#◇It may seem a bit swapped design-wise◇

[solarsteam]

◇I got the very silly idea of a Monster Hunter Stories/ HoB crossover.◇

◇Anyway, Hob will have a mizutsune and Lorelei will have a Valstrax, or more specifically, a Crimson Glow Valstrax.◇

[ym-loreposting]

Inspirations for the Sages in A Link Between Worlds

The Sages in A Link Between Worlds are a diverse bunch of characters, unlike the Sages and Maidens from its prequel A Link to the Past, who are all depicted as the same robed men or color-swapped girls respectively. They seem to take more after the Sages from Ocarina of Time, who are from a variety of races and are more distinctive overall. While some of the Sages in A Link Between Worlds take after those from Ocarina of Time, most of them are firmly rooted in A Link to the Past.

Gulley

Gulley is often said to be inspired by the Kokiri from Ocarina of Time, but I don't think that is necessarily correct. Instead, he takes far more after Flute Boy from A Link to the Past in his design. Flute Boy is also found in the Haunted Grove in A Link to the Past, a place that Gulley also frequents. It is possible that the Kokiri as a whole were inspired by Flute Boy as well, given their similar designs, but Gulley's design remains closer to Flute Boy's than to the Kokiri.

Oren

The enemy Zora queen Oren does seem to take after Ruto from Ocarina of Time, as she has a far more humanoid design than the other enemy Zoras that appear in many of the 2D Zelda games. But she does also remain steeped in A Link to the Past, as her Zora's Domain is where Zora's Waterfall was in that game. Oren's design falls more in the middle between the Zora designs common in the 3D games and the enemy Zoras seen in the 2D games.

Rosso

Rosso is a bit of a contentious topic, though he does have obvious ties to the Gorons. He has a belt buckle bearing their symbol and also looks the part with his physique, though he has a few non-Goron traits as well such as ears and fiery red hair. In-universe, he is just a human as Gorons were revealed to sprout from the ground in Tears of the Kingdom, which would make Rosso having Goron ancestry difficult. That said, he still is a clear reference to the Gorons given he is a miner on Death Mountain and he doesn't seem to take after any character from A Link to the Past.

Osfala

Osfala doesn't take from any character in particular, instead seemingly being inspired by how sagely characters were depicted in A Link to the Past in general. This includes the robed sages of the Imprisoning War and their descendant Sahasrahla. Unsurprisingly, Osfala is also the apprentice of A Link Between Worlds's incarnation of Sahasrahla.

Irene

Irene takes after the witches Syrup and Maple from A Link to the Past (specifically its GBA release where Maple is concerned), which is also evidenced by Irene living in the same hut as them. She lives alongside her grandmother, who may actually be an elderly Maple, given her Lorule counterpart is called "Mapes".

Impa

Impa has been a staple of the series since its inception, appearing since the first Zelda game. Impa in A Link Between Worlds is an elderly lady, which is how she appears in the original NES titles, Skyward Sword, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. Impa in A Link Between Worlds is part of this line of old Impas and doesn't pull from any one incarnation in particular.

Seres

Finally, Seres is a reference to the Maidens from A Link to the Past, who served the same role as the Sages in A Link Between World do gameplay-wise. She is a maiden as well who takes after them when it comes to appearance. Her father meanwhile is the Priest of the Sanctuary. While a similar character did exist in A Link to the Past, he did not have any confirmed family that can serve as a more concrete analogue to Seres.

[kaiju-krew]

the way you draw Mothzilla makes my brain juises go brr. But I did see that you said that you could see other ships, may I ask your opinion on a weird one? Male Mutozilla? it is very odd, but it's basically tiny adoring partner and their huge partner, which is a trope people seem to like

mothzilla S tier forever <3

i think that could be a fun ship! personally i dont get a lot out of the mutos like, personality wise? (besides barb i love her lol) so it's a bit harder for me to be interested, if that makes sense? :(( no hate ofc!!! gay goji ships are dope. i've been considering hitting my gijinka mosugoji designs with yaoi & yuri beams (for sane people reading i'd gender swap them so one pair is boygoji x boymosu and the other is girlgoji x girlmosu. double gays.) it would also help ppl understand my interpretation of mosugoji is always bi4bi lmaooo

[dreamii-krybaby]

Y’all remember my raspberry swap au? Which is basically a doll and uzi role swap

Here are like some main ideas

Fist of all, Khan WAS the assigned colony leader but after getting murdered by the disassembly drones (N *cough cough*) alongside Nori, in his will he gave the role to one of his trusted friends, “Adán” (which is Doll’s father btw)

Adán is much more younger than Khan and didn’t have much experience, so getting the role of leader of the colony, plus the fact he is grieving Yeva’s death deeply and has to deal with Doll’s antics takes a heavy toll on him

Adán tried to give the job to someone else but no one wanted and he felt he would be disrespecting khan. So what’s up with his relationship with doll?

Its strained, due to Adán being new to the job and having to manage so many things, he is overworked and burned out and is not in the right headspace at all. And is in deep grieving, which has let him to not pay much attention to doll’s needs, he occasionally seems to be in his own bubble not paying attention to anyone or anything.

Doll is also grieving but in a different way, it has mostly affected her academically. And since her dad hasn’t been paying attention to her emotionally she occasionally lashes out, which lets to arguments which lets to her getting ground and things getting progressively more complicated.

She eventually makes a friend at school, lizzy :3

Meanwhile Uzi kinda goes the same path as Doll does in canon. She plans a whole revenge plan on prom night. On everyone favorite’s boy, N. Who takes more different personality.

Oh and Adán and Doll speak english! But with a very heavy russian accent, but there are scenes where they actually speak russian. Meanwhile Uzi speaks japanese! She got it from Nori.

Also Uzi’s home is similar to doll’s but different aesthetic as in the composition and colors. Also her parents corpse’s are on the living room (get it- haha)

She also has countless of gadgets and weapons littered around and buckets and bags full of drone parts and oil. Also, yes her house is infested with insects but like i was thinking that instead of roaches its like moths or spiders.

Also instead of Uzi bringing knifes she brings many little gadgets, but one of my ideas is that she carries a purse that actually turns into a sort of weapon but still thinking about it.

As for Doll, her equivalent of Uzi’s SAH railgun would be maybe a crossbow or a dagger with poison but am still thinking about it. May go with the crossbow

Also since Doll and Uzi are based on highschooler archetypes, i was thinking that Doll takes more on the “quiet true crimes artsy kid” meanwhile for Uzi, am still figuring her archetype, but definitely am thinking that she is that one kid who gets the highest marks without even trying.

As for Yeva and Nori, their personality wont change that much, as for now. Yeva is more unstable rather than unhinged. As in constant breakdowns, anxiety attacks and dwelling in unhealthy coping mechanisms (Smoking and drinking). She tried her best to make Doll think everything was ok but she became dependent a bit on Adán and all of this happened when she started getting the visions. And I was thinking that instead of doing drawings its maybe something with photography maybe, like collages maybe. But idk

Adán was there for Yeva but things got complicated as he couldn’t deal with how unstable Yeva became. And he blamed himself deeply after Yeva was murdered by the disassembly drones, by being shot in the head.

Also character design wise, Adán is almost the same as his canon design, Doll gets a wardrobe change, Uzi does too. Am still thinking about the rest.

If you have any ideas pleaseeee tell me. I would greatly appreciate it. Also you can ask me anything regarding this AU

Also Yeva’s and Nori’s and Khan’s death didn’t have a big time gap btw, maybe a few months apart.

Also I was thinking of Uzi trying to restrain N by building her own contraption :3

Edit: when the whole “leaving your kid to die” shit happens. When V and Doll team up and beat J’s and N’s ass and win. Adán immediately goes to hug doll and try to apologize but Doll shoves him away and call’s him out, telling him that she feels like she is being treated as nothing but as a burden. Then the rest plays out like in canon mostly

This let’s to Adán trying to find ways to cope (in a healthy way) and get some sort of help with managing the colony and his grief

Edit: Nori’s and Khan’s corpses display nanite acid and have parts that are completely burned or melted off.

[over-the-time-flow]

Super Robot Rollcall: The GEAR Fighters

Ginga Izumo

"The universe doesn't need no 'king'!"

Source Material: GEAR Fighter Dendoh Age: 11 Birthday: May 5th Height: 145 cm Hobbies: Watching anime Voice Actress: Youko Mitsuoka Character Designer: Hirokazu Hisayuki

A little boy who enjoys practicing karate at his mother's dojo, playing sports, watching anime, and idol bands... until one day, through a series of convoluted events, he finds himself alongside a classmate he can't stand in the cockpit of a mysterious robot! A story as old a time.

As 11-yos often do, the two very quickly conciliate their differences and become friends.

His dad is often travelling around the world, but he doesn't really miss him, because he tends to bring the customs of wherever he last went along whenever he comes to visit, which tends to cause a lot of embarrassment for Ginga...

Compared to Hokuto, Ginga has better Melee, Defense and Skill. All around, both of them have fairly good stats, but defensively they're not so impressive.

Hokuto Kusanagi

"This isn't some sports match! We can't just say 'oh well, i lost!' and go home!!"

Source Material: GEAR Fighter Dendoh Age: 11 Birthday: July 7th Height: 147 cm Hobbies: Watching anime, playing billiards and football, building plastic models Voice Actress: Naomi Shindou Character Designer: Hirokazu Hisayuki

A timid boy who enjoys spending time with his parents, with his computer, with plastic models, and most of all, with his beloved dog. One day, the Galfa Empire attacks his town, and in the commotion, he ends up in the cockpit of the Dendoh alongside a classmate he can't stand!

As 11-yos often do, the two very quickly conciliate their differences and become friends.

Lately, his duties as a Dendoh pilot have been getting in the way of his personal life. He's no Peter Parker, but he finds himself having less time to spend with his dad, and his mom seems so distant recently...

Compared to Ginga, Hokuto has better Ranged, Accuracy and Evasion. They're both fairly competent in terms of statline, but even though i like Hokuto more, it's kind of a fact that Ginga's a better pilot in a vaccuum. Still, you'll be shifting between them many times a stage if you're deploying them anyway.

GEAR Fighter Dendoh

Source Material: Gear Fighter Dendoh Height: 24.5 meters Power Source: double a batteries 2 Hyper Dendoh Batteries Real World Designer: Jun'ichi Akutsu

A mysterious robot that can only be controlled when both Gear Commanders (in essence, control units) light up, which only happens when Dendoh itself judges the pilots to be worthy. The Gear Commanders allow the pilots to catch "Data Weapons", large bioelectrical cryptids who become weapons for the Dendoh, powering it up.

In other words, it's the closest SRW will ever have to a "summoner" type character, which (combined with how great the show is) really endears me to this thing.

We get the Dendoh with the Unicorn Drill already acquired, and shifting to it will swap the pilot to Hokuto. Unicorn Drill grants us Fire Wall, a decent barrier ability, and most importantly, having a Data Weapon grants the Dendoh the ability to use the Final Attack, a move that deals more damage the more EN the Dendoh has remaining, but that will always leave it with only 10 EN remaining. As of right now, we have no way of refilling Dendoh's EN without putting it back in the ship (which will RAPIDLY drain the pilots' Will, especially in R), and all of its moves spend at least a little bit of EN, and most spend quite a bit. As such, the Dendoh is a potentially VERY powerful unit, but it requires wise utilization, and i find it to be one of the most fun and rewarding units to use in the game.

Both forms are clearly meant to be Super Robots, but have fairly unimpressive HP and Armor. Unicorn Drill's Fire Wall will prove very useful to us in the future.

Vega

"Rushing in blindly out of rage is the same as admitting defeat."

Source Material: GEAR Fighter Dendoh Age: ??? Birthday: ??? Voice Actress: Kotono Mitsuishi Character Designer: Hirokazu Hisayuki

The mysterious second in command at GEAR HQ. She finds herself tasked with taking care of the Dendoh's young pilots, and she's quite adept at her job. She's extensively trained in CQC, and can fight beyond the limits of a normal human, demonstrating superhuman abilities at multiple points.

For whatever reason, she sometimes finds herself uncomfortable around Hokuto.

You would be excused if you thought she was a support unit, but make no mistake, Vega is a real robot pilot geared to be dealing damage through and through. Her stats are all quite decent, and her Spirit learnset does not disappoint either.

Valkyrie

Source Material: Gear Fighter Dendoh Real World Designer: Jun'ichi Akutsu

Vega's specialized combat bike. It's loaded with missiles and various lightweight CQC weapons that make use of Vega's fantastical skillset. So long as they're on the ground, Vega can stand up even against Mobile Suits, Mechabeasts and the like.

It can also hover above water, although "hover" may be an incorrect way of putting it; rather, it's capable of driving atop water.

It's no powerhouse, but this thing can actually put in some work. It's nigh impossible to hit (especially with upgrades to its Mobility), and while it'll never hit quite as hard as a dedicated combat unit, it can hit hard enough thanks to Vega's stats.

The true draw of this thing, however, is that it shares upgrades 1 to 1 with another unit we'll get much later, and that other unit can be piloted by other characters. If you really want to, you can pump upgrades into this machine and get two competent machines to decently upgraded levels for the cost of one.

[sunnyleahomesblog]

Budget-Friendly Kitchen Remodeling Ideas That Will Increase the Value of Your Home

Are you considering remodeling your kitchen but are concerned about the price? Fear not! With some smart planning and creative thinking, you can achieve a stunning kitchen remodeling project that won't break the bank. In this article, we'll explore budget-friendly kitchen remodeling ideas that not only enhance the heart of your home but also add significant value to your property. Paint and refresh One of the most cost-effective ways to give your kitchen a fresh new look is by painting the walls and cabinets. A new coat of paint can transform a dull and outdated kitchen into a vibrant space. Opt for light, neutral colors to make the room feel more spacious and inviting. You can also consider painting your cabinets in a different color for a trendy two-tone effect. Upgrade Your Hardware Small details can make a big difference in your kitchen's overall appearance. Swapping out old cabinet handles, knobs, and faucets for modern, stylish options can instantly elevate the space. Choose finishes that complement the new color scheme, and you'll be amazed at the impact such a simple change can have on your kitchen remodeling project. Open Shelving

Open shelving is a cost-effective substitute for conventional upper cabinets. Removing a few upper cabinets and replacing them with open shelves not only reduces costs but also creates a more open and airier feel in your kitchen. Display your favorite dishes, glassware, or decorative items to add a personal touch to the space.

Reface Rather ThanReplace Cabinets If your existing cabinets are structurally sound but look dated, consider cabinet refacing. When doing this procedure, the current cabinet boxes are kept but the cabinet doors and drawer fronts are changed. It's a cost-effective way to achieve a fresh, modern look without the expense of entirely new cabinetry. Upgrade Lighting Good lighting is essential in any kitchen. Swapping out old, outdated fixtures for modern, energy-efficient lighting can transform the ambiance of the room. Consider installing under-cabinet lighting to brighten your countertops and make tasks like chopping and food prep more accessible. Energy-Efficient Appliances Investing in energy-efficient appliances may seem like a splurge, but it's a wise decision in the long run. Newer appliances not only save you money on your utility bills but also add value to your home. Look for the ENERGY STAR label to ensure you're getting appliances that are both eco-friendly and cost-effective. DIY Backsplash A stylish backsplash can be a focal point in your kitchen, and you don't need to spend a fortune on it. Consider installing a peel-and-stick backsplash, which is not only budget-friendly but also easy to apply yourself. You can find a wide variety of designs and colors to suit your kitchen's style. Butcher Block Countertops Granite and quartz countertops can be expensive. A more budget-friendly option is butcher block countertops. They add warmth and character to your kitchen while being considerably cheaper. Plus, they're relatively easy to maintain and can be sanded and refinished if they get scratched or worn over time. Maximize Storage An organized kitchen not only looks better but also functions better. Invest in storage solutions like pull-out shelves, drawer dividers, and pantry organizers to make the most of your available space. Utilizing every inch of storage can help keep clutter at bay and make your kitchen remodeling project more efficient.  Hire a Professional for Key Tasks While a budget-friendly kitchen remodeling project often involves a lot of DIY work, some tasks are best left to the professionals. Plumbing, electrical work, and major structural changes should be handled by experienced contractors to ensure safety and compliance with local building codes. In conclusion, a kitchen remodeling project doesn't have to drain your savings. With the right approach and a bit of creativity, you can achieve a budget-friendly kitchen makeover that adds tremendous value to your home. From simple cosmetic updates like painting and hardware changes to more significant upgrades like lighting and energy-efficient appliances, there are plenty of options to choose from. For a successful kitchen remodeling project that combines affordability with quality craftsmanship, consider reaching out to Sunnylea Homes. Their experienced team can help you turn your budget-friendly kitchen remodeling ideas into reality. Don't hesitate to contact Sunnylea Homes today and start your journey toward a beautiful, value-enhancing kitchen space.

[spork-guitar]

I have a Theory™

but first, a disclaimer: this theory is not meant to imply that I think Marinette is abusive and manipulative like Gabriel. I’m only trying to compare their personalities as far as the way they see the world and approach situations, especially involving their respective love interests. please let me know if the way I phrase something at any point seems like I’m justifying and/or condemning something or someone I shouldn’t be, but also know in advance it is not my intent.

okay okay but hear me out here

what if Marinette and Adrien’s relationship was meant to parallel Gabriel and Emilie’s?? like I don’t know enough to have much of a basis for this theory but just listen okay 

we have:

the creative one/(aspiring) fashion designer who:

- is a very talented designer

- is afraid of failure/making mistakes

- has trouble balancing their civilian life with their alter ego

- would do anything to keep their Miraculous identity a secret/to protect themselves and their identity

          - ex: Gabriel letting Simon Says capture him (Simon Says); Gabriel akumatizing himself so his identity won’t be discovered (The Collector)

          - ex: Marinette stealing phones from Adrien (Copycat), Alya (The Mime), and Chloe (Reflekta) for various, mainly self-serving reasons; Marinette (as Ladybug) outing Lila as a liar so Adrien won’t fall for her (Volpina)

- is known for making impulsive decisions and snap judgements that affect other people without considering how those people might be affected

          - ex: Gabriel banning Nino from coming back to the Agreste mansion (Bubbler); Gabriel becoming Hawk Moth under the assumption that Adrien would side with him if he knew what Gabriel was trying to do (Style Queen: “If only I could tell Adrien why I’m doing this. He would understand.”)

          - ex: Marinette shifting blame away from herself and onto the rest of her class when Chloe’s bracelet went missing (Rogercop); Ladybug keeping information from Chat Noir (mainly throughout season 4)

- is intelligent and curious, often coming close to a big revelation only to be dissuaded by a single piece of evidence; interestingly, while they are easily thrown off a trail of otherwise solid evidence, they tend to overcomplicate matters in order to draw suspicion away from themselves

          - ex: Gabriel suspecting Adrien may be Chat Noir, only to drop this theory when he believes he is seeing the two in the same place (Gorizilla)

          - ex: Marinette suspecting Gabriel may be Hawk Moth, only to drop this theory when Gabriel is akumatized (The Collector); Marinette suspecting Chat Noir may also be a student at her school, only to drop this theory when he mistakenly refers to it as an elementary school, while Marinette herself creates a very convoluted plan to cover her tracks (Kwami Buster)

- has a rational-minded “assistant” of sorts who is trusted with their identity

- is connected closely with at least one member of the Bourgeois and Tsurugi families

- is borderline obsessed with their love interest and would do literally anything for them, even if it endangers their identity

          - ex: Gabriel putting the entire city in danger for Emilie many times throughout the course of the series

          - ex: Marinette nearly giving up her Miraculous/revealing her identity to save Adrien (Volpina)

the one in the public eye/model/actor who:

- had blond hair and green eyes, is conventionally attractive

- is associated with birds/feathers

          - ex: Emilie was a previous holder of the Peacock Miraculous

          - ex: while Adrien is allergic to pigeon feathers, there are feathers seen in the background of the famous “Adrien the Fragrance” ad (Gorizilla), and he is also accompanied by birds during a photo shoot (Mr. Pigeon 72)

- is associated with purity/perfection

          - ex: Emilie is pictured surrounded by gold in the mosaic in Gabriel’s office; she is also currently kept in a repository with a transparent case, reminiscent of Snow White’s glass coffin

          - ex: Adrien is referred to throughout the series as “flawless”, “the image of perfection” (Simon Says), and “perfection personified” (Oni-Chan), among other things

- is musically gifted and enjoys music

          - ex: Emilie was a pianist; she also had an extensive collection of records that are currently kept in Adrien’s room (Party Crasher)

          - ex: Adrien is a pianist; Adrien enjoys playing piano duets with other people, including Gabriel (Captain Hardrock), Plagg, and Emilie (Puppeteer 2)

- is associated, however coincidentally, with solitude

          - ex: Emilie’s only known acting role was the lead in a film titled Solitude (Gorizilla)

          - ex: Adrien is often depicted alone or “behind bars” (examples include, Sandboy, Queen Banana, etc.)

- is known to be kind-hearted and generally a nice person, except when the safety of their loved ones is threatened

          - ex: Gabriel compares Adrien and Emilie, calling them “way too overly dramatic” with “quite a temper” when Adrien tells Gabriel to leave in order to avoid capture by Simon Says (Simon Says)

- has damaged a Miraculous

          - this is assuming Emilie is at least partially responsible for the Peacock Miraculous being damaged, as she has canonically used it

          - ex: Adrien was revealed to have damaged the Rabbit Miraculous with a Cataclysm (Timetagger)

- has an off-kilter, lookalike relative

- is connected with at least one member of the Bourgeois and Tsurugi families

          - this is assuming that Emilie knew both families, as it is more than likely she did due to the fact that Gabriel has done business with the Tsurugis in the past and Chloe was a childhood friend of Adrien’s)

- has a job that places them in the public eye, as opposed to their love interests’ more “behind-the-scenes” careers

          - ex: Emilie was an actress, while Gabriel is a reclusive fashion designer who is not known for his public appearances

          - ex: Adrien is a model, among other things, and while Marinette has created pieces for others to model, she herself has never been on the runway

now, we don’t really know much about what Emilie was like as a person or how she behaved relationship-wise (although I may have a similarly long post about that coming soon if I have the motivation to post it), so this is just based off the bits and pieces we do know

so, in conclusion...

age-swap AU where Marinette uses the Butterfly Miraculous to bring Adrien back while Gabe and Emilie have a cute high school romance

thank you for coming to my ted talk

[changeling-rin]

Hi! I was wondering, what are your thoughts on the different Zelda games? Not a ranking or anything, just what did you like/dislike in each game/franchise as a whole? And how did you come up with the personalities of the characters for DL? Thank you!

Oof.  Oh, you’re gonna make me Longpost, aren’t you.  Yeah, okay.  You asked for it.

Skyward Sword/Gen 

-I both love, and hate, the motion controls.  On one hand, I have never felt more epic than when I personally stabbed my sword into Demise’s head.  On the other hand, I have never felt more frustrated when my wiimote would misinterpret my swings and I would subsequently die.  Contrary to popular opinion, I actually like Fi.  Her design is beautiful, her theme is gorgeous, and her goodbye to Link is one of the most beautiful yet heartbreaking moments in the entire franchise.  The origin of the Master Sword, in my opinion, might be one of the best things to come out of this game.

Gen’s personality came about mainly as the foil to Lore and Dusk’s pre-existing dynamic.  Lore is the spastic one, and while Dusk is definitely somewhat of the straight-man, he’s much more likely to roll with it unless it’s drastically damaging.  Gen, on the other hand, will avidly apply common sense to anything and everything, and since Lore very rarely follows common sense, Gen morphed into his ‘conscience’, so to speak.  His predilection for healing was a side-effect of me dying a lot in his game and spending more on Red Potion than probably anything else, and also because the group needed a medic and Gen was definitely the most take-charge character I had who would do that sort of thing.

Minish Cap/Speck

The Picori are the cutest things, oh my gosh.  I do, however, suspect their violent and painful end in BotW - if they’re the ones who put the Rupees and Bombs and stuff in the grass, and there’s no such things in BotW…  Aside from that!  I adored the concept of shrinking down and having the entire environment change on you.  It was such a unique way to make an old area new again.  On the flipside, I loathed the Kinstone sidequest with a passion.  I never did manage to match them all.

Speck was basically me saying to myself, ‘He’s a tiny person.  How do tiny people see the world?’  And then he turned into a quiet, shy kid who tries very hard not to be a bother and looks at problems from a completely different angle than most people.  This is why he always second guesses his words - he’s by far the most frequent user of ‘um’, ‘uh’, ‘ah’, ‘oh’, etc, and this is entirely on purpose.  Tiny people, by nature, will do whatever it takes to make sure the bigger people don’t get mad enough to smush them - a bit morbid, I know, but if you think about it…  This is also where his habit of stabbing the eardrum came from.  Where most people wouldn’t even think of it, Speck just saw a really good access point and a whole lot of convenient fabric handholds to get him there.  

Four Swords/The Four

I have actually never been able to get my hands on a copy of the original Four Swords game.  I know.  I’m a disgrace to the fandom.  However, I have done extensive research, and I can say that by far my favorite concept is being able to deploy a Bow-Wow in the direction of my enemies.  I literally cannot imagine it without cackling.  

The Four were the result of me having two sets of Four Sword Heroes and desperately needing some way to tell them apart.  It took a very long time for me to decide to play up the hive mind aspect, but once I did everything clicked for them.  Rather than being split individual aspects of the original Link, the Four are literally a copy-paste of OG Link’s personality with only tiny variations between them, which led to the decision to make them somewhat quiet and awkward about their synchronization.  People rarely accept what’s unfamiliar to them, and to be honest the Four probably have one of the more ‘tragic’ backstories.  They may or may not have been chased out of a town or two due to a couple misunderstandings about the source of their hive mind.  (My babies, I’m so sorry I did this to you I’m a terrible author whyyyyyyyy)

Ocarina of Time/Ocarina

By far, one of the most investing stories in a game.  Ganondorf is fabulously evil, 10/10 would thwart again.  Music, of course, is beautiful.  The travel mechanic, on the other hand, I am not a fan of.  Trying to get somewhere before getting the respective warping Song is tedious at best, and the sheer amount of time it takes for me to swap between Young and Adult Link is just… it’s a hassle, is what it is.  

Ocarina is a little kid in a Big Person’s body, and I write him accordingly.  He’s the wide-eyed boy in a brand-new world.  He’s naive to a lot of things and oblivious to several others.  He and Mask have a bit of an odd dynamic because of this - Ocarina will basically gravitate to wherever Mask is as a sort of unconscious instinct, under the unrealized assumption that Mask means protection.  The ‘Little Brother’ mentality, if you will.  

Majora’s Mask/Mask

THE MOON.  THE FREAKING MOON.  I will never be able to play this game without feeling vaguely stressed and unsettled the entire time and THAT FREAKING MOON is the reason why.  Very compelling plot, 10/10, but WHY.  Aside from that, the music is fantastic, Majora is Creepy To The Max and we so rarely get that in Zelda games so I am on board, the transformation masks are probably my favorite mechanic, and your heartstrings get yanked on several times with the Goron Lullaby quest and Mikau’s entire storyline.  

Mask evolved directly as the opposite to Ocarina, with the caveat that he is directly aware of Ocarina’s unconscious ‘Little Brother’ mindset - Mask just happens to be sincerely uncomfortable with the ‘Big Brother’ role.  He’s more knowledgable, more experienced, and this was done explicitly to be in direct contrast with the fact that he looks like a little kid.  He’s Ocarina’s opposite in every single way, and it’s fun to have them play off each other.

Twilight Princess/Dusk

Probably my favorite game, art-style-wise.  There’s some things that Twilight Princess does fantastically well artistically, not to mention that it contains one of my favorite characters of all time.  Midna is awesome and there’s nothing that will convince me otherwise.  I actually think the wolf mechanic is a really good way to make new problems within old areas - but I will admit, the bug hunts can be tedious.  And that one escort mission can go jump off a cliff. But I adore everything about the concept of a Twilight Realm, and even though Ganondorf comes in and kinda shafts Zant out of the way, he’s fabulous enough that I can accept it.  They are, after all, both marvelously evil.  

Dusk’s personality came from me thinking back on everything that happens in his game and promptly deciding that: he either went a little insane to deal with it all, or he had the lowest level of crap to give that I’d ever seen.  Obviously, I decided on the latter, and I’m very glad I did, because from there that allowed me to build the faux-duo-actually-triad leadership between him, Lore, and Gen that works so very well.  I kinda ended up putting a little of myself into Dusk, in that he’s very reserved and will think about what he says before saying it.  Of course, I had to incorporate the wolf somehow, and the way that was the most fun for me was to bring some of those traits over into his hylan form.  One of these was me interpreting the howling mechanic as Dusk being a naturally good singer, and we all know where that led.

Four Swords Adventures/Red, Blue, Green, and Vio

The loss of the Bow-Wow hits me deeply, but we do get horses so that helps a little.  Also, it surprised me a little how similar this game is to the predecessor, Four Swords.  There’s a couple plot differences, Shadow Link is a thing, but for the most part it follows a very similar pattern and I kinda wish something different had been done.  It’s fun having more than one weapon to swing around, but not quite as much without other people to play with.  The one thing I have to say about Zelda multiplayer games is that, without actual multiple players, it’s just… not as fun.

I freely admit that large parts of Green, Vio, Red, and Blue’s personalities came directly from the FSA manga - particularly, the subversion of color expectations by having Red be the timid one and Blue be the aggressive one.  You never see that nowadays, and I immediately pounced on it.  Vio and Green had slightly less large chunks of manga personality, but I basically ripped their inner-group dynamic wholesale.  Their individual interactions though, those are all me.  Blue and Vio just seemed like natural bicker partners.  Red’s Adorable Puppy face evolved out of the sheer amount of times the manga had him on the verge of, or shedding, actual tears.  And Green naturally needed to be the exasperated leader keeping them all in line.  It all just sorta flowed from there.

Link to the Past/Lore

The originator of such musical classics like Kakariko Village, the Dark World theme, and Zelda’s Lullaby, and I thank this game for making these songs so good.  I adore the way that the Dark World can take the entire freaking country of Hyrule and turn it into something completely new.  But there were some times where I wasn’t sure where to go?  I don’t know if it was me or not, and it could have been.  I might just be bad at inferring destinations.  

Lore is the direct result of being the target of four entire games, and me thinking to myself, ‘Now how does a normal person deal with something like that?’  The answer was, of course, that they throw normality out a window.  Lore is my way to have fun, and also to let out every random impulse I’ve ever had but never acted on.  In a way, Lore is me, but without all the inhibitions.  Sometimes he ends up being a direct conduit between my brain-thoughts and the page.  That aside, I also gladly seized the opportunity to bring something different to the group, which is how the different languages came in.  He’s the only Link who actively, within his games, visits other countries, and there was no way I could pass that up.  

Oracle of Ages/Oracle of Seasons

They remind me of Pokemon titles.  “Here’s these two games!  With the exception of some minor details, they’re exactly the same!  Combine them for a special surprise!”  I do think the Subrosians are adorable though.  And of course, shout-out to Veran, the only explicitly female villain the Zelda franchise has ever seen.  Maybe someday you’ll get a friend to help you out in that testosterone-filled mess.  Maybe someday. 

Link’s Awakening

Far sadder than I anticipated it being.  Also, the Bow-Wow returns!  Clearly the best thing in the game. On the bad side - I don’t remember which one it was - there was this one dungeon that just… for the life of me I could not get it to make sense in my brain.  I don’t know why.  I also don’t remember what the solution was.  Very engaging story though, the Windfish mystery kept me engaged right up to the Big Reveal.

A Link Between Worlds/Sketch

The painting mechanic is just.  It’s so clever.  The entire landscape is transformed with a single dimension shift and I loved it.  I was kinda skeptical about the same map as LttP, but then Lorule happened and I was pleased enough with that to accept it.  Ravio and Hilda are fine additions to the LoZ family and I wholeheartedly accept them - also, the Lorule Castle theme is one of the best songs in the franchise, fight me.  One thing I do remember is this one boss battle, I think with some sort of Manhandla plant?  It took me at least ten or so tries to get past that thing.  Really didn’t enjoy that one.

Everything intentional about Sketch evolved from his painting ability, this being his phobia of water, his tendency to use stealth in a confrontation, and his continued sidetracking with artistic ideas.  At some point though, he turned into one of the most sarcastic Links in the bunch, and I’m really not sure how it happened.  But it seemed to fit him for whatever reason.

The Legend of Zelda/Realm

I regrettably have not been able to get my hands on this one either, but I have watched a play-though.  My observations are as follows:                    Where is the map.  How did anyone figure out where they were going in this game.  I don’t understand how that wall was supposed to indicate it was bomb-able.  How did people play this game without getting too frustrated to continue.                                                                                       On the bright side, the dungeons seemed to be very well-laid-out, and the bosses, while repetitive, were pretty memorable.  I suspect I would get lost within the first ten minutes, though.

Realm is directly based off of my above observations.  I am firmly of the opinion that absolutely nobody can make it through the original LoZ game without getting lost at least once, and this resulted in Realm’s absolutely abysmal sense of direction.  Consequently, I made him hopelessly optimistic and cheerful enough to make the sun jealous, because the only person who could put up with those sorts of mishaps is the person who can just get right back up and keep going.  Also, the fact that I myself and severely directionally challenged means that writing Realm comes very easily.

The Adventure of Link

I have not played this one either.  I apologize.  That said, I dislike the switch from top-down to 2-D scroller.  In comparison with literally every other game in the franchise, AoL feels the least like a ‘Zelda’ title.  Though, for the invention of Shadow Link, I award at least few points.

Wind Waker/Wind

It’s adorable.  It’s somehow a very dark and serious game disguising everything behind a cute and cartoony art style and even though I can recognize it I don’t actually care.  The story is engaging, Tetra is the Best Pirate, and the ocean makes it feel so big.  I do think the sailing mechanic can be a bit time-consuming before the warp travel kicks in, and I actually feel like Ganondorf went down too easily, maybe?  

Wind is based off of sailing, basically.  I took the amount of time it takes him, in-game, to get places and decided that he has the patience of a saint.  Also the bafflingly ability to stay awake for three days straight, but that hasn’t come up in DL, so.  Because of this, he’s usually pretty content to let conversations evolve without much input from him, unless he’s got something important to say.  And of course, he’s got the Wind Waker, which resulted in me making up an entire magical classification system to explain why he’s so good at controlling the weather, accompanied by an entire chapter-length head canon about the relation between the weather and music.  Ironically enough, for all that Wind has no instrument of his own, the fact that he’s a conductor means he’s actually the most musically talented of the whole group.

Phantom Hourglass

I wouldn’t call it a worthy sequel to Wind Waker, but I honestly don’t think it’s too bad - with the exception of the Temple of the Ocean King.  First time, it was kinda fun.  Second time, less fun,  Third time, getting repetitive.  Fourth time, getting annoying.  Fifth time, and I was really done with that mechanic.  The remixed Sailing Theme was good though, and once I got past Linebeck’s surface personality I liked him pretty well too.

Spirit Tracks/Steam

I have never played this one, but the concept seems fun.  The riding-a-train song is amazing.  This Zelda is probably the most fleshed-out that the character has ever been, and I dearly hope she can take the position of ‘companion guide’ again someday.  Or maybe even ‘protagonist’, who knows?  I do dislike how vague Malladus is, because as the Final Bad Guy I feel like he should have been solidified more than just “Demon sealed a long time ago”.  And to be honest, why Trains?  It just seems so random.  

Steam, like several other Links, is based around his gameplay.  As an engineer, he’s a pretty hands-on type of person, which is why he frequently gets distracted with the inner workings of other Links’ items.  And due to the fact that Trains require very little input to control and a lot of travel time, he’s the least physical of all of them.  This basically means that he runs the slowest, hits the lightest, and will likely bring the least to the table in a fight.  This is one of the reasons I gave him the ‘I Like Trains’ summon, because even if he himself can’t hit very hard, his Train sure as heck can. 

Oh my gosh I think this took me a solid hour to type out, I hope you’re very happy with this response Anon ;)

[sunshinelikesstarwars]

Day 1: Role Swap

For this prompt, I’ve imagined a Jedi Satine and Duke Obi-Wan situation. I’ve mixed it up a bit, though. I hope you enjoy!

—

Satine stood quietly next to her Master, waiting for the group they were meant to accompany. She was doing her best not to fidget. They had arrived at the landing dock early, after all, and it didn’t make much sense to be upset about punctuality when no one was technically late.

Qui-Gon knew her too well, though. “Patience, my young padawan,” he said with a smile. “Keep your mind in the moment.”

“Yes, Master,” was the automatic reply. Even with the constant reminders, the lifelong lessons, and the ever-present example of Qui-Gon’s own serenity, she still longed to be doing something all the time.

Her Master chuckled. “Did you happen to read the mission briefing? I seem to have forgotten to look it over.”

She knew he was using the excuse to distract her. Still, Satine wondered how Qui Gon functioned as a Jedi before her apprenticeship. Had he ever read a briefing of his own free will? With a small sigh, she summed it up: “It’s two missions in one, really. The first part is to provide extra guard for a prince on his flight to Stewjon. The second is to guard the royal family once we get there.”

“Royalty, hm? Elected, I assume. I’m afraid I don’t know much about Stewjon.” The comment was innocuous enough, but the sideways glance and raised eyebrows were an obvious request for information.

“Sometimes I think you take ‘living in the moment’ too far, Master,” she said wryly. “It does pay to learn of the past, you know.” He chuckled. She proceeded to tell him what she knew anyways. “The Stewjon system does have an elected monarchy, but the House of Kenobi has had a member as king or queen for the past century. Most Stewjonian citizens live on the planet Stewjon itself, and while they are known for being opinionated and stubborn, the Kenobis are equally well known for being excellent negotiators; hence their continued control of the system.”

“And who is this prince?”

“Prince Obi-Wan Kenobi is the second son of Queen Ati-Rin Kenobi. He has been on Coruscant for diplomatic training with the Senate.”

“I see. And why are we guarding the royal family?”

“Stewjon’s monarchy has recently received troubling threats from a possible terrorist group and reached out to the Temple for assistance. We are to provide security for the royal family until the worst of the danger has passed, preferably while conducting our own investigation regarding the terrorists.”

“Interesting. What about—“

The conversation came to a halt as a small group of people, presumably including the prince, arrived. When she looked for a moment longer, it was obvious who the prince was. His clothes were simple in design, but made from finer fabrics than the rest of his entourage. He wore what Satine assumed was the traditional plaid of his House as a sash, a pattern of green, blue, and gray, draped elegantly from shoulder to opposite hip. His auburn hair was stylishly arranged. Every inch of him looked polished, refined, put together—in short, an ideal prince.

While Satine liked to think she didn’t judge others based on appearances, something about this prince (the way he held his head as he walked, the perfect smile on his face, his impeccable clothing) annoyed her. He was too good to be true. Politicians tended to be corrupt anyways, especially ones born into privilege, so trusting that perfect smile would probably not turn out well. She did not like Prince Kenobi, she decided. Of course, she could do nothing about this revelation—a Jedi helps even those she may not like—so she would look at this mission as a trial of patience. Hopefully it wouldn’t last long.

Master Jinn stepped forward and she followed him. “Your highness,” Qui-Gon said with a bow. Satine wondered how her Master had known for sure this was the right man before she mimicked him, being sure not to bow any deeper than was strictly necessary. “I am Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn,” he continued, “and this is my apprentice, Satine Kryze. We have been sent to accompany you to Stewjon.”

The prince returned the bows with a nod and said, “A pleasure to meet the both of you. I am Obi-Wan Kenobi. Thank you for your willingness to help my family in this time of need.” Satine was proud of herself for not scowling at his probably insincere thanks. Did such an arrogant-looking man even care about his family? And she was sure there was some kind of slight in his behavior. He no doubt believed himself to be above the assistance of Jedi, seeing as his guards were checking the dock and the ship unnecessarily. Did they think someone could get past a Jedi? Fools.

She was rather surprised when he met her gaze. People tended to ignore her once they heard she was an apprentice. “I don’t suppose you have any relation to Clan Kryze of Mandalore?” His striking blue eyes were unsettling.

“A Jedi has no family,” she said. Inwardly, she winced. That sounded so cold and abrupt. And possibly as if she was ashamed of her heritage. “That is, the Order is our family.” Better, but not quite it. “Rather, a Jedi forsakes attachment to better serve the Force.” This was terrible. What had been his question? Had she answered it? She could feel her Master’s amusement through the Force, and her mouth twisted a bit. What an auspicious start to a mission. Not ten minutes in and she already looked completely incompetent.

If the prince was amused or bemused by her rambling, he didn’t show it. He nodded with that same perfect smile. “Of course. Forgive my curiosity; I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.” Again, probably insincere. He’d probably meant to start one of the “but Mandalorians hate Jedi” conversations that seemed to happen when her birthplace was disclosed. Satine released the annoyance his statement caused with a huff. Insufferable man.

He turned to Qui-Gon. “Shall we board? I’m quite anxious to be home.” He and her Master walked side by side up the ship’s ramp with Satine trailing behind and the prince’s guards behind her.

Hopefully, this would be a short mission.

-

The moment they exited hyperspace above the planet Stewjon, the feeling of wrong—danger—caution flooded Satine’s senses. She quickly rose from her meditation in one of the side rooms and hurried to the common area of the ship she was sure Qui-Gon would be.

He looked right at her as she came through the door. His face would appear calm to others, but she saw the tightening of his mouth, the slight furrow of his brow, that indicated his concern. He’d felt the warning, too. He made a small gesture with his head that meant “stay here,” then took his leave of the prince and walked in the direction of the cockpit.

The prince himself also seemed to sense something was wrong. He looked from Satine to the door Qui-Gon had left through and back, all the while shifting in his seat (and somehow managing to make it look refined). “Is anything the matter?” he asked when it was apparent Satine would say nothing.

“I’m sure all is well, your highness,” she replied. He might be spoiled and arrogant, but her job was to protect him. She must keep calm. The guards and crew in the common area seemed to sense nothing wrong at all, and it wouldn’t be wise to start a panic over a feeling the Force had sent. After all, it might have to do with something entirely unrelated.

A part of Satine sighed. These sort of things seemed to happen quite a lot on their missions. And it was almost never unrelated.

Determined to project peace and tranquillity into the room, she took a seat near the prince. She hoped it wouldn’t be long until her Master returned.

The prince turned his perfectly coiffed head her direction and smiled. “I’m sure you’re right.” Satine smiled back (hopefully it was convincing). Apparently it was, because he continued, “By the way, what would you like me to call you?”

She blinked. “Um.” Nice. Your wittiness is unparalleled, Satine.

“It was something Master Jinn said earlier,” he went on, and she noticed the slight tightening of one of his fists. Oh. He’s nervous and trying to distract himself. “He said a Jedi apprentice was called a...hm, a padawan, right?”

“Yes,” she said, impressed against her will that he had remembered the rather obscure word.

“I wasn’t sure if that was a title of sorts, or if you prefer ‘miss,’ or if you’d like me use your first or last name, or something else entirely.” Again against her will, Satine found herself impressed by his composure. He kept eye contact, was breathing evenly, and his voice was unstrained. The only tells of stress were the slight rambling and that single fist. “I have the feeling that we’ll be spending a fair amount of time together in the future, and I’d like for us to start off on the right foot.” And he smiled again, his teeth perfectly straight and white (dental procedures, surely), his skin flawless (due to makeup and ridiculously expensive treatments, no doubt), his eyes kind (more makeup and a lifetime of practice at looking sincere).

Before she could give an actual answer, Qui-Gon reentered the room. He was by the prince’s side in a moment. “Your highness, you’ve received a comm,” he said.

The prince frowned a little. Rising from his seat, he said, “Oh. Of course. I’ll take it in—”

“It’s a recording. And I believe your guard will wish to hear it as well, if it is what I think it is.”

One guard member managed to look both annoyed and thankful at the same time. Obi-Wan was frowning in earnest now but settled back into his seat while Qui-Gon worked on pulling up the message on the holo in the center of the room.

Qui-Gon gave a solemn nod in the prince’s direction before he pushed one final button and image of a person with wide, terror-filled eyes appeared, crouched and clutching a small recording device. Some of the guards gasped—they must have recognized the person who was dressed in what looked to be a uniform of some sort.

“This message is for Prince Obi-Wan Kenobi. If a member of Kenobi staff intercepts this message, please proceed to act according to code blue and see this message delivered immediately. Prince, I hope this message reaches you before you reach Stewjon.” The person shot a worried glance over their shoulder. “I must be quick. All transmissions from the palace are being blocked and monitored, going in and out. This is a special line, one known only to heads of security, and should be secure. Obi-Wan, my prince, I’m so terribly sorry, but your family has been killed.”

Satine looked over at the prince with wide eyes. He was white-faced but showed no other emotion. Both arms were crossed, both hands in fists. She quickly looked back to the message.

“The House of Kenobi has been targeted, all members of it. I can only assume that this…this gang is the one who threatened your family so publicly. I am unsure of the status of your brother Owen, as he was also off-planet at the time of the attack, but all family members that were at the palace have been killed. Obi-Wan, you must keep yourself safe. Do not come to Stewjon, do not come to the palace, and be—“ The recording changed angles suddenly as the device was dropped. There was a staticky scream and other garbled voices before the recording cut off.

The room was very silent. The prince sat, staring unseeingly. Satine shot a wide-eyed glance at Qui-Gon as the guards started to discuss the message.

Satine felt as if this was a failure on the part of the Jedi. Had they not acted quickly enough? Every government was threatened at some point, after all. Should they have come ahead of the prince? Made a public statement that the Jedi were protecting the family? Relocated the entire family off-world immediately? She tried to release her feelings to the Force. This was a time of crisis; this was no time to dwell on anxieties.

Eventually, the prince stood, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. “A-alright.” The guards went quiet, and one with a hat slightly different than the others (she assumed this was the captain of the guard) stepped forward.

“My prince,” the woman started, but Obi-Wan shook his head and brushed past her.

He walked to a panel near the door and pressed a button. “Attention all staff. Code status has been updated to blue. Please act accordingly.”

Immediately, Satine felt a wave of panic and concern from all corners of the ship.

“Sir!” cried one of the guards. “Sir, this is a dangerous situation. If even one of the crew is part of this—this gang of murderers—“

“Then I will not travel to find my brother with them in tow,” the prince said. His voice was much harder now, but still refined.

The captain of the guard pinched the bridge of her nose. “Your highness, I wish you would’ve talked this through with us.”

“There’s no time. We shouldn’t even still be standing here talking.” He turned to the door. “No doubt they have some sort of trap planned for us here, and if they know their group has succeeded, they are more likely to spring it. We need to either make our escape now or prevent any sabotage from happening.”

And then the lights cut out, red emergency lights turned on, and a dispassionate voice started saying, “Warning. Depressurization at dangerous levels is detected,” over the speakers.

[arkus0]

Okay my thoughts on Generation 8 of Pokemon so far. It’s an okay game in the series. As much as I want to love the first main line game on the Switch set in a Pokemon version of the United Kingdom (where I live) with a lot of references to British culture both old and new, there are too many things holding this game back for me. I’ll try and keep this brief and state what I find are the Good and Bad points for me personally: (MINOR SPOILERS)

PROS:

- Visually enjoyable, despite a few low def textures on some objects, the scenery of the Galar region is lovely and screams Great Britain.

- Music is really nice, whether it’s the gentle backgorund music in the wild area or the chanting of the crowd when in Gym Battles.

- Galar Region Variants are even better than Aloan Variants as they seem to go an extra mile beyond different colour schemes and slight model changes as most of them now have extra or alternative evolutions.

- Despite an initial Knee Jerk reaction to some of the new Pokemon designs (art wise) I have grown to actually like this Generation’s Pokemon concepts (haunted teacups, mixed up fossils, Foxes and Hounds, Forest Witches and imps, etc).

- The Gym Missions before facing the Gym Leader are a fun change to the usual Gym challenges. I personally enjoyed the first one where you have to hear Wooloo, or the third Gym where you have to cath Pokemon while a Partner tries to mess you up.

- The designs of the NPCs and Gym leaders are very nice and I really enjoy seeing them when they show up.

- Pokemon camping is a neat idea and an interesting evolution of previous mini games where you interact with your Pokemon, though I feel it could of had a lot more to it, more mini games besides the cooking curry one.

- Seeing wold Pokemon show up in the world and some even chasing you is a really cool experience and makes trying to catch specific ones easier since you don’t have to rely on the RNG, though that element is still in effect for some.

- The Wild Area is a great concept, a wide open space you can explore while wild Pokemon wander around you. I was expecitng there to be much more than the two big areas but I’m happy with what we got as a first try at the idea.

CONS:

- Game is very easy. Exp Share is a constant throughout the game and cannot be switched off, resulting in your Pokemon quickly out leveling everything else (unless you’re me and juggled your Pokemon with the boxed ones to keep levels down).

- Pacing between Gyms and towns is very short, you’ll go through a simple route maybe enter a tiny (and very linear dungeoun) get to a town and immediately face the Gym. No quests to gain access, no Mt Moons or any sort of maze like dungeouns to get through, making this a short game compared to previous ones.

- The story is a bit shallow despite having some nuggets of a good idea. It barely touches upon the legends of the region just repeating the same thoughts over and over again in certain spots while the main focus is on the Gym Challenge. Then at the end it dumps a whole lot of conflict with very little build up. The post game story is a little better and I feel like they should of swapped them around. I know Pokemon isn’t really very deep but Sun and Moon gave us a compelling story and interesting characters to follow.

- Team Yell are pretty pathetic as the “Villain Team”, but I guess they aren’t really villains anyway, just annoying fans for one of your rivals. The closest thing you get to an organisation of antagonists doesn’t get introduced until the final leg of the main story, coming out of no where.

MIXED:

- Dynamaxing and Gigantamaxing are a neat concept, but I feel like it’ll be hard to justify them in future games since the Galar region at least has a background story about the phenomenom. I prefer Mega Evolutions and hope they bring those back.

- While I am a bit sad about the whole “No National Pokedex” thing, it doesn’t bother me as much as others. I’m dissapointed I won’t be able to transfer some of my favourites from Moon, but in the meantime I’m perfectly happy building a team from the newer Pokemon. And who knows what will happen in the future? They may introduce the rest via DLC.

- They got rid of the Online Plaza that was in Sun and Moon, thank goodness, but now use a simpler system that seems like a step back from what the GTS was in X and Y. It’s not terrible but linking up with a friend online is a bit tricky since you both need to arrange a Link code, which can result in accidentally linking up with the wrong person who just happen to use the same code.

- The Pokemon Box system can now be accessed anywhere at anytime letting you swap out your team without needing to go back to a Pokemon Centre. On one hand this is a nice convieniance, but I wonder if it’s too convinient and just another step in making these games more for the casual gamers?

OVERALL: The game itself is fine and is still fun to play, but with the shallow story, poor pacing and very easy difficulty this game has dissapointed a number of long time fans. I still enjoy it enough to keep playing and see what DLC plans Nintendo and Game Freak have in store for us.

[nyrator]

another Christmas, another (surprise) Kresna visitttt

admittedly my mind has been blanking a lot lately and it’s a bit worrisome but I will do my best to document this visittt

so originally Kresna wasn’t going to visit and it was just going to be a lax/lonely Christmas for us

but then on Monday his boss suddenly gave him Christmas Eve off (swapped in place for a Saturday) and so he hurried home on his lunch break, packed his things, went back to work, and afterwards zoomed on over to the states again because he is insane and a good

He left on Christmas Day in the afternoon, but it was still a good 40 hours or so togetherrrr

The above were the gifts he got meee- The hat and Jenga were bought that day, the other two things were bought previously and wasn’t able to deliver them until now and so he says they didn’t count for Christmas but I disagree (still need to listen to that Radiohead album thoughhh), I tried drawing him something but may have failed because my art block is extreme, will still try to finish it thoughhh

So Christmas Eve, we go exploring the town to see what’s open- went and got donuts, went to the mall and he got me that hat pictured aboveee (the hardest decision was bobble versus no bobble), I wanted to get him an arcade pocket player with Dig Dug on it but he refused (it was a NES rom anyway and not the actual arcade version so it ended up being a wise decision)

While at the mall, he also had a sudden realization as we passed and explored a pop-up toy store- Jenga. A game close to Kresna that he wished to share with me.

That store only had knock-off and branded versions, so we passed and gave up on it. Later we went to dinner- our usual pizza place was closed, so we went to a diner (I tried bacon for the first time on a sandwich and it wasn’t that great, very smokey, beef is better to me apparently), and afterwards he sees the book store as we’re heading home, and so we serve into it, explore books, and then, in the manga section, we see it-

Jenga.

So, Jenga, right? Simple. Rules say you can only use one hand, you can tap loose blocks, yadda yadda yadda. Well, it doesn’t seem that strict with how you place the block afterwards, or whatever happens to blocks you intentionally move with another block, right?

So as you can see above, that’s the way Kresna has taught me to play. True to the spirit of the rules, we’re not doing sleazy tactics, but boy, do we play filthy

As he says: "It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail."

I’ve always described my want of a partner as someone who I can comfortably play Mario Party with, go absolutely cutthroat with, and still be able to be their partner, and Kresna is all that and more. We go hard, we go dirty, but we most importantly have fun, and it’s so good- speaking of, at the mall, may have discovered that my ring size is a size 8.

Otherwise- We played a nice chunk of Soulcalibur VI. I’ve been playing it a lot lately (50+ hours at the start, most of it character creation and like 15 in the Libra of Souls part), so Kresna decided to get in on the fun. As you can see, his character is the definition of the “chin down, eyes up, bad ass” variety. Rockin’ them sweet shades, often shirtless, all seductive beast.

And don’t let the scores fool you- he absolutely destroyed me in that game having barely played a SC game before, while I had 50 hours in the game, and how most of it just went to character making instead of getting good. Towards the end he started practicing fundamentals to try to understand the game better, and how to beat my character when I’m too fast/in his face stringing things together too much, and I ended up polling ahead, but mannn.

also shout outs to my SC character, will have to share them all soon

That night, we also watched Summer Wars (we were also going to watch a horror movie or Die Hard, but could not find them easilyy), both of us have seen it before but I absolutely defiled Kresna’s taste when we watched The Girl Who Leapt Through Time the other day and I stated I thought it was a better movie than Summer Wars (forgetting Kresna loves Summer Wars, to be fair I watched it back when it first aired on Cartoon Network and it was filled with commercial breaks and lack of interest so I didn’t really care for it at the time)

still decent/10 and I’m not sure which one I prefer at the moment but it was definitely a better watch this time than my first time

also we enjoy messing with Google voice commands on my phone a lot as you can see (he also enjoys stealing my phone and changing my wallpaper)

also bonus, current wallpaper of the year (and also new icon~) because I love Kuja (also while looking for the artist I discovered that Murase was a character designer for FFIX, a character designer for Gundam Wing, and a director for Genocidial Organ, all things Kresna and I have in common (as well as Ergo Proxy director, mannn, all feel so disjointed from each otherr)

[lateviews]

Lateview: Absolver

If you've heard the expression, “Biting off more than you can chew”, then you'll understand how I feel about Absolver. Fans of third-person fighter games like “Dark Souls”, “Devil May Cry” and “God of War” know that these types of games require high levels of love and polish to do well. Despite the starved market, there’s a lot of room for mediocrity. Surprisingly, Absolver doesn't pull any punches and goes toe to toe with the best... until it runs out of steam.

Absolver is a third-person fighter game trying to set itself apart from the crowd using two unique mechanics: stances and the combo builder. The “build your own combo” system has been done before, most notably in “Remember Me” and “God Hand” but the way they combine it with the stances really sets it apart. Each move has a speed and damage rating as well as some of the moves having unique properties like breaking guard and interrupting attacks. There are 4 combat stances, visually corresponding to the direction your torso is facing. Changing stances will result in you turning your torso to face to the left or the right of your opponent while others will leave you with your back facing towards the enemy! Each stance can be assigned an escalating number of light attacks and a heavier “alternate attack”. Most attacks transition you from one stance to another; then, since you’re in another stance, you can immediately use that stances attacks. If you build your combos correctly, you can create loops where one attack will lead into one stance before an attack in that stance returns you to the same stance you started in. The end-result is a custom-built train of attacks that you've personally engineered to confuse opponents as you flow from stance to stance. Since you’re changes stances so often, your alternate attack changes over time. Predicting what move your opponent is currently planning on doing is daunting since there is so much they can do. Oh, and did I tell you that you can pull out a sword or gloves and doing so swaps you over to a brand new page of attacks that you need to customise and memorize?

The game has RPG elements to it as well. Gear will drop from mobs as you down them and you'll also find stashes of gear hidden within piles of rocks. Most interestingly though is how you acquire new attacks. You start the game with a reasonable number of attacks but soon you’ll run into people using 'new' attacks against you and if you block that attack, you'll start learning the move. Use your right thumb-stick ability against it and you'll learn it even faster. Story wise, this is a cool concept. Get punched in a particular way a certain number of times and you should be able to know how your opponent punches like that. Unfortunately, in practice, this just results in you actively not killing your opponents. You end up standing around as they are wailing on you while try to block/dodge/parry all their moves; grinding out all the moves before you move along. There is a risk/reward system at play here wherein all the learning you've done during a fight won't be saved until you kill the opponent and exit combat, but there is a lot of moves to learn from random grunts in the world and these don’t really pose a threat once you’ve got a handle on the game. This system gets even worse when you're trying to discover sword specific moves because swords are rare, and by the time you find someone wielding one, they are normally a very strong opponent and you can't afford to grind out these moves because you won’t survive unless you actively damage them.

That's pretty much the entire game. Fight, learn moves, earn gear, equip said moves and gear, repeat. Thankfully that's not as bad as it sounds because hey, it's a fighting game. You came here to fight. So why am I so disappointed in it? Well before I get to the big one, let me just rattle off a few smaller impressions the game left on me: ●       Falling off ledges is far too easy. Admittedly this is a designed mechanic; forcing someone up to a ledge and just pushing them off with attacks is a legitimate way to win a fight but it still felt like it was far too easy to just slip off. Even with nobody attacking you as you’re navigating the environment, one foot off the path might mean falling and most of the time falling is death, because when it's not instant, the insane fall damage will ensure you lose the fight that you just dropped into.

●       The environment is not easy to find your way around. The “map” you're given is essentially 3 circles, and you don't know where you are unless you sit at a bonfire an energy shard thingy or kill a boss as these are the only 2 markers on the map. Many times, vital paths that you NEED to go down are not highlighted or made evident in any way and are sometimes, out-rightly obscured. As a result of this, I completely missed an entire area of the game for a long period of time simply because I couldn’t find the path AND I thought I had already entered that area of the map… There's a time and a place to do-away with the hand holding evident in modern game design but this is too far the other way.

●       Maybe why the environment is so convoluted is to try to hammer in this sense of mystery that the game is so stubbornly trying to instil. The game makes a point of telling you NOTHING about where you are, who you are, what you're doing or why. Thankfully it does tell you what to do (fight people and open a door). It just comes across as entitled. There IS an interesting world here but by the end of the game, nothing is explained at all. Who am I? Why did I teleport when I put on this mask? Why do I need to kill these people? Did I travel through time? Who is this chick with a sword? Who were the people who were here before? The game makes a point in referring to the tesseract-looking particle effect that happens as you kill others, get killed yourself or even unsheathing your sword as “folding” which seems really cool! To sum up my feelings on the aesthetics and lore of the game, I have two words. Obnoxiously Mysterious

Finally, the big one. The game ends. It just ends. No big finish, no special reveal, no closure. Nothing. If you remember before, I mentioned the map being 3 circles? That's it. That's the whole game. I have FOUR HOURS in Absolver, and it's finished. The entire story-mode. That's a third of the I spent in DMC and less than a 10th of the time I spent in Sekiro. Now sure, those are AAA titles with massive budgets behind them, but I cannot help but feel starved of content, especially since the story does not wrap itself up. The game starts with you and a bunch of other initiates standing in an arctic wind before you are chosen, you don a mask and teleport to another world. You then traverse through 12 named areas (3 of which contain nothing) fighting 11 different bosses. There are probably below 50 enemies to fight in the entire game. And then you're done. After fighting the somehow important Risryn, you're teleported back to the place you started with, you graduate from being a “prospect” to become an “Absolver”, you get a neat cape and you get told, “Idk, wait around and grind a bit I guess?” before it teleports you back to the “hub”. To put this in perspective, if the game had 3 times as much content as it currently does, I would still probably call the game short. I have no idea why (besides development problems) the game ended when it felt like Act 2 should have begun.

The game tries to justify this by placing a big emphasis on PVP. There is a system to look up other players and have a tussle and the game is always online so you might find people in the world and decide to start smacking one another but if the game is dead (like it was when I got to it) then all the PVP is non-existent. That's not even mentioning the players who don't WANT to fight other people. As far as I can tell the “latest” addition to the game included the “downfall” mode. This mode (only available after you have graduated to be an absolver) is randomly generated rooms of goons to fight endlessly. The lore explanation for this area only adds questions to the already tall pile of unanswered ones. The game allows you to fight bosses again at a harder difficulty, but this is locked behind PVP progress…meaning that if you weren’t able to find a game like myself, then you just can’t

I hate having to be so negative. Other indie games cater themselves to a casual market and can have all the depth of a puddle and still receive high ratings but because the devs took on such a loved genre, all the depth they have added only makes people want more. I mean really, if my biggest complaint about the game is that I wanted more, there's got to be something good about it. In shooting for the stars, the devs came up short, but the time, skill and effort they put into trying to get there far exceeds a lot of other developers. I can say that the game was bug free and (until it ended) felt close to a AAA title and the sad thing is that it starts to get judged by those harsh standards. For a AAA title, this would be an insult; But for a fighting game? This is a worthwhile experiment; for an indie game? This is one heck of an accomplishment and for your time? This is worth it.

Overall, I'd look to pay $15 to $25 for Absolver, despite its $42 default price tag. It depends on how much you love the third person fighter genre; how much you enjoy PVP (and if you're lucky enough to be in a locale with players online) and how much you want to support the studio. If you can make a trio of yourselves, maybe you can get some mileage out of the co-op enabled Downfall mode, but I wouldn't want to pay much more for that.

[gdelgiproducer]

What’s been your favorite staged version of JCS? (Non-concert)

First, a list of the staged (non-concert) versions of JCS I’ve seen: two high school productions (about which you’ll hear nothing in this post; it’s unfair to judge them in competition with pros), the closing performance of the 2000 Broadway revival, two performances of the national tour that followed said revival (one of which featured Carl Anderson as Judas and Barry Dennen – Pilate on the original album, Broadway, and in the 1973 film – as Herod), and four performances of a national tour initially billed as Ted Neeley’s “farewell” engagement in the role of Jesus. In total, discounting the number of performances of each, five productions, only three of which we will consider here.

The 2000 Broadway revival had basically all the problems of the video of the same production: I’m sure Gale Edwards is a fine director of other shows, but she missed the boat with this particular iteration of JCS. (Not having seen her original production at the Lyceum Theatre in 1996, which unfortunately never left that venue and was reportedly far better than the one that went wide, I can only comment on this version.) Her direction and the production design that accompanied it were full of the kinds of blatant, offensively obvious attempts at symbolism and subtlety that appeal only to pseudo-intellectual theater kids. In real life, there’s no such thing as obvious good vs. obvious evil (things just ain’t black and white, people), and any attempt to portray this concept on stage or in a film usually results in a hokey “comic book” product, which is kind of what the 2000 production was. 

The first thing Edwards did was draw her line in the sand. “These are the good guys, and these are the bad guys.” The overall production design played into this ‘line in the sand’ feel as well, being so plain in its intentions as to almost beat you over the head with them. There may have been some good concepts mixed in, but for a show that runs on moral ambiguity, they were very poorly executed and did damage to the piece. Some examples:

Annas and Caiaphas were devoutly “evil,” seemingly designed to inspire fear.  It’s easy to see good as so very good, and bad as so very bad; to want to have the evil in a nice little box. But it’s not that simple. As Captain Jean-Luc Picard (and now you know where my Star Trek loyalties lie, curse you!) once said, “…villains who twirl their mustaches are easy to spot. Those that clothe themselves in good deeds are well camouflaged.”  Evil isn’t always a clear and recognizable stereotype. Evil could be lurking inside anyone, maybe even in you, and you would never know. People aren’t inherently evil. Like good, it’s a role they grow and live into. And since history is basically a story of the developments and actions of humans over the ages, maybe it’s a mistake to view the characters who’ve played their parts in it so one-dimensionally. It doesn’t dismiss the evil they did, but it does allow one to understand that this potential to be good or to be evil is in everyone, and that it’s not always as simple as just doing the right thing.

Judas was an almost thoroughly unlikable prick (though Tony Vincent played him a tiny bit more sympathetically than Jerome Pradon in the video); in beating Jesus over the head with his cynicism and curt remarks, any sense of a fully three dimensional person was lost, leaving us with a total, utter dickhead. If the audience is to truly feel for Judas, and appreciate his fall, it’s imperative for them to see his positive relationship with Jesus. More importantly, it has to be readily apparent. It shouldn’t be the audience’s responsibility to assume as much. I never once saw any love, or even a hint of friendship, between Jesus and Judas in the 2000 production. Judas’ interactions with Jesus were a constant barrage of either completely in-your-face aggression, or more restrained (but still fully palpable) aggression. No hint of a conflict in him, or at least none the audience could see, and what use is a conflict or emotion if the audience isn’t privy to it?

And when not telegraphing an ultra-specific view of the story’s events, everything else about the design would’ve left a first-time viewer befogged. Young me liked the industrial, post-apocalyptic, pseudo-Gotham City atmosphere of the set. Older me still likes it (though I am firm in my opinion it works best on stage), but realizes what a mess the rest of it was. We’ve got Jesus and the apostles straight out of Rent, Roman guards that looked (with the choice of riot gear) like an army of Darth Vader clones with nightsticks substituting for light sabers, priests that practically stepped off the screen from The Matrix, a Pilate in generic neo-Nazi regalia, a Herod with showgirls and chorus boys that seemed to have visited from a flash-and-trash third-rate Vegas spectacular, a Temple full of ethnic stereotypes and a mish-mosh of dime-store criminals, and a creepy mob with a striking resemblance to The Addams Family that only popped up in the show’s darker moments. Lots of interesting ideas which might work (operative word being “might”) decently in productions of their own, all tossed in to spice up a rather bland soup. The solution to having a bunch of conflicting ideas is not to throw all of them at the wall at once; you look for a pattern to present itself, and follow it. If no pattern emerges from the ideas you have, it’s a sign you should start over.

You can see what my basic issue was: where other productions at least explored motivation, examining possibilities and presenting conflicting viewpoints for consideration, the 2000 production (when not utterly confused in its storytelling thanks to conflicting design) blatantly stated what it thought the motivation was without any room for interpretation – this is who they are, what they did, why they did it, so switch off your brain and accept what we put in front of you. Which, to me, is the total opposite of what JCS is about; it didn’t get famous for espousing that view, but for going totally against the grain of that.

The national tour at least had Carl and Barry to recommend for it the first time around, but for all the mistakes it corrected about the 2000 revival (swapping out the shady market in the Temple for a scene where stockbrokers worshiped the almighty dollar, with an electronic ticker broadcasting then-topical references to Enron, ImClone, and Viagra, among others, was a fun twist, and, for me, Barry Dennen gave the definitive performance of Herod), it introduced some confusing new ones as well:

For one, Carl – and, later, his replacement, Lawrence Clayton – looked twice the age of the other actors onstage. Granted, Christ was only 33 when this happened, but next to both Carl and Clayton, Eric Kunze (I thankfully never caught his predecessor) looked almost like a teenager. When Ted and Carl did the show in the Nineties and both were in their fifties, they were past the correct ages for their characters, but it worked – in addition to their being terrific performers and friends in real life whose chemistry was reflected onstage – because they were around the same age, so it wasn’t so glaring. Without that dynamic, the way Jesus and Judas looked together just seemed weird, and it didn’t help anyone accept their relationship.

Speaking of looking weird together, the performer playing Caiaphas – who was bald, and so unfortunately resembled a member of the Blue Man Group thanks to the color of lighting frequently focused on the priests – was enormously big and tall, while the actor in the role of Annas was extremely short. Basically, Big Guy, Little Guy in action. Every time I saw them onstage, I had to stifle the urge to laugh out loud. I’ve written a great deal about how Caiaphas and Annas are not (supposed to be) the show’s villains, but that’s still not the reaction I should have to them.

The relentlessness of pace was ridiculous. It was so fast that the show, which started at 1:40 PM, was down by 3:30 PM – and that included a 20-minute intermission. What time does that leave for any moments to be taken at all? A scene barely even ended before the next began. At the end of the Temple scene, Jesus threw all the lepers out, rolled over, and there was Mary singing the “Everything’s Alright” reprise already. How about a second to breathe for Mary to get there? Nope. How about giving Judas and Jesus two seconds’ break in the betrayal scene at Gethsemane? The guards were already grabbing Christ the minute he was kissed. I was so absolutely exhausted towards the end of the show that I was tempted to holler at the stage to please slow down for a minute. The pace didn’t allow for any moment in the show to be completed, if it was ever begun; it was just too fast to really take advantage of subtle touches and moments the actors could’ve had, and as a result, I think they were unable to build even a general emotional connection, because one certainly didn’t come across.

The cast was uniformly talented singing-wise, with excellent ranges and very accomplished voices. (In fact, the second time around, the woman understudying Mary, Darlesia Cearcy, walked away with the whole show in my opinion, and I am incredibly glad to have seen her career take off since then.) But, in addition to some being more concerned with singing the notes on the page just because they were there than imbuing them with emotion and motivation, the cast was undercut by the choices that production made with the music. For one, there’s a huge difference between singing “words and notes” and singing “lyrics and phrases.” When you have a phrase like “Ah, gentlemen, you know why we are here / We’ve not much time, and quite a problem here…” you sing the sentence, and if sometimes a word needs to be spoken, you do that. You don’t make sure you hit every single note by treating each like a “money note” (which you hit and hold as long as you can to make sure everyone hears it), dragging out the tempo to hang on to each note as long as you can. Generally, the actors were so busy making sure every note was sung – and worse, sung like a money note – that they missed the point of singing a phrase, and how to use one to their advantage. Caiaphas and Pilate were particularly egregious offenders. (I’ve never understood some of these conductors who are so concerned that every note written has to be sung. The result suffers from it.) 

And then there’s Ted’s production. Of the three, it’s the one I liked the most, but that’s not saying much when it was better by default. 

The production design was stripped-down, the set basically limited to a bridge, some steps, a stage deck with some levels, and a couple of drops (and a noose) that were “flown in.” The costumes were simple, the sound was very well-balanced, and the lighting was the icing on the cake. Combined, the story they told was clear.

The music sounded very full, considering the pit consisted of a five-piece band relying in part on orchestral samples.

Ted, for being of advanced age, was in terrific form vocally, if his acting fell back a little much on huge, obvious, emotive gestures and choices. (I love him and all, but his attempts at acting were kind of like a “Mr. Jesus” pageant, striking all the appropriate Renaissance poses. The film, through editing and close-ups, allows him a subtlety he just ain’t got onstage.)

And there were some beautiful stage pictures; for example, there was a drop with an image of a coin with Caesar’s head on it in the Temple scene, and it fell on the crowd when Jesus cleared out the riff-raff. In the leper sequence that followed, the chorus’ heads popped out of holes in the cloth, under which they undulated, pulsing to the beat, and rather than being treated as a literal mob scene, the sequence had a very dream-like effect, a mass of lost souls reaching out to Christ. It was rather like a Blake painting, with a creepy vibe in a different manner from the typical “physically overwhelm him” approach. He didn’t interact with them, didn’t even turn to look at them, until finally he whipped around with a banishing thrust of his arm, hollering “Heal yourselves!” Sometimes it was over-acted with annoying character voices (remember, I saw this four times), but when it wasn’t, the effect was chilling.

My main beef with the show was, oddly enough, on a similar line to my beef with Gale Edwards’ production: it drew lines in the sand. But in this case, it drew them with respect to Jesus’ divinity. 

As written, JCS deals with Jesus as if he were only a man, and not the Son of God. The show never suggests that Jesus isn’t divine, but neither does it reinforce the view that he is. Portrayed in detail in JCS is the mostly-unexplored human side: ecstasy and depression, trial and error, success and regret. He agonizes over his fate, is often unsure of his divinity, and rails at God. Not so in this production. Aside from “The Temple” and “Gethsemane,” there was never any room for doubt that Jesus was the mystical, magic man portrayed in the Gospels.

At the top of the show, after a fight between his followers and the Romans during the overture (a popular staging choice I’m not a real fan of, but you’ve got to do something during that moment in a fully staged version, and I understand why it’s an easy choice to make for exposition purposes), Jesus made his majestic entrance, spotlit in robes that looked whiter than Clorox bleach could produce, and raised a man from the dead. Well, where’s the room for Judas to doubt? Clearly “this talk of God is true,” we just saw it! If this guy is actually capable of performing miracles, and more than that specializes in necromancy, good luck telling him that fame has gone to his head at the expense of the message and he’s losing sight of the consequences! Try explaining to anyone that that person is “just a man”!

If that weren’t enough, Jesus went on to have a constant connection with God throughout the show, speaking to a spotlight that focused only on him and often served to distract him from anything else happening onstage, and at the end, during “John 19:41,” his body separated from the cross, which fell back into the stage, and he ascended to heaven. 

Now, though the former was admittedly played to excess (some reviewers unkindly compared Neeley to a homeless man with Bluetooth), there are arguments to be made in favor of both of these choices: a Jesus who constantly seeks a connection with God that isn’t reciprocated, searching for guidance or at least a friggin’ clue, is great foreshadowing for his eruption – and acceptance – in “Gethsemane.” As for the ascension, depending on how it’s staged, there’s room for argument that it could be interpreted more metaphorically than literally, as the moment when Jesus’ spirit is born, as Carl Anderson once put it (meaning, to me, that his message is given life and strength when his body fails him). But this production didn’t have that level of shading and layers to it, and coupled with the resurrection at the start, it defeated the rest of the story.

None of ‘em’s perfect, and I don’t think I could create the perfect one. Thus, concert.

[euteh]

How long have you been using your current smartphone? The answer for an increasing number of consumers is years, plural. After all, why upgrade every year when next year’s model is almost exactly the same as the device you’re holding in your hand?

Dutch social enterprise Fairphone sees this as an opportunity to sell sustainability. A chance to turn a conversation about ‘stalled smartphone innovation’ on its head by encouraging consumers to think more critically about the costs involved in pumping out the next shiny thing. And sell them on the savings — individual and collective — of holding their staple gadget steady.

Its latest smartphone, the Fairphone 3 — just released this week in Europe — represents the startup’s best chance yet of shrinking the convenience gap between the next hotly anticipated touchscreen gizmo and a fairer proposition that requires an altogether cooler head to appreciate.

On the surface Fairphone 3 looks like a fairly standard, if slightly thick (1cm), Android smartphone. But that’s essentially the point. This 4G phone could be your smartphone, is the intended message.

Specs wise, you’re getting mostly middling, rather than stand out stuff. There’s a 5.7in full HD display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 632 chipset, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage (expandable via microSD), a 12MP rear lens and 8MP front-facing camera. There’s also NFC on board, a fingerprint reader, dual nano-SIM slots and a 3,000mAh battery that can be removed for easy replacement when it wears out.

There’s also a 3.5mm headphone jack: The handy port that’s being erased at the premium smartphone tier,  killing off a bunch of wired accessories with it. So ‘slow replacement’ smartphone hardware demonstrably encourages less waste across the gadget ecosystem too.

But the real difference lies under the surface. Fairer here means supply chain innovation to source conflict-free minerals that go into making the devices; social incentive programs that top up the minimum wages of assembly workers who put the phones together; and repairable, modular handset design that’s intended to reduce environmental impact by supporting a longer lifespan. Repair, don’t replace is the mantra.

All the extra effort that goes into making a smartphone less ethically challenging to own is of course invisible to the naked eye. So the Fairphone 3 buyer largely has to take the company’s word on trust.

The only visual evidence is repairability. Flip the phone over and a semi-opaque plastic backing gives a glimpse of modular guts. A tiny screwdriver included in the box allows you take the phone to pieces so you can swap out individual modules (such as the display) in case they break or fail. Fairphone sells replacements via a spare parts section of its website.

Despite this radically modular and novel design vs today’s hermetically sealed premium mobiles the Fairphone 3 feels extremely solid to hold.

It’s not designed to pop apart easily. Indeed, there’s a full thirteen screws holding the display module in place. Deconstruction takes work (and care not to lose any of the teeny screws). So this is modularity purely as occasional utility, not flashy party trick — as with Google’s doomed Ara Project.

For some that might be disappointing. Exactly because this modular phone feels so, well, boringly normal.

Visually the most stand out feature at a glance is the Fairphone logo picked out in metallic white lettering on the back. Those taking a second look will also spot a moralizing memo printed on the battery so it’s legible through the matte plastic — which reads: “Change is in your hands”. It may be a bit cringeworthy but if you’ve paid for an ethical premium you might as well flaunt it.

It’s fair to say design fans won’t be going wild over the Fairphone 3. But it feels almost intentionally dull. As if — in addition to shrinking manufacturing costs — the point is to impress on buyers that ethical internals are more than enough of a hipster fashion statement.

It’s also true that most smartphones are now much the same, hardware, features and performance wise. So — at this higher mid-tier price-point (€450/~$500) — why not flip the consumer smartphone sales pitch on its head to make it about shrinking rather than maximizing impact, via a dull but worthy standard?

That then pushes people to ask how sustainable is an expensive but valueless — and so, philosophically speaking, pointless — premium? That’s the question Fairphone 3 seems designed to pose.

Or, to put it another way, if normal can be ethical then shouldn’t ethical electronics be the norm?

Normal is what you get elsewhere with Fairphone 3. Purely judged as a smartphone its performance isn’t anything to write home about. It checks all the usual boxes of messaging, photos, apps and Internet browsing. You can say it gets the job done.

Sure, it’s not buttery smooth at every screen and app transition. And it can feel a little slow on the uptake at times. Notably the camera, while fairly responsive, isn’t lightning quick. Photo quality is not terrible — but not amazing either.

Testing the camera I found images prone to high acutance and over saturated colors. The software also struggles to handle mixed light and shade — meaning you may get a darker and less balanced shot that you hoped for. Low light performance isn’t great either.

That said, in good light the Fairphone 3 can take a perfectly acceptable selfie. Which is what most people will expect to be able to use the phone for.

Fairphone has said it’s done a lot of work to improve the camera vs the predecessor model. And it has succeeded in bringing photo performance up to workable standard — which is a great achievement at what’s also a slightly reduced handset price-point. Though, naturally, there’s still a big gap in photo quality vs the premium end of the smartphone market.

On the OS front, the phone runs a vanilla implementation of Android 9 out of the box — preloaded with the usual bundle of Google services and no added clutter so Android fans should feel right at home. (For those who want a Google-free alternative Fairphone says a future update will allow users to do a wipe and clean install of Android Open Source Project.)

In short, purely as a smartphone, the Fairphone 3 offers very little to shout about — so no screaming lack either. Again, if the point is to shrink the size of the compromise Fairphone is asking consumers to make in order to buy an ethically superior brand of electronics they are slowly succeeding in closing the gap.

It’s a project that’s clearly benefiting from the maturity of the smartphone market. While, on the cellular front, the transformative claims being made for 5G are clearly many years out — so there’s no issue with asking buyers to stick with a 4G phone for years to come.

Given where the market has now marched to, a ‘fairer’ smartphone that offers benchmark basics at a perfectly acceptable median but with the promise of reduced costs over the longer term — individual, societal and environmental — does seem like a proposition that could expand from what has so far been an exceptional niche into something rather larger and more mainstream.

Zooming out for a second, the Fairphone certainly makes an interesting contrast with some of the expensive chimeras struggling to be unfolded at the top end of the smartphone market right now.

Foldables like the Samsung Galaxy Fold — which clocks in at around 4x the price of a Fairphone and offers ~2x the screen real estate (when unfolded), plus a power bump. Whether the Fold’s lux package translates into mobile utility squared is a whole other question, though.

And where foldables will need to demonstrate a compelling use-case that goes above and beyond the Swiss Army utility of a normal smartphone to justify such a whopping price bump, Fairphone need only prick the consumer conscience — as it asks you pay a bit more and settle for a little less.

Neither of these sales pitches is challenge free, of course. And, for now, both foldables and fairer electronics remain curious niches.

But with the Fairphone 3 demonstrating that ethical can feel so normal it doesn’t seem beyond the pale to imagine demand for electronics that are average in performance yet pack an ethical punch scaling up to challenge the mainstream parade of copycat gadgets.

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Fairphone 3 is a normal smartphone with ethical shine – TechCrunch How long have you been using your current smartphone? The answer for an increasing number of consumers is years, …

[nayanasri]

How long have you been using your current smartphone? The answer for an increasing number of consumers is years, plural. After all, why upgrade every year when next year’s model is almost exactly the same as the device you’re holding in your hand?

Dutch social enterprise Fairphone sees this as an opportunity to sell sustainability. A chance to turn a conversation about ‘stalled smartphone innovation’ on its head by encouraging consumers to think more critically about the costs involved in pumping out the next shiny thing. And sell them on the savings — individual and collective — of holding their staple gadget steady.

Its latest smartphone, the Fairphone 3 — just released this week in Europe — represents the startup’s best chance yet of shrinking the convenience gap between the next hotly anticipated touchscreen gizmo and a fairer proposition that requires an altogether cooler head to appreciate.

On the surface Fairphone 3 looks like a fairly standard, if slightly thick (1cm), Android smartphone. But that’s essentially the point. This 4G phone could be your smartphone, is the intended message.

Specs wise, you’re getting mostly middling, rather than stand out stuff. There’s a 5.7in full HD display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 632 chipset, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage (expandable via microSD), a 12MP rear lens and 8MP front-facing camera. There’s also NFC on board, a fingerprint reader, dual nano-SIM slots and a 3,000mAh battery that can be removed for easy replacement when it wears out.

There’s also a 3.5mm headphone jack: The handy port that’s being erased at the premium smartphone tier,  killing off a bunch of wired accessories with it. So ‘slow replacement’ smartphone hardware demonstrably encourages less waste across the gadget ecosystem too.

But the real difference lies under the surface. Fairer here means supply chain innovation to source conflict-free minerals that go into making the devices; social incentive programs that top up the minimum wages of assembly workers who put the phones together; and repairable, modular handset design that’s intended to reduce environmental impact by supporting a longer lifespan. Repair, don’t replace is the mantra.

All the extra effort that goes into making a smartphone less ethically challenging to own is of course invisible to the naked eye. So the Fairphone 3 buyer largely has to take the company’s word on trust.

The only visual evidence is repairability. Flip the phone over and a semi-opaque plastic backing gives a glimpse of modular guts. A tiny screwdriver included in the box allows you take the phone to pieces so you can swap out individual modules (such as the display) in case they break or fail. Fairphone sells replacements via a spare parts section of its website.

Despite this radically modular and novel design vs today’s hermetically sealed premium mobiles the Fairphone 3 feels extremely solid to hold.

It’s not designed to pop apart easily. Indeed, there’s a full thirteen screws holding the display module in place. Deconstruction takes work (and care not to lose any of the teeny screws). So this is modularity purely as occasional utility, not flashy party trick — as with Google’s doomed Ara Project.

For some that might be disappointing. Exactly because this modular phone feels so, well, boringly normal.

Visually the most stand out feature at a glance is the Fairphone logo picked out in metallic white lettering on the back. Those taking a second look will also spot a moralizing memo printed on the battery so it’s legible through the matte plastic — which reads: “Change is in your hands”. It may be a bit cringeworthy but if you’ve paid for an ethical premium you might as well flaunt it.

It’s fair to say design fans won’t be going wild over the Fairphone 3. But it feels almost intentionally dull. As if — in addition to shrinking manufacturing costs — the point is to impress on buyers that ethical internals are more than enough of a hipster fashion statement.

It’s also true that most smartphones are now much the same, hardware, features and performance wise. So — at this higher mid-tier price-point (€450/~$ 500) — why not flip the consumer smartphone sales pitch on its head to make it about shrinking rather than maximizing impact, via a dull but worthy standard?

That then pushes people to ask how sustainable is an expensive but valueless — and so, philosophically speaking, pointless — premium? That’s the question Fairphone 3 seems designed to pose.

Or, to put it another way, if normal can be ethical then shouldn’t ethical electronics be the norm?

Normal is what you get elsewhere with Fairphone 3. Purely judged as a smartphone its performance isn’t anything to write home about. It checks all the usual boxes of messaging, photos, apps and Internet browsing. You can say it gets the job done.

Sure, it’s not buttery smooth at every screen and app transition. And it can feel a little slow on the uptake at times. Notably the camera, while fairly responsive, isn’t lightning quick. Photo quality is not terrible — but not amazing either.

Testing the camera I found images prone to high acutance and over saturated colors. The software also struggles to handle mixed light and shade — meaning you may get a darker and less balanced shot that you hoped for. Low light performance isn’t great either.

That said, in good light the Fairphone 3 can take a perfectly acceptable selfie. Which is what most people will expect to be able to use the phone for.

Fairphone has said it’s done a lot of work to improve the camera vs the predecessor model. And it has succeeded in bringing photo performance up to workable standard — which is a great achievement at what’s also a slightly reduced handset price-point. Though, naturally, there’s still a big gap in photo quality vs the premium end of the smartphone market.

On the OS front, the phone runs a vanilla implementation of Android 9 out of the box — preloaded with the usual bundle of Google services and no added clutter so Android fans should feel right at home. (For those who want a Google-free alternative Fairphone says a future update will allow users to do a wipe and clean install of Android Open Source Project.)

In short, purely as a smartphone, the Fairphone 3 offers very little to shout about — so no screaming lack either. Again, if the point is to shrink the size of the compromise Fairphone is asking consumers to make in order to buy an ethically superior brand of electronics they are slowly succeeding in closing the gap.

It’s a project that’s clearly benefiting from the maturity of the smartphone market. While, on the cellular front, the transformative claims being made for 5G are clearly many years out — so there’s no issue with asking buyers to stick with a 4G phone for years to come.

Given where the market has now marched to, a ‘fairer’ smartphone that offers benchmark basics at a perfectly acceptable median but with the promise of reduced costs over the longer term — individual, societal and environmental — does seem like a proposition that could expand from what has so far been an exceptional niche into something rather larger and more mainstream.

Zooming out for a second, the Fairphone certainly makes an interesting contrast with some of the expensive chimeras struggling to be unfolded at the top end of the smartphone market right now.

Foldables like the Samsung Galaxy Fold — which clocks in at around 4x the price of a Fairphone and offers ~2x the screen real estate (when unfolded), plus a power bump. Whether the Fold’s lux package translates into mobile utility squared is a whole other question, though.

And where foldables will need to demonstrate a compelling use-case that goes above and beyond the Swiss Army utility of a normal smartphone to justify such a whopping price bump, Fairphone need only prick the consumer conscience — as it asks you pay a bit more and settle for a little less.

Neither of these sales pitches is challenge free, of course. And, for now, both foldables and fairer electronics remain curious niches.

But with the Fairphone 3 demonstrating that ethical can feel so normal it doesn’t seem beyond the pale to imagine demand for electronics that are average in performance yet pack an ethical punch scaling up to challenge the mainstream parade of copycat gadgets.

Android – TechCrunch

Fairphone 3 is a normal smartphone with ethical shine How long have you been using your current smartphone? The answer for an increasing number of consumers is years, …

[j-richmond]

Thoughts on the Anthem demo:

Since I had to take a day off anyway I decided to try out Anthem. Its a 3rd person adventure shooter by Bioware. I had gotten excited about it last year because it looks a lot like both The Division (game play wise) and Destiny (world design wise), both of which I loved. I spent the day playing the demo with my brother Nick and our friend Gabe (who I also played The Division and Monster Hunter World with). They both seemed to like it quite a bit, but I had very mixed feelings...

Good: Anthem takes place in what appears to be a very large open world. Its interesting looking, with lots of space to explore. I love exploring science fiction spaces, and flying around checking out caves and weird alien architecture was fun.

Bad: There's not a ton of stuff in the world. Its hard to tell since this is just a demo, but Anthem's neat world seems to be mostly empty. Theres not a lot of reason to stop and look around. Even the neat features like the ruins of small communities, giant alien structures, huge waterfalls, etc, are mostly just decorative. There doesn't seem to be much to do. There are a scattering of enemies, but not much reason to stop and shoot them.

- Good: Anthem has a setting kind of similar to Destiny, as far as I can tell. You're the last humans in the last human stronghold, trying to protect your way of life and keep your society and technology alive in a very hostile world. Thats not super original, but destiny had a visual style that I liked a lot,and Anthem's visual style, especially for its hub city and its NPC inhabitants seems to be a direct copy. Which is just fine with me!

- Bad: There's no character creation,and you never see your character. The game asks you to select a masculine or feminine voice, and then starts you off in the hub city with no other customization. Anthem is a multiplayer game, but like Monster Hunter World and The Division your hub is an instanced area available just to you, so no other players will ever see you there. While in the hub you're stuck in first person mode, so you never get to see what you look like. This is incredibly frustrating to me.It immediately killed my immersion. Instead of feeling like i was an inhabitant of this interesting world I felt like I was just me playing a video game. In Destiny, monster Hunter World and The Division I felt like I was directly involved in those worlds through my character. Here it felt more like i was going on a theme park ride. Weirdly, as soon as you put on your futuristic Iron Man style armor suit and leave the hub city the rest of the game is played in 3rd person. So you can see your armor, and so can everyone else. And while you can customize your armor a fair amount, this feels less like having a unique character and more like having a fancy cell phone case.

Good: You can fly. Anthem is a big place, and the main way you get around is by flying in your Iron Man style armor. And the terrain of the game really encourages that. You'll fly through underground tunnels, over vast waterfalls, in and out of ravines. Theres a lot of chaotic vertical terrain to explore by flying. Bad: Unfortunately flying sucks. once you're actually in the air the flying controls are okay. They're a little clunky,a nd don't feel super responsive, but they're okay. Unfortunately, getting in the air is awkward. You can't just take off like superman. you need to actually be in the air before you can activate your jets, which means jumping up and taking off, or falling off something and taking off. Its the "taking off" action thats the problem. Hitting the button sends you into a kind of twist animation that sends your thrusting forward toward wherever your camera is pointing. The action can be disorienting, especially since your character isn't always facing the direction your camera is pointing. As a result, you often start your flight going slightly the wrong way, or even crashing into a wall or object (which can send you falling back down to the ground, sometimes hundreds of feet). The move gets easier to do with practice, but after hours it still felt awkward to me.

The bigger problem is that  you can only fly for about 10 seconds at a time. Flying is both the main way you get around the game and one of the game's main mechanics. You're meant to be flying  and hovering in battle often. But flying has a resource gauge (a  heat gauge) and it only takes about 10 seconds to overheat. Which means flights tend to be short and stressful, and using flying to explore the world, or even just enjoying flying for its own sake, is really limited. You can extend your fly time by cooling down your engines by flying through waterfalls or skimming rivers, but that mostly requires hugging the ground, and that kind of defeats the point?

Good: Missions are fun. Missions in Destiny and The Division tended to be short and mostly revolved around going to a place and killing a guy or flipping a switch.The 3 missions in Anthem are all more involved than that, and while none of them are super complicated all involve multiple locations, lots of different enemies and a boss fight. For this type of game they're satisfying. The game also has some public events in its freeplay exploration mode which seem fun. In one I was blowing up supply tents in an enemy camp while waves of enemies tried to take me down. In another i was collection alien tech while a giant monster chased me through a swamp. I wouldn't say these were more compelling than Destiny or The Divvisin's public events (and nowhere near as fun as coming across a random monster in Monster Hunter World), but they were enjoyable and I can see myself stopping to participate in them over and over. The demo's one Strike/Dungeon was also pretty enjoyable.

Bad: Missions do a very bad job of actually telling you the mission mechanics. Each of the three missions and dungeon had a puzzle mechanic, but I missed the explanation for all of them. Partially this was because the game just says "collect the thing", but doesn't tell you what the thing looks like or where it is. It took me forever to figure out the tiny glowing ball (hidden amidst the explosions, power effects, glowing plants, acid baths, strobe lights, exploding insects, grenade blasts, etc) was the item we were supposed to collect.In another puzzle I totally missed that there was a puzzle at all, and thought the game had just glitched and wasn't opening a door. My second time through the dungeon, after having nick explain the puzzle mechanic to me, I watched the poor random 4th player who had joined our party run around the puzzle room in confusion looking for the item, because he didnt realize that the very unobtrusive and hard to notice pouch that had appeared on his character WAS the item. unfortunately all we could do was  watch, since he didn't have  a microphone connected. 

Good: In addition to being able to equip 2 guns, each of the 4 types of armored suits has a selection of built in options hat allow you to attack, defend or support other players. These can be swapped out or upgraded too, which gives you some fun choices.  I started out with two different throwing weapon attacks, but eventually upgraded to a mine launcher and an acid spray. There seems to be lots of options. Lots of guns too.

Bad: However, gun play sucks. Maybe its just because I've played Destiny for so long, but gun play in Anthem is stiff ad unresponsive. The guns are also just not very fun to use. Theres several types of guns, but they all kind of feel the same and none of them seem very effective.  Thankfully you don't have to rely on just your guns, since the suit abilities are much more powerful. But shooting is a BIG part of the game, an the guns and gun play are just lackluster. The guns themselves may get more interesting as the game goes on, but I'm not sure gun play will at all.

So I'm undecided on the game. This is just a demo, and the game itself could end up being a lot better. But I was pretty excited about this game, and now a lot of my enthusiasm has died. In fact, more than anything its just made me want to go back to playing Monster Hunter World. I'll wait for the game to be released and see what people have to say before I decide for sure.