#I do like the inconsistency of the first map. that is actually something older but that I re-found and added to my Game Reference stuff

[icewindandboringhorror]

Recent game related things .. hrmm...

[brionysea]

possessiongate: explained

i've been vague posting about this for a while, but after mapping everything out i think it's time for a full analysis of stranger things 4 and what's going on with mike wheeler in it

i think vecna is in mike's head. i think mike is being possessed by vecna at certain points in the season, which is why he's suddenly so weird and inconsistent about a lot of things

@dinitride-art’s post on the visuals of mike’s monologue sent me down this rabbit hole, and since going through everything for this explanation with that in mind, i'm now extremely convinced that this is intentional

i’m going to follow mike through the entire season to explain what he's thinking, what's going on in his head in general, and why it's not what the show wants us to think

very lengthy explanation under the cut!

we start in hawkins, with el's letter. it's the first thing we see. the camera only secondarily pans up to mike. then nancy suddenly barges in, seems to snap him out of something, and we immediately get the question "what the hell are you doing?", which mike never actually provides an answer to

in the second shot we get of mike, the sign above his bed is only partially visible. it reads “one w”

one -> vecna

w -> wheeler

there's an almost immediate connection, and it has something to do with el because her letter is still in frame until mike throws it away. vecna intends to use mike against el

when we get a wider view of the room, it's a complete mess. last time we saw mike's room it was immaculate. we can see daylight coming through the window in the mirror ("one way" mirror -> one is watching him without his knowledge) but his lamp is still on, implying he's been up all night

there are a lot of time references surrounding mike in this opening sequence. time -> clocks -> vecna

mike's issue with sleeping (which is later revealed as a sign that vecna is in your head) gets a bit closer to noticeable when he starts to say something that's probably along the lines of him going to bed early not mattering because he won't be able to sleep anyway, but he doesn't get the chance to finish what he wants to say. this happens a lot this season

karen: you need to go to bed early tonight. mike: why? ted: it's a 6:30 flight, michael. mike: yeah, i know, but— karen: no buts. 9 or no california. ted: and no sweetie pie.

they're already hiding mike's thoughts from us. even when we’re seeing things from his point of view, for one reason or another, we’re not allowed to know what he’s thinking despite him actively trying to tell us

ted’s comment brings up el again, further connecting her to the time references and mike’s concerning behaviour

mike is immediately not okay for some reason, from his very first scene, but it’s not in our face like max. it’s hidden. nancy doesn’t comment on the state of his room even though this isn’t normal for him. his parents kind of seem to assume that him trying to brush off his need for sleep is just him being a stubborn teenager. his grades having slipped is told to us through a joke while the same thing with max is pointed out as not normal and a sign that something’s wrong. the characters haven’t noticed, and a good majority of the audience won’t notice either unless they go looking for it. it’s all there, but it's hidden in plain sight

for this first day, mike is 100% mike. this is establishing who he is now, without any active supernatural interference. mike is over the forced conforming of last summer, mike doesn’t care about being popular, mike doesn’t care about girls laughing at him, mike is embracing his love of dungeons and dragons again, mike is shamelessly sending heart eyes the way of the cool older guy who likes dnd and rock music and shows him it’s okay to be different. this is setting up the contrast for when he starts acting like a completely different person later

because of an outside influence in the shape of eddie, mike does a few uncharacteristic things. he ditches lucas and lets someone else lead, instead of leading by example like he usually does and just telling dustin that they’re going to the basketball game anyway. he did fight for lucas in the first place, being the only one who could just say that they needed to postpone, but he gets manipulated in a direction he doesn’t want to go. this really sets the stage for what’s going on with him this season

mike is having headaches. this is another sign of vecna being in his head. i think of it like a physical defence mechanism, a sign from your body that something’s wrong, similar to the nosebleeds since they both stem from the brain. which there’s also a very small hint of when mike does this very subtle sniffing thing while sitting outside with dustin like there’s something tickling his nose

there’s the beginning of mike not really knowing what’s going on

mike: screw what? [...] what? what? dustin, where are you going? [...] come on, just talk to me! tell me things! [...] what are you talking about?

this is new territory. mike usually knows everything for absolutely no reason. he's being removed from his leadership position as the dungeon master and his ability to understand the situation is being messed with. that functionally changes his role, and effectively disables him as a character so that the season can work and vecna can win

they neutralised jonathan so that he couldn't support will and el by making him a stoner. they (vecna) neutralised mike so that he couldn't support will and el by making his mind not his own anymore

during the campaign, an argument starts up. mike doesn't take part until dustin puts his ego on the backseat to ask what mike thinks, reminding us just how smart mike really is and the effect he has on people. especially since his advice works. mike, always being more inclined to fight than run, supports dustin's plan

mike: it's risky as hell. but you're the ones on the battlefield. so it's your call.

this sounds like mike giving advice that he wants to hear himself. specifics of the campaign aside, getting told that he's smart and capable and should trust his own judgement is a major turning point in his character later on

right around the time mike would be meeting his curfew (offscreen, because we're not allowed to see that either) and committing to visiting the byers, vecna moves in for the kill and chrissy dies

mike was supposed to visit the byers months earlier but he didn't for some reason, and them coming back to hawkins for christmas didn't work out either. it's easy to find a reason why, probably money, but mike had already gotten permission from karen at the end of season 3 and money isn't a problem for them. he could have just been doing his avoidance thing, or it could be a play on the pattern of him being late to things, but i'm curious if he subconsciously knew that something bad would happen if he left and held it off as long as he could. considering mike is already acting like someone else when he gets off the plane and his clothes, which he must have put on in hawkins, are used to indicate that, it's possible vecna took control in this offscreen blind spot and made him go. the fact that it took this long for that to happen really is a testament to mike's mental strength

now we’re in california! and mike immediately starts acting weird. he’s wearing sunglasses indoors, which is unnecessary and really stands out. i also get a vibe of implied dishonesty

mike: so i kinda did, like a 70/30 split, kinda thing.

70% vecna. 30% mike. this is absolutely an intentional slip from vecna, since we know he likes just telling people his plans and feeling smug about how clever he is when he still fools them

mike is very weird towards will, which is so unlike him that absolutely everyone picks up on it. mike got over his “ignoring will” issues near the end of season 3. he looked devastated and completely dead inside the day they left hawkins. there is no way that mike, fully in control of himself, would treat will this way after seeing him again for the first time in months

argyle: that's a rad shirt, man. ocean pacific? [...] oh no, no, no. no, it's a shitty knockoff. yeah. but don't worry, i'll get you the good threads out here.

mike shows up acting fake. the dialogue points out that his shirt is fake. and a bad fake, at that, but one that's convincing enough at first glance. you can connect the dots

then argyle brings up nancy and things get awkward, but like most of the romance this season (especially around mike), i think it's meant to distract us

argyle: yeah, this is kinda awkward, man. mike: yeah, so awkward. argyle: i mean, i really thought it was ocean pacific.

it comes right back to the shirt. right back to mike being a fake. one that tricks you unless you look hard enough

things aren’t awkward because of nancy. they’re awkward because this random person who vecna didn't even seem to account for, based on the initial weird look mike gives him that really reminds me of possessed will looking at bob, called out his ploy in two seconds flat without even realising it

vecna has mike play along with the perfect, happy, normal couple ideal that el is aiming for, while simultaneously ignoring will. inevitably it crashes and burns, which vecna was probably counting on, because he knows lies like this never last

mike and will fight. mike's side involves a hurt that's based in not knowing what's going on. he looks confused when will describes the day they both just lived through (this will not be the last time this happens) and tries to just... leave the conversation. because he doesn't know what to say. because he doesn't know what will's talking about. this whole day was mostly from will’s point of view and doesn’t even touch mike’s, so we don’t even know what, exactly, mike is confused about or what he thought was happening

but will doesn’t let him walk away

will: you're mad that i didn't talk to you? seems like you made it super clear that you're not interested in anything i have to say. mike: that's just not true. will: you called maybe a couple times. it's been a year, mike. meanwhile el has like a book of letters from you.

we know mike cares what will has to say. he cares a lot. all he does this season is listen to what will has to say

it also hasn’t been a year. it’s been six months, tops. but mike and will stick to this even when most other characters talk about it normally. the only real time period in the show that matches up with what they’re saying was between seasons 1 and 2. before will got possessed. before will and mike spent an entire season joined at the hip while mike provided emotional support against the possession. which is exactly what happens in season 4, just in reverse

one line near the end of the fight hints towards mike already knowing something's wrong, despite being pretty majorly influenced by vecna for the majority of the day

mike: why... why am i the bad guy?

if this is mike — which, considering it sounds like he has to fight to say it, i think it is — it's possible that he saw/found the double meaning in argyle's comment earlier. he glanced down at his shirt when he heard it and didn’t really know how to respond to it

we saw how mike dressed just one episode ago, one day ago, and it wasn't like this. the outfit is used as an indication that something's wrong with mike. the logic of the clothes being unlike him probably opened up the floodgates for his intuition, which we know doesn't have to make logical sense for him to trust it

i’m dead certain that el heard this fight. she heard angela's group perfectly when they were a similar distance away from her, and she has a habit of hearing mike whether he wants her to or not. she seems to have very good hearing in general, possibly because of the way she was born. el knowing this will pop up again later

vecna manipulates mike's reaction to el schmacking angela, which mike notably seems confused about later and can't coherently explain. this part was very, very obvious. even casual viewers picked up on this reaction not matching up with mike’s prior reactions to el dealing with bullies

because of this preoccupation with mike, vecna has to pretty much speedrun fred's visions as this big chunk that takes long enough for the sun to set because he didn't have time to spread them out over the day like he did with chrissy. there was one individual vision, but it was relatively brief and wouldn't have left mike to his own devices for too long

this was most likely happening during the period where everyone was standing around rinkomania, on the drive home, and spilling into the dinner scene, because mike's stormy, silent judgement and bitchy glares are the most in character thing he's done in california so far

the byers and guests have dinner. mike seems normal at first, although there is another hint of a nosebleed. he quickly realises that murray's hiding something and gets visibly suspicious about it, he's still unimpressed by jonathan and argyle's shenanigans, and he instinctively questions joyce's last minute business trip but keeps his thoughts to himself, probably because he doesn't fully understand the situation and also likes and respects the byers too much to start a scene at the dinner table when he's a guest in their home. we saw this behaviour during eddie's campaign, the choice to not involve himself unless called upon while a whole lot's going on around him. this is all mike

and then mike starts a scene at the dinner table when he's a guest in their home

vecna must have jumped back shortly after killing fred. something switches, and suddenly mike's not acting like mike anymore

he makes a totally uncalled for, passive aggressive comment that upsets el further in response to jonathan and argyle trying to make her feel better. that happened on the drive home too, and while mike rolled his eyes at them, that's because they were ridiculously high and acting like it. he didn't have a problem with them being nice to el ten minutes ago. it comes completely out of nowhere. there was no indication he was even that upset about the angela incident prior to this. if anything he was thinking about his fight with will

el visibly finds mike's comment confusing for a second before she leaves to beat herself up in her bedroom, making it the second time in one day she's thought mike was acting wrong. and she's right to think that. mike only ever makes comments like this to el or will in the heat of the moment because they get special treatment. a chill family dinner where mike was previously minding his own business is not equivalent to el throwing lucas through the air and knocking him unconscious

mike doesn't eat at dinner. he's shown playing with his food and will is shown noticing it. argyle must have too because of something that happens later. mike has always done this when he's upset, dating all the way back to the first episode, but in this context it seems to be representative of him resisting something. it reminds me of his implied resistance to sleep too

joyce is confused by what’s going on, probably referring to jonathan and mike’s behaviour specifically. murray, the expert Seer of Things, watches el leave with mild surprise and then immediately looks straight at mike

murray: okay, i, uh, i sense tension. is it the risotto? everyone hates the risotto?

this is a joke, but mike is pointedly not eating the risotto in the same scene as he suddenly starts acting like a different person. it was a targeted comment. the tension is within mike. it's vecna fighting for control of mike's mind

jonathan and argyle, however, have only positive things to say about the risotto. this topic of food (in relation to mike) will pop back up later

now we’re onto the part of how and when vecna kills people that probably stumped robin when she tried to find a pattern to it. why they got an extra day to figure out max was in danger. it’s because vecna had to make sure mike wouldn’t fix things with el first. he’s still keeping an eye on the home team, because he starts opening the first gate the second they leave the trailer park, but el is his priority

mike mopes at breakfast. he still isn't eating. he's still resisting. will is still noticing, which is promising in terms of mike eventually getting help on this. but for now he loses again, just like last night, and he ends up chasing after el. he brings her food too, which as it currently stands is not a good thing. she doesn’t eat either, and i doubt she would have even if he’d brought cutlery

mike seems really confused during their conversation. he trails off a lot and talks himself in circles. it really stands out because it's so different from his usual speech patterns

el: you think i'm a monster too. mike: what? el: yesterday. the way you looked at me. you... you were scared of me. mike: no. no. no, that's not... that's... that's not true. i was surprised. maybe i was a little upset in the moment, but i mean... i'm sorry. i just... i didn't know what to do.

no mention of his comment at dinner. it's almost like he doesn't even remember saying it. he retroactively confirms that he didn't care that much about what happened once the shock wore off. and i cannot stress enough that he is so, so confused. this isn't about no one telling him anything anymore. he was there. he should know what he's talking about. but he doesn't

it sounds like he's seriously fighting to get the words out again, but cranked up to a hundred. this is probably why max got so much extra time. because mike is stubborn as hell, and every single season demonstrates how his true strength lies in his mind, and it probably took a lot of vecna’s focus to force him into upsetting el when we know how much he cares about her and he seems to be actively fighting it. it takes mike five tries to even start to say "that's not true," the same thing he said to will yesterday. but it’s such a minor detail, and they’re overshadowing it all with the love triangle drama, so it’s easy to miss

mike is usually so confident and so level headed and so silver tongued that he can get full grown adults like hopper to respect and listen to him in a crisis, so hearing him trip over his words like this is ringing major alarm bells. el looks confused by the way he's acting again because mike is truly gifted at quickly understanding and explaining situations. he's slightly worse off when they concern his feelings, but he's not this bad. the only way he'd be acting like this is if his ability to understand what's going on has been internally tampered with

the uncharacteristic hesitancy and confusion lingers for most of the scene, but it lets up a lot after "i say it" and entirely disappears by the end, where this really patronising tone comes in to fill its place that doesn't sound like mike at all. he calls el ridiculous, he tries to make her think she's making things up, he brushes off her feelings, he deflects. mike does not do this in conflicts with el. mike avoids. and mike has far more respect for el than this

mike: what, like... what is this? you know what i think of you.

this directly leads into mike externally basing el's self worth on being incredible and special and a superhero, which directly contradicts the information we already have about mike's thoughts on el's powers that they're actively drawing our attention to

in season 3, mike was the one person saying that el shouldn't have to use her powers. that she shouldn't be obligated to sacrifice everything for her friends. that she's more than a superhero or a machine. that she's a person who's worthy of protecting whether she's saving them or not. and he followed through on that when she initially lost her powers: he flipped the car when she couldn't, he made a plan to get her and max to safety and tried to protect her from vecna when they were trapped in starcourt, and months later he got a teddy bear down from the high shelf for her when she couldn't get it herself. there was no hint of mike's view of el potentially changing without her powers. none. and this show is very good at foreshadowing, so that absence is very conspicuous

the tail end of this speech doesn't sound anything like mike. there's a reason he sounds like he's fighting it

but you know who it does sound like? vecna. the guy who thinks every other human being is an unimportant nobody. the guy who says that brenner didn't matter because he was ordinary. the guy who thinks that el is on his level, whether that's as an apprentice or an enemy, because of how special and incredible and superpowered she is. the guy who wants to kill el's friends while she watches, or kill her while they watch, as punishment for turning against him. and he can't do any of that if she doesn't remember him, and she can't remember him until she's pushed into thinking that she's worthless without her powers, which is exactly what mike is putting into her head in this scene despite that not being how he sees her at all

the police interrupt before mike can get his head sorted out, and we get this

mike: everything's gonna be fine. i am going to fix this. okay? just... just stay calm and everything's gonna be fine. okay? just... all you have to do is trust me. i promise. i'm gonna get you out. i promise!

like to his advice to dustin, i think this reveals what's going on in mike's head. el doesn't want reassurance that everything will be okay. el doesn't need to be told not to panic. she's not the one panicking right now. these are all things that mike needs to hear

which implicitly makes "i'm gonna get you out" a lot more interesting. it applies to el, because she's getting arrested and later trapped by brenner, but how does it apply to mike? what does he need out of? what does he need rescuing from?

vecna focuses on max much later, after el doesn't return home and confirms that she's on her way to getting her powers and memories back. they try to hide it with the episode break, but mike immediately starts acting more like himself. he gets into an individual standoff with an authority figure representing the american government in like five minutes. that's the most mike wheeler thing he could possibly do

mike: so, what? we're just supposed to trust that you're the good guys? whoever you are?

this is mike in control of his own mind, mike who's finally acting like himself again, and he's telling us not to blindly trust anyone just because they're supposedly a good guy. he's telling us not to trust him, just like el didn't seem to earlier. because he doesn't trust himself right now. because he's been acting like someone else. if there's one thing mike is stellar at, it's tactical calls like this. this is exactly what happened when will was possessed

mike retreats upstairs to read el's letter, isolating himself. that particular habit becomes something very interesting in a little bit

dear mike, i have gone to become a superhero again. from, el

he realises that his words pushed el towards this decision, that he's the reason she chose to go back to some version of the lab, and he starts to wonder why the hell he said any of it. this kind of implies that what he said downstairs was entirely based on intuitive, subconscious knowledge, since he was pretty focused on the situation in front of him, and seeing something solid and tangible that proves there’s merit to the idea of something being wrong with him just kicked his brain into high gear

mike’s still very present in the hawkins part of the story during dear billy. they’re in mike’s space, and the way they’re hanging out without him there and not even trying to think of a plan makes his absence really obvious. max writes him a letter. max says his name twice, either independently of anyone else’s or before them. he appears in max's memory montage

we see the basement for the first time this season and it's as bad as his room. the lighting is much darker and less homey than before, there's no natural light, and the mess makes it feel claustrophobic when it’s actually a very open space. it's hard not to think that this is meant to be a physical representation of what's going on in mike's mind

as for what mike's actually doing, he has a clear head for the first time since he landed in california because vecna doesn't need to use him to mess with el anymore, and he's using it to question his own actions and words and why they don't reflect what he actually thinks

will: i… i just don't think they've actually thought this through. if this goes on for a month, or months, and people can't get a hold of us, they're gonna totally freak out. meanwhile my mom's probably having a panic attack already.

this is said by a rambling, pacing will, while mike sits on the edge of the bed, not moving, staring a hole through el's letter. it's the next day, and he's still hung up on it. he still can't figure out why he called el a superhero. this is a different type of anxiety than we've seen from mike before, because when mike is anxious he's usually the one pacing non-stop until everyone is annoyed with him. we saw that behaviour from him just last night, so he hasn't just dropped it

mike paces when he wants to fix an external problem. the fact that he's not moving at all here suggests that this is an internal one

the joyce mention can only be indicative of mike's mental space, because joyce isn't that anxious at all this season. certainly not enough to be reminiscent of a panic attack. this isn't foreshadowing for joyce, it's utilising the similarities between her and mike to tell us what he's on the edge of until will pulls him out of it

the idea of a problem lasting for months is interesting too, because threats from the upside down usually last for about a week. i think it's meant to indicate that what mike is quietly freaking out about has been going on for months, and that it’s connected to what's happening in hawkins

mike: before the cops came, me and el, we had a bad fight. we never fight. [...] but, i don’t know, this one just felt more adult.

when they got interrupted, they weren't talking about mike's inability to say he loves el. they were talking about el being a superhero

mike's confused as he says they never fight, which backs up el's confusion over his comment at dinner and his own confusion during the fight in question as mike not being in control during that conflict. this isn’t normal behaviour, and mike’s the one who started it so mike’s not normal right now

the adult comment is really telling too. it felt more adult because it was more adult, because there was an adult involved. vecna was involved

mike: and maybe i should've said something, and if i would've said that thing, then maybe she'd want me there with her. wherever she is.

the show wants us to think he's talking about the romantic conflict. but if what he's thinking about is the idea of breaking up with el, and what he's thinking about has him on the verge of a panic attack, then it can't be el because we've seen his reaction to breaking up with her before and he was totally fine. what they’re telling us is going on in mike’s head makes no sense at all

this is a trick. just like mike’s fake shirt. they're distracting us with the relationship drama and letting us assume that it's about el or will as we please, while mike never specifies that that's what he's talking about

he means the main bulk of the letter. he's talking about calling el a superhero instead of telling her what he actually thinks which is that she doesn't need powers to have worth. he's on the verge of a panic attack because he doesn't know why he said that, because he feels like he's losing his mind again, and because it physically drove el away to get her powers back at the same time as bad things are happening in hawkins. that combination usually leads to el endangering herself and mike protesting, so him driving her to it without even meaning to is definitely panic-worthy

will tells mike that he can see el again and say whatever he wants to say then, but mike clearly isn't convinced. he's not reassured. he doesn't want to hear that he's going to see el again. he doesn't actually want el to have taken him with her. because being near el means uncontrollably saying something he doesn't believe that hurts her again. this is the start of mike wanting to distance himself from el to protect her

mike significantly perks up when joking around/flirting with will and after jonathan makes the plan for them to go to hawkins (away from el), which leads into possibly the most mike scene in this entire season: the bedroom heart to heart with will

will: you're packed already? mike: yeah, i mean, i never really unpacked. thanks, by the way. will: for what? mike: for knocking some sense into me. i mean, i was being a total self-pitying idiot.

there's... a lot going on here. they bring up mike's emotional baggage and then almost immediately have him brush off his panic (a near panic attack, remember) from earlier that he never actually dealt with. both of their reactions support what i was saying earlier, that it would be ridiculous if mike was that panicked over el. not even el being in danger, just a fight with el

will definitely did the right thing by pulling mike out of that spiral and it makes sense that mike would thank him for that, but he was still thinking about it at the end of that scene before he got distracted by jonathan's plan. mike is still bottling things up. there are still things about mike that are being hidden from us

mike attributes his change in mood to will, which isn't entirely wrong. support systems do make a difference in fighting off possession, as seen with the shed scene back in season 2, and mike was instrumental in bringing will back so the opposite is most likely true. but the fact is that it isn't just will, it's that vecna isn't actively using mike anymore, and it’s that mike thinks he’s going to hawkins where he won’t be able to hurt el so he can stop worrying about it for now

mike: hey, also, about the last few days...

it was incredibly intentional that mike didn't get to finish this sentence. it would have told us too much if he did. getting an insight into what mike’s version of the first two days in california looked like would probably answer a lot of questions

mike gets distracted by will's inability to accept an apology, going against his prior, uncharacteristic behaviour of apparently noticing how will was feeling but not really doing anything about it, and we get likely the same information we would have but framed in a different way

mike: listen, the truth, is the last year has been weird, you know?

presumably he's just being dramatic again and actually means the time since the byers moved, but that's still a long time. and if things have been weird in the same way that the last few days have been weird, where he’s constantly confused and not acting like himself and not knowing what’s going on at all, that has some really sinister implications

will nods in response, because he does know. will knows what it's like to be possessed. he knows what it's like to have someone else in your head. he knows what it's like to feel like you're going crazy. he knows what it's like when someone else is using you to hurt the people you care about

mike says he feels like he was focusing too much on el and that he lost will in the process. vecna was using mike to upset el. he was pushing her where he wants her to go on the chess board. he was pushing her into remembering him so that when he tortures her he'll get the full satisfaction out of it. mike wasn't allowed to focus on will because vecna wouldn't get anything out of that

the way mike mends his relationship with will here by just being himself and caring is exactly what vecna was trying to avoid by not letting mike talk to el

they get knocked off course by the shootout, plans change, and their new goal is to find a way to el

vecna continues to leave mike alone, focusing on patrick and the nosy teenagers that are poking around his house. he wants the cali crew (and mike specifically) to find el, and just letting mike do his thing is the easiest way to make that happen

when argyle starts freaking out in the desert, mike realises while standing over an open grave that not only did his words send el away, they could directly lead to her death if anything happens to her. and he still has no clue why the fuck he said that. he freezes up again (continued indication that this is an internal conflict within his mind) as he gets caught up in that thought spiral, because he didn't actually resolve it before despite what he said to will. during their conversation on top of the car, mike connects the mystery of unknown hero agent man’s dying (lack of) words to his own situation

why didn't he just say the number? -> what the hell was going on with mike in the monster/superhero fight?

because mike still can't figure it out. he still doesn't know why he couldn’t just tell el what he thinks of her

mike: i should've explained myself. maybe then eleven would've taken me with her and things would be different, but i... will: no. mike: i didn't know what to say.

there's the reoccurring oddity of mike being uncharacteristically lost again. he didn't know what to say because he didn't know what was going on, and he still doesn't understand the fight or the things he said or why he lied right to el's face

the idea that things would be different if that fight had gone differently is an interesting thing to bring up. they're telling us it's important. the things mike said in that scene are important. if mike wasn't neutralised like this, things would be different. that's why vecna couldn't let him run wild and still entertain any idea of success

i think what they’re really getting at is if mike was able to give el a stronger hint that something’s wrong. because el is very clever, and i do believe that she figures it out near the end of the season, but it would’ve made a significant difference if she got it just a few days earlier

will: i think it's just scary to open up like that. to say how you really feel. especially to the people you care about the most. because what if they don't like the truth?

queercoding aside, that last question really freaks me out within this context. because yes, it was the 80s, but good people existed in the 80s. good people have always existed. our cast of main characters is made up of good people. none of them would hate mike for being queer, even if it's a very understandable fear for him to have. but if mike was unwittingly giving information to vecna? if he was used to push vecna's plans into motion? if he was used to cause the downfall of hawkins?

that's a much, much scarier thing to think about. because i find it more plausible that people would be angry at him for that. mike could easily think so too, even if it's not his fault. he'd certainly blame himself

then mike finds the coordinates, figures out what NINA is, and has the idea to go to suzie for help

the assumption that NINA is a phone -> the assumption that what mike wants to say is that he loves el

the reality that NINA is a computer -> the reality that what mike wants to say is that el doesn't need to have powers or be a superhero to matter

mike: now i don’t know if NINA’s a computer like joshua or owens’ lab, but unknown hero agent man, he gave us access to it for a reason. we just need to find the computer. we find owens, then we warn him. then we warn eleven. i just need a hacker.

this is a coded way for them to talk about what’s going on with mike through the connection they established between the number and the superhero fight. he doesn’t know what’s happening to him, but he knows that it’s happening for a reason. he needs to find out what the situation is and then warn el. and he can do that by going to suzie

mike’s headache from the first episode makes a reappearance when they get there. vecna’s still in his head, just dormant. mike lies flawlessly with will, in contrast to dustin, lucas and max doing a very bad job of it. they’re reminding us that mike is good at lying to make us look closer at the things he’s been saying

suzie: i’m really sorry. truly. but it looks like you came all the way here for nothing. unless… mike: unless? suzie: there might be a way. but we’re gonna need help. and i mean a lot of help.

they said that mike would find answers at suzie’s house. this is it. the scene cuts to karen looking for the kids and running down into the basement right after this, which is looking good for their relationship growing stronger next season

mike came here looking for a computer, and they end up needing suzie’s father’s computer, which is locked up in his study. they use the help from before to distract him, sneak in, and start looking for answers

jonathan: maybe it’s hidden in the code somehow? mike: what you just said makes no sense. suzie: hold your butts. i’ll just trace the IP.

someone’s going to overcomplicate the situation because mike’s head has so much constantly going on in it that even a certified genius like suzie has an initial “what is all this?” reaction to it when she sees the mountains of code on the real world equivalent. but there’s going to be a really simple solution that most of them were too overwhelmed to think of immediately

the cali crew succeed, so whatever this section is foreshadowing in season 5, it’s going to work. much better than the similar plan of this season. there are a million more distractions, everyone gets out unharmed, and the person who locked up the computer is none the wiser at the end

even with the coordinates, they have a hard time finding NINA. mike and will are on the same page but jonathan insists on rechecking the map. it's right, and they remind us that mike said as much. we should trust what he's thinking about something being wrong with him and we should trust the coded solution he just found

argyle is the one who actually finds the trail, so for some reason he's going to be really important to fixing this problem

back in hawkins, vecna plays mind games with nancy and uses her as a messenger for el too. apparently that's just a thing for the plot relevant wheelers

then there's the painting scene. which i think vecna was listening in on, but i don’t think he was influencing it

the answers they found at suzie's were that mike needs help. will gives him help when he starts spiralling about the closing distance between him and el, real help that actually gets through to him, by reminding him of who he fundamentally is. when mike is literally losing himself, that makes all the difference

the scene is also very visually similar to when will was possessed. will is being absolutely smothered in light from the window, because he's mike's light, the one max says you have to hide in to escape vecna, and when the shed scene turned into a time skip montage mike was lit in a similar way

mike: i mean, she’s special. she was born special. maybe i was one of the first people to realise that.

this doesn’t make any sense unless it’s mike looking back into vecna’s mind without realising, because it’s just not true for mike but it is something vecna would think. he was talking about how el was born special (like him) just last episode. he’s the one who told her the secret to making her powers stronger because he saw himself in her

if you zoom in on what mike’s saying, you get “maybe i was one”. was. past tense, when el was nearby. now he’s mike again

when nancy delivers the message for el, it includes seeing mike dead. vecna definitely knows who he is and he's in danger

then we find out, through el, that mike did try to call will. he tried to call him a lot. enough that dustin was sick of hearing about it

dustin: i told you, joyce has this telemarketer job. she's always on the phone. mike won't stop whining about it.

so why didn't mike say as much in their rinkomania fight? he'll complain to dustin but not to will? he was defending himself, saying it's not solely on him to maintain that relationship, so why wouldn't he say something along the lines of "at least i tried," because we all know mike can get harsh in arguments with will that he thinks are unfair

why would mike say that will should have reached out more but not say that he did try to reach out himself? he told el that he called her every night for 353 days without any hesitation, so he doesn't think admitting to that kind of thing is embarrassing. he wanted el to know that he missed her. he protested when will said he deserved the way he was treated during that argument. he wasn't afraid of will knowing how much he cares because he started shamelessly flirting and told will that hawkins isn't the same without him like two days after their fight, once he started acting like himself again

and that's the problem. because it wasn't fully mike at that point. all he could get out was "that's just not true," which was calling on our pre-existing knowledge of him to piece things together

which is exactly what el starts doing. she has a lot on her mind, but she's noticed all of mike’s odd behaviour already. this is just another thing that's so blatantly contradictory that it pushes her towards really questioning where all of it is coming from. she knows this doesn't make sense. if she heard mike and will arguing about the calls she heard mike say that he was the bad guy. that was the very first hint mike seemed to be trying to give anyone that something was wrong with him, the first real effort he made to warn them, despite not fully knowing what he was warning them of. and el's figuring it out. this perfectly matches up with what jonathan said at suzie's about the answers being hidden in the code, and with mike’s goal of warning el

we get our second elmike reunion of the season, and it's right this time. el gives him a once over when she first sees him, and she seems to realise very quickly that this is actually mike. his smile looks real. he’s wearing his signature colour. he hugs el the way he usually does. they do their cute little forehead touch thing that we saw in starcourt after vecna almost killed her. he's not wearing unnecessary sunglasses. he's not ignoring will

in contrast to the shitty knockoff comment from the airport reunion, we get this

el: oh, mike. is it really you? mike: it's me. i'm here. el: okay.

that's the most "loved one fighting off possession" dialogue ever. and there's no reason el would ask that question if she hadn't realised that he's been not mike at some point, because el isn't a character like mike or joyce or hopper or will who's had problems with not knowing what's real before

this is confirmation that despite vecna's interference, mike is still here. this is will speaking through morse code and just saying the word "here" after being given strength by mike and his family, just like mike was given strength by will. and el looks so happy about it that it suddenly makes me as emotional as the willel reunion does

then we get into the piggyback, which i think has some layers to it as an episode title. it's been said a lot that vecna's like el. not just that he has powers like her or that he's from the lab like her, but that he's like her. it's incredibly easy for me to believe that they think similarly enough to have the same ideas. using mike to get to el could be described as piggybacking

el came up with it by remembering the times she's gone into people's minds to find the source of why they changed. i think this could be part of the solution to getting mike back. it matches up with what suzie said about tracing the IP address. el will have to go into mike's mind to help him, finally letting us see everything that's been going on with him throughout the whole show. mike's role in the party is sharing vital information, so it wouldn't surprise me if he spies back on vecna like will did, especially since that was mike's idea in the first place, or shows el the way to find max or vecna's weakness

it's interesting that they keep calling it a mind fight too, because that doesn't really make me think of a fight in the mind. it sounds like a fight for the mind. and that's definitely not what happens with max, because her life is at stake, not her mind

over in russia, the adults finally hear about what’s going on

hopper: she said the doc's with the girl. and the girl went off to fight some evil in hawkins. then they all went off-grid. the doc, the girl, everybody. [...] and they're not alone. joyce's kids are with them.

mike isn't included in the group that's fighting vecna. this omission makes sense for argyle, because hopper doesn't know he exists and joyce has no reason to think he'd be with them, but there's no way in hell that mike would leave el or will in the middle of this. joyce knows that. joyce has seen firsthand how stubborn he is when will is in danger, and hopper came around to him being the same way with el by the end of season 3

i don't think this is a character thing. joyce only briefly saw mike acting weird at dinner after months of being nowhere near him and that isn't really enough to figure anything out, even for her. i think it was a very conspicuous decision for the writers to not align him with the strictly good guys’ side when they had the opportunity to

argyle making a pizza is included in the preparing for battle montage. it's funny, but it also implies that whatever happens with that pizza will be important to defeating vecna

then el and mike get their first real conversation. when mike puts the pizza box glasses on and confirms that they work, el is watching him like she's looking for something. it's only when he starts goofing around, like when he joked about his singing or made fun of himself with the M&Ms in season 3, that el relaxes and starts giggling and looking absurdly happy again. this is the way mike always tries to make el laugh. it's nothing like the lame socks joke from rinkomania

mike is literally in the dark. he can't see what's going on. el can

el: mike. mike: yeah? el: i… missed you. mike: yeah. yeah, i missed you too.

el is weighing her words very carefully. she doesn't know how much she can say to mike yet. and it really sounds like they've missed each other for longer than the few days separation, because they haven't really been together like this in months

from there mike brings up the monster/superhero fight again, and el just listens. she's feeling him out, waiting to see if he has some kind of explanation for what was going on there. because he was back to himself in the reunion scene, he was back to worrying about her safety and being relieved when she's okay. that was completely at odds with the superhero comment

argyle shows up with his pizza before mike can apologise or tell el that she doesn't need to act like a superhero for him to care about her. the pizza is for mike, it turns out, but he doesn't want it

and he shouldn't, right? wasn't food bad?

el: good. mike: it's good? what do you mean it's good? el: really good. mike: that's insane. that's blasphemous.

mike seems to think so. but then argyle and el conspire against him (and the fact that they're worried enough about him to make him eat something in the first place is really telling of how much trouble he's in), and he admits defeat and accepts more help

mike: okay, okay! no, you're right. it's good.

el says the pizza is good. jonathan and argyle said the risotto was good. will was eating at breakfast

mike wasn't eating the risotto when he disappeared and someone else filled his place. mike wasn't eating breakfast before he went up to el's bedroom and someone else filled his place. mike wasn't eating back in season 2 while his parents listed off all the ways he's bad and horrible, fundamentally, as a person. mike wasn't eating in the first episode when his parents said that he shouldn't look for will. nancy told mike that the things he likes to eat are disgusting in season 1

it was never about vecna. the food is mike. admitting that the food is good is admitting that he is good

el knows this. will knows this. jonathan knows this. argyle knows this, and he's only known mike for a week. the entire party knows this. dustin, lucas, joyce, max. even karen's catching on. ted thinks the game mike likes is lame and for nerds, but that it being called pure evil is ridiculous. nancy cried when she saw a vision of mike's dead body and used the desire to keep that from becoming reality as fuel to keep fighting

dustin told mike not to jump off the quarry. el always finds the strength to save mike. steve saved him in the tunnels. max freaked out when she thought he was dead at starcourt

mike constantly throws himself into dangerous situations with no care for his own safety. he put himself at high risk of getting shot during the shootout by physically shielding the others because he thought that would be better than will or jonathan getting shot, which jonathan had to put a stop to

everyone knows that mike wheeler is worth it. they're just waiting for him to catch up

that's what mike needs to beat this. he needs to realise that he, mike wheeler, is worth fighting for, exactly as he is. that his continued existence in this world is worth preserving. that he can't let himself disappear. fighting for his friends isn't enough, he has to fight for himself

here’s where we get into the mind fight, which mike isn’t really apart of, so there shouldn’t be a lot to say. right?

vecna: you think i don't see what you're doing? memory max: is mike a good kisser? vecna: you think i don't see everything?

no, it turns out there’s this very conspicuous placement of a mike mention in this part of the story. the dialogue in the memory montages this episode matter, and max's first one in the running up that hill scene had barely any dialogue because words don't seem to be the point for her. the point is the togetherness and joy and sense of belonging from having fun with her friends. if the point of that memory is el laughing, they could have just had that. they didn't have to include the line about mike right in the middle of vecna saying he sees everything, but they did. because vecna is watching mike, and watching el through mike

el was giving the cali crew updates the whole time she was looking for max. vecna only came for max when el said she was getting close so that he wouldn’t kill max too soon

into the red mind soup world we go! vecna monologues, tells el she's the monster, says that the whole point of this was for her to watch max die

vecna: all i needed was someone to open the door. and you did that for me. without even realising it. didn't you? and when you did realise, you chose to resist.

this would work perfectly if you put mike in this scene. mike was used to open the door to get el here. mike didn't know what he was doing. mike doesn't even need to fully realise what's happening to resist it

and now, we’ve finally reached the infamous monologue

mike asks if el can hear him a lot. the answer is yes, but she can't tell him. she can't tell him because of the vines. she can't tell him that she knows what he's been trying to say all week because mike isn't just mike anymore

mike: el? i don't know if you can hear this, but… but if you can, i want you to know i'm here, okay? i'm right here.

more confirmation that mike hasn't disappeared yet. that he's still in there. that there's still hope

then he starts getting into all the obvious lies. but the thing is, i don't think they're lies, because i don't think mike is the one saying them. mike is a good liar. vecna is giving the monologue. which means it's not a lie, it's just not true. and mike looks like he's fighting it the whole time. this is where the alternate interpretation of what a mind fight is comes in

at the end of season 3, max and mike were the ones with el when vecna chased her through starcourt. they tried to protect her from vecna. they stalled long enough to keep el from getting skewered and for joyce to close the gate. now el is trapped, max is being killed in front of her, and mike is monologuing down from the sky and making her cry. they are both being used to hurt el

el knows that mike hasn't loved her since the day they met, because she heard him say he wanted to send her back to pennhurst that first night. el knows that mike can live without her (if not happily), because he made it a whole year into her disappearance but less than a week into will's. el knows that mike's life didn't start the day he met her, because he tried to end it a few days later when she ran off and took any hope of finding will with her

it's not until mike calls el a superhero again that she realises exactly what's happening

el's reaction to mike saying he can't lose her looks like she's thinking the exact same thing. she knows something's wrong with mike, and she doesn't want to lose him either, because he was one of the first friends she ever made and she doesn't want him to disappear

mike starts parroting what brenner said about flying and moving mountains, and el looks angry. she looks at vecna, looming ominously over max, not lifting a finger to stop mike's supposedly good monologue. and then she's able to pull away from the vines

mike was a distraction. mike was keeping el from breaking away sooner and saving max and hawkins

this is what they meant by forced conformity killing the kids. mike didn't choose to conform to society's expectations of the nature of his relationship with el, he was forced into it. and max died because of it

max's plan didn't work. nancy's plan didn't work. el's plan didn't work. dustin's plan didn't work

joyce's plan did. joyce caught vecna off guard again. and it worked because she didn't tell the kids what she found out about hopper. mike had no clue what she was doing. he didn't know she was involved, and vecna distracted him before he could figure it out by himself

vecna screwed himself over. because despite all the posturing about being the superior specimen, vecna is not as smart as mike. that's why mike had to be free to find el. because mike is better than him. mike has foiled his evil plans over and over and over again. even now, when vecna's supposed to have total control, mike managed to warn el when he was only at 30% control against vecna's 70%, and he did it in a way where vecna doesn't even know she knows. vecna screwed himself over letting mike have even that much, because mike is better than him, whether he likes it or not

the gates opening -> mike urging el to wake up -> el reviving max

once again, mike is right in the middle of things that are happening because of vecna despite supposedly having nothing to do with it

the fact that he's crying is also a massive red flag. he's one of the most emotionally closed off characters on the show. he only cries when something's seriously wrong

he really is terrified of losing el, and he's spent the better part of the past week trying to figure out why he said something he didn't mean that pushed her into danger, and he just said a bunch more stuff he didn't mean, and she hasn't woken up yet, and if she never does it'll be his fault

two days later, mike is back to himself. the first thing he does is hug karen

karen: you are never going on vacation again, you hear me? in fact, you can forget about college. you are staying right here.

there’s more of mike being “here,” officially adding karen to the list of people who will probably be fighting for him in season 5

then we cut to jonathan and nancy

jonathan: this isn't an earthquake. i know. i know a lot more than you think. nancy: how? we've been trying to call you— jonathan: i know. i know, i'm sorry. we just couldn't risk contact. nancy: "we couldn't risk contact"? jonathan: hey, hey. i'll tell you everything, okay? i promise.

we know jonathan's very perceptive. jonathan sees things that people try to hide. jonathan's been with mike all week, jonathan's seen everything, and jonathan's hinting at having more answers than anyone would expect

i honestly think he has the best frame of reference for mike's normal behaviour. he's known him since he was five, he's older than him so has a better memory of certain points of his life (as illustrated by the toy up the nose story that will only vaguely remembered), and he didn't stop paying attention to him the second he stopped being cuter than his baby sister like the wheelers did

at the hospital, mike is in the same room as lucas for a grand total of ten seconds before lucas notices that something’s wrong with him

i can't for the life of me figure out what tipped him off. i have no idea what's going through his head or why he gives mike such a suspicious look, similar to el's from the pizza box glasses conversation. mike can't see lucas as he realises something’s wrong because it's during the hug, just like he couldn't see el before, which means that vecna can't see that they're onto him either

i'm confident that he was 100% mike at this point (with vecna still in his head, just dormant again), but the effect it's had on him is apparently still extremely noticeable to the people who know him very well

mike didn't seem to know that el brought max back to life. she didn't tell him, and she doesn't explain now either. he'll have to be in the dark on basically everything in season 5 for them to stand a chance, up until the point where they get him back properly, which is a major problem because mike is instrumental to figuring things out and making plans. hawkins literally fell apart without him

will looks concerned when he finds out how messy mike has gotten from nancy’s lighthearted jab about his bedroom. it seems like a lot of different people are collecting a lot of different pieces that they'll have to put their heads together to make sense of

when nancy talks to jonathan one on one again, they continue to hide what’s going on with mike behind the relationship drama. she says that she's glad jonathan was with mike first and will second, kind of as an afterthought, which is another hint towards jonathan knowing what's going on with mike

while they’re cleaning up the cabin, el not talking to mike goes from implicit to textual

will: did she… talk to you at all? mike: not much. i mean, a little bit.

this is exactly what jonathan was talking about. team hawkins was trying to call the byers, but they couldn't risk contact in case the government was listening. mike has been trying to call the byers, but they can't risk contact in case vecna is listening

i’m pretty sure this is what mike was going for in the first place. the idea of distancing himself from the group and el specifically. it’s exactly the kind of move he would pull, and it’s funny that they ended up going with what was originally mike’s plan because it’s just the best course of action. he came up with it days ahead of anyone else, based mostly on instinct and not the evidence that el and jonathan needed to collect over the week to figure it out

will: it's strange, knowing now who it was this whole time, but…

the camera is focused on mike as will says this. half of his face is in shadow, which conveys a sense of duplicity

we cut away for a second, but it comes back to mike for will to say that vecna won't stop until he's taken everything. vecna will likely try to completely take over mike's mind. possibly as a replacement body, because he knows they wouldn’t dare try the molotov cocktail trick when killing him means killing mike too. this matches up with what happened in season 2 and joyce's fear that will would cease to exist as the possession grew stronger

then the adults show up and mike gets an individual reunion with hopper, which kind of visually parallels the one with karen

hopper: you’ve grown. mike: yeah. you shrunk.

hopper’s comment puts him on the team of people who will be fighting to get mike back in season 5 too. staying “here” is connected to growth, and he’s happy to see that mike has grown, and he’s going to want him to keep doing that

mike’s part is more of the same of their dynamic from the start of season 3. mike is being annoying to show affection because hopper is one of the few adults he feels safe enough to act like an obnoxious teenager around. but hopper doesn’t get mad about it this time, he gets this fond smile on his face and initiates the hug. this is one more thing that mike’s been conditioned to think is bad about himself getting treated as good instead

hopper was vitally important to figuring out will’s possession. he was the first person joyce called and he’s the one who always figured out what will was saying when he found unconventional ways to communicate like through drawings or morse code. hopper’s probably going to do something similar for mike

[backroomskokichi]

i saw an ask you got abt the interpretation of the V3 cast's ages, and i'm honestly pretty neutral on the topic but you mentioned "no proof" on the adult angle so i wanted to share a bit on why i think either argument is reasonable & the ages are well and truly ambiguous on purpose? (disclaimer that i have nothing to do w that guy from the post that was linked & this isn't really focused on the existence of nsfw content)

1. due to the ending reveals, some people believe that the characters had to have been 18+ to sign themselves up for the tv show based on japanese law surrounding game show participation. of course, this is a fictionalization of japan and doesn't necessarily carry the same laws over, but i think its a reasonable enough assumption for some to make.

2. similarly due to the meta-fictional nature of it, some interpret it almost like adult actors being hired to play high schoolers for a tv role? again, i don't particularly have a strong preference for either age interpretation + nsfw content completely aside, i do find this an interesting scenario to explore for the psychological impact of brainwashing someone to believe theyre younger than they actually are for the sake of an experimental death game tv show.

3. due to the previous two casts being revealed as secretly older than originally presented/having forgotten years of memory, many went into V3 under the assumption that the cast would also be older than they remembered. the ending does not confirm this, but it doesn't necessarily contradict it, either. combined with the previous two points, the lack of confirmation in either direction led some to think "oh, so the age/memory twist this time was due to the show, got it."

4. ryoma is suggested to have been tried for murder as an adult, not as a minor, and went to a regular adult prison, not juvy. also something part of a supposedly meta-fictional backstory, but if even the meta-fiction is ambiguous and inconsistent with age, it's hard for me to believe that either answer is truly the "canon" one. his backstory also includes a "lover," which arguably could be there as a strangely mature speech pattern to "contradict" his apparent age, but could also be meant to suggest that he's over 18. the issue with age in the character backstories is that some of the timelines would have to be incredibly tight for them to be minors- not that its impossible, just that its a bit fantastical in nature (which isn't odd for this franchise, to be fair). like, if ryoma is a minor now, how old was he when he went to jail? how old was he when he had a lover? how old was he when he killed those guys?

5. similarly to the previous point is korekiyo's backstory (i dont know about you, but i personally interpret him as a victim of abuse by his sister). how old was he when he was being abused? how old was he when she died? and, most confusingly, how much time did it take him to kill 90+ women? the age timelines don't make much sense, and i think that's intentional! it's supposed to lend to the ch 6 fiction twist- these things don't make any sense because they are arguably not real, even within the context of the game.

6. the layout of the V3 map looks a lot more like a college campus than the first game did. a separate building dormitory, a casino, a love hotel- all of these things being on campus gives it a more mature atmosphere to me. unrelated to the characters' actual ages, i did immediately think to myself upon starting the game, "oh, they're going for kind of an older vibe than the previous games, aren't they?"

7. this isn't super important to the actual canon of the franchise, but i figured i would include it as it is official material; in the talent development plan mode + the summer game, the V3 cast attends hope's peak at the same time as the first two casts. it's irrelevant to their ages within the killing game, but is relevant to the belief that it's inappropriate to ship the V3 cast crossgame. within killing game canon, if ch 6 is to be believed, the first two casts aren't "older" than V3, they're just fictional characters. the only place they exist for real in the same universe is the side material where they attend school together, putting them in the same approximate age range.

8. now, i'm not going to claim something dumb like "minors don't have sexual fantasies." of course they do. but this ties back into point 1: the idea that they signed up for this tv show and consented not just to the killing game, but also for the love hotel events to be broadcasted. again, you could argue that the laws in this universe are different, and that the people who made the game are not below sexualizing minor characters, but... it's a pretty dark interpretation, even for an already dark game like this, that their universe has canonically legalized the televised sexualization of real minors (real in their universe, i mean). this i think is one of the biggest reasons that some people prefer to interpret the characters as adults: the game is just so much more uncomfortable if you don't. either interpretation does allow for interesting fan exploration in terms of the dystopia of this universe- either legal sexualization of real minors, or you could analyze the societal implications of this world utilized brainwashing to sexualize adults who believe they are minors + are dressed in school uniforms, as a way that media gets to create this sexualization without breaking the law. but, understandably, this is not a popular topic to explore even in criticism BECAUSE of how uncomfortable it is.

my biggest takeaway from all this is NOT to say that the cast is irrefutably adults, but moreso to say that ages are all intentionally kept vague to allow the player to decide. similarly to point 8, you can make the criticism that the team intentionally left the ages vague in order to dodge some criticism around the sexualization of "a high school aesthetic" - though even that isn't super neccesary, considering the many anime and games that feature sexualization of totally unambiguous minor characters. its all up for debate, in the end, but i have this theory that a lot of media leaves age unintentional at the teen/young adult line, like genshin impact pretty much never confirming character ages & using the same body models for teens as they do for short adults: they want to appeal to all customers, so the customers are left to interpret the character ages however they want.

"the ages are ambiguous, but i choose to view them as adults because the game is much too uncomfortable for me if they're minors" is a take i see a lot, and slightly lean towards myself. i don't think its any closer to canon than them being minors, but it does make things like the love hotel just a bit more bearable. and i think there's a pretty big difference between "i interpret the characters as adults" and "i want to make nsfw, and i don't care whether the characters are adults or not," you know?

sorry that was so long, thanks for reading, and have a good day!

Yeah you’re right the timelines don’t make sense at all so it’s a bit hard to grasp how old they are , though some of the characters believe they are minors like when himiko and Kokichi stated themselves that “we’re teenagers” “I’m not even an adult yet” which is a little proof that they believe they are minors from what I think one from the game and one from SS camp

,, not the backgrounds of the characters and ryoma plus some other characters are completely debatable but it’s specifically Kokichi and some other popular characters I see nsfw art of which is just uncomfortable wether they choose to believe they’re adults or not. I’m just personally uncomfortable with it.

Interpret the characters as adults and don’t make nsfw? Okay, I trust you

Interpret the characters as adults JUST to make nsfw? Then it’s a bit weird!

Thanks for explaining though ,, kinda long but I read through . I’m glad I’m finally seeing some debatable evidence that can work on both sides other than the typical “it’s fictional so it doesn’t matter!” “They’re adults because of the love hotel!” Cuz I’ve seen THAT ‘evidence’ for YEARRS and it just pushed me to believe they’re just minors. I still am going to persevere them as minors myself, but this opened my eyes a little to why ppl do what they do in the fandom all up to its interpretation.

[gaykarstaagforever]

I decided to pretend to be a man and play Arkham Asylum on Hard. I.e., hits do a lot more damage and and there's no counter-attack indicator.

Except THERE IS. If you're so bad at it, as I am about 50% of the time, the game assumes something is wrong with your brain and frantically flashes the "press Y to counter" prompt during the fight.

Yes, thank you. This is obviously my fault, and not yours, for making everything dark and murky and constantly attacking me with 16 guys who have animation loops inconsistently telegraphing attacks, and also the animations are having them teleport around the arena because this weird free-form 3D combat engine must have been an absolute nightmare to get to work at all.

It's still impressive, as an effort that pays off really well maybe a quarter of the time? If you randomly hit the right buttons and the game randomly decides to respond appropriately.

"YOU JUST HAVE TO HIT A ZEN FLOW-STATE WITH IT!"

Yes, that helps. But that is fundamentally not the ONE solution to "getting gud" at this. There is a lot of RNG jank going on here.

Especially when you unlock more advanced auto-takedown perks, which are literally cheats that just make the combat slightly easier. You'll hit the trigger, and suddenly all the enemies are standing their quietly, waiting to get hit. I mean, I like the idea, but it really is a "make the game easier suddenly" thing.

I respect how much of a mess this is, and how well they managed it. It's JUST good enough to work. And that's why it's been so influential. But it is by no means perfect.

I'm at the Ivy boss battle, which is annoying when it's easy, and is hilariously frustrating on Hard. You have to actively pay attention to three simultaneous things, or you will absolutely die immediately. And you NEVER accurately predict where the edges of her killer grass patches are. Sometimes you can clip into them and you're fine, sometimes you're clearly outside them and you get grabbed and lose a quarter of your health.

This battle is one of those situations where it's fun precisely because it's bullshit, and I absolutely understand that it's purposely hard and that I will fail it 9 times in a row before I accidentally beat it.

I've never had over like a 12 hit streak. Even in the challenge maps, even on Normal. I think I am fundamentally misunderstanding what the game wants me to do. Like I think at that point you really need to start doing the combos exclusively to keep building it. But I always dodge-jump or Batarang or cape-bewilder because I feel like Batman would do that in a fight. Plus then you get a bonus for variation.

And by the end they're layering the stupid cattleprod and knife guys at you. And I still don't know if the combo moves take them down, or if you have to distract them first like normal.

I've been replaying this since it came out in 2009, and I still have no idea how the combat actually works. Which either means I'm stupid, or there is enough RNG in here that it's inherently variable. I have no idea. I assume I'm stupid.

It's not a hard game. But it can be moderately challenging, and I think it strikes a good balance between making me take it seriously and being fun. And that's what great games do.

...The Neon Skeleton Vision needs to show enemy vision cones, though. Oh my god. These guys swing their heads around like they're dancing. Batman should be able to tell where they're looking. Games older than this manage that, so it wasn't a tech thing, they just didn't think about it.

Also I have yet to get all the Riddler crap. I want to, until I start trying, then I get bored and frustrated. Plus I think some of them are timed, but you also have to have the necessary tech unlocks at that moment to get them? Which is bullshit.

[primrose-path-of-dalliance]

on bren and feeblemind.

(cw: lots of caleb backstory. self-explanatory, i think?)

.

.

this isn’t something i’ve talked about on my blog yet, but since the campaign has begun drawing to a close, i want to make sure i say my piece on the popular theory that bren/caleb was institutionalized because trent ikithon feebleminded him to disable him.

my piece being that it’s exceptionally unlikely he did—at least as a premeditated plan. this kind of theory also falls prey to the exact beliefs ikithon has tried to exploit in caleb.

for our mutual reference, i’ll quote the spell description of feeblemind.

FEEBLEMIND (PHB) 8th level enchantment

Casting time: 1 action Range: 150 feet Components: VSM (a handful of clay, crystal, glass, or mineral spheres) Duration: Instantaneous

You blast the mind of a creature that you can see within range, attempting to shatter its intellect and personality. The target takes 4d6 psychic damage and must make an Intelligence saving throw.

On a failed save, the creature’s Intelligence and Charisma scores become 1. The creature can’t cast spells, activate magic items, understand language, or communicate in any intelligible way. The creature can, however, identify its friends, follow them, and even protect them.

At the end of every 30 days, the creature can repeat its saving throw against this spell. If it succeeds on its saving throw, the spell ends. The spell can also be ended by Greater Restoration, Heal, or Wish.

considering the characteristics described and implied by actors other than ikithon—caleb and astrid prominently—who are not motivated to deceive on ikithon’s behalf, feeblemind is not consistent with caleb’s mental break.

fact the first: when bren broke, he became violent and spellcasted.

when astrid describes the circumstances in which he was taken to the vergessen sanatorium (e89, 1:49:30), she refers to his lashing out as “creat[ing] a lot of sparks everywhere else” and rubs at burn scars across her neck. she says that they had to subdue him because he was too dangerous. all of these statements add up to a bren who was viciously spellcasting at his friends and mentor when he broke down.

this wouldn’t have been possible if he’d been feebleminded. feeblemind explicitly prevents the affected creature from casting spells or activating magic items. in that scenario, the only thing bren would’ve been capable of is throwing hands. from him? not very dangerous at all.

how do we know astrid wasn’t lying or intentionally deceptive? because she (and eadwulf) still cares so much for caleb that she risked her life multiple times to aid him. no one who would give caleb a map to a secret volstrucker vault with her own handwriting on it (e127, 29:29; and 30:57)—or intentionally fail to counterspell him when ikithon could’ve seen her do so—would lie to caleb about ikithon attempting to permanently feeblemind him if she knew.

to preempt the idea that astrid had set the m9 up: it’s very obvious she didn’t, since trent ikithon had clearly had no forewarning of a break-in. he would’ve at least been waiting in the vault, already prepared to subdue them quickly, if he’d known.

so it’s fair to determine that astrid would either be honest to the extent of her knowledge to caleb or make it clear that she couldn’t answer him. since she didn’t imply the latter, we can assume she was being honest. and because of astrid’s competence, it’s highly probable she would’ve noticed if his behavior was symptomatic of feeblemind over the years.

fact the second: bren’s mental condition repeatedly improved and regressed while he was institutionalized.

astrid states this in the same conversation about their subduing him after his breakdown (e89, 1:50:50). considering this with the context of their romantic relationship prior to his breakdown, her genuine care for him, and her rise to power that included accompanying ikithon frequently to the sanatorium (e127, 31:07)—astrid would’ve had the motivation and the opportunities to visit bren in person. she could’ve also kept well-abreast of his condition.

actual times of improvement and decline in the mental state that astrid first observed during his breakdown wouldn’t be consistent with feeblemind. although it reduces the victim’s intelligence score to 1, they still retain thought and their sense of identity without problems.

this is a maintenance of consistency and (relative) reason. feeblemind does not actually damage a person’s basic perception of reality. but the health of bren’s behavior throughout the years was instead very unstable.

fact the third: caleb doesn’t remember anything from the burning of his home up to his healing by the unknown cleric.

in the conversation with astrid in e89, he asks her what happened when he broke and explicitly says, “the last thing i remember is my home” (1:46:58). when he first tells beau and nott about his past, he explains that he doesn’t remember much of what happened to him there (e18, 2:51:54).

beyond the reduction to their intelligence, feeblemind doesn’t affect the victim’s ability to form memories. caleb’s keen mind feat and established narrative element of his eidetic memory would’ve still been present as well. therefore, feeblemind alone can’t explain such a significant, near-empty gap in his memory. he would still remember something.

even the possibility of trent ikithon altering them directly is precluded by the fact that the cleric’s healing removed the alterations to caleb’s memory. if all those years had been magically blocked away, they’d have returned when he was healed of everything else.

fact the fourth: sometimes, people really do just break.

nothing about caleb’s backstory is inconsistent with just... being a person living their life, even a terrible one. he was a young man that believed so zealously in his country and his purpose, abused by a powerful older man, that he did many horrible things and believed they were right. until finally he did something that he couldn’t process and broke down.

there’s two reoccurring, underlying assumptions i’ve noticed behind why this theory seems to be so compelling and popular:

caleb just seems so remorseful and traumatized by his double patricide. there’s no way he would’ve willingly murdered his parents. ikithon must have known and decided to preempt his inevitable betrayal.

everything we know about bren, especially from the horse’s own mouth, suggests that he had been willing (at least up until his mental break) to murder his parents. he was literally an extreme nationalist—a fascist, if you will. he was lawful evil (twitter source). he gratefully executed many “criminals” put in front of him, more than likely by burning them to death based on his ptsd. victims whom we now understand may not have been guilty of anything at all.

he was glad to do what he thought was best for the dwendalian empire, and he truly thought being volstrucker was the correct path. trent ikithon, his abuser, treated him as his favorite (e110, 3:30:58). because he believed.

that fervent faith, in fact, is the key to something like his breakdown in the first place. hearing the dying screams of his parents, bren was forced to confront a violent dissonance between his radical beliefs that condemned traitors (as he believed until the cleric’s healing) and the intuitive horror of murdering his parents that he couldn’t reconcile. this fathomless sense of betrayal is why caleb so deeply despised ikithon and himself.

a young evocation wizard who didn’t want his parents dead would’ve run into that burning house, feebleminded or not. someone magically compelled to set that fire would’ve understood what happened as soon as the charm left him and would definitely remember every detail once the cleric healed him.

caleb is remorseful and traumatized because he willingly murdered his parents. as well as many others.

it can’t be that simple. caleb was institutionalized for eleven years just because his abuser pushed him too far? there must be a more nefarious reason. ikithon even said he basically stored him for later.

putting aside the fact that bren having a breakdown in the way he did makes complete sense for his situation, ikithon’s “claim” that he orchestrated all of caleb’s subsequent years is not only something he never actually says (e110, 3:16:34)—it is a claim that’s patently absurd.

i’ve written meta that discusses this in the past (link here). essentially though, the number of moving pieces and assumptions that would be needed for such a series of events is ridiculously improbable. even assuming that ikithon feebleminded him—so that caleb’s mind would be intact when he ‘woke up’—even assuming that ikithon somehow procured the service of a cleric of the archeart—a banned deity in the empire that would oppose ikithon...

why in the world would he ever reasonably believe that caleb widogast, the man he viciously betrayed and lied to and abused, would do anything to benefit ikithon?

trent ikithon is a mortal man. he has power, yes; enchantment magic, authority, and a history of abuse and manipulation over caleb’s head, yes. but ikithon is a mortal man. not a puppeteer in the sky piloting people’s bodies.

he certainly wouldn’t have led caleb to a whole new family that would change everything about his life for the better. a family that would love him, truly—a family that would help him heal, bear the weight of his guilt, and find a real future waiting for him again instead of a self-destructive end. a family that would fight tooth and nail for caleb’s sake against ikithon.

abusers lie. their biggest lie, the one they always circle back to in the end, is that their victim is unique: that there is something which makes them deserving of abuse, and that their abuser is both right and inescapable.

ikithon is read as honest because he chooses his words carefully and has the self-confidence to believe it. everything he’s claimed about caleb and his past have either been implications that he encouraged others to reach for him or platitudes empty of everything except gaslighting intent.

caleb has escaped. and everything ikithon wants is to convince caleb and his friends that he continues to control caleb’s life, that caleb is special, so he can regain some influence over a man who’s come to command so much power.

the idea that caleb must’ve been feebleminded—that he couldn’t have just had a mental breakdown like so many other prospective volstrucker before miraculously, then strenuously, recovering to create a hopeful future for himself—falls into the trap of validating ikithon’s lies.

trent ikithon didn’t see and believe in caleb’s ‘full potential’ before anyone else did. he didn’t foresee a single ounce of the man’s struggle to put himself back together after what he suffered. caleb was not institutionalized to serve as a toy to one day pull back out of the closet. there was no feeblemind or other secretive plan that could only serve to obfuscate the brutal truth:

ikithon abused a boy until he shattered, and tried to hide the evidence. a crime that he’s committed against countless other children. plain and simple.

so that’s my piece.

caleb widogast—bren ermendrud—was not the victim of a premeditated feeblemind from ikithon, based on the mechanics of the spell. even more importantly, the narrative of his and ikithon’s stories would suffer if he was.

now,

A LOGICAL POSSIBILITY I WON’T DENY.

what if ikithon feebleminded him as a method to subdue him after the breakdown?

this is more or less an alternate theory that’s irrelevant to the points i actually wanted to make. but i want to talk about it anyway because it’s kind of fun.

fact the bonus: bren spent eleven years in the sanatorium.

eleven years is a long time. he would’ve been able to save every 30 days after the initial failed save. the exandrian calendar has about eleven 30-day periods every year. assuming a feeblemind spell cast on him just prior to his institutionalization, that’s somewhere around 121 possible save attempts, give or take a few.

what’s the likelihood of him actually saving? to go through the mechanics:

normally, feeblemind reduces a person’s intelligence score to 1, modifier -5. caleb, as a variant human, possessed the feat keen mind from the beginning both mechanically and story-wise. this would make his intelligence score 2, modifier -4, even after feeblemind.

as a level 1-2 wizard, he would’ve had proficiency in intelligence saves. this would be +2 to his save.

in total, the modifier to bren’s intelligence saves would be -2.

in order to cast feeblemind, trent ikithon would have to have been a minimum level 15 wizard. this leaves two possible proficiency bonuses to determine his spell save dc: +5 or +6.

it’s probably safe to assume that his intelligence score is at least 18–20, likely 20. this would be a modifier of +4 or +5. (his intelligence could be 22+ if matt wanted to be a real dick, but let’s assume otherwise.)

spell save dc = 8 + spellcasting score mod (for wizards, this is intelligence) + proficiency bonus.

this means trent ikithon’s possible spell save dc is somewhere from 17–19.

therefore:

at minimum—17 being ikithon as a level 15–16 wizard with an intelligence score of 18–19 at the time of casting—bren would have to roll a 19 or nat 20 to make the save with his -2 save modifier.

at a dc of 18—ikithon either being level 17–20 or having an intelligence score of 20, but not both—bren would have to roll a nat 20.

at a dc of 19(+), it would be impossible for bren to save without additional bonuses such as bless.

i don’t have the brainpower to calculate some real statistical probabilities, but depending on your opinion of trent ikithon’s probable capabilities at the time of bren’s mental break, he may have been able to save against feeblemind sometime during the eleven years he spent at the sanatorium.

naturally, this has the earlier-mentioned conundrum of remembering that return of clarity once he was healed by the cleric, should ikithon have been retrieved to recast the feeblemind and altered his memories. nevertheless, it may or may not be a fun thought to play around with.

[writingwithcolor]

Patrilineal Jewish girl, Sephardic culture

@feminismandsunflowers said:

hi! my character is a patrilineal Jewish girl in the usa, she didn't convert but still considers herself Jewish. her mom is Christian. her g-grandmother/father were undocumented refugees from Europe (antisemitism) and her g-grandmother was v closed off abt her origins but my character's dad thinks she said something abt being Sephardic. her fam has a fair amount of Sephardic culture. but could she claim Sephardic culture to any extent if they don't know? trynna get a handle on how to present her.

"My character's dad thinks she said something about being Sephardic"

and

"her fam has a fair amount of Sephardic culture"

are inconsistent statements. 

The first statement sounds like the only indication Dad has of which Jewish culture they are is a statement he's not even sure about ("thinks"?) and the second statement sounds like Dad considers himself Sephardic and practices Sephardic traditions.

So, to me personally, this would depend on the level of Sephardic cultural practice she grew up with. If she grew up with those traditions and Dad sharing them with her, then yes, that's who she is. If Dad isn't even sure he's Sephardic and what she practiced in her upbringing wasn't distinctively Sephardic in any way, I have a hard time seeing why she should claim the culture if she's not even sure if her ancestors were Sephardic.

Disclaimer that the Reform position is to 'count' patrilineal Jewish people as long as they were raised in the traditions. This is not the Orthodox position but I am Reform.

--Shira

I'm also a bit confused about this situation. I think it would be helpful if you start by specifying where in Europe the family comes from and what anti-Semitism they were fleeing from. I'm Ashkenazi and not the most knowledgeable about Sephardi history, but as far as I know it wouldn't make sense for a Sephardi family to be seeking asylum from the pogroms in Russia or Poland, for example. I guess it could make sense if they were from Spain, France or Italy, but we would have to know more, and I'm wondering if this isn't a 'trace your logic' situation. Why do you want them to come from Europe? *Quickly cracks open a Claudia Roden book* Sephardi Jews have origins in many North African and Middle Eastern countries, such as Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Syria, Iran and Iraq just to give a few examples. If you want Sephardi characters, why not represent those cultures instead of re-hashing the same Euro-centric Jewish stories?   

In terms of whether she could claim Sephardi heritage of any sort if they don't know, I'm interested in what Sephardi followers think. Religion-wise, I don't think there would be too much of a problem with it. Yes, Sephardim are more lenient on some things and stricter on others, so by picking the wrong one she may be following some of the rules wrong, but that's just a matter of tradition really. If someone was a ba'al teshuva and had no way of finding out which population their family came from, I imagine a rabbi would advise to choose one and stick to it without worrying too much about which one. I don't know 100%, though. 

Culture-wise, I don't know if this is what Shira was getting at but I wonder if it would be cultural appropriation due to Ashkenazi Jews being more likely to be white-passing and getting more media representation. Is Jewish lineage enough to claim Sephardi traditions and culture, or do you need to know for sure that you're Sephardi - that will be for Sephardi followers to decide. 

To build on Shira's disclaimer:

I'm Modern Orthodox and I would describe your character as someone who is not halachically Jewish, i.e. not in Jewish law. In most situations, this would be a technicality for me and I wouldn't hesitate to treat her as Jewish if she identifies as such. In particular, with her family history it makes sense that she considers herself ethnically Jewish and the legacy of discrimination is part of her identity - that's not something we can erase or overlook. It would be different if my kid wanted to marry her, I think (not that I ever plan to be one of those parents who would disown their kid or something for marrying out but I'm not going to pretend I completely wouldn't care, either). Then I might be hopeful that she may formally convert, especially if she had always lived as Jewish anyways.

 Other things she may experience if she hangs out in Orthodox circles: a few people might act like jerks and be iffy around her like she's 'not really Jewish', probably the same people who are pro-Trump and mansplain why women's exclusion from parts of Orthodox worship is actually protecting us. On the subject of women's exclusion, if you have any male characters with a similar parental background, they can't get an aliyah in shul or count towards a minyan - the character you're describing couldn't anyway, though. 

Hopefully if your other Jewish characters are nice people, they take to heart the teaching that you should rather throw yourself into a fire than humiliate someone else in public. When I was a student, there was a patrilineal man in our community who once entered the shul just in time to be the tenth man, making a minyan. A Chasidic man in the congregation quickly stood up and said "Oh no, I left the gas on!" and left. That way no one had to make a whole song and dance about the other guy not being allowed to count. Patrilineal Jewish followers, feel free to add more! 

-Shoshi 

I'm going to add some things here, about the terms Sephardi and Ashkenazi, that I think might be partially tripping the author up.

Sephardi and Ashkenazi are terms used to describe the traditions that a person follows. Those traditions are heavily linked to the land where they rose up, and to parentage, as people are typically encouraged to follow the traditions they grew up with. However! Converts exist, and converts are usually encouraged to join in on the traditions in their community. So, as an example, a person can be from anywhere in the world, of any racial or ethnic background, convert in a Conservative synagogue, and follow Ashkenazi traditions. A person can be from a place that is usually seen as very Ashkenazi-heavy, like Germany, and then end up converting in an esnoga (synagogue) in Spain, and practice Sephardic traditions. Either of those converts might have children, and those children will take on their minhagim (traditions), and will be a part of the culture their parents joined just like their parents were.

It can be confusing for many people because the terms are so often conflated with ethnicity, which is in turn conflated with genetic lineage. The trouble is, the groups they describe are older than the modern, western conception of race, and ethnicity,  and we don't completely fit into these categories. Ashkenazi Jews don't all come from Europe, even their ancestors might not. In the US it's been estimated that at least 12-15% of American Jews are Jews of Color, and those JoC are very, very often Ashkenazi. Some converted, some didn't, but they are still following the traditions, and are still Ashkenazi.

So it's fair to say that the traditions of Sephardim grew in the Iberian peninsula, and North Africa, but they also moved along with those Jewish people as they dispersed, and were expelled. Jews from Portugal fled to the Azores, but also to the Netherlands, where there is a large Sephardic presence, right in the middle of a space that is assumed to be all Ashkenazi! Scores of Jewish people from Morocco moved to France. Then too, people marry folks from other groups. Often they will pick one family's traditions to follow, but sometimes they mix and match, and sometimes they end up moving somewhere else and taking on those traditions.

Because so many people have traditions that match their genetic background we've begun using the term Ashkenazi to mean strictly white, European Jewish people. Sephardi we have taken to mean strictly white, Iberian Jewish people (which doesn't even include the massive number of North African Sephardim). We've forgotten entirely to cover Mizrahim (a tradition associated with the Middle East), or the Romaniote, or Cochin Jews, or any number of other groups. Yes, genetic background accounts for a large portion of those people, but it doesn't map completely, and it's important not to forget that.

This complexity is why the statements Shira drew attention to:

"My character's dad thinks she said something about being Sephardic" "her fam has a fair amount of Sephardic culture"

Don't make sense. You would know you are Sephardic, because it's something you do first, and may be, secondarily, directly linked to something in your ancestry.

Finally, since you are showing a patrilineal Jewish person, I really encourage you to show them consistently engaging with their Jewishness, and actively participating in Sephardic culture. I'm the Conservative one here, and my movement, and Sephardi tradition (there are no movements for Sephardim, just varying observance) don't allow patrilineal descent to give a person Jewish status halachically. This is not something I endorse. Patrilineal descendants really struggle outside of Reform communities, to be seen as Jewish, and often to just be treated with respect, so it's important that you give this character every opportunity to participate, and show who they are.

-- Dierdra

[theminionjcfucked]

The BB23 Houseguests and the deep, dark/embarrassing I think they’re hiding:

DISCLAIMER: This is humor and not to be taken seriously. I am not accusing these people of these things for real. Relax.

Alyssa: She gives me the vibes of someone who cheated on her college exams and paid someone else to take them.

Azah: An actual international super spy! I feel as though because she has traveled so much and knows so much about the world, she could secretly be an undercover spy and her being clumsy and closed off is just a cover. Azah international spy truthers unite!!!!

Brent: He was high key compensating for something so I’m gonna go with he has a micro penis and feels the need to overhype himself to hide his pain for his itty bitty teenie weenie.

Britini: She has actual killed someone. Somebody said something wrong and she just karate chopped their jugular in half.

Christian: He permed his hair too many times when he was younger and now it’s forever that way. He’d have to shave it completely for it to grow back somewhat the way it used to be.

Claire: She’s hacked into a government facility before. Full on Nicholas Cage in National Treasure. She is the Guy in the Chair.

Derek F: He is actually one of the voices for Siri and every time your GPS is recalculating it’s actually just DF stumbling over his words. 🤯

Derek X: I don’t know I feel like he’s an open book. Probably was just a thumb sucker or slept with a night light or something harmless like that. I don’t get deep dark secret vibes from him.

Frenchie: Was a drug lord at one point and was planning on using the money to open up a meth lab. Explains why he looks much older than he is. Stay in school and don’t do drugs kids.

Hannah: She has found the cure for cancer and is waiting for the right moment to share it with the world.

Kyland: This one I might actually believe: the first time he ever bathed or took care of his personal hygiene in his life was in the BB house and that’s why he’s so inconsistent with it because it’s brand new to him.

Sarah Beth: She is a secretly a succubus ala Jennifer’s Body. She has been sucking the common sense out of Ky and that’s why he has fallen off the way he has. Watch out for her.

Tiffany: She has fully mapped out how to take over the world. We are pawns in her game and there is nothing we can do to stop her. 😔

Travis: He is actually IS from Hawaii and the Texas thing is just a ruse.

Whitney: 100% she is from a cult. Gives me very culty vibes.

Xavier: He too feels way too honest to be hiding any deep dark secret so I’m gonna guess he has a silly phobia of some sort. Like he’s scared of bunnies or butterflies. Like an elephant to a mouse.

[not-wholly-unheroic]

On the Origins of Hook: The Complicated and Often Contradictory Backstory of a Villain

The story of Peter Pan has been told and retold in writing, on the stage, and on the big screen countless times, yet in the original storyline, we are thrust into a world with a pre-established (and presumably long-standing) relationship between its hero and villain with little information regarding their pasts. So far as the audience is concerned, Peter and Hook have always been a part of the Neverland...yet as evidenced by the many retellings that attempt to answer the question of these characters’ origins, clearly, people want to know more. Barrie, however, leaves a great deal to the imagination and while he tackles a bit of Peter’s past in The Little White Bird, there is significantly less information about Hook in his writings, and much of it is up for debate, as Barrie arguably contradicts himself. 

In terms of canon (which for the purposes of this article I am limiting to Barrie’s final published version of the novel), much of what we know about Hook can only be inferred from a few brief passages. In the initial introduction of the pirates, Barrie gives us the following description of Hook:

In the midst of them, the blackest and largest in that dark setting, reclined James Hook, or as he wrote himself, Jas. Hook, of whom it is said he was the only man that the Sea-Cook feared. He lay at his ease in a rough chariot drawn and propelled by his men, and instead of a right hand he had the iron hook with which ever and anon he encouraged them to increase their pace. As dogs this terrible man treated and addressed them, and as dogs they obeyed him. In person he was cadaverous and blackavized, and his hair was dressed in long curls, which at a little distance looked like black candles, and gave a singularly threatening expression to his handsome countenance. His eyes were of the blue of the forget-me-not, and of a profound melancholy, save when he was plunging his hook into you, at which time two red spots appeared in them and lit them up horribly. In manner, something of the grand seigneur still clung to him, so that he even ripped you up with an air, and I have been told that he was a raconteur [storyteller] of repute. He was never more sinister than when he was most polite, which is probably the truest test of breeding; and the elegance of his diction, even when he was swearing, no less than the distinction of his demeanour, showed him one of a different cast from his crew. A man of indomitable courage, it was said that the only thing he shied at was the sight of his own blood, which was thick and of an unusual colour. In dress he somewhat aped the attire associated with the name of Charles II, having heard it said in some earlier period of his career that he bore a strange resemblance to the ill-fated Stuarts; and in his mouth he had a holder of his own contrivance which enabled him to smoke two cigars at once. But undoubtedly the grimmest part of him was his iron claw.

From this, we may be able to draw a few conclusions about who Hook was before he came to the island. (1) He was likely a sailor, if not a pirate, BEFORE he met Peter, given that he had previous interactions with “The Sea Cook”--that is, Long John Silver. (2) He was alive and most likely an adult by the mid 1700s, as in Treasure Island, Billy Bones--a former crewmate of Silver’s--has the date 1745 in his log and the dates 1750 and 1754 on his treasure maps. (3) Hook’s hairstyle and fashion is similar to that of Charles II, whose reign ended with his death in 1685. 

We are also informed by John that Hook was supposed to have been Blackbeard’s bosun. Blackbeard was born somewhere around 1680 and may have been a privateer earlier in his career at sea, but he didn’t actually take up piracy until 1716 and had only a very brief reign of terror before he was killed off the coast of North Carolina in 1718. Assuming Hook was meant to be Blackbeard’s bosun after he went pirate, this gives us a pretty narrow window of time during which Hook might have interacted with him. And, if we take the comment about the Sea Cook seriously, then Hook must have been pretty young at the time he worked for Blackbeard, given that there is a twenty-seven year gap between Blackbeard’s death and the earliest date Billy Bones offers in connection with Silver. 

Hook also uses words and phrases such as, “Pan, who and what art thou?” which would seem to indicate that he is from a time period centuries before the Darlings come to visit. (“Thee” and “thou” had pretty much completely fallen out of common use in English by the late 1700s/early 1800s.)

So far, so good. The dates might make it a bit of a stretch, but we can pretty comfortably say that prior to Neverland, Hook was a sailor--and probably a pirate--during the 1700s, was likely born in the late 1600s, and was possibly a related to Charles II, who had many illegitimate children. This possibility fits nicely with Barrie’s statement that, “Hook was not his true name. To reveal who he really was would even at this date set the country in a blaze.”

We don’t know much about his parentage, however, except that Hook’s voice cracks when he is speaking to Smee about mothers regarding the neverbird’s refusal to leave her eggs even after the nest falls into the water. Whether this is because he was close to his own mother and is lamenting her loss or he had a rather indifferent (or even cruel) mother and he is lamenting his own lack of a loving childhood is up for debate, though the official sequel, Peter Pan in Scarlet--written in 2006 by Geraldine McCaughrean--favors the second interpretation. (Again, however, for the purposes of this article, I am only considering Barrie’s published novel as canon.)

We also learn that Hook attended Eton, a rather prestigious school for boys between the ages of thirteen and eighteen. Assuming Hook completed his schooling there and was, therefore, at least eighteen by the time he joined up with Blackbeard, it would place his being born somewhere close to 1700. Assuming his interaction with Long John Silver was, at the earliest, probably around 1745, and that this interaction happened prior to his visiting the Neverland, it puts Hook (physically) at approximately age 45 by the time we meet him in the book, give or take a bit.

There are two potential problems with that timeline, however. (1) In Barrie’s original novel, only Peter stays young forever. The boys can technically grow up, and Peter “thins them out” when they do. (Decide for yourself whether that means banishment or something worse.) If this is the case, Hook shouldn’t still be alive or, even if the aging process is slowed down, at the very least, he should be an old man, given that the Darlings visit in the early 1900s...making him at least two hundred years old. (2) Near the end of the book, when Hook is trying to convince the boys to join his pirate crew and John asks innocently whether they would still be loyal subjects of the king, Hook responds with, “You would have to swear, ‘Down with King George!’” John (and likely the audience) assumes here that Hook is talking about King George V, who would have been the present king of England at the time the novel was published. If this is the case, how does Hook know who the king is? Has he been able to leave the island and find out this information? Or is Hook, perhaps, from a more modern era than we suspect? Cleverly, Barrie leaves this question open-ended, as Hook could just as easily have been referring to King George the First, who ruled England from 1714 until 1727. 

As for personal hobbies, we know only that he loves flowers and plays the harpsichord--an instrument that was once quite popular but which had fallen out of favor by the 1800s, replaced by the piano. 

The rest of the information we get from Barrie about Hook’s origins comes primarily from his “Hook at Eton” speech, delivered in 1927--many years after his original play (1904) and novel (1911). And here’s where things get interesting (read: contradictory). Because he wrote the speech so many years later,  as a sort of afterthought, and because of the inconsistences with the novel, I personally reject this information as canon. Nevertheless, it is Barrie’s take on his own character and, therefore, is worth at least considering.

In this work, we are told that Hook not only attended Eton but also--at least briefly--went to Oxford. This in and of itself poses no major problems for the timeline suggested by the novel.  What DOES pose a problem, however, is the fact that Barrie claims to have been in contact with Hook’s “Aunt Emily”--apparently his closest surviving relative--and has been in search of possible photographs of Hook during his time there. This would indicate that Hook MUST be from a much later, more modern era than the book suggests, as photography didn’t really come into fashion until the mid-1800s, and even if “Aunt Emily” is quite old (and she is likely a good fifteen to twenty years OLDER than Hook if we assume she is near in age to one of his parents) at the time of Barrie’s supposed meeting with her, she couldn’t have reasonably been expected to have been born before the early 1800s, placing Hook’s own birth nearer to the 1850s. While some of the information in the novel might be explained away to fit with this date (his choice of dress and hairstyle, for instance), he could not possibly have interacted with Blackbeard or Long John Silver. In fact, he could not have been a pirate--at least, not in the traditional sense--at all, as the Golden Age of Piracy (1650s--1730s) had long passed and the Age of Sail ended in the 1860s. Because of this inconsistency, some have argued that Barrie may have intended Hook to be a more modern man who essentially became trapped in a child’s fantasy land. He became a “pirate” only AFTER his interactions with Pan--that is, he took on the role of a villain because that is how Peter and the children imagined him--and that John’s assertions about his interactions with Blackbeard and Silver are merely rumors that the boy has heard.

Setting aside this apparent contradiction in the timeline, we DO learn some other interesting facts about Hook. For instance, Hook’s blood (which was said in the novel to be thick and strangely colored), is specified as having been yellow. This, along with his appearance having been described in the novel  as “cadaverous” has lead some to conclude that Hook was likely rather sickly as a child. We also learn that Hook enjoyed the Lake poets and strawberry mess (a dessert),  collected keys, performed well in sports while at Eton (though he did not like water sports as he rather surprisingly hated the feeling of water on his skin), and played the flute. We also learn that he was politically conservative and was probably never in a romantic relationship. 

There are a few other bits of information about Barrie’s idea of Hook that can be found in the early manuscripts for the play, which feature “deleted scenes.” One such manuscript--the earliest, I believe--can be found here. (Though good luck with reading it without going cross-eyed because Barrie’s handwriting is BAD.) However, I think this post has gone on long enough, yet we are still left with many unanswered questions. But perhaps this is what Barrie intended all along. Perhaps, fittingly, we are ultimately left to fill in the blanks about this villain of the Neverland with our own imagination. 

_____

Thanks to @katherinenotgreat for asking me to do a post on Hook’s origins. Thanks also to @concordia-cum-sinistro for your input. Feel free to add your own information regarding the original manuscript drafts, as I know you are more familiar with them than I am.

[legionnairefrank]

As a console player, what is your opinion on the current state of dbd? Also, thoughts on the nerf to spirit?

They nerfed Stridor, not Spirit

(tldr in the tags)

The main issue is lag, that's it

It was an issue ever since I joined console dbd in February of this year (I have played pc here and there at a friend's house but that was customs only and doesn't count)

However

It's really bad

It's not as bad when I play with mostly console teammates or killers, or play custom matches with friends.

But I hope you understand my frustration when I say when it lags, it can cost a health state, regardless of which side you play.

Hits that should hit, don't. And vice versa

I don't mind the attempts at balancing, something like that is difficult and hard to do with so many things to consider (killer powers, other perks, certain maps, and player interactions with all of these)

But I would rather that balancing be put aside to fix inconsistencies in the game.

I know they're going to fix pallets, that's great.

But what about windows, other stuns, perks just outright not working despite working just fine earlier in the match (dead hard I'm staring directly at you)

Don't get me wrong here

I feel as though the devs, the actual devs, are a little out of touch with half the player base (mobile doesn't count here I'm pretty sure that's considered separate development from what I'm talking about)

I get it, ps4 and xbox one are old consoles, but if they stop working on the game that's available to older consoles at random then it should no longer be available, and they obviously haven't given up on us. We're hardy and stubborn people tbh

This isn't me being a whiny survivor/killer main either

I play both sides with the same attitude and usually can find positives even from matches with toxic Nea mains and camping Bubbas, like i respect the attempt but I'm just given time to do other shit I do not care about my matches that much

Granted, up until I decided to stop giving two shits (and also started playing with rank 20 again)

I am being genuine when I say I almost gave up on this game entirely. I nearly lost sight of why dbd interested me in the first place because I let gameplay take control over everything. I fell in love with the lore and I just got done taking a break to read into it again because I loved it so much (yes, even the archives)

The negativity didn't help at all. It's not good for humans to get bombarded with so much bad stuff and nothing good (which is why I want to depip back to yellow as survivor because at least those games were Fun to play as scummy as that might sound)

I feel like the more you play the more jaded and cynical you get about it.

Would I recommend dbd to others? 100%

I already have gotten 2 irl friends, one irl friend's partner, my own partner, and like half a smallish discord server to check it out at least for a little bit.

They aren't as negative about it, the games I play with and against them are fun as hell and they haven't gotten exposed to this community yet (I warned them though and we're working on the tunneling)

I haven't had this much fun since I started playing. New players get the game and have fun to start out, veterans will bitch and moan about everything and will harass you because you "didn't play right." (True story and part of the reason I don't trust Laurie's with ttv in the name)

The game is good, could be better, but it's good. I feel like sometimes the community gets a bit too rabid and it isn't helping our case against the game's current state. The fact that we get so divided is not helpful either?

I don't have good suggestions, but I'm a positive person by default so I don't have too many complaints either.

If anything fixing the lag to where it's bearable is all I personally want out of BHVR, I can learn to deal with the other stuff, you get used to it anyways.

Also I want BHVR to stop giving us BP when the game breaks and start giving auric cells and/or possibly give us console players access to the public test servers in some form, I also want that.

As a final note

[mothmansrevolt]

some doodles i did for my loz story (thats in the works, everything is planned i just gotta sit down and write. Below the cut is some of my jabbering on about them, spoilers if i ever write the fic. well not really spoilers but more background stuff and me talking bout the story in general. Not that important i just wanted it all somewhere.

Second pic is older! Mist fairies are actually fog fairies, specific to the foglands. They are savage to all those without a magic signature similar to foglanders and have teleportation abilities when in large groups. That is all i will say. Soruspiris are containers for souls. regular fairy looks fluffy and i don't know why... Zelda's doodle was just here because i wanted to draw her. She's a fallen angel I guess. IDK Link actually can hide a lot of spiris on him as well, especially in his hat. Alright, Iarta is the spirit of the Soul's Bane Blade (or Soul Stealer), or Link's main weapon. She has acted as a sort of caretaker and teacher besides Link's grandmother, who often travelled herself. Honestly I just wanted to draw Iarta and baby Link. This is in no means her final design. I've been struggling with what she looks like (and the other sword spirits for that matter), most of them look similar, specifically her, the Statue's End, and the Twin Blades. I thought she'd have a few different forms as she does mainly fight for Link in a physical sense but IDK. As for the embroidery on the cloak and sash, Link does hand embroidery, specifically small runes to add minimal enchantment to clothing for protection and other such things. Verin's sash has ones for I think it was protection and good luck? Link's are mainly weather protection and elemental protection as well as to prevent fog fairies from ripping it to shreds. Ganon is making an appearance because of another drawing I was doing and was trying to remember what he looked like (spoiler I still didn't know and just pulled up a pic. he's the most inconsistent looking character I'm so sorry. I'm trying to figure it out along with Zelda who is basically consistently changing appearances in the story anyway). His scar on his face would technically be from before the story occurred, since he's a trained fighter more than anything. Also in an older pic, the first one i posted of him, I'd like to note that those swords (i see now that they are sickles, im so sorry) are not his main ones. Spoiler but they break. He's supposed to weild the twin blades, not those. That picture is a goddamned mess cause he has the goddess's scars (don't question the name its what my notes say) and swords that are broken at that point. As well, he wouldn't be in the gerudo desert? So yeah. A mess. Alright, Koddila! My favorite bird mom! She's here because I need practice drawing ritos. Yeah i stuck with the botw esque design concept cause they're my favorite overall though I deviated from the consistent fashion in which rito dress in that game (i sat in that village and fucking studied those clothes. no joke). She's notably a warrior though so she has the shoulder thingies. Verin, the zora father Link did not want, probably did not need, but still got, is honestly here because I have never drawn a zora before and will never try again. He's supposed to be scarred and battle worn, having lived a tired life or something. He just wants Link to stop doing stupid stuff and almost getting himself killed, weird foglander magic be damned. Sorry for rambling. The story's outline is being edited right now. Specifically, i've summarized every chapter im going to write and am adding and taking details right now. My friend told me i could've made it multiple books if i wanted to explore more of the world, but at that point I made the story on a time crunch and I'm sad I did so. Souls of Power was originally designed as if I were concepting and creating a world for a video game, a map and everything. Hell, I'd even jokingly written out whistle mechanics for calling Spiris and directing them. The world has so much more in it that I'd be writing, from hidden places to cucco racing to the entirety of the damned foglands that Link barely explores. I'm trying to add more of the world into it, but we'll see what I can. I just know that Link's arc got really... well sad. I had to make it different because Link's ending wouldn't be that good at all. So when I publish it, just know Link wasn’t going to have a fun time, but he’s going to get a good ending

[xb-squaredx]

Pokémon Sword and Shield: A Franchise Turning Point

The Pokémon franchise has been around for over 20 years, and in that time it has proven to be more than a passing fad and has carved out a massive multi-media empire. Outside of some rare spinoffs like the Pokémon Stadium games or the likes of Colosseum or Pokken Tournament, the series has stayed primarily on handheld consoles. For years fans dreamed of what a true, mainline Pokémon game could be like on a home console. During E3 2017 when Game Freak announced that such a title was in development for Switch, people got excited. The resulted games, Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee were not quite the main leap people expected, instead being a strange hybrid of Pokémon GO and remakes of Pokémon Yellow. However, the announcement that a true new generation of Pokémon would hit the Switch in 2019 reignited that hype. While at first excitement was high, over time a dark cloud hung over the titles, Pokémon Sword and Shield. Controversies erupted over the announcement that not every little critter would be featured or transferable to the game, and as time went on any new announcement was met with pushback. Everything from visuals to new features was criticized all the way up to launch day. Now that Sword and Shield are in players’ hands, at the end of the day…how did it all turn out?

A WHOLE NEW WORLD

This time around, trainers embark across the Galar region, basically the Pokémon equivalent to the UK. I do like Galar as a setting; it has a ton of character, with probably the most interesting aspect to it that Pokémon battles are treated as a major spectator sport. If you want to join in the Gym Challenge, you need a sponsor, and your Gym battles take place in massive stadiums filled to the brim with roaring fans. It’s an interesting deviation from past games, even if the basic formula is about the same. The characters within Galar also have a fair amount of charm from your main rivals to the Gym Leaders, to the undefeated Champion. A lot of people give Hop, your main rival, a lot of flak, but I found he had a lot of hidden depth to him and he has a satisfying arc as the story goes on. As he loses to you again and again, he doubts himself and subsequent battles have him throwing in random Pokémon and strangely his signature partner, the adorable Wooloo, is absent. Once he gets his act together, however, he forms a pretty balanced team, and Wooloo’s back front-and-center. It was a neat moment of character growth shown off through gameplay. As far as Champions go, Leon has a lot more presence throughout the game than a lot of past Champions. His flair, his awful fashion sense, his inability to follow directions…it all made him a bit more endearing. Most of the Gym Leaders are pretty much just there as stepping stones, but they all are fairly memorable either for designs or flashes of personality. It helps that everyone gives you neato trading cards too!

Galar’s main claim-to-fame is the Wild Area, a huge collection of different biomes located smack in the middle of the map. It has far and away the largest collection of Pokémon within, with different monsters appearing depending on the weather or time of day. It’s a place you’ll be returning to time and time again, and it made a big impact. It’s the only area in the game with a controllable camera, for one, and rather than follow a linear balance curve, the Pokémon you encounter in the Wild Area are often far too strong to handle. You’re even forbidden from catching Pokémon if you lack a certain number of Gym Badges, so the place is full of Pokémon you can only really admire from afar until you’re “worthy” of getting them.

Take the Wild Area away though, and Galar feels pretty small. With only ten Routes in the game, Galar is among the smaller regions. Most Routes are very straightforward, not many branching paths or hidden goodies, and there isn’t any neat new areas opened up after beating the game either. The Wild Area, from a franchise standpoint at least, is pretty impressive, but looking at the game on the whole it feels a little lacking. That’s not to say Sword and Shield don’t bring in new mechanics to mess around with, but whether they make up for what’s been taken away is going to vary with people.

GO BIG OR GO HOME

Since the games went 3D, each region tends to have its own core “gimmick” to differentiate it with older titles. X and Y had Mega Evolution, Sun and Moon had Z-Moves and for Sword and Shield we have Dynamax. Something in the air in Galar can allow Pokémon to grow to colossal size for a short time, granting them extremely powerful Max Moves for its duration. While Dynamaxing seems cool at first, the spectacle kinda wears off after your first few uses of it (not to mention the animation lasts forever), and upon further inspection it’s not as great of an upgrade as you’d think. For one, a Dynamaxed Pokémon only gets a health increase, and all other stats stay the same. Abilities and their elemental types stay the same too, so it’s not a game-changer like Mega Evolution was and it really has more in common with Z-Moves. The Max Moves can be nice, as they’re usually a good deal more powerful when it comes to raw damage, and can come with nice side-effects, but it’s kinda inconsistent. The stronger Fighting-type moves actually become weaker as Max Moves, for one. On top of the base Dynamax ability, some Pokémon can use “Gigantamaxing” instead. This changes their look overall and grants them a unique G-Max Move, though considering how hard they can be to acquire I’m not sure it’s all that satisfying. It doesn’t help that rather than having a certain species of Pokémon capable of Gigantamaxing, it comes down to unique Pokémon themselves that have the trait and it can’t be passed down through breeding either. Overall, Dynamaxing has its uses but I highly doubt it’ll become a staple of the series and will likely be replaced with something else for the Generation 9 games, and I can’t say I’ll miss the mechanic much.

One big addition to the series is Max Raid Battles, found in dens littered all over the Wild Area. Teaming up with up to three other players, locally or online (or team up with awful CPUs if alone), your goal is to take out a permanently Dynamaxed Pokémon. You get a limited amount of turns and if you suffer more than four knockouts, the Raid will end in failure. Victory, however, enables you to get rare and powerful Pokémon, some even coming with really great stats and difficult-to-obtain Abilities, and it’s practically the only way to get Gigantamax Pokémon. The difficulty of the Raids increases as you progress through the game, however, and the Five Star Raids can be brutal. The rewards are great though, getting a lot of extra loot. Bonus moves to teach Pokémon, EXP candies that eliminate a lot of grinding, and more, even if the capture attempt fails. The one real issue with Raids is that some Pokémon can be pretty stingy with appearing in Raids, and you’ll have to use somewhat rare items, Wishing Pieces, to kick some Raids off. There are also the occasional connection issues, but I have more to say on that later.

Outside of these new features, there are the standard quality-of-life changes that each game has, though some can be harder to notice and appreciate than others. You can send Pokémon in storage out on Jobs, to get some neat rewards and some EXP for them, though I find them to be a bit underwhelming. Being able to swap Pokémon on the fly now is a godsend, and together with the EXP Share built into the game, it allowed me the freedom to switch up the monsters in my party and get newcomers up to speed quickly. Most games I barely bother with more than the maximum six, but the sheer variety of Pokémon in Galar let me feel more comfortable with constantly swapping around. On that same note, no National Dex aside, there’s a LOT of choices in Galar. Route 1 alone has over ten Pokémon you can catch right at the start, as opposed to the common mammal, common bug and common bird. It was nice to see some under-represented Pokémon make the cut, but I won’t argue with anyone bummed that their favorites aren’t allowed in. It is a regrettable decision overall, even if it might have been unavoidable here.

Now, you’ll notice I didn’t mention the story much at all because…there isn’t much of one. Pokémon as a franchise isn’t known for its storytelling, despite the Black and White and Sun and Moon games existing and having very well-done stories. Overall, Sword and Shield seems to focus more on characters than an overarching plot and that isn’t too bad overall, but it makes the eventual climax more than a little disappointing. Team Yell, our villainous organization this time around, are just a bunch of hardcore fans for another rival of yours, a girl named Marnie. The conclusion to their story felt very flat, and the eventual main problem involving the Legendary Pokémon is tacked onto the end of the game with little build-up. It doesn’t help that the main villain’s motivation doesn’t make sense. He wants to avert an energy crisis that’s 1000 years from actually happening, and for some reason he refuses to let you get your shot at fighting the Champion because apparently putting things off for one day is unacceptable. It’s just very sloppy. And honestly, “sloppy” can describe a lot of this game, sadly.

WHY Y-COMM WHY

No game is without flaws, and Sword and Shield are far from the first Pokémon games to have their fair share of issues, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that these games in particular are a victim of compromise. Game Freak doesn’t have the luxury of delaying games and polishing them up to a fine sheen, not when the multimedia empire has merch and anime to launch at the same time. I’m also certain that working on this game alongside the Let’s Go games AND Little Town Hero did them no favors. So there are areas in the game that lack polish. The story’s abrupt conclusion, the visuals in general, and Galar itself feeling a tad empty; these are all compromises that had to be made to get this game to ship on the date decided well in advance. I can sympathize with the developers here, and really they’re in an un-enviable position. But at the same time, I’ve been playing Pokémon games for over twenty years, and I kind of expect better, you know? Far too many times I have to shake my head and question why something is designed the way it is, or why it feels at times like the games are going backwards in quality. Problems that were solved several games ago rear their ugly heads again, and for this being a brand new generation and the “proper” debut on a powerful home console, I can’t help but feel that this is just a 3DS game that’s been blown up onto my TV.

NPC character models and the Pokémon themselves look fine, as does the sleek UI, but environments look kinda rough. The Wild Area itself, I say with no exaggeration, looks like it was ripped out of a GameCube game. Those trees are a meme, but at the same time, they also look that bad. Some of the main towns are pretty grandiose, be it the giant castle theme of Hammerlocke, or the steampunk designs of Motostoke, while others feel incredibly barren. It’s kind of intentional with Spikemuth, but I was more than a little disappointed with how small towns feel. While it’s great that HMs have been officially retired (starting from Sun and Moon), Galar itself feels like it has little to offer those that want to explore. You don’t get access to a way to cross water until near the endgame, but there are only a small handful of areas you’d need to backtrack to with that ability. There’s not even a Victory Road in this game, or a rough equivalent.

Sword and Shield, from a competitive standpoint, seems to be trying to make strides in breaking down barriers and allowing more casual fans to dip their toes into competitive play, which I really appreciate, but I think there’s still room for improvement. While on the one hand, it’s never been easier to tweak and customize your Pokémon to your heart’s desire, the game is still not as transparent on certain subjects. You can view a Pokémon’s Effort Values, extra points you can place towards stats, on their stat screen, but only if you hit the X button on that screen, and there’s no indication that’s a thing you can even do. I was more than fifty hours into the game before a friend even told me that! There have been some pretty major strides to reduce the time commitment however, so I have to give the game credit there. As far as game balance goes, having less Pokémon to choose from does inspire creativity, though from what I hear, a fair few Pokémon are a bit of a problem, but that’s no different than any other game. Honestly, even attempting to balance a game with so many moving parts and possible strategies is pretty admirable. I’m not deep into the meta of competitive Pokémon though, so I feel there’s not much I can add to the conversation. If there’s one thing I can’t defend however, it’s this game’s connectivity features.

Starting from the DS era, Pokémon has had online features, but Sword and Shield marks the first time that the Global Trade Station, or GTS, has not been available. This means it’s impossible to put up a posting for a desired Pokémon, or fulfill other’s requests. This wouldn’t be so bad if the way to trade with friends wasn’t such a chore. Rather than being able to freely select a friend and initiate a trade or battle with them, players must enter four-digit codes and HOPE the game pairs them up. This is in every way a downgrade from the past several games. X and Y released over SIX years ago and solved this very issue with the Player Search System. Y-Comm, as it stands, is an awful replacement and there’s not one thing about it that other systems didn’t do better.

If you connect online, the game will have “stamps” appear that show you what friends are doing, alongside broadcasting trade or battle requests from random people, but often those requests are out of date, and trying to join in will result in error messages, the requests fulfilled long ago. Trying to join friends in Raid Battles is an exercise in trial and error, and if online in the Wild Area, other players constantly appear within it and as a result the game begins to chug along. What could have been a neat way to interact with other players across the world results in the game becoming worse to play, so I mostly left it off. Connecting with others has always been a franchise selling point, way back to the days of the Game Boy Link Cables. To see this game drop the ball so severely is worrying. I care about this far more than the graphical issues, far more than the National Dex, and it makes me hesitant to try out the next titles if they can’t solve these issues and KEEP them solved.

AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE

Pokémon Sword and Shield are not bad games; they’re in fact filled with charm and fun. I’ve logged over 80 hours into the game over the past few weeks and the hours flew by. There’s a lot of work that’s clearly been put into the game. The Pokémon designs and concepts this time around are really creative, for one. There’s the Applin line, dragons that hide in apples, and the abominations that are this game’s fossils; carelessly stitched together pieces of incompatible fossils resulting in a freak of nature. I love them. My heart goes out to Game Freak, because it’s clear people worked hard here, but this simply can’t be the game they wanted to make. I think Sword and Shield are turning points for the series, but it’s unclear if that’s a good thing or not.

For all the backlash and negativity surrounding these games, they’re still the fastest-selling Switch games ever. Many fans are pretty satisfied with the game as-is, and the real bitter pill disgruntled fans need to swallow is that…these games have no real reason to improve in quality. Think about it; sales aren’t down, and there’s not a true rival to these games anymore, so why would the hire-ups at Nintendo and The Pokémon Company give these games more time and resources? On top of this, remember that these games are only one part of the massive whole that is the Pokémon brand. Pokémon GO makes a frankly disgusting amount of money, the anime has been going strong for two decades, merch is in no short supply, and now we can likely add major Hollywood films to the list as well. If Game Freak was any other developer, behind any other franchise, they’d likely be able to delay the games to polish them up and add in content that would otherwise be cut, but they can’t do that when they MUST launch simultaneously with the anime, the card games, the merchandise, etc.

The series has been around for so long now as well, while many fans have likely moved on from the franchise, new ones are lining up to take their place. On top of that, there are Pokémon diehards that will likely always support the series. Pokémon is a constant for them; it’s almost like comfort food in game form. They’re not WRONG for feeling that way, and I’m kinda in that same boat. I knew going in that these games were going to be somewhat disappointing, but I still bought the thing! For all the rage directed at these games, many people still gave them their money, and I think the message has been read loud and clear: Pokémon can get away with cutting Pokémon, so it’s unlikely Game Freak will change course any time soon.

Now, of course, that’s one way to look at things. A negative way to be sure. It’s also possible that Game Freak can learn from issues they had with developing these games and push past them. As they get used to console development, to HD development, and get a better idea of what fans want, the next games might actually surpass all expectations. Pokémon as a franchise has always had feature creep to deal with, and Sword and Shield is clearly where it all boiled over. So maybe if they don’t have to worry about accommodating nearly 1000 critters in every single game, they can make larger strives towards higher quality. I don’t want to count them out, but at the same time, I won’t hold my breath either. I’ll always be open to what path this franchise takes, even if they stumble a bit to get there.

In the end, Sword and Shield feel more than a little rough, but there’s some real bright spots glimmering in what might be the franchise’s Darkest Day. The Pokémon themselves are still fun to use and capture, the characters and world of the games are still wholesome fun, and I’ll reiterate that pumping over 80 hours into this game didn’t feel like a chore and I was largely engaged for the entirety of that time. Here’s to hoping that brighter days lie ahead, and a few years from now we can look back at the Dexit controversy and laugh.

-B

[missnight0wl]

Imagine Rakepick is in love with Jacob and is helping MC's out love for him because she also wants to find him ??? Imagine she doesn't want anyone to know that's why she's so mysterious about their relationship and keeps saying she doesn't know him. They probably bonded when they searched for the cursed vaults. It would be an amazing plot twist lol

Thank you so much for this ask! I hope it’s all right that I’m answering this publicly, but I have so many feelings and thoughts when it comes to Rakepick and Jacob that it’s just a great opportunity to talk about it. Also, I apologize in advance that I might take it more seriously than you intended. To the point though.

To be honest, it’s not that far from how I imagine their relationship. I wouldn’t say she’s in love, mostly due to the age difference. We don’t really know how old was our brother when they met, or even WHEN they met, but I assume that the most fitting option for the whole story is Jacob being born in 1966. That would mean that he’s ten years younger than Patricia. And you know, it’s not a tragedy (heck, my own mother is nine years older than my father), however, in our situation, Jacob was likely 16-17 and Patricia was 26-27 when they met, which is sort of… yeah. Still, I do strongly believe that they were close and that it has a huge impact on the relationship between Rakepick and MC. And it feels so important and interesting to me, yet it’s just so underappreciated by the players.

To begin with, I think they were both intrigued by each other. We know Patricia has a keen eye for talented people, and we hear all the time how skilled Jacob was. Also, some time ago I wrote the analysis of Rakepick comparing MC to herself. If I’m right and “one person before” was indeed Jacob, it’d mean that she also acknowledged his potential – and it really says something coming from her. Jacob, on the other hand, was probably fascinated by all the things he could learn from Rakepick. She’s powerful, she already knew a lot about the Cursed Vaults, possibly also about R. Maybe he had a teenage crush on her as well – because c’mon, who hasn’t, right? (Just kidding… or am I?)

Anyway, I imagine they’ve become attached to each other, they started trusting each other. I do believe that one of the reasons Patricia cares about MC now is because she cared about Jacob before. Moreover, I think she sees it as her mistake, and that’s why her behaviour towards us is sometimes inconsistent. On the one hand, she saves our life. But then, she sends us to the Forbidden Forest to face the Chimaera. She lends us her Niffler, then she uses us to steal from Filch. She mentors us, she breaks our wand etc. She both cares and pushes us away. Perhaps she didn’t push Jacob away enough, and it made them both weaker. Rakepick definitely doesn’t look like a person who feels comfortable with an emotional attachment to anyone.

This isn’t actually the idea I got after finding the notebook revealing their partnership. I had similar thoughts already after learning that our favourite Curse-Breaker had a young assistant in the past. You can get this information in Y4Ch3. I didn’t choose it myself, but when I’ve heard about it, it really intrigued me. I was assuming for a long time that this person had to have a bigger role, and now with Jacob’s news, it makes even more sense, in my opinion.

If you keep in mind that Patricia and Jacob knew each other, some things really start to look differently. For example, MC’s relationship with Sickleworth. Sure, it is said that Jacob’s sibling is good with creatures, but isn’t it peculiar that we get so well with this adorable Niffler basically right away? Like, MC literally has dialogues with him, they understand each other without words. It really makes more sense to me if Sickleworth recognised Jacob in MC and continued the close bond they had. And Patricia loves Sickleworth, so of course, she’d be more willing to get closer to someone accepted by her child. Or maybe it was the other way around.

Another thing involving Rakepick and Sickleworth: on the map of the Forbidden Forest we found in the Vault of Fear, there was written R. You know, like our main antagonist. But during the fourth year we also found this note about the arrowhead:

Why it had to be buried, in the magical world with so many possibilities of hiding? Perhaps so it had to be discovered by a Niffler? And not any Niffler, a trained one and particularly obedient to its owner. So, could R on the map be for “Rakepick” as a clue to who will help us…?

(And no, I don’t think Jacob was hiding it from Rakepick, as it was fairly easy for Sickleworth to find it.)

There’s also “The Letter From No One” theory. In short, it’s possible that Rakepick came back to Hogwarts in our year 4 because at some point during year 3 Jacob got into captivity and couldn’t protect MC any longer. This would mean they were still working together, in a way, all that time. And you know, Patricia had one interesting line after spotting Pettigrew on the Marauders’ Map:

Notice the expression “under my watch”. Sure, she might’ve been talking about being our teacher and/or mentor, yet I can’t help but feel it’s not the only “obligation” to protect us she has.

I’m still not certain why she keeps denying the things we found in Jacob’s notebook; however, the best explanation that comes to my mind is that Jacob asked her for it and/or she does it to protect him somehow. I mean, she could be hiding her own dirt, but then again, she could just ignore us – like she usually does, it won’t be the first time for her to say “I’m not telling you anything” – instead of actively assuring us it’s not true.

All of the above being said, I have to admit that I enjoy the idea of them getting together eventually, like during the Second Wizarding War – romantically or not. It just seems to me like a good ending for their stories. Because look:

They’re (almost) equally powerful, and Rakepick acknowledges that.

They have a similar experience with the Cursed Vaults (and probably both were closely involved with R). They also lost the best years because of that experience.

They could practice curse-breaking together.

They could take over Knockturn Alley. I mean, this one was pretty much done already, if we want to believe those quotes from the game:

“Rakepick is the most frightening thing in Knockturn Alley…”

“From what the teachers say, your brother became one of the most feared wizards in Knockturn Alley.”

As I mentioned, Sickleworth is likely fond of Jacob. And hey, if a man is accepted by your beloved pet, he must be a keeper, right?

Imagine Rosmerta seeing sweet quiet Jacob with that Rakepick woman. In fact, imagine anyone’s reaction to that relationship. People keep telling us how Jacob was likeable and thoughtful and all – at least the ones who knew him better. But there’s no way he’ll be the same after the Vaults. He also apparently didn’t have a group of close friends to support him, unlike MC. As far as we know, Patricia might be the only person to understand the mess of his life.

I’m sorry it turned out to be so long, but I just feel it deserves attention (I put links to some of my other posts to not make it even longer). If you ask me, Jacob and Rakepick are probably the most important characters in the story. So yeah, I kind of hope my assumptions will turn out to be true, at least the part about their relationship before the current events. The hints are already in the game.

[ssnakey-b]

Square-Enix announces FFVIII remaster. I wish I could be excited about it.

Me desperately trying to convince myself that I'm happy we got some acknowledgement of the 20th anniversary.

So Square-Enix just announced that Final Fantasy VIII is getting a remaster and first things first, in case you haven’t seen it yet, here it is:

Many of us FF8 fans are of course very excited about this announcement and even though I made sure not to set my expectations too high when I first heard the rumours, I too was happy to learn that Square-Enix was acknowledging the 20th anniversary of our favourite game, and that it was finally getting some recognition outside of crossovers and the occasional cameo or reference.

But then, I watched the trailer again and as the euphoria of the original announcement faded, I started noticing some things I was less than impressed by, and within an hour, I came to the realization that... I just plain don’t like the direction where this thing is going.

Let’s look at the characters one by one and let’s immediately address the elephant in the room:

Squall’s stupid Dissidia face. This was an immediate disappointment. At least they stuck to his original outfit, I suppose, but man, I cannot comprehend this decision. Why? Why can’t they leave the original design alone? Everyone loves that design, even the people who hate Squall. And why mess with the character’s design in a product that’s made solely as fanservice for long time fans?! Why must Dissidia replace every. Goddamn. Thing whether the fans like it or not?!

That’s actually a joke I made to myself. “Man, can you imagine if at E3 they announced that they’d just replace Squall’s model with the Dissidia one! HA HA HA!” and I actually didn’t even bring it up in the Discord because I didn’t want to be obnoxious with yet more bashing of Squall’s Dissidia redesign. And yet, here we are, they actually fucking did it. They actually just took the original FF8 and fucked it up by putting Dissidia Squall in it. Guess I am justified in my bashing (and I do like the Dissidia games a lot, make no mistake, I just can’t stand that stupid and pointless redesign of Squall).

And it’s not just that it’s different, and it’s not just because it’s blatantly a recycled asset that’s been retooled slightly, it really does look terrible to me. I really don’t like his overly thin face, his overly soft features, and the fact that he generally looks like he’s 14. Yes, I know he’s a teenager, but he’ still not THIS young, and his original design really gave you the impression that it was someone who trained to be a professional fighter, as opposed to a shoujo manga character.

The hair also looks off. It looks less like hair and more like a plastic helmet or something.

And I know people made jokes about how spiky it was in the original game due to the technical limitations of the time, but it still looked good in my opinion, and it was designed in such a way that it actually looked like his biggest bangs rested naturally on his ears. Here his hair just makes weird solid spikes because... I don’t know, he’s related to Phoenix Wright, now? I used to joke that Squall must be the type of guy who spends hours making it look like he spends no time on his looks, but here it really looks like the dude is just slathering his hair in gel to create these spikes and make them fashionable.

And speaking of the bangs, I have no idea why they thought making the ones on the sides of his head all curvy was a good idea. To me, it just looks like armpit hair, or really unkempt sideburns. I’m just amazed by how not a single strand of hair on that model wants to obey the laws of physics.

These changes are especially jarring to me considering they apparently haven’t touched the CGI cutscenes, making it blatant that it’s not what he’s supposed to look like. So at least it’s creating inconsistencies that didn’t exist in the original game, so that’s a bonus.

Also, looking at the folds on his jacket, they... really don’t look good. Looking back at the original model, they really knew how to work with the limitations of the time, so the folds are more understated, yet at the same time, there was more of a contrast with the rest of the jacket, making it again look more real in spite of the lower resolution.

Oh and it looks like they gave him skinny legs like in Dissidia because Heaven forbid that a professional mercenary looks like received para-military training.

Next on the list is Quistis and she does look a lot better than Squall. I especially like how serious she looks. All business all the time. But again, the hair is where it falters. It looks weirdly... poofy, for lack of a better word, compared to her original self and much like Squall’s jacket, the texture of it feels far less sharp than originally, especially when you look at where the bangs meet the pulled back part of her hair. It really feels like there should be a bigger contrast in the shading to highlight the shape of it and give it more volume.

Again, compare with the original, which had a much sharper contrast between the shadows and the highlights, and so made it look a lot more voluminous and lively. Also notice that there was more shading on the original model, giving it a more defined shape. And much like with Squall, the hair gives me that weird impression of just being clipped on and not actually connected to the head, which wasn’t a problem with the older models. This will continue to be a trend, but more on that later.

The same goes for the clothes. Again, in spite of being lower resolution, you can see folds and you can easily imagine the texture of it, but in this trailer, everything is completely smooth and flat. It really takes away from the personality this outfit shows.

Then, there’s Linoa, and she too I’m pretty sure is based off her Dissidia design, though there’s a bigger chance they actually made a new model seeing how Dissidia NT models have a much higher polycount than the PSP games. Now, I actually liked her Dissidia redesign. It wasn’t quite the same as in the original game, but I liked how they made her look more mature and even a bit curvier, which makes sense since it’s set after the events of each character’s game.

So even though the rounder face seems a bit odd in the original game, I can could have been happy with it and besides, there seemed to be quite a few differences between her CGI model and her battle model in FF8 anyway, so I’m not gonna complain about it looking a bit different. But then, once again, there’s the hair...

So... what happened to her caramel strands? You know, the signature part of her looks? If you look veeeeery closely during the video, there’s what might be a couple very faded strands, but the fact that I’m not sure should tell you everything you need to know, as they’re pretty much gone. And overall, the modeling just isn’t very good and much like with Squall, her bangs just look weird, overly stiff and spiky. Unlike with the original model, it feels like it was cut out that way like cardboard or something rather than naturally following the shape of her head.

One positive I’ll give it is that we can clearly see the two rings on her necklace, and I’ll give them bonus points if there’s only one before Squall hands her his ring.

On to Selphie.

...

She actually looks fine and is definitely the one who comes out the best from this whole thing. No complaints there, even though we don’t get to see much of her. Even her wristband/bracelet thing is more detailed, which will come in very handy for fan art.

Next is Zell. Now, I’ve seen people mention/complain that they gave him a babyface, but I actually don’t mind that. Zell’s whole deal is that he’s trying to act tough and dangerous even though he’s clearly a loving mama’s boy, so it fits in that he’d look more youthful and innocent. Hell, one could even argue it explains why he wanted to get a face tattoo. No, I have far more of an issue with everyone else having baby faces as well.

And last but not least, we have Irvine. Now face-ise, I don’t have much of a problem with it, looks pretty good. The bangs are a little weird and again give me that cardboard/wood cutout feel, but still, doesn’t look bad.

What does look bad is Irvine’s shotgun:

The barrels look weird, right? Well that’s because as you may have noticed, the texture for the holes isn’t aligned with the 3D model. That’s also why you can see a bit of wood texture on one of the cannons. And you can’t see it very well on this screenshot, but the chamber also has mismatching textures.

That’s right, in the trailer announcing a remaster that's supposed to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the game, a product whose only purpose is to make the game look better, they felt comfortable showing us graphical issues that weren’t present in the original game.

Now sure, this will probably be fixed by the time the remaster gets released (at least I hope it will) but I cannot stress this enough, the one thing this remaster is supposed to do is make the game look better and the big announcement trailer cannot even promise us decent texturing.

It also says a lot about the different treatment of fandoms that on the same day, FF7 fans get more insight on an awesome remake of a game that’s already been ported to pretty much every current system in existence, has had multiple sequels, spin-offs and adaptations and constantly gets referenced in other games, with all the love and care that one should expect from a major AAA project but for FF8 fans, proper texture mapping is too much to ask.

It just boggles my mind that a major publisher would create a trailer blatantly showing broken graphics, but to do so for a remaster is just incomprehensible to me.

And speaking of the textures, this leads me to my main issue with these models, which is that they just plain don’t look good. Final Fantasy VIII had a really strong visual identity and compared to the rest of the games, it looked extremely realistic, to the point that even the more recent games that do go for a more realistic feel, like XIII or XV, still have a more overtly fantasy feel. And FFVIII pulled off that realistic style amazingly well. Even though it was made using technology that wasn’t anywhere near as advanced as what we have to day, they still felt like flesh and bone people, and that made them that much more relatable.

But here, that strong identity has been completely neutered. Everything looks way too soft and clean. The textures have no definition to them and are overly smooth; they look airbrushed. And look, I’m not gonna pretend that the characters in the original looked gritty or anything, they were still pretty boys and girls, but they were believable pretty boys and girls. There was still something about them that made it feels like they could be people you’d meet in the streets. Here, their uncannily smooth and featureless skin looks like plastic. They look like action figures.

These models not only look bland and boring IMO, but they just do not fit with the style of FF8, which is going to be especially jarring considering they apparently don’t intend to upgrade the backgrounds. Hell, these models don’t even fit with one-another, as Squall and Linoa really don’t look like they belong with the rest of the team, IMO.

To really ram home how badly this remaster fails to understand FFVIII’s aesthetic, just look at this comparison, which just made me go “Urgh!” when I saw it. Just look Squall and Quistis don’t fit in with this environment. See how especially out of place Squall looks. Behold how stiff and awkward his hair is. Marvel at his collar made of crumbled up tissue paper! Admire how his once intense expression now looks bland and boring! Behold how what few folds left on Quistis’ overly smooth outfits no longer follow the shape of her body! Gaze in wonder at how lifeless these soulless mannequins look.

It’s just so sad and what makes it worse is that just a few months ago, we had the FF8 Mobius event which gave us an HD version of Squall and Ultimecia and that looked amazing! Now obviously a full game with that look wasn’t gonna happen, but I really would have hoped that they’d at least use it as a guideline for the direction to take the art in. Instead, all we get for the 20th anniversary is a remaster that can’t even promise to look as good as the original.

It’s just so sad, and some people are already defending it by saying that we should be happy we got anything at all, or that we shouldn’t be “ungrateful” about it. No! We shouldn’t be content with mediocrity just because it’s better than nothing, especially when I’m not convinced it is. It’s a terribly apathetic to have, and I’m pretty sure it’s the exact sort of attitude AAA companies want to cultivate: be happy with what you get because you ain’t getting anything else.

As for being ungrateful, that’s just laughable. They’re not giving us a present, people, it’s a re-release of a 20 year-old game and as far as I can tell, all they’re doing is change the 3D models, and we’re still gonna have to pay for it. It’s a glorified mod and yet it barely competes with fan-made ones.

Add to this how quickly slapped together the trailer blatantly was, using what is hopefully an early build of the remaster and being half made of CGI footage despite the fact that they don’t appear to have done anything new to it, and it really doesn’t give me the vibe of something made with love.

Honestly, I used to think I was gonna buy it either way, partly because I still wanted to see how it was, partly because I wanted to support Square-Enix but honestly, seeing how this is shaping up, I don’t want to support this any more. I already bought the game on PS1 and PC, why should I buy it a third time in a worse-looking version?

Look, I really wanted to get excited for this. I really wanted to celebrate some new official FF8 content with everyone, but I can only judge it from what I’m seeing, and what I’m seeing is an unfitting art direction, recycled assets and mismatched textures. I just cannot bring myself to cheer on something that really doesn’t seem

So unless they really show us stuff that blows me away before release, I think I’ll stick with the PC version (or maybe the PS1 version on emulators if I’m feeling REALLY nostalgic), even if there is no good reason why it should still be doing such a better job of improving the game’s graphics than an official remaster. Oh and by the way, let us not forget that this is something that console players don’t get the luxury to do since FF8 was infamously not ported to modern consoles, unlike all the other ones. So if you play on consoles and want to play the original without the remastered graphics, fuck you, I guess.

Yep, still the best looking guy here.

[out-of-this-dimension]

The Star Fox Adventures Game Manual -- Analysis

So, you may remember a few months back, I received a lot of hate mail on AO3 and FF.net for a fic that I posted that I’ve since taken down in hopes of redoing someday.  The hate was largely from people who don’t like Panther (the fic was Krystal x Panther) but a lot of their arguments were attempts to debunk how “canon” my fic is.  With a lot of my fics, I don’t stray too far from canon, but I do fill in “gaps” with my own headcanons.  I feel like the SF series is a comfortable enough blank slate to do that.  Mild spoilers for future fics, but one of these headcanons is that Panther is Cerinian.  I’ve actually covered this headcanon previously on my blog but I’m too lazy to look up the link.  

One of the arguments my “secret admirer” tried to make about how my fic “contradicts canon” is that “Well, Panther can’t be Cerinian because the Star Fox Adventures manual says that Krystal is the sole survivor.” (and then they made a hate fic about how my headcanon of Panther being Cerinian couldn’t possibly work, but that’s a story for another time).

Admittingly, I hadn’t looked at the manual in most of a decade, so that little tidbit escaped my memory.  But honestly, with Cerinian OCs flying around left and right in the fandom, I thought it was an odd piece of info to nitpick about.  Regardless, it sparked some intrigue, so I decided to poke around the internet and lo and behold, I found a PDF copy of the manual.  Since it’s been a long while since the last time I read the manual, I decided to do an analysis on it.  Analysis with pictures under the cut!

This is the “prologue” of Star Fox Adventures and while it’s all good and dandy, I want to point out three very important things-- 1. Peppy retired at this point, not after Krystal showed up. I mean, this is relatively minor but I thought it was noteworthy that our Barrel-Roll Loving Team Dad was already going to be retired before the “next SF game”-- whatever that would have been, though I’m fairly certain Assault’s development launched right at the heels of Adventures, if not while Adventures was in late development still. 2. Slippy apparently traded in his pilot’s wings to become a mechanic, which is... blatantly ignored in both Assault and Command because while he does mechanic-like stuff (playing off of his role as the “team smartie pants”), he still very much is a pilot. 3. Falco left because he was bored is only a rumor.  I know “Farewell Beloved Falco” tackles this to a degree. I want to also note that this inspired me to re-read Farewell Beloved Falco on Monday and there’s no real point in the manga that says Falco left because he was bored (I have my own speculation as to why he left but I’ll save that for later).  I find it really odd that the manual says Falco “simply disappeared”, when he very clearly left with great bravado at the end of the manga.  He didn’t vanish into the night or anything, like this would imply.  He said he was going to go solo for a bit and flew off after the Titania Incident.  It... feels like maybe there was a miscommunication here between who was giving the person writing the manual details.

This is the Character Bio page, which, to my secret admirer’s glee, does contain the info that Krystal is the only survivor of Cerinia.  It also name drops Cornerian Weapons R&D, which has also never been heard of before or since this manual. I actually searched excessively for more mentions about this and yielded no results.  Curious.  I had never noticed that and assumed Slippy had just been tinkering on stuff for fun.  Also oof, my heart at ROB being considered a full-fledged SF member.

I’m going to skip over the parts I don’t have any commentary on.  

So it’s pretty clear from the final product that Rareware had no idea what they were doing with the SpellStones.  They clearly absorb magic from the planet to keep the planet from falling apart (which says to me that this is not the planet’s natural state but I’ve talked about that before so I’ll spare you the ramble).  But what was going on with them is really unclear.  I understand that Dinosaur Planet gives a better explanation of the SpellStones but that purpose does not seem to be canon any longer.

The text here implies that Scales has every single SpellStone in his possession (the Queen EarthWalker ALSO states he removed the SpellStones himself).  Yet, when you make it into the game...

(Special note: I found this pic on Google and the file was called “Asshole”, which, tbh isn’t inaccurate but it gave me a chuckle so I thought I’d share it.)

Scales doesn’t possess all of the SpellStones.  Drakor, a mutant in Scales’s army, guards the one at Dragon Rock-- we can assume Scales is responsible for that.  The King RedEye has been fitted with one in his head-- we can assume Scales is responsible for that.  But past that? We find Scales in the CloudRunner Fortress treasury with the first Ocean SpellStone, which he has clearly just found.  And the entire point of DarkIce Mines, the entire reason the SnowHorn are enslaved, is because Scales is looking for the SpellStone.  Which says to me that the SpellStone wasn’t even removed by him.  He wouldn’t have had to enslave the entire tribe to go digging for it otherwise.  He wouldn’t have had to lay siege to CloudRunner Fortress either.

So this entire plot point is absolutely inconsistent to what’s in the manual and even... in the game. What is the reasoning behind this?  Probably the innumerable plot changes during SFAdv’s development.

With the fortunate release of the Dinosaur Planet ROM and the creation of the Warlock Engine by Hugo Peters, a lot has been uncovered in terms of how Dinosaur Planet would have originally looked like.  Dark Ice Mines, for instance, was actually meant to connect via the SnowHorn Wastes (or, Northern Wastes) via a small cave entrance on the other side of the river near where one finds Garunda Te.  The cave still exists in the finalized version of the game but leads to no where.  

However, with Star Fox being added in, I think Rare felt the need to add in things that made the game feel a bit more in line with the Star Fox series.  The planet pieces being torn apart was a way to shove in Arwing sections of the game.  And the devs needed a reason for the change in the planet’s state... and what’s a better throwaway reason than “it’s just magic, bruh”?  So the SpellStones, being focal points in the game’s story, were changed to being part of the reason for the planet falling to pieces. That led to DarkIce Mines, despite having a basically completed map, getting yoinked from the planet’s surface and tossed into space, meaning the entrance was sealed.  The reason for all of this was handwaved into “Oh, Scales did this because he removed the stones” without... the game actually reflecting much of that at all because most of it had been made with a different story in mind.

I think Rare did this hoping that no one would look at the plot too closely but uh oh, that didn’t happen.  And if you need further proof that this was all a bit of an “oopsie” on Rare’s part, you need not look much further than DarkIce Mines once more.  Belina Te has a small throwaway line about how her father hid the SpellStone in the mines.  She says something to the effect of “He didn’t say where he hid it, only that it was somewhere safe” which is code for “Yeah lol I stuck this important object crafted by the gods into the claws of a giant monstrosity but it’s w/e”.  Maybe he was hoping that Galdon would protect it from Scales.  I mean, it’s not a bad thought, really...

But the fact that the game seems to imply Scales has all the stones is still technically wrong.  Now, because I think about these things a little TOO much, here’s my theory as to how this could have technically worked: All the SpellStones are placed in the same spot, you just traverse different routes (The Force Point Temples) to reach that spot. The only way I could see Scales making out with 2 out of 4 SpellStones is that there was a battle between the SharpClaw and the other dinosaurs at the central point where the SpellStones are located and General Scales was only partially successful.  Which could very well be the case, but, unfortunately, the manual and game seem to not act as though this is the case...

tl;dr for that section: This literally makes no sense no matter how you slice it and sure, you can come up for reasons that things ended up this way but ultimately, the game is conflicting with itself about its own story.  But let’s move on.

Apparently atmospheric conditions are so powerful on Sauria that it can interrupt communications, which I thought was a neat lore tidbit.  

So I got 2 things from this tidbit about Saurian.

1. This language is called “relatively new”, even though it’s existed for thousands of years, which feels like a contradiction?  A quick Google search estimates English has been around for 1400 years, to put that into perspective and I think English is considered to be fairly new compared to other languages, but I’m honestly not too terribly learned on that.  Of course, that’s only viewing this through the lens of someone who lives on Earth.  Having a language around in the Lylat System only for “a few thousand years” makes me wonder how long the older languages have existed?  It’s quite possible that a few thousand years isn’t a long lifespan for a language in this universe.  

2. Who were these off-worlders?  And boy do I have theories.

Theory 1. The Krazoa.  They are seemingly the gods to the dinosaurs and speak the same language.  This could mean that they taught the dinosaurs this new language.  It would fit the bill for their portrayal in this game. They are godlike entities, the dinosaurs do revere them... it makes sense.  

Theory 2. The ones who taught the dinosaurs how to talk were the Cerinians. There is mild evidence for this with Krystal understanding Dino Speak without a translator despite being new to the planet (evidenced by the fact the CloudRunner had to explain the Krazoa to her/some dialogue bits about her learning of General Scales/the brief exposition we get about her searching the Lylat System for answers).  You could argue this is due to her telepathy - she could just simply be talking in a way that the dinosaurs can understand but I don’t think Krystal’s telepathy had been firmly established as part of her character at this point (she had the ability to leave telepathic messages onto her staff and she could channel magic into Andross, but her true telepathy powers weren’t really shown until Assault).  Krystal’s staff also seems strangely in-tune with Sauria, which I’ve theorized about previously.  I’m mostly thinking on the Magic Caves that are conveniently scattered on Sauria.  It could be that Cerinians had built the shrines within the Magic Caves to help their descendants out if they ever showed up to Sauria.  So, I guess the tl;dr version is “Maybe the Cerinians had previously been on Sauria and had established the Magic Caves and had taught the dinosaurs their native language?” 

To summarize my thoughts, the manual is a reflection of SFAdv itself- riddled with weird plot inconsistencies that you can almost fudge reasons/logic to cover but some of it feels like stretches for the sake of making plot make sense.  There’s some contradictions in the lore/story but despite that, there’s still interesting tidbits to be found.  

If anything, this booklet kind of validates my feelings from the post I made about canon awhile back.  Not all of the canon makes sense when you nitpick it to death.  When the source material conflicts with itself, you’re not going to win a “this is canon because x and y, etc” because... well... the story itself doesn’t even seem to know what’s canon.

Additionally, canon is something derived partially from people’s own experiences.  Two people can consume the same media and come to different conclusions and that’s fine.  We don’t need to have these tired debates about whose interpretation of canon is better.  We just need people to understand that while their interpretation may fit them but it may not fit everyone.  And that’s why, as I have begun doing Fanon Hot Take posts, I keep that disclaimer up.  I don’t wanna say “My opinion of how to interpret canon/fanon is the best opinion” because that’s stupid. There is no definitive “best” because it’s all subjective.  But people get into their own feelings so much about their interpretations and that’s when we have these debates of “well, my idea is better than yours”.  Then people try to dismantle each other instead of just appreciating the different ideas being brought to the table.  And it’s exhausting.

Frankly, I don’t ever think Panther being Cerinian will be canon.  But Nintendo has not, as of this date, said he’s not.  But that’s my interpretation of his character until Nintendo gives us more to go off of.  And if my interpretation bothers someone enough that they decide to send me harassment over it, then that’s on them.  I will not be apologizing for my interpretations, even if they do go against the grain.  It’s a pity people like that exist, that would rather tear at others than try to just enjoy the content that appeals directly to him but alas, they are not the first person to be like that and they will not be the last.

On a lighter note, while I am still bothered by this person going out of their way to be so spiteful, I want to thank them for inspiring me to look at the text.  It validated my feelings further and it made me realize how stupid the canon debate is.  I actually had a blast going back over this book and re-reading everything.  I hadn’t gotten to lay eyes on this booklet in years!  I really hope I get to do this for other SF games because a lot of these manuals have such hidden gems.

Thank you for reading this ramble/analysis!

[sketchs-trashcan]

so, it seems like tumblr ate my original post...*sigh* at least this means I can do the same thing but with the entire game now.

Since I ended up with PQ2 early, I wrote down most of everything that happened and decided to put it all together in a guide of some sort. I have a less-spoilery section full of general info and a much more spoilery section that pertains to the labyrinths. The labyrinth parts will be mostly about where to unlock special screenings as well as weakness to some FOEs and the boss of the labyrinth. Keep in mind that this is NOT a full guide and I definitely left some things out and/or vague. This is more like the bare bones of the game. Kinda. idk what to call it.

if you want something a bit more specific and/or want to scream about the game, feel free to message me!

Less spoilery stuff

•don’t play based off of knowledge from PQ, literally almost every shadow has different weaknesses and resistances

•hitting a (fill in the blank)bane lexy with something it’s resistant to can cause it to use holy wrath on a row (heavy damage, all binds) (seems to only be specific ones, i have yet to find a pattern though. i don’t think it started to happen until farther along in the game, which was an aboslute bitch in some cases)

•golden shadows always move first, don’t bother with moves like line guard unless that character is in boost

•FOEs can’t be knocked down

•speaking of knocking things down, you need all enemies to be down before you can do an all-out attack. also, all enemies will go back up after one

•after getting back up, enemies might attack. it’s a bit inconsistent

•you know what else is inconsistent? some of the in-game descriptions and explanations. i’m pretty sure armor smasher or whatever only lasts one turn, not three. also, blue is the weakest color for an FOE, not white. i refuse to believe that a dinosaur is somehow less threatening than a dude in a chicken suit. there’s other problems, but those are the ones i can think of off the top of my head

-i lied. i thought of something else

•in the shop, the “have” section includes anything in storage, while inventory is what you actually have with you. it’s a bit dicier when withdrawing items, i think that counting system’s just fucked

•the huge churros are a bit of a ripoff by the time you can get them unless you want to restore only 30 HP to a row in battle. otherwise, just use normal popcorn (as a side note, i was playing on hard, so my team had to be hella buff to take on the first boss, this could be why i view the churros with distain)

•the hotdogs and large dual dogs, on the other hand, are good. especially the dual dogs, stick to those once you unlock them

•selling FOE bits doesn’t really seem to unlock new items in the shop until later. very disappointing gosh darn it yosuke, stop messing with the game mechanics

���read item descriptions. i went into the first boss battle thinking gutsy fries were the same as revival beads. they are not.

•sacrificing personas doesn’t seem to create special materials anymore

•unison attacks can happen so long as at least one participating member is in the battling party. example: the unison attack with P3P and the other (human) 2nd years can occur even if fuuka is the only one present (she’ll need to be navigating the battle though)

•unison attacks occur at random from what i can tell. they’re very strong, but don’t count on one always popping up when you need one

•follow-up attacks are also random, but much weaker. they at least knock down the shadow that’s still up and gives you the opportunity for an all-out attack, so there’s that

•always take the opportunity for all-out attacks. enemies might recover before the rest of your team can attack and get into boost mode

•some special screenings seem to be unlocked only if you check the shop/box office at specific points in the game. i don’t know if they’re only at specific points or if they can happen after that, too

•wildcards do not all need to be at a specific level to unlock ultimate personas, so don’t feel completely obligated to keep them up to speed with joker (you should still train them a bit though). everyone else needs to be at least level 55 to unlock theirs afterwards

•if two FOEs end up running into you at different times during a battle, the most recent one will kick out the older one (aka you don’t fight both of them at once). which means if you win, the newer one dies, but the older one will still be lurking next to you (this is based off of one special screening where i got cocky and nearly paid the price for it)

-i am currently unconvinced that homonculi or however it’s spelled exist outside of chests. i beat the entire game, beat every FOE, and they still haven’t shown up in the shop

That was long. Oops? Well, next up is the labyrinths, so if you want to find out this stuff on your own, best not go any farther.

More spoilery stuff

Kamoshidaman

•i’m 90% certain that the goba-k more is in a golden chest somewhere in this labyrinth. if not, it was in junessic land

•Noir and Queen do not join until after boss

•P3P does not join until second floor (if I’m remembering correctly, otherwise it’s third)

•when rescuing P3P, take out the original shadow, then beat the shit out of tank with everything you have

•just try to stay alive during inital Kamoshidaman encounter, don’t bother too much with attacking (i don’t know if attacking is required for the battle to end, i tried to attack and quickly got pummeled)

•there’s a shortcut that leads to the stairs between the 2nd and 3rd floor, but you have to fight a battle before you can activate it. the battle is not nice

•Boss: Left is weak to fire, right is weak to electricity, middle is weak to fire once left and right are gone

also, the scene where the thieves make their move is fantastic, make sure to watch it. volume on also makes it better

Junessic Land

-lots of the enemies here have a weakness to psi, some of them have weakness to nuke. change your team accordingly

•you can’t sneak up on the pterodactyl FOEs. even if you sneak up on them. they “sneak up” on you and gain advantage (they’re weak to ice, resistant to curse, and can confuse you, btw) ::edit:: they don’t gain advantage so long as you approach them from the front

-t-rex FOEs only chase you if you walk into their line of sight (they’re weak to nuke and resistant to basically everything else, btw. highly recommend avoiding battle when possible)

•IT minus Yosuke does not join until the second floor

•Yosuke does not join until you rescue one of the herbivores

•dead end in area 1, D4: regain HP and SP

•for a certain special screening, ammonite is located in D3. don’t be a fool like me. avoid the pond until you find all the chests

•electric gates are essentially mean walls. you can walk right up to them, just don’t try to walk through them

•dead end in area 3, B6: unlocks new special screening

•can begin unlocking unison attacks after rescuing Yosuke

•dead end in area 3, E4: allowing Fox and Teddie to eat the fruit causes them to lose HP and gain SP (probably only matters if one of them is in your party, idk)

•dead end in area 4, F6: unlocks new special screening

•Boss: weak to electric, resistant (and eventually null) to wind

-Left back: Weak to psi. Resistant to ice, nuke

-Middle back: Weak to nuke. Resistant to ice, psi

-Right back: Weak to ice. Resistant to psi, nuke

-Based on context clues (those being the boss going from mostly chilling to beating the shit out of me), I’m 99% certain you do NOT want to actually knock out the “boss”, focus on the back line

A.I.G.I.S.

-for the most part, anything robotic has the exact weakness you’d expect it to have

•SEES minus P3 and Aigis join on the first floor

•the stationary FOEs are stupidly easy to defeat if you have electric attacks

•the other FOEs, on the other hand, are not. they will hurt you and some of them chase you through security gates. do not engage, do not pass go, do not collect $200 (unless they’re either blue or white on your map, in which case, go nuts)

•there are three possible tasks you can choose from to open the lab. don’t know about the other two, but power doesn’t involve battling

•Aigis and P3 join on first floor of lab

•dead end in zone 1, C4: unlocks new special screening

•dead end in zone 2, C6: unlocks new special screening

•dead end in zone 2, B5: unlocks new special screening

•southwest corner of small room in lab 1F (corner is in A4): unlocks new special screening

•dead end in lab 2F, B6: unlocks new special screening

•boss: no weakness initially, but weak to everything once hacked first time (it’s still on and can attack though, and the hack is temporary), weak to curse second (haven’t checked everything)

-has an attack that brings everyone to the same amount of hp, using all/line guard is probably a bad idea when it happens depending on everyone’s hp, recommend fuuka as battle nav for healing tide and bringing along someone with mediarama

-seals one attack from each person at random

-uses multiple magic attacks (have found electric, ice, fire, and wind)

-has attacks that can bind magic, strength, or speed

-make sure ALL elements are covered, preferably by more than one skill/person

???

•be very wary if you come across an actual set of stairs, there will be a battle in the next open space/beyond the next door

•some stage lifts have FOEs on them

•gnomes turn every three steps

•mr. bear can potentially change its path when you flip a switch

    -in case you were wondering. they are weak to curse. and they hit really fucking hard (as in, over 200 damage while under the influence of debilitate to a roughly lv 50 aigis in the back row, and she’s resistant to physical attacks. big yikes). but. if you use the combination of debilitate/masukunda/masukukaja/orb of haste. they hit you once in a blue moon. so basically never

•there is a goho-m more in the golden chest in the first act

•dead end in act 1, 4C: new screening

•(just assume the rest of these are dead ends) act 2, 3E: new screening

•act 5, 5E: new screening

•act 6, 7B: new screening

•act 6: 6F: i’m 99% certain this unlocked a special screening but for some reason i wasn’t given a notification

•boss: first off. can i just say. WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK IS THAT??? WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?? DISGUSTING!!! EUUURGHHHH!!!!!

-looks like a variety of attacks, including almighty. it depends on where the eye is

-eye is the only part that can actually take damage, the rest seems to be just for boost

-knows mamudo

-eye: immune to everything except physical/almighty

-left arm: weak to wind

-right arm: ?

-head: ? (never figured out these two bc i beat it before i could bother figuring it out)

-real weak point: weak to electric and ice

-later on, if you use any support skill other than your new one (you’ll know which one), the real weak point will bind you again. also happens once everyone is unbound

-side note, normal unbinding items don’t work, unless that was a very unfortunate glitch i had

[REDACTED]

-you have to actually step on switches to use them. that’s really all i’ve got

-wait. there’s a dead end somewhere that unlocks one of the last unison skills. i forgot to write down where though.

-there is also a “treasure spot” somewhere on the last labyrinth floor :) that has :) a special surprise :) have fun :):):):) *screams into the void*

-defeating the FOE that chases you is required to unlock the ultimate weapons. the FOE that mimics you is required to unlock ultimate armor. both things require parts from other FOEs, so go nuts, i guess

-rain leg musha is weak to fire and curse, resistant to nuke. wicked turret is weak to psi, resistant to fire

-there are “reruns” of the bosses you have to beat. they’re easy so long as you exploit their weaknesses. they’re basically the easy version of when you first fought them, no extra gimmicks. i found kamoshidaman in the lower left, dino boy in the bottom right, computer in the upper right, and big ol’ blob in the upper left

ENLIL

-weak to psi and nuke, resistant to electric

MAELSTROM INCARNATE

-ok, this battle was both fun an an absolute bitch (my entire team was level 72 and i was on hard mode, if that give you any context)

-first and foremost, this boss can change its affinity. you can tell what it is based on what attack it’s using. in all cases, it’s null to wind. not sure why

     -weak to ice, resistant to fire (and vice versa)

     -weak to light, resistant to dark (and vice versa)

-the boss can nullify buffs to your party and debuffs to itself. this makes those skills useless overall, but they can at least distract her for a move, which could give you the breather you need

-the boss can bind and afflict ailments

-retake undoes everything that happened in the previous turn (it’s like the turn never happened in the first place), so if the boss is “charging up” and there’s no sword in front, just have everyone guard

-if the sword is in front and it starts glowing in waves? fucking. block.

     -the attack seems to alternate which row it hits, but i beat the boss before i could actually think to look for a pattern

-there will come a point where the boss does an action you haven’t seen previously. see things through to the end (aka don’t turn of the game in a panic)

There’s another battle post-game, but it’s. uh. really. really. REALLY fucking hard. my team was all level 72, i switched to safety mode, and I still died before i could really do anything. the only tip i can give you is that when a new character joins the battle, for the love of all that is good, G U A R D, dammit

[caranfindel]

Recap/review 14.08: “Byzantium”

THEN: Beardy Sam! Lily Sunder! Oh, I had such high hopes for Sam using Lily's dark angel magic... could this be happening? (Spoiler alert: nope!) Jack's total systemic failure!

NOW: TFW is gathered at Jack's bedside. Sam's the one sitting next to him, but Dean is the one who's the most upset. OF COURSE. Jack thinks maybe this is just how it's meant to be, which of course Dean disagrees with, because this "isn't part of some damn plan." And of course, even if it was part of some damn plan, it's not like Dean follows anyone's damn plans. {Sidebar: It reminds me that, when Kelly was pregnant, Cas received some kind of vision about unborn Jack saving the world. Was that supposed to be a prophecy? Or just a possibility?}

Jack's still coughing, and actually using an oxygen mask, but there's no blood and he can breathe enough to speak easily, so he doesn't seem to be at death's door just yet. Dean stomps out into the hall to hit things, and Jack asks Sam to tell him he's okay. But clearly Jack isn't, like, 2 minutes from dying, so Sam says Dean will be back in a minute and Jack can tell him himself.

Jack asks what will happen after he dies, and Sam sadly says he doesn't know. "Then it's going to be an adventure," Jack says, and he lies back and coughs a little bit more.

Cas comes out into the hall to comfort Dean, or confront him, I don't know. Dean says it's not fair and Cas is all, yeah, duh, but he needs you (ah, confront him it is), so stop making this about yourself. Even though the previous episode obviously did give you the idea that it is, in fact, all about you.

Dean comes back into Jack's room, 66 seconds after he left it, to find him lying quietly with his eyes closed. "He's gone," Sam says. Wait. What? Like that? No more coughing blood, no rattling last breaths, no slip into unconsciousness? Just boom, Jack's gone before the title card like a random victim of the week? That's cold, guys. It's a good thing Sam didn't follow Dean out into the hall, or he would have died alone. As it is, Sam was the first person he saw when he was born and the last person he saw when he died (I'm not crying, you're crying). Everybody is sad (oh god, you guys, Sam's face), but Dean is the saddest, at least as far as we can tell, because he's the one who gets the sad, sad closeup.

Well, that escalated quickly!

Title card!

TFW stands sadly in the hall (Sam's all hunched over, poor baby) and discusses what to do next. "Wake and a bonfire," Dean says, because that's what Jack would have wanted, and because that's what they'd do even if he didn't want it. {Sidebar: Has anyone noticed these signs that have appeared in the bunker? I never saw them before. Do the new roomies need directions, or rules posted on the wall, or something?} Sam quickly peels off without saying a word. Cas tries to go after him, but Dean stops him, saying Sam needs his space.

That’s the sound of my heart breaking.

Dean calls Mary to tell her Jack died. I don't know that I would have done that. I would have asked her to call me so I could tell her in person, considering that they were close. And apparently she didn't even know Jack was sick. Seriously, boys, you don't communicate well at all. While Dean makes his uncomfortable phone call, we see Sam leave the bunker with a bag slung over his shoulder. Cas watches him but doesn't say anything. Dean shows up, literally a second or two later, and asks him if he's seen Sam.

Cut to Cas driving, with Dean in the passenger seat. It's not his tiny blue car from the last episode, it's something much bigger. Dean is berating him for letting Sam leave, and he doesn't accept Cas's defense that Dean said to give him space. Cas, you're supposed to know that Sam is allowed space in the bunker, but that doesn't mean he gets to leave. They find him quickly enough, though, which makes sense since he had like a five second head start. He's just off the road, in the dark, sitting next to the Impala. Sam, you took the Impala? What were you thinking? {Sidebar: Dean told Mary Jack died "this morning," and now it's dark. Does that mean Jack died very early, and it's still before dawn? Or have they just sat around grieving all day, and now it's nighttime?}

(Could you please stop worrying so much about minor timeline inconsistencies? Nobody cares!)

Sam weakly raises a hand to block the headlights when Dean and Cas arrive, but doesn't get up, and he just looks broken and miserable. Dean is furious. He jumps out of Cas's car (which turns out to be a big Dodge truck, and why does Cas get two cars when Sam doesn't even have one?) and yells "tell me you didn't make a deal!" Sam's shocked that Dean would accuse him of such a thing (ha ha, why would he ever) and says he was trying to build a pyre.

We get a flashback of him furiously chopping trees until his axe handle snaps in the middle of the second tree, and yet he still took the second tree down, so he must have kicked it over or attacked it with his bare hands because he was JUST THAT UPSET. Oh, Sammy. "I couldn't... I couldn't even do that for him," he says. "I should have done more. I should have tried harder. Everything we've got, the spells, the lore, what good was any of it if we couldn't save him?" Oh, oh, Sammy. He's so broken-hearted.

Ha ha this is not okay.

{Sidebar: Was Sam planning to build the pyre out there in the woods? Or take the wood back to the bunker in the Impala? I mean, he knows Cas has that nice big truck, right?}

(Again, we do not care as much about logistics as you seem to think we do.)

Cas remarks on how odd it feels for Jack to be dead, that it's not so weird for angels to die but it just doesn't seem right that Jack can. Apparently he considered the boy immortal. Dean decides they will say goodbye tomorrow, but tonight they're getting shitfaced.

And they do. As a sad Allman Brothers song plays in the background, they drink whiskey and eat candy bars (do they even know about his nougat love? do they?) and apparently switch to tequila (and Chuck, I do not know what anyone sees in tequila) and I guess tell funny stories about Jack because they're all laughing. Sam's the first one to get up and stumble drunkenly out of the kitchen (and why are they drinking in the kitchen and not the library, which seems like the traditional sad drinking spot). As Cas leaves, Dean says "we did everything we could, right?" (Spoiler alert: wrong!) and continues to drink alone. "Here's to you, Jack," he says, "wherever you are."

Which is our segue to wherever Jack is. He's with his three dads, happily eating a burger on the hood of the Impala on a beautiful sunny day. Sam can't get a signal on his phone, which should be his first clue that something is horribly, horribly wrong. Then Dean kind of fritzes and the sky goes dark and Jack knows something is wrong. We seem him stepping through a door into the white hallway of Heaven. But something is wrong there, too. And the "something wrong" is a great flood of black goo that rushes toward him. He runs.

Cut to Dean, waking up where he's been asleep on the kitchen table (and dang, Dean sleeping on the kitchen table is so pretty). We hear voices in another room and I think oh, people are back in the bunker, but it turns out this is another episode where all of the people are conveniently away at the same time. He staggers into the map room to find Cas and Sam talking to a woman with an eyepatch. It's Lily Sunder! An older version, to be sure {Sidebar: She's played by Veronica Cartright, who you may remember from Alien and The Witches of Eastwick. Or you may not. I don't know your movie viewing habits.} Dean thoughtfully points out that she got old, and she calls it "an unfortunate side effect of giving up magic." You know, she really is a pretty decent older version of Alicia Witt. Good show, Show.

Sam says he realized last night that they'd never looked at Kevin's translations of the angel tablet to see if there was anything there that could help Jack. He hoped Lily would be able to read them, and possibly find a way to bring Jack back. It's interesting that there has been no discussion of whether they should bring Jack back. I guess the talk about how weird it is that he actually died was as close as they're going to get. And yeah, I know, this is nothing new for them. But considering that Jack was at peace with it, and considering how well these things always go, you would think they'd at least pay lip service to the idea that it might be best to let what's dead stay dead.

{Sidebar: Dean remembers that Lily tried to kill Cas, but nobody remembers that Cas thought Lily's child was a nephilim, even though Lily was still alive after giving birth to that child. Just putting that out there.}

Lily flips through Kevin's notes, which look like a bunch of cuneiform, and says she can't decipher them. Dean's all, okay, we're done here, but Lily has a suggestion. They can use her magic, drawing on the power of Jack's soul to heal his body and bring him back. Dean's completely against it, but Lily says it won't use his entire soul. "How much of it?" Sam asks, and Dean gives him a disbelieving look. But Lily says it will only use a small amount, and he'll never miss it. Well, it's not like they've never used soul power before, though those have always been for temporary purposes.

Dean points out the obvious flaw in the plan, which is that Jack is already dead and his soul is gone. But if his soul is in Heaven, Cas thinks he can pull it into his body for a few seconds, long enough for Lily to work her magic. (Ew. I wonder if it's gross for a soul to find itself in a dead body.) Her magic uses the power of his soul to resurrect him and keep him alive, and boom. Jack's back.

But she's not doing it for free. She knows she's going to Hell when she dies, being that she killed a lot of angels, which means she'll never get to see her daughter again. So she wants TFW to get her into Heaven.

Dean still thinks it's a bad idea to use any of Jack's soul for this scheme. Cas thinks Jack should be the one to make the decision, and Sam points out that he knows (better than anyone, one might say) the importance of a soul, but if they can bring Jack back, they have to try. So this still feels flip-flopped: Sam willing to make a possibly unwise deal to bring back a dead loved one, and Dean holding back.

Of course, none of this will work if they can't figure out how to get Lily into Heaven. Dean wonders if they could get Billie to do it, but Cas points out that Death and her reapers don't make that decision (thank you, Continuity Fairy). Oddly, Sam seems a little surprised to hear that. This wouldn't be news to him, would it?

Anyway, they have to turn to Anubis, the ancient Egyptian guardian of the dead. It's interesting that they didn't go with St. Peter. I mean, I like that they're not limiting their characters to traditional Christianity, but it seems like Cas, in particular, would have suggested someone from the Bible. Cas explains that Anubis weighs your heart against "justice's feather," and Sam says what I'm thinking, which is that Osiris did that, and they've already met him. (Did they kill him? I don't remember.) Cas says Osiris is Anubis's father, and when God left, they needed a new judge, so Heaven passed over Osiris to work with his son. It's convoluted but whatever. I mean, it's cool that they're incorporating different religions and gods, so. Let's summon a god!

Cut to a lush garden, with a pond and lots of too-pretty-to-be-real flowers. A little girl is playing with her dog, who runs after a ball and disappears into the bushes. He's gone too long, and then we hear rustling in the bushes, and I'm ashamed to say I was pretty sure Lucifer or Nick was going to step out of them (I covered the guest star credits on first watch and didn't know who was in this episode). But it's Jack. Oh, then the little girl is Kelly, and he found his way to her heaven! When he tells her he's her son, she changes to grown-up Kelly, who is thrilled to see her son until she realizes she's in Heaven and therefore she must be dead... and so is he. I'm glad Jack has the ability to leave his Heaven and find Kelly's. I mean, if Heaven is made up of your good memories, think of how skimpy and repetitive his would be.

Bunker. Sam and Dean prepare for the ritual as Lily writes instructions for Jack. Dean's still disgruntled about the whole thing, and they argue for a bit. Dean says he just doesn't trust her just as we hear footsteps, and it looks like they're doing it AGAIN - the thing where someone says something bad about the character who is right behind them, and can we just not, please? But it's Cas, not Lily. Yay! He reports that Heaven is in distress and all the gates are open. I guess that will make it easier for him to get in. Sam tells him to go on to Heaven, and when they're ready for him, they'll pray. Oh, so they can still pray to him? Good to know.

Dean paints symbols on the floor as Lily hands Sam a really thick instruction manual for Jack. I wonder how long it took her to write all that? Sam says he has to go "grab one more thing" and then gives Dean a significant you need to apologize look and head tilt toward Lily. I do love these unspoken conversations. Dean's apology is everything you'd expect from a man who learned to apologize at John Winchester's knee, since he says "looks like we got off on the wrong foot" (i.e., it's not my fault) and immediately asks, suspiciously, why she stopped using the angel magic if it's so awesome. He guesses, correctly, that she's letting herself get old, because she wants to die, and why does she want to do that if she's pretty sure she's going to Hell? She says she has a tiny bit of her soul left, and if there's even a teeny chance that she'll get to see her daughter in Heaven, well.

Anyway. Cut to Cas, wandering through Heaven. He comes across puddles of goo and a couple of bodies. Looks like we're down to, what, nine angels now? (As always, it's interesting to me that angels use vessels in Heaven, though I understand it would be pretty difficult to portray them if they didn't.)

(Then again, if we didn't insist on including angel drama, we wouldn't need to show angels in Heaven at all, would we?)

(Just saying.)

Turns out one of the bodies is alive, and it's Duma. She has black goo coming out of her nose and only remembers that when "it" touched her, everything went black. Cas dramatically tells her he's looking for Jack, and she goes with him. They find the spot where Jack was with TFW on the beautiful sunny day, but his food is cold. (Does your food get cold in Heaven? I thought it would stay at the perfect temperature. Bummer.) Naomi shows up and tells them Jack is gone, and that they're under attack. "It" stormed Heaven and they can't stop it. What is it, you might ask? "The shadow. The thing that rules The Empty." Naomi reminds us that Cas and Empty Dude are "old friends" and they show us Empty Dude forming out of the black goo and oh, wait, wait. Is this what was happening last week, when Nick prayed to Lucifer and we saw something skeletal forming in The Empty? It wasn't Lucifer at all? It was Empty Dude? Is that what's going on here? I'm confused. I mean, I'd love for Lucifer to stay asleep in The Empty. So I'm all in favor, if that's what's really happening.

Naomi says Empty Dude wants Jack, and maybe he does belong in The Empty after all, since he's half angel. Well, if I were Jack (or Cas), I'd point out that his grace was mostly gone and he was more human than angel. But no one asked me. Naomi says Empty Dude will destroy Heaven if they don't let him have Jack, and "46,750,000,000 human souls will be cast in the wind." I really want someone with math skills to tell me what percentage that is of all of human life so far, because I wonder how many people Show has decided probably went to Hell. Naomi says one nephilim isn't worth all those souls, and I'm sure she's supposed to be Evil Bureaucrat, but honestly, she's right. But you know Cas won't see it that way. He refuses to help, and then suddenly Naomi is overcome with black goo and she yells at him to run. He does.

Bunker. Sam reads the spell. Lily draws her blood. Anubis shows up. Turns out Egyptian gods also look like bureaucrats, with a suit and briefcase. He recognizes the Winchesters and Dean is kind of snarky with him, which is exactly what you'd do if you summoned an ancient god to ask him for a favor. Lily tells him she wants to know where she's going when she dies, and he says it's against protocol but what the hell (spoiler alert...). He draws an abacus with black and white beads out of his bag ("you were expecting a scale and a feather?") and invites Lily to put her hand above it. The beads move and change color and when they stop, there are more black than white. Well, that ain't good.

Anubis tells her he can't change it, and Dean threatens him because, once again, that's what you do when you summon an ancient god and ask him for a favor. And Sam jumps right in there. Come on, boys, you know how this works. Anubis explains that he's not the one who decides if you go to Heaven or Hell (which you should remember from your experience with his father, fellas.) "You do. Each of you. Your individual choices, all tallied at the precise moment of your death. Keep me here. Try and kill me. It is not going to change Lily Sunder's fate. But it might change yours." Now this is how you threaten someone, boys! There's more silent conversation ("I don't want to go back to Hell, do you?" "Aw, fuck no"), Sam rubs some paint off the floor, and Anubis disappears.

Heaven, I'm in Heaven. Cas and Duma find Kelly's Heaven and there is a joyous reunion. Cas apologizes for not keeping her son alive, and tells Jack they have a way to bring him home, but the magic will draw from a piece of his soul. He pretty much takes any choice away from him by telling Jack that Empty Dude will destroy Heaven if he doesn't come back to life. "Smart," says Duma, except she's not Duma! She's Empty Duma! Oh noes! (The black goo effect really is pretty good, I've got to say.)

Bunker. Sam points out that Lily could still do the spell to save Jack, even though there's nothing in it for her. Because that's what Sam would do. But Lily's not interested, and she packs up her stuff to leave and Sam finally shouts "he's our kid!" and oh, Sam. Just stick that knife in my heart and twist it a bit more, why don't you? Dean says he thinks she's lost so much soul, she's not human any more, because why would she let anyone else lose a child, knowing how it feels?

Heaven. Empty Duma says Jack belongs to her and where she's taking him is worse than Hell, because "at least Hell is something." You know, I think The Empty would be pretty awful if you were awake, but from what we've seen, no one is awake there. Even its ruler was asleep. So, would being asleep forever actually be worse than Hell? I'm thinking not. (Honestly, if Heaven is full of good memories, a big chunk of my Heaven is going to be drifting off in a soft bed in a cold bedroom under flannel sheets and a quilt and a cat.) Anyway, Empty Duma is pleased that her threats are upsetting Cas. He draws his angel blade and attacks, but she flings him into the kitchen cabinets.

Bunker. Jack's body is surrounded by candles. Lily pulls out her locket and kisses the photo of her daughter, then says "I'm ready" and picks up the spell book, so I guess Sam and Dean were able to convince her after all.

Heaven. Fighty fighty.

Bunker. Dean prays to Cas and tells him they're ready. Lily starts chanting.

Heaven. Empty Duma starts to strangle Jack. Cas tells her to take him instead. She drops Jack and then says what I'm thinking, which is that she gets him anyway. "Not for years," he says. "Eons, maybe." But if she lets Jack go, Cas will go with her now. She accepts, but says she won't take him now. She wants him to suffer, so she wants him to go back and be happy, and once he does feel happiness, then she'll come and "drag you to nothing." Cas accepts.

The Empty leaves Duma, and Jack angrily confronts Cas, asking why he made the deal. "Because I made a promise. Because I love you, Jack. Sam and Dean, they love you, and they are fighting for you this very minute." He tells Jack not to let the Winchesters know about the deal, and Jack promises not to tell. {Sidebar: Would Jack even remember what happened in Heaven? Sam and Dean didn't, until Joshua specifically made them remember. But does that mean they naturally forgot every time? Or that Joshua made them forget every time, but in Dark Side of the Moon he decided not to, and he let them naturally remember? Discuss.}

Jack doesn't want to leave Kelly yet, but she tells him she'll be waiting. And this is something that didn't occur to me until rewatch - did Empty Duma give up the right to Jack's soul period, or just for this particular death? If and when he dies again, is The Empty going to claim him again? I would have made that clear, Cas.

Anyway. Cas holds Jack's face and in the bunker, Jack gasps back to life. Sam gives him a spell to read and his eyes glow and he says he feels good. Dean hugs him (because of course Dean gets the hug, why would I think Sam gets the hug, for fuck’s sake) and then the guys notice that Lily has quietly died in the corner. Well, I didn't see that coming.

Nah, that’s cool, I’ll just stand over here and watch, thanks.

We see Lily walking into Anubis's office. He holds up the abacus again and this time, when she puts her hand over it, there are more white beads than black. "Did you know what doing the spell would cost you?" he asks. Apparently she did, and that good deed outweighed enough of her bad deeds that she gets to go to Heaven after all. Yay Lily!

Back in Heaven, Naomi thanks Cas for saving Heaven, even though she knows he didn't do it for them. And she wants to give him a reward. "Like, for example, the archangel Michael's location?" Nice try, Naomi. We all know his location. He's in Lebanon, Kansas right now.

Isn't he?

Bunker. Jack and his dads eat burgers and smile at each other and Dean's glad they know where Michael is. Cas points out that they don't know where Dark Kaia and her spear are, and I'm still thinking about that damn archangel blade, and Jack with his archangel grace which is supposedly regenerating, and why haven't any of them made that connection? Anyway, it's a happy, homey scene, and the camera pans off to the side and I'm absolutely certain that something bad is waiting here. It's going to be a dream, or Dean's eyes are going to flash blue, or something. But no, it just fades to black. Huh.

This seemed a lot more ominous than it should.

So. Let's talk about Cas's deal. I hate it. Jack is back, and the only lasting effect from his brief death is something that will impact Cas. I hate that they took a non-Cas problem and made it a Cas problem. I hate that the rest of the season is going to be about the Sword of Damocles hanging over Cas's head. I want my angst to be over 6 ft tall and to be wearing flannel, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. I just can't get into the sad saga of Cas waiting to be yoinked away. Especially since we know exactly when it's going to happen, even if Cas doesn't. Bad things happen in May, people. (I also wonder why Empty Dude doesn't just go back to sleep.)

And let's talk about the Winchesters' decision to save Jack in the first place. I don't like it. It makes sense only if you know that (1) he'll be taken to The Empty and that it is somehow worse than Hell, and (b) if he doesn't go to The Empty, Heaven will be destroyed. And they didn't know any of that when they decided to go after him. I wanted at least one of them (spoiler alert: SAM) to say "yes this is awful but he was at peace with it and every time we un-kill someone, something awful happens, so maybe we should just let this one go," and of course they would have done the spell anyway, but there should have been some pushback.

And finally, the Michael thing. Are we to believe that Michael is not hiding in Dean after all? Because that means he really did abandon his vessel for no good reason, and that's... that's something that they REALLY need to explain. Hiding in Dean made SO MUCH MORE SENSE. (Could it be that Naomi is lying to Cas? Was she, possibly, Empty Naomi?)

Also, Sam yells he's our kid and then gives him a hearty pat on the shoulder? What the fuck ever.

Anyway, please help me stay unspoiled, thanks!