

...

95: Leaders of the removed tribes were quick to promote the idea of multitribal “international councils” aimed at promoting peaceful relations among the tribes in Indian Territory and the surrounding region. These councils grew out of a tradition of peace conferences that U.S. officials had organized prior to removal to reduce tensions between western tribes (particularly the Osages, Pawnees, Kiowas, and Comanches) and the eastern Indians who had begun to migrate voluntarily to the West early in the century. Fort Gibson, erected in 1822 along the Arkansas River at a spot near the future site of the Cherokee capital of Tahlequah, had been the scene for several of these gatherings. One such meeting in 1834 involved more than a dozen tribes (including recently arrived Delawares and Senecas from the Midwest) that pledged friendship to one another and agreed to meet again to conclude a formal treaty. The 1835 Camp Holmes treaty, negotiated on the prairies west of Fort Gibson, fulfilled that goal. It established peaceful relations between the eastern tribes such as the Cherokees, Choctaws, and Creeks, and local groups such as the Wichitas and Osages. A second gathering the following year extended the Camp Holmes agreement to the Kiowas and Kiowa-Apaches.15In the 1840s the Cherokee tribal government, along with the governments of neighboring groups, began hosting their own intertribal meetings. They took this step both because they were eager to maintain good relations with the powerful tribes that had previously occupied their new homelands—particularly the Osages, Kiowas, and Comanches—and because they were increasingly conscious of threats to their borders. To the south, the new Republic of Texas, dominated by slaveholders, seemed determined to remove its resident tribes and create a homogeneous, independent settler nation on the model of the United States. The Cherokees had little interest in antagonizing these aggressive neighbors, many of whom were recent arrivals from Georgia, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Tribal leaders in Tahlequah were also aware that Mexican officials to the west, still resentful of the Texans’ recent success in their war of independence, were eager to form alliances with Comanches and other groups who had traditionally raided agricultural communities along the Arkansas River. To the north, resettled tribes from the American Midwest—particularly Delawares, Shawnees, Potawatomis, and Wyandots—were making new homes on the Missouri frontier. The disruptions accompanying their arrival triggered yet another round of retaliation and resentment among indigenous groups.16Large intertribal gatherings began in 1843. In June of that year more than three thousand representatives of twenty-two tribes gathered at Tahlequah in response to invitations sent out by John Ross and Roly McIntosh, the chief of the Creeks. For four weeks the delegates made camp across a two-mile-wide prairie and participated in round dances, ball games, and parades. William Potter Ross, barely a year removed from his Princeton graduation, was among them.When the formal sessions began, Chief John Ross reminded the delegates of the serious work before them. “Brothers,” he cried, “it is for renewing in the West the ancient talk of our forefathers, and of perpetuating forever the old pipe of peace . . . and of adopting such international laws as may redress the wrongs done by the people of our respective tribes to each other that you have been invited to attend the present council.” In addition to securing pledges of peace from all who attended, Ross won approval for eight written resolutions that established rules of conduct and included the declaration “No nation party to this compact shall without the consent of all the other parties, cede or in any manner alienate to the United States any part of their present territory.”17One white observer predicted that the 1843 gathering would “disperse without having done anything,” but the resolution regarding land cessions was a clear signal that the men who had been victims of removal had a serious purpose. They wanted to forge an alliance that could hold their enemies at bay.18 Often ignored by outsiders, these gatherings continued throughout the coming decade.

[kyndaris]

Going and Going

It is not often that I feel an incredibly strong connection to the protagonists that I often control. While there are many I like, and often find amusing, there hasn’t been one that speaks to the writer in me. Enter Alan Wake. With the dearth of video game releases in early 2020 and the threat of COVID-19 in the air, I thought that now would be the perfect time to clear out a little of my Steam pile of shame. Lo and behold, a Remedy title that had not been available to me initially due to console exclusivity.

Though my favourite genre as a reader is fantasy, I have branched out to other genres such as thriller and crime. Was it any wonder then that I was immediately invested into the narrative of the game? The story begins with Alan Wake and his wife, Alice Wake, arriving in Bright Falls, Washington for a holiday. However, once they arrive at their cabin located in Cauldron Lake, it is revealed that their trip was a ploy by Alice to help Alan resume writing after he had finished his last bestseller: The Sudden Stop and was crippled by writer’s block. When he walks out into the middle of the night, consumed by anger, his life is upended by a Dark Presence that kidnaps his wife. Diving in after her, Alan wakes up in his car, teetering on the edge of a cliff. 

Thus begins the mystery of piecing together the events that led up to the car crash and finding out what had truly happened to Alice.

As with most thriller plots, there are plenty of red herrings and twists. Alan, though an esteemed writer, is not as proficient a detective as his character: Alex Casey. Consequently, he is strung along by numerous powers at play: from Doctor Hartman to Barbara Jagger. Until, of course, it is revealed that Alan wrote all of the events in his manuscript of Departure. One that he had been forced to write while holed up in the Bird Leg Cabin (another excellent shout out to the legend of Baba Yaga), directed by the mysterious Dark Presence in the lake.

By game’s end, Alan manages to save his wife with the help of the Clicker, after surviving numerous close calls on his quest. However, like every great hero, he must pay a price. The cost for saving Alice is to take her place in the Dark Place.

After the game ends, though, there are still many unknowns. Like the quote from Stephen King at the beginning of the game, the Dark Presence and the Dark Place are never properly explained. What it means to be a Taken or how Bright Falls is expected to continue when so many of their people have gone missing/ are killed is also left up in the air. 

Gameplay wise, Alan Wake is very much a third person shooter. The only difference is that the writer also wields a torch that enables him to weaken the Taken to make them susceptible to bullets. The entire shine and then shoot mechanic took some time to adjust to as most games have trained me to fire my gun first and ask questions later. The heavy reliance on batteries also put to mind that the entire game was an extended advertisement for Energiser batteries. In fact, if the batteries acted like they did in the game, I might have actually bought a ton. Auto-recharges given enough time? Clutching torches tight to increase the power of the beam? 

Alan Wake is also quite tactical. Since our titular protagonist is not an every man that looks for treasure or a military man, it is understandable that his stamina is not always the best. Still, I found it quite frustrating that Alan could barely dodge the axe blow from one of the Taken even though I knew I had pressed shift. It also bothered me that occasionally my button presses to use a flare did not always work and I would be overwhelmed by the Taken.

I also felt that some of the levels were much too long. Yet, perhaps in a way, the length of the levels were perfect as they helped build up tension and make me sink better in Alan’s state of mind: wondering when all of it will all end and if he might ever find Alice.

All of these observations can be carried over to Alan Wake: American Nightmare, which I also thoroughly enjoyed. It also helped that there was more variety for weapons: from a submachine gun to an assault rifle.

As for the narrative in American Nightmare, it was a lot more simpler and focused between the battle between Alan and his evil doppelganger, Mr Scratch.  And while I have never liked time loops in video games, the way it was used in American Nightmare proved refreshing. I’m looking at you Bravely Default and Final Fantasy Type-0! 

The dichotomy of light and darkness was also a strong theme that ran through both games and helped exemplify the battle between good and evil. This is especially prevalent in Alan Wake: American Nightmare. Despite the fact that it is very much a trope, I enjoyed how it was employed in both Alan Wake and American Nightmare. Particularly when it was accompanied by the excellent narration for Night Springs. Hearing Alan referred constantly as the Champion of Light had me grinning at the cheesiness of it all.

Overall, Alan Wake and Alan Wake: American Nightmare proved to be an intriguing diversion. I very much liked the story that was told and the questions that remained even after the credits rolled. It also felt like it had more meat to the narrative than Remedy’s more recent game Control (though this is probably due to the fact that Control was very much about the background lore of altered world events and objects of power). As such, I felt much more invested and was incredibly eager to devour each manuscript page I found. The flashbacks were also excellent and helped paint a clearer picture of Alan’s motivations.

My name is Kyndaris. I’m a writer.  

[thehallofgame]

Review: Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones

Release: 2004

My Rating: 8/10

              Fire Emblem Sacred Stones was only the second game in the series to be released outside of Japan. The series was already an old standard in its home country but was only getting started outside of it. For that reason, Sacred Stones had a lot to do in one game. I can’t speak to how Japan received the game, but in the states (other than complaints that it was ‘too easy’) the game was generally well received and well liked.

              Sacred Stones featured a new world and new protagonists: twins Eirika and Ephraim. The two are the heirs to a kingdom that has suddenly been invaded by a former ally. They both escape and embark on separate missions, though their paths often cross and eventually reunite. Early in the game the story branches and the player will have to choose who to follow. Ephraim goes to the front lines of the war, Eirika embarks on a lengthy quest to gather allies.

              As in other Fire Emblem games, magic and prophecy inform the story. The titular Sacred Stones are scattered between five nations and are responsible for keeping an ancient Demon King locked away. The suddenly evil Grado Empire has launched a war of world conquest to seize and destroy the stones, and with each one destroyed more and more monsters appear in the world.

              Both protagonists travel the world gathering elite soldiers to help them fight. These characters are what form the party the player takes into battle. As in previous Fire Emblem games, there are many starting classes with various proficiencies in melee weapons, bows, magic, or healing. Each class has its own strengths and weaknesses in addition to the weapons triangle that determines the advantages/disadvantage each kind of weapon has against the other types. As is traditionally the case in this series, swords have an advantage over axes, axes over lances, and lances over swords. Specific class advantages might be mounted knights with high speed but with vulnerability to horse-slaying weapons, slow knights with heavy armor that can be flattened by magic or armor-slaying weapons, and a handful of flying units that are vulnerable to bows.

              As units participate in combat they gain levels until they reach a level cap of twenty, with few exceptions. Those exceptions are the journeyman class, which takes the place of the villager class and class changes automatically at level ten, and a dragon shape-shifter who never class changes. Every other base class, however, has the ability to change classes at level ten or above by using a special one-time use object that must be found on the various maps throughout the game. Upon class change the player will have a choice between two advanced options for that character that either offers them enhanced versions of their current skillset or a broader skillset.

              Another form of growth occurs through the support system. Certain characters that engage in combat beside each other will build support points that will eventually allow them to have conversations with one another during battle. After this conversation occurs they will gain a support level that will give minor stat bonuses to the pair when they fight side by side. There are three ranks of support, C, B, and A, with A being the third and best tier. However, each character may only perform a total of 5 support conversations, which means they can only complete one conversation tree. While, as a gameplay mechanic, it makes sense to encourage the players to specialize, and the low number of supports combined with it taking a long time to unlock support conversations helps the pacing, this means that it’s going to take several play-throughs to view all of the conversations a player might be interested in. Basically, it blocks a good chunk of possible character development behind replaying the game which is awkward and a little annoying. Does the average player unlock every support option on a run through a fire emblem game? No, they most certainly do not because it takes forever, but it’s a little frustrating to have the opportunity explicitly taken away.

              The story is advanced by chapters that each have a battle at their core, though after the first ten hours or so the player is given the freedom to choose between a few different battle locations before advancing the story. There will always be a new story-battle to engage in but eventually there will also be a training-tower as well as random pop-up battles with monsters. The training tower and monster battles give opportunities to level up lagging characters or build up support, but these battles are fairly repetitious and lack the unique hooks of the story battles.

              Once the player has decided where to enter combat they will be prompted to choose their units for the battle. Helpfully, by accessing the map view the player can view enemy units, their positioning, and any special features of the map. Tapping the right shoulder button on any menu option, or object on the map, will generally open a window providing explanation or more detail, which is essential in judging enemy strength and weapon loadout. From the battle prep menu the player can also choose their battle party, check their support rankings with one another, switch items around, and even arrange the party within their pre-selected starting locations on the map and finally save the final decisions before entering combat. If the player needs to reload for any reason they will be offered a chance to resume a suspended game which will plop them right where they saved in a battle or where they turned off the system after having one of their units killed in battle. If a unit did bite the dust, the other option is to ‘restart chapter’, which will appear as though the player has been sent back to the beginning of dialogue and battle prep, but the player will find all their saved arrangements still intact after they’ve skipped through the repeated dialogue cutscenes.

              Once the player presses the start button and initiates combat they will be dropped onto the grid-structured map. The feel of Sacred Stones is very classical tactical RPG. Each unit has a certain amount of distance they can travel each turn, and an action they can use to initiate combat, heal, or interact with the map in some way such as opening doors, using ballistae etc. By scrolling to and clicking on enemies the player can see their movement range in blue and the reach of their attacks in red. With this information, the player arranges their units to maximize their weapon and terrain advantages. The aim is to approach enemies with the player’s strongest units while keeping vulnerable mages and healers protected from attacks. Often there will be set pieces on the maps to interact with such as houses or shops. Making it to these locations before the enemy is tricky but often yields considerable reward.

              The player and the enemies have alternating turns in which to move units and perform actions. The player goes first, but then they must wait until every enemy unit has moved before taking another action. Most melee units must be in the square immediately beside an enemy to attack them, but some weapons and magic can attack from one or more squares away, and even attack across a square with a friendly unit in it without harming them. When combat is initiated the unit’s stats determine what their damage, chance to miss, and what the chance of a critical hit is. If one unit has significantly higher speed than the other that unit may attack twice or more in one combat turn. The attacking unit strikes first, but if the unit survives it may counterattack. A critical hit is a devastating attack that will kill the recipient outright more often than not.

              A certain segment of the Fire Emblem fanbase has complained that Sacred Stones is too easy, but I find that the difficulty balance is just right for a new to moderately skillful player. Perhaps it needed an extra-hard difficulty mode for the die-hard tactical RPG fans to really feel satisfied, but Fire Emblem is a series that has always struggled with walking the line between welcoming to newcomers and accommodating challenge seekers.

              Some battles are tricky and will require some experimentation to master, but most can be beaten on the first or second try with a careful approach. Likewise, combat is just deadly enough that a unit left completely exposed likely won’t survive the turn, but if a character is appropriately leveled they can usually survive one attack. As Fire Emblem Sacred Stones’ characters die permanently if they are KO’d in battle, it’s comforting to not have to restart the chapter completely for every mistake.

              Ultimately, Fire Emblem Sacred Stones is a really solid game. It doesn’t do anything revolutionary for the series, but it did keep it going strong as the second game to be made available overseas.

[thesffcorner]

Honor Among Thieves

Honor Among Thieves is the first novel in a YA sci-fi duology written by Rachel Caine and Ann Aguirre. It follows Zara, a teenager who lives in the slums of futuristic New Detroit, who in spite of her criminal record, and problems with drugs, gets selected to become an Honor: a human who will go on a year long journey inside the body of a Leviathan; whale-like sentient aliens who have helped Earth come back rebuild after being on the brink of collapse. Becoming an Honor should be the greatest achievement, but for Zara it seems too good to be true; and it just might be. The way I remember being pitched this book, was a heist set in space. That is absolutely, not the case. It’s actually kind of hard to describe what it is and a big reason for that, it’s that it feels like it’s actually 2 books in one. Part I of this book is spent on Earth, and it fools you into thinking that the plot will be very different from what it actually is. When we meet Zara she is living in New Detroit as a thief, which naturally lead me to believe that this book would involve a heist. We also quickly establish that she is a drug user, that her family is dysfunctional and that her best friend/boyfriend is likewise a thief and a drug addict. Zara steals something she shouldn’t and to escape the people after her, she enrolls herself in a rehabilitation center, where she’s approached for the Honor’s mission. Now, I want you to understand, just how inconsequential and unrelated this whole first third is, to the rest of the book. First, we have a lot of set up: Zara’s backstory, the world’s history, we are introduced to a gang boss who’s apparently all-powerful and all-reaching. All of it is stuff that could be interesting, but it never gets properly explored. Firstly, though I liked the slums of the Zone in New Detroit, they were very similar to most iterations of Detroit I’ve seen/read before; a bit of Robocop, a bit of the Zone in The Big Sheep, just a very typical cyberpunk setting. Zara herself is built up to be the typical cyberpunk protagonist; she has a tragic backstory, has illegal yet useful skills like stealing and fighting, and she’s even a casual drug user. I expected that we would see her overcome her addiction, or that it would stay a permanent part of her character like Case or Takeshi Kovacs; instead once she enters the Honor program, her addiction immediately disappears, and it’s never brought up again afterwards. We likewise spend a lot of time focusing on the thing she steals and on the mafia boss who goes after her; it’s pretty much Zara’s entire motivation for going into rehab. However, this subplot is so generic, and so completely inconsequential to the rest of the novel, that I genuinely forgot it existed, until just now when I sat down to write this review. If Zara’s addiction, and how it ties with this recipe for a synthetic drug is completely irrelevant, and New Detroit is never a location we visit again, than why did we spend so much time on this subplot? There had to be a better way to get Zara off the streets; she could have been arrested, or betrayed by her crew… I just don’t get it. There is another subplot that also goes nowhere, and it’s you guessed it, tied to the plot-cul de sac of New Detroit. Zara’s father was abusive and religiously fundamentalist; this helps inform a lot of Zara’s later decisions, and some of her personality, but we again focus so firmly on the religious aspects, and yet it never comes into play afterward. Why was it necessary that her father was religious? Why was he trying to hog the microphone at the press conference? We never get an answer, and likely never will because the book isn’t about that. So what is the book about? Well, it’s mostly about aliens, loneliness and trust. Once we get to space the entire plot and tone of this book drastically shifts. At first, I had a very distinct Hunger Games vibe; the train ride to New York, the training facility, Marko’s entire character (we’ll get to it). But then, as soon as we enter space we shift to something I can only describe as… Farscape. The Leviathans are sentient beings; they are the size of spaceships, look like whales, can survive in 0G and the void of space and they feed off of sunlight. The Honors get assigned 2/Leviathan and they complete a Trial that lasts a year, after which they can chose to go to a Journey with a Leviathan from which they never return. Supposedly, it’s done for scientific and cultural exchange, but it becomes very clear early on, that something more is going on. Zara gets assigned to Nadim, along with a Brazilian girl named Beatriz. What follows is what I can only describe as a romance between Nadim, the whale/Leviathan and Zara. it was such a dramatic change of tone, pace and even genre that the first few chapters I got whiplash. However, this was the part of the book that hooked me hard, because the relationship between Nadim and Zara is so fascinating and strange, and yet so understandable and immediately engaging. I was rooting for them from the moment she got on board and I found the way the authors managed to capture both their immediate attraction to each other, as well as the slow build of their trust and fondness perfectly executed. There is a scene where the two bond completely, and it was probably the strangest, most unsettling and yet somehow engaging scene I’ve read in awhile; I almost still can’t believe this is a YA book. Nothing is explicit, don’t get me wrong; Nadim and Zara have an entirely spiritual connection, but the way it’s written and just the sheer oddity of a love story between a girl and an alien ship was so not the thing I was expecting with that start of this novel. I almost wonder if one author wrote the beginning of the book, and another the rest; they are so distinctly and jarringly different that I’m genuinely wondering if I switched to a different book mid-reading. If it weren’t for the first chapter where we are introduced to Nadim, I could have sworn these were meant to be two separate stories. The last third of the book is a lot more action packed, and we find out more about the world, the reason for the Journey and the Leviathan’s arrival and what is actually happening. There were a few scenes that were difficult to read, mostly pertaining to physical abuse, which is strange to say since the abuse isn’t human. But it was still written very well and rather graphically and it was hard to read, I found the ending very interesting and I’m sad I don’t have access to the second book immediately, because I want to know what happens next. Briefly, I’ll go over the characters. I don’t have much to say about Chao-Xing and Marko; they were very minor supporting characters, though I expected Marko to play a bigger role than he did, especially since he’s so prominent at the start. The fact that he was Serbian was a weird shock to me; I don’t think I’ve ever read about a character that’s so close to my nationality before (though like most of these sci-fi books, ethnicity and race are oftentimes incidental and don’t actually inform the characters at all). There was also one part that made me cringe into oblivion, where he’s described as having a “Slavic point to his chin”. WTF does that even mean?? Beatriz was a fine character; she’s the more toned down, bookish type to serve as a foil to Zara. I liked that she had a bond with Nahim that was different from Zara’s but she still cared about the Leviathan. Her being musically inclined was also fun, but she just didn’t have a strong enough personality to grasp on. Nahim was surprisingly, in spite of being an alien, the more interesting character. I absolutely loved the way the authors wrote him as both this foreign, non-human entity, while also experiencing a lot of the same emotions like jealousy, humor, fear and even pride. He was a very trusting character, and his push and pull with Zara was really engrossing. There were many points in the book where I felt like Zara did; that if anything happened to him I wouldn’t be able to handle it. Zara was a very typical YA protagonist; she’s spirited, she’s angry, she’s dissatisfied, afraid of being stuck or being controlled, afraid of trusting people and getting hurt and pushing the ones who care about her away. There was a lot of Katniss in her; she has a lot more of a mouth than Katniss, and I liked her quips a lot of the time. She actually reminded me of Takeshi Kovacs more than once throughout the book, which was probably all the bravado hiding pain and insecurity. She was also a black character, and that’s made clear with several descriptions of her skin and her hair. I appreciated this; I feel like I don’t mention that often enough in my reviews, because I don’t feel equipped on judging what representation is good representation, but I overall found Zara to be a well rounded and motivated character. I rooted for her, I wanted her to make it, and I really appreciated that she always stayed suspicious and never backed down from learning the truth. Overall, it was a book that surprised me more than once. It’s not perfect, but I enjoyed it immensely; it would be a full 4 star if the beginning hadn’t been that disjointed from the rest. As it stands I can’t wait to read the sequel; I think this was one of the best executed relationship developments I’ve ever read and I’m really glad I picked it up. If you like aliens, you’ll probably like this too.