#I still need to play the crossover but I’ve played enough of both individual games to feel this in my soul

[fic-for-fic-sake]

Playing with Fire

Pairing: Loki x reader

Warning: Slight foreplay but not even

A/N: This is not at all somewhat loosely inspired by events happening in my everyday life...shut up. 

You, Wanda, and Nat decided to have a girls night. In a team full of male ego’s, sometimes the testosterone got too strong to bear so you three called in a girls night. It wasn’t the typical slumber party vibes you had seen in the movies. Instead of makeovers and candy it was sparring and wine. The two weren’t exactly meant for each other but with enhanced individuals getting drunk was pretty much off the table anyway. 

You were in the middle of throwing knives at Wanda, who was expertly dodging them, while Nat was going on about her latest mission with Clint. 

“I mean it was fine but it wasn’t Budapest, you know?” She complained between reps. You chuckled under your breath and Nat clocked it. “What?” 

“Nothing, nothing. It’s just, I may have made a tiny little drinking game.” You explained, going over to the wine bottles and taking a swig to emphasize your point. “Every time you bring up Budapest I take a drink.” 

“I don’t bring it up that much.” She fired back. 

Wanda gave her a pointed look, not even having to open her mouth to say where she stood on the matter. 

“Fine,” Nat began, “if you guys have to drink when I mention Budapest then I get to drink when Y/N talks about Loki.” 

You instantly regretted bringing up the drinking game. You coughed a bit as wine got caught in the wrong pipe. “I do NOT talk about him that much.” All it took was another pointed look from Wanda to know that that was complete and utter bullshit. 

“Yeah but that’s different because I’m not in a relationship with Loki.” 

“But you want to be.” Wanda noted, taking the wine bottle from your hands and drinking a long pull, winking at you as she did. 

“Whether I want it or not is irrelevant.” You insisted, suddenly wishing you could steer the conversation into literally any other direction. 

“And why is that?” Nat asked, coming over to where you and Wanda stood and arching a crimson eyebrow at you. 

“Because, Loki is, he’s…” 

“Bad news.” Wanda offered at the same time Nat said “Trouble.” 

“Exactly.” You confirmed. “So whatever feelings I may or may not have will promptly be shoved down into the very darkest corner of my mind until they simply cease to exist.” 

“How has that worked for you in the past?” Nat inquired. 

“It’s worked out just fine, thank you very much.” 

“And how many relationships have you been in?” Wanda questioned. 

“None.” You replied automatically. “Fuck.” 

Sensing your not-so-inner turmoil Wanda gave you back the bottle of wine which you proceeded to polish off. 

“He doesn’t even pay attention to me anyway.” You tried to justify to them. 

“Didn’t you guys talk for like two hours last Wednesday?” Wanda pointed out. 

“Yeah, we did, it was actually a really nice conversation.” You recalled. 

You had been sitting in the library reading when Loki walked in, looking stunning in what he considered to be casual clothes, which had been laughable. While his forest green tunic and tailored black pants had certainly been a step down from his battle armor, it was a far cry from casual, at least by mortal standards. 

He had asked what book you were reading which then led to a discussion about the different types of Midardian literature and the crossovers with Asgardian books. And that had lent itself to him offering to give you some Asgardian books so you could see if you liked them or not. True to his word, later that night you found a stack of four books sitting outside your door with a note from Loki telling you that he had enchanted them to automatically translate from Asgardian to English.

“So...how can you say he doesn’t pay attention to you?” Nat asked, rolling her eyes as if you were oblivious to the attention he had given you. Which, of course, you weren’t. You had finished two of the books already and were chomping at the bit to tell Loki what you thought of them. But there was only one problem. 

“He hasn’t spoken to me since.” You confessed, feeling suddenly very small and stupid. 

“That doesn’t make sense...not even a word?” Wanda asked, so gently you thought your heart would shatter. 

“But see, it does make sense. Because this is what he does. He’ll talk to me and make me feel like I’m the only person in the world and then he’ll fuck off for God knows how long and swoop in just as I’m giving up hope that he’ll ever speak to me again. He has me on his hook and he knows it. But none of that even matters.” 

“Because you’re shoving your feelings down?” Nat offered. 

“Yes, and because he has a girlfriend.” You said, feeling your heart sink as the weight of your words hit you. It’s not like you had expected anything to happen between you two but him being in a relationship was like closing a door you never expected to be open to you to begin with. It hurt and you hated to admit that it hurt and you hated him for making it hurt. 

“Yeah, I had heard Thor talking about Loki and Sygn earlier. How do you feel?” Wanda asked, handing you another bottle of wine. 

“Fine, I feel fine. I literally couldn’t care less.” You lied as you pried the cork out of the bottle and drank a good portion before giving it to Nat. “Okay, enough about me, let’s hear about everyone else.” 

And that was that. For the next few months Loki kept up his sporadic contact with you but he had a girlfriend and you weren’t about to make an even bigger fool of yourself than you probably already had. So you stopped expecting him to talk to you. Stopped sitting straighter when he walked into a room and stopped being disappointed when he didn’t notice you. 

Four months after your girls night with Nat and Wanda there was a Friday night get together with the whole team, Tony’s idea. He said it would be good for bonding. You had gotten the text when you were on your way back from a date. Nothing much, just a casual meet up in Central Park, nothing to write home about. She was fine. A pretty blonde with soft brown eyes and a good laugh but that was it. She was fine. She wasn’t what you were looking for, who you were looking for. As soon as the thought entered your head you promptly shoved it away. He was taken and you just needed to go on a date with someone different that was all. 

You looked at your appearance in the elevator mirror on the ride up. You considered changing out of your light blue floral sundress before the gathering with the team but it appeared it wasn’t meant to be as you could already hear voices bleeding through the doors before they opened. 

You walked out to a mock whistle from Sam which made you dip into a mock bow before you made your way to the kitchen island and fixed yourself a drink. 

“That bad?” Nat smiled as you took a swig of the gin and tonic. 

“It was fine.” You replied, shrugging. “I have another tomorrow so we’ll see.” 

“Another what?” Thor called from the couch, his hand around a glass of amber liquid that you suspected was something much stronger than scotch. 

“Another date!” Nat called out in reply, smiling encouragingly at you. 

“Was the one today not satisfactory?” Thor questioned. 

You rolled your eyes, “it was Fine. Honestly both of you it was fine.” 

“Don’t worry doll, you’re not the only one in the dating game.” Bucky said from the fridge, grabbing himself another beer. 

“Bucky, if you’re about to tell me that you and Steve broke up I will believe that love is truly dead.” 

“Not us doll.” He shook his head and tried and failed to hide his amusement. 

“Then who?” You were very confused and nobody was making things any easier on you. 

“Me.” The voice came from behind you and it chilled you to the bone. You turned to find Loki leaning against the wall fixing the cufflinks on his black suit. His demeanor showed a complete lack of interest but the way his emerald eyes held you in place had a predatory grace that both excited and scared you. 

Loki had been gone for a month on a diplomatic mission and you had heard nothing from him in the meantime. It had been so easy to put him out of your mind, but now you wondered how you could have thought of anything but him. 

“Oh.” Was all you could bring yourself to say. As your heart sped up to a gallop and heat flooded through your body at the way he was looking at you. He shouldn’t be looking at you like that, he had just said he broke up with his girlfriend. You shouldn’t want him to be looking at you like that, you had moved on, hadn’t you? Apparently your body hadn’t gotten the message from your head yet, stupid body. 

One hour and two drinks later you were all sitting around the large kitchen table, each absorbed in their own conversations. You were talking to Tony and Bruce and Loki was in a conversation with his brother but he was only half listening. The other part of him kept sneaking glances at you and you could feel his eyes on your body like a physical touch. After you caught his eye one too many times you excused yourself to the bathroom. You needed to get a hold of yourself. 

You didn’t need this selective attention bullshit again. You couldn’t do it. You couldn’t stand spending hours talking to each other one day only for him to not speak to you for days on end after. No, you looked at yourself in the bathroom mirror and resolved yourself to go back out there and not care. Not to feel his glances on you, not to acknowledge his presence, not to speak to him or play into his games like a fool. Because you weren’t a fool. Pep talk done, you unlocked the door and walked straight into a wall of black. 

You startled and tried to push yourself away only to feel slender arms wrap around your waist and legs walk you back into the bathroom. You managed a few paces back and found yourself looking into Loki’s eyes. They really were the most magnificent shade of green. Damnit. 

“Loki, what are you doing here?” You asked, still too stunned to wonder why he backed you into the bathroom. 

“I’ve been gone for a month and that’s the question you ask me?” He leaned against the door, folded his arms over his chest, and crossed one slender leg over the other. Fuck him for being so attractive right now. 

“You don’t get to do that.” You stated, leafing through your emotions until you found one that suited you, anger. You were angry with him for having you on his hook, angry with him for his sense of entitlement, and angry with him for being attractive. To be fair, the last one wasn’t really his fault. 

“Do what?” He asked, like he really didn’t know what he was doing. 

“You don’t get to go literal months without speaking to me and then demand why I’m not talking to you when you’ve been back all of two hours.” 

“Actually I got home last week.” He replied coolly, pushing off of the door and taking a step closer to you. You rebuffed his advance by taking a step backwards. 

“Thank you for proving my point to me.” 

“What point?” 

“Don’t be obtuse.” You chided. “You’ve been home a week now, haven’t sought me out at all in that time mind you, but now you’re upset that I didn’t speak to you?” 

“I broke up with Sygn.” He said, taking another step towards you, and you took one back in kind. 

“So I’ve heard.” 

“I’ve missed you.” He crooned, advancing towards you until your back was forced against the counter top. 

“And what, exactly, have you missed?” You replied hotly. “Ignoring me until the last possible moment? Making me look pathetic for wanting even a scrap of your attention?” 

He took his thumb and index finger, placed them on your chin, and tilted it up at the same time he lowered his head to your shoulder. 

“Come now darling, I don’t think you’re pathetic.” He breathed into the crook of your neck. Your pulse skyrocketed as your breath hitched and you let out a whimper. Your nails dug into the marble counter in an effort to keep from touching him the way you wanted. To keep from running your fingers through his thick black locks. 

“Loki, I can’t do this.” You pleaded in a whisper even as his hands came to settle on your waist, even as he lifted you effortlessly onto the counter top and stood squarely between your legs, making your dress ride up to your mid thighs. 

“Can’t do what?” He questioned, placing feather light kisses along the column of your throat as his hands moved slowly up your newly exposed thighs. 

You tried to steady yourself even as you felt the throbbing need between your legs and his own need pressed against you. 

“Being near you is like playing with fire, and pretty soon I’m going to get burned.” You huffed, caught between wanting him to stop and wanting him to continue, oh please God continue. 

“Oh pet, haven’t you heard?” He questioned, bringing his lips a hair's breadth away from yours, “I’ve more an affinity for ice.”

[hasquetzorkukudoneanythingwrong]

Divine duo part 1

Rex had woken up full of energy, because today was a special day. He and his wife were going to visit another universe's chaldea, specifically Faye's. They had to get ready soon, they were spending the morning there then bringing Faye and her girlfriend Ereshkigal to their chaldea. They had been planning this for a bit, both pairs were excited.

They had to wait for the opportunity tho, since they were messing with the multiverse itself things had to be just right. The two Da Vincis and Sions needed to make sure there were absolutely no problems whatsoever, because otherwise the risks could be too great. Just the other day the two groups were finally able to coordinate a good day to do it and now it was that day.

Rex and Quetz went to the control room to prepare to go to the other chaldea. Da Vinci and Sion were in contact with their counterparts to make sure things go well.

Sion: ok you two! Ready?

Rex: yeah!

Quetz: si!

Da Vinci: ok, sending you in! I'm 3... 2... 1!

And while in their coffins Rex and Quetz are sent into the other chaldea to meet up with Faye and Eresh.

It's dark for a short while then everything lights up. Rex and Quetz found themselves in the other control room with Faye and Eresh standing not too far.

Faye: hey you two!

Eresh: good to see you again!

Rex: heyyo!

Quetz: so far everything's the same as ours.

Faye: I mean, I doubt much can be changed with just a different master.

Rex: do not doubt the influence we can have on our chaldeas.

Eresh: you probably have more influence on your chaldea then Faye does.

Faye: so where to first?

Rex: cafeteria! I'm starving! Haven't eaten at all yet!

The group goes to the cafeteria and sat down at a table together. Each master sat next to their respective partner servant while face to face to each other. Faye and Ereshkigal had relatively normal meals for their breakfast. Meanwhile Rex and Quetz had huge meals both with a big stack of pancakes.

Faye: my, you two are healthy eaters.

Rex: well we train for lucha a lot so we need the energy.

Quetz: si! Can't have mi amor tire out on me while training!

Eresh: oh you like lucha too Rex?

Rex: well not at first, but Quetz got me into it! I'm training to be her lucha partner one day!

Faye: oh that sounds so fun! A huband/wife lucha duo!

Quetz: si! We actually did have one match together before!

Eresh: really?!

Rex: yeah... in the final match-up for the last Christmas Quetz's original partner Bradamante couldn't fight because of an injury but because it was the final match-up they let me sub for her!

Faye: what?! She got injured?!

Rex: yeah... I imagine things went differently for you then.

Eresh: yeah, in fact at the last moment Bradamante had became like this super Santa I think? And had defeated the other Quetz in the end.

Quetz: oh! That's very different!

Faye: how did you manage to fight the other Quetz?! She was Quetz's more violent bits so how did you even survive?!

Rex: it's still Quetz tho! She loves me no matter what! She couldn't actually give it her all against me!

Quetz: si! Even when training I don't want to hurt mi amor too much! I love him too much to see him injured, especially by my own hands.

Eresh: so it was like the power of love basically!

Rex: yeah! It was hard for me to fight her too tho, since it's still Quetz but since I needed to beat her to make Quetz whole again I managed to defeat her in the end.

Faye: aaawww! It really was the power of love! And lucha.

Rex: yeah! Honestly tho it didn't feel like THE match for us. Y'know what I mean? Like... since our opponent didn't give it her all and didn't have a proper partner it wasn't the right match-up for us.

Eresh: it's not the perfect match for your husband/wife team?

Quetz: si... and mi amor wasn't fully prepared for lucha. He still needs more training. I don't know if we would've been able to win if she went all out honestly.

Rex: yeah... I'm still training.

Faye: I'm sure you'll get there one day! And I'd love to see that perfect husband/wife match-up when it finally happens!

Rex: yeah, but that's enough about us! What have you two been up to?!

Faye: actually not long ago we had another double date with a different universes' master and servant pair!

Quetz: oh! Who was it?!

Eresh: it was Maya and Helena.

Rex: ah, lil miss horny. Did she convince you to do anything risqué?

Faye: yeah... we played a game of strip poker.

Quetz: strip poker?! How'd that go?!

Eresh: she was trouncing us! She always saw through our bluffs! I ended up naked first! It was so embarrassing!

Rex: oof! That sounds like hell.

Faye: it wasn't so bad...

Quetz: well we'd never agree to such a game!

Rex: yeah! Only I get to see mi corazon's body!

Quetz: si! And mi amor's body is for my eyes only!

Faye: that's nice to hear!

After a bit the pairs finished their meals and so the tour could start proper.

Rex: so what do you wanna show us first?

Faye: oh I know! Let me show you my goddess' place of worship!?

Rex: oh you got one too!?

Faye: yeah! She's a goddess after all so she needs a temple!

Eresh: but Faye you only gave me one. That line of reasoning implies places for the others.

Faye: I mean... you're my goddess so you deserve it the most!

Rex: yeah, same thing in my chaldea. I've got a huge room dedicated just to Quetz! But she deserves it the most!

Quetz: mi amor! You're making me blush!

Quetz then proceeded to take Rex's face in her hands and give him a kiss. Which had the other pair turn a bit red.

While on the way to the temple of Ereshkigal the four ended up meeting a very interesting individual.

Irkalla: oh my! Is this the other master you mentioned Faye?

Faye: yeah this is Rex and his version of Quetzalcoatl.

The other death goddess eyed the new pair a bit. Despite her looks she had a very different vibe to her when compared to her counterpart. She definitely felt more intimidating then Ereshkigal.

Irkalla: hmmm, interesting. Not really sure what Quetzalcoatl sees in him tho. I've seen better.

Quetz didn't like that, but instead of attacking her she just flashed her signature toothy grin and said a few words.

Quetz: now what's wrong with mi amor?

All of a sudden Irkalla got nervous. Not as much as Eresh would've but you could tell she didn't want to deal with the lucha goddess.

Irkalla: er... anyways I've got to go. See you later Faye.

Faye: seeya! Huh... never seen her like that before.

Eresh: Quetzalcoatl is a very scary woman. I got nervous when she made that face.

Quetz: ehehehehe, well I don't like people being rude to mi amor.

Rex: it's hard to believe she's also Ereshkigal.

Faye: are the other Quetzes closer to the original?

Rex: well... mostly? Hard to say without them here.

After a bit of time they were in Eresh's temple room.

Rex: impressive!

Quetz: si! It seems perfect for Ereshkigal!

Faye: thanks! Only the best my goddess!

Eresh, turning red: yeah, it's pretty great.

Then all of a sudden a familar voice is heard.

???: hello?! Is the other master here?

And in came someone else, it was the Quetzalcoatl of Faye's chaldea.

Faye: oh hey! What are you doing here?

Other Quetz: I wanted to see the other master, and I figured you'd bring him here.

The other Quetz came up to the group and looked at Rex.

Other Quetz: my what a cute lil master! I almost want him to take me back with him!

Faye: woah! I dunno if we can do that!

Rex: what would you do if my Eresh said the same?

Faye: uuuuhhh...

Faye was turning red with the question.

Rex: because I'd trade!

Faye: wait! You can't just say that! You already have like 5 of her!

Rex: you don't want 3 Ereshes?

Faye: pls! Let's drop the topic for now!

Rex: fine...

Eresh: Quetzalcoatl, how come you don't seem angry like normal?

Quetz: I think I'm getting used to other me's loving mi amor. At least it makes sense.

Eresh: that's kinda concerning.

Quetz: si...

After a bit it was almost lunch time, which meant it was time to switch chaldeas. The group headed towards the control room to go to Rex's chaldea. They got into the coffins to head to their destination.

Sion: ok! Just like before! 3... 2... 1!

A/N: ok! There's part 1 of this RexCoatl/FayEresh crossover! Next time it's my chaldea's turn! And Faye will meet all the other Quetzes and so on. Hope you guys like it!

Credit to @hasereshdoneanythingwrong for letting me use their beautiful ship! Hope it's accurate!

Tags

@hasishtardoneanythingwrong @haspaulbunyandoneanythingwrong @hasabbydoneanythingwrong @hasbbdoneanythingwrong @haskamadoneanythingwrong @hasnightingaledoneanythingwrong @hasspartacusdoneanythingwrong @castlecsejtespeakertechnician @renmeo @kierakaz @valiantstrawberrymilk

[theshinsun]

Hello again! Here I am sending more 😂 Do you mind doing character thing with Kasamatsu, Imayoshi, Wakamatsu and Otsubo? If it's too much, can you do with the first three? Thank you 💕

Hello again! ^^ (So sorry for the delay I was half done and then I got hit with homework and classes and didn’t have much time to do more analyses, but they’re done for the week now! I’m free!) 

I don’t mind at all! But if it’s alright with you, I probably will just do those first three, not just because it’ll be ridiculously long otherwise, but because I don’t really? think I have any strong specific feelings for Otsubo? Idk why, I like him I just didn’t connect that much with him I don’t think... but I’ll gladly talk about the others!

Kasamatsu

How I feel about this character

GOOD SENPAI. I love this guy so much and wish he got to interact with more of the cast, I really vibe with his character design (his eyes are just... damn, also SOCKS), and I love the relationship he has with his team. He’s ruthless but obviously cares about all of them working together well, and is just looking for the respect he’s due as captain. Boy puts up with so much bullshit from his team of chaotic flaky weirdos, someone needs to cut him a break.  

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Kise (KiKasa ftw, the character development Kise goes through because of Kasamatsu is excellent, and almost instantaneous after he joins the team [“I liked being Kise of Kaijo”]. it’s really easy to interpret his behavior toward Kasamatsu as a crush; there’s no denying they’ve got chemistry and work well together... and even tho Kise drives his senpai nuts, they obviously both care about each other a lot)

Aomine (I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. They have one [1] interaction in canon, but that one interaction sold it for me. Aomine showing deference to someone and calling them “senpai”, helping him up after he got knocked down which seems... pretty unusual for him at the time, I’m so down for these two being in a relationship, it’s such a different dynamic than I usually see with pairings featuring Aomine, and there seems to be some legit respect to build off of there)

Imayoshi (I blame Lysapadin’s fic The Long Game for this, the way these two play off each other there and also canonically is... hilarious, the flirting, the Banter, please give me more quality captain ships I have a need) 

Hyuuga (MORE QUALITY CAPTAIN SHIPS. I talked about them a little in my list for Hyuuga, but I just love the idea of both of these tough, exasperated captains getting to be vulnerable with each other)

and this one is a crossover but

Oikawa Tooru (maybe because he reminds me so much of Kise, and Kasamatsu so much like Iwaizumi, I feel like they’d have a similar dynamic, but it’d be interesting to see how, unlike Kise, a hardworking somewhat self-destructive person and a fellow third-year like Oikawa would get on with this guy.) 

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Hmmm.... I’m gonna have to say Imayoshi again, even tho they work together as a couple too. The way they interact is so good, whether it’s platonic or not, and I’d love to see more one-on-one interaction with them. It could just be because the way Lysapadin handles their respective personalities in multiple fics is so perfect, but if they’re not romantically involved I’d at least like to see them as snarky semi-begrudging basketball buddies. 

My unpopular opinion about this character

I don’t know? If I have one? Mostly bc I don’t really know what the fandom itself thinks about Kasamatsu, he didn’t get a lot of press even in KNB’s heyday. A random opinion/hc of him tho is he seems to be a bit of a pessimist. Whenever he’s commentating he’s just talking about how the team’s gonna lose, and even before his own game he seemed to just be thinking about how he lost before. Idk what else to give ya, just something I observed that I don’t really see talked about or portrayed for this guy.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

*deep inhale* MOOORE SCREEEENTIME. And not just as a commentator/attachment to Kaijo where Kise hogs the spotlight, give this guy some time to interact with other characters and flesh him out some more please! I know I’m a broken record but that’s the only thing I can think of to improve him.

Imayoshi

How I feel about this character

I didn’t used to have much opinion of this guy tbh, when I was new to KNB… but NOW, damn, I love him every time he appears. He’s hilarious, I love how sassy and clever he is, I love that he has an accent (tho it’s only pointed out in the manga), I love that he gets to have little tidbits, like that he’s bad at drawing but good at mind-reading, and how he wears slippers in a school environment and just goes around teasing everyone, whether they’re teammates or opponents. Love this guy. I love how extra he is and I’m living every time he’s on screen.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Aomine (ok I talked about this quite a bit already in my Aomine rant analysis, and I mostly blame Lysapadin’s A Firm Hand series, but I just can’t get enough of the idea of these two together… [also this comic ] Imayoshi taking Aomine in hand and knowing how to handle him when no one else does, and gradually warming up to him when he stops playing tough and finally shows his soft side. good shit)

Momoi (also probably bc of A Firm Hand, but I could see these two having a very interesting relationship. They’re both extremely smart, and good at understanding people, and I really like the idea of Imayoshi taking Momoi under his wing so she doesn’t have to suffer in silence and handle everything by herself. I feel like they’d be surprisingly sweet to each other, but lesbehonest, also a potentially terrifying power couple that I almost never see done)

Kasamatsu (again, just like above, a unique dynamic and a lovely rarepair that doesn’t get talked about enough. they didn’t get nearly enough time to play off each other in canon but what we did see was damn good) 

Hanamiya (ok so… I’m not immune to this ship. I’ve seen some art, a couple fics, and it doesn’t seem to be much of a thing anymore, but still, why the hell not. they’ve got history, they’re both smart slightly evil [or very evil] shits, and they’d be such a disaster of a couple that’s why I love them)

My non-romantic OTP for this character

If not Kasamatsu, then probably Susa. They only got a little time to bond in canon, but I do love their dynamic and how chill they seem to be with each other. They remind me of a team mom/dad duo (tho I couldn’t tell you which was which lol). I could probably be talked into shipping them romantically, but I also just like the way they get along as friends and teammates. 

My unpopular opinion about this character

This is more an argument I keep having with my sister… but I actually, genuinely like this guy’s design. She thinks he looks creepy and too evil and doesn’t like that his eyes are drawn closed, but esp in the manga, he looks really polished and I like that you can tell when he gets serious by whether you can see his eyes open. (or as I say to my roommate “oh shit he’s got eyes they’re in trouble”)

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

I wish we got to see more of him just hanging with his team. Idk maybe I’m biased, but I feel like Touou in particular doesn’t get that much time devoted to, like, practice and normal everyday shit (maybe bc we got to see Kaijo twice and Shuutoku got a whole training camp plus some, but all we get of them is the hot springs scene and a very short scene at the beginning and end of the show imeanwhat) I would’ve liked to get to know this guy better and see more of how he runs his very strange individualized team, but that could just be me.  

Wakamatsu

How I feel about this character

My dude puts up with so much shit. I mean the first we see of him he’s getting kneed in the stomach by a certain dickish first-year, and he just always seems… so done with what’s going on around him. When he’s not yelling about it, which… mood, tbh. He’s relegated to little more than a background character in the anime, and only gets a liiiittle more development in the manga (as well as lots of really good faces), but tbh I’d love to see more of him. I’d love to know what he’s like as a captain and see more of how he gets along with the team; he’s the kind of hotheaded noisy player they make into the protagonist of other shows and I want to know more about him.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Momoi (k a couple of my friends @spaztictwitch and @hadenxcharm actually sold me on this one. It’s a really really rare pair, but now I can’t stop thinking about it and I really like the possibilities of them as a couple.)

Aomine (again I talked a little bit about this in my Aomine essay, but I’m a sucker for this kind of ship… the love/hate dynamic, I mean. that doesn’t get old does it. and yet I don’t think I’ve ever seen content for these guys together, maybe I should take it on myself)

Sakurai (hot-tempered senpai/captain and anxious apologetic mushroom, sign me tf up these two would be Hilarious as a pairing, oh my god. I love it)

Kiyoshi (k listen. LISTEN. yes all I’ve got is the fact that they’re both centers and they only interact, like, twice, but the idea popped into my head and I think I could actually totally see it. any takers?)

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Imayoshi. I don’t know if I’d ship them as a romantic pair (tho like with most things, if someone made a good case for them I’d consider it), but I do like their canonical interactions, like Imayoshi explaining the exceptions made for prodigies in sports (“do you know the golfer Tiger Woods? How about Shaq?��), and passing the proverbial hat to him when he retires as captain (“no worries, you’ll do fine!” like he’s reassuring a new parent or smth lmao). They’re good teammates even if Touou is not really about teamwork, and I like the mutual respect in how they seem to get along.

My unpopular opinion about this character

Not just a one-note guy who yells all the time. I mean, yes, he does yell and he’s got a short temper, but so does Kagami and people don’t portray him as a guy with only one emotion and that emotion is Anger. I mean… usually they don’t. Idk maybe it’s because most of his screentime involves him butting heads with Aomine, but he seems to get along with the rest of the team alright. He respects his seniors and the spirit of the team too, he’s just an all-around good guy that seems to get the short end of the stick a lot.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

I have a MIGHTY NEED to see how this guy does as captain, I want to know how he does things differently than Imayoshi and how he handles all the bullshit the team throws now that it’s all gonna be landing on his shoulders. We only got a tiny scene at the end of the show demonstrating his policy about Aomine, and we barely saw him at all in the Last Game, is he doing okay?? Is he ruling Touou with an iron fist or getting into screaming matches with his kouhai? I need to Know.

Thanks so much for asking, I really appreciate the show of interest! <3 Sorry again about the delay!

[eggoreviews]

My Top 25 Games Advent Day 10 - Detroit: Become Human (#16)

“We are gonna tell them peacefully that we want justice. If there’s any humanity in them, they will listen. And if not, others will take our place and continue this fight. Are you ready to follow me?”

This is a divisive game if ever I’ve seen one. Some cite David Cage’s latest multi-branch epic as a modern masterpiece of cinematic gaming, seamlessly weaving three tales of humanity and equality that is genuinely and sometimes harshly affected by your choices. But others, a fair amount of others, see this title as an overblown, janky mess with David Cage’s typical wonky, heavy-handed writing and themes that don’t even attempt subtlety. Me personally, I can see both sides of the fence. So here’s my take.

Going into Detroit, I honestly wasn’t expecting much, being well aware of the reputation Cage carries from his previous projects, but I’m a big ol fan of decision-based adventure games as anyone who’s been reading this countdown will know, so I thought it’d be a fun distraction. Detroit turned out to be what I consider to be the best decision-based game ever created (there’s one other in this list that places above Detroit, but you’ll see why when I get to it). And that’s purely down to the game mechanics alone, even just putting aside the characters and writing for a moment, the sheer amount of endings and branching pathways is baffling. This is a game that is perfectly in tune with every single choice you make, which can often result in deaths of characters that you can’t undo and then boom, you lose the rest of that character’s storyline. It’s harsh, but it means every player gets a different experience and gives much, much more weight to the decisions you make as you strive to get everybody out at the end. Detroit is genuinely a wild ride, made even more enjoyable by its various crime scene investigations, fight scenes and chase sequences, which all keep the overall gameplay from becoming stale.

Now, I know some people criticise this game as a whole for not digging into AI or telling another Ex Machina story about science and technology and ‘tHe SiNgULaRitY’ or whatever, but that’s because that’s really not what Detroit is trying to do. Detroit tells a story of standing up to prejudice and reminding us that humanity should always strive to do better by those that are oppressed, and using the allegory of androids is excellent in driving this home. Detroit is a story of overcoming prejudice in an increasingly terrifying world, as the city of Detroit itself is home to those hurling insults and violence at androids, while simultaneously becoming reliant on them. It’s an interesting paradox, especially as the game continues to give subtle speculation in the background of various scenes as how technology could affect infamous cities such as Detroit in the future, as well as giving an insight into the potential international climate in 2038, from bees dying out to a potential war over the Arctic between the US and Russia. The speculative world-building in this title is stellar, and it’s something I think a lot of people gloss over when considering this game to entirely lack subtlety.

Moving on the foreground of Detroit, here’s where the majority of the people point to Detroit’s massive ham-handedness. The characters. Detroit places you in the control, and basically places in your care, three entirely different characters with completely different and engaging perspectives on the growing number of ‘deviant’ androids:

Connor, a prototype detective android, begins the game entirely sided with his own oppressors, doing everything he can to ensure his mission is complete. Connor can remain as a cold, ruthless, uncaring machine for the entire game, to the disdain of your reluctant colleague and eventually close friend (boyfriend) Hank. Or, if you’ve made enough choices to make Connor reflect on his life, you are given the choice to later defect and allow Connor to discover his humanity. Here’s what I love about Detroit; going back to the masterful story branch crafting for a moment, the game doesn’t allow you to make throwaway choices that entirely contradict how you’ve been treating a character for the whole game, so Connor’s eventual deviancy can only come about if that’s how you’ve been playing him. What’s even more powerful is that, if you choose to stay on the original path Connor was taking, his eventual obsolescence is all the more heart-breaking, as he realises all too late that he was manipulated and used by his creators to harm those who wished for freedom, only to have himself replaced by a more advanced model after being successful. Now that’s how you do an ending.

The second, Markus, yet another prototype gifted to the artist Carl (played by the legendary Bishop himself, Lance Henrikson) to take care of him in his old age. Markus’ story has a hell of a lot of dimensions to it, as you acknowledge throughout your time with him that, despite the fact he is still a slave, he lives what could be seen as a privileged life, compared to other androids at least, living with the artist that simultaneously owns him and dictates his entire life, whilst also urging him to seek his own humanity and think for himself. Some interesting hypocrisy from Carl, which is another reason why it’s so easy to have mixed thoughts and feelings on certain characters. Characters are morally grey in Detroit, even if it doesn’t seem so on the surface! So there’s some of that nuance people seemed to forget was there (but hey, this is all just my opinion so uhhh don’t @ me telling me I suck). In the end, having fallen from his sheltered life into one now entirely dictated by himself, Markus finally sees for himself the horrible treatment of the rest of his kind and resolves to take action and becomes a symbol for the android rebellion, rounding off a satisfying arc for a character previously completely blind to the suffering of his fellow androids.

And the third, Kara, is a household android that has lost all memory beyond a horrible accident she seemed to have suffered. Unlike the polar opposite stances of Connor and Markus, Kara and her growing bond with her previous owner’s child Alice represent what Markus is fighting for and what Connor is fighting against; finding humanity. Kara doesn’t want a part in war or rebellion, her only desire is to protect the child she’s now caring for. While this perspective was extremely important, not least as a way of seeing firsthand how your large scale choices as Connor and Markus are affecting smaller scale narratives such as Kara and Alice’s bid for freedom, my one and only gripe is wishing they’d made Alice, and to a point Kara, into more developed characters that could stand on their own. While their plight is poignant and effective and their motivations are clear, the same can be said of Connor and Markus, who each have their own nuances and quirks to their character that subtly portray the humanity they’re discovering in themselves. Kara and Alice, with a little more development outside of their main drive, could’ve made that plotline just a little more interesting, but I maintain that their perspective was essential in showcasing the outcomes of your choices. Plus, Luther is an awesome character and I love him more than anything. It all just goes to show that a lot of the subtlety some claim as missing entirely can be found in other aspects of the experience, most notably the world-building and the excellently composed soundtrack. In particular, I think the move of choosing an individual composer for each character was absolute genius, as it gives each one their own unique musical style and atmosphere.

I know a lot of this, especially the characters and their arcs, may seem like cliches and so on the nose it isn’t even trying, but I think in this case, it just works. Stories of breaking away from ingrained prejudice can be just that and sometimes benefit from telling stories as they are, Detroit didn’t need to be stylised or rooted in subtle, shifting plot threads to leave me an absolute emotional wreck by the time I finished playing. Sure, it tackled its heavy themes with as much grace as a blind rhinoceros, but that didn’t detract at all from the emotional value of each individual plot thread and it certainly didn’t hamper the experience of being completely engrossed in a story where your choices matter more than anything else. David Cage may have rightfully earned his reputation as a bit of a fumbling, heavy-handed writer, but this game is so painstakingly crafted from every character to every setpiece and every choice alteration from minute to grandiose, makes that famous Cage jank almost entirely disappear. Almost. And if you yourself are a Cage skeptic as I once was (and to a point, still am), I encourage you to give this game a try.

Standout Moment Award: The crossover finale of all three main narrative threads is absolutely perfectly executed, and feels equally impactful no matter your choices. But, you know, obviously the best canon ending is when everyone gets out alive.

Standout Character Award: Connor. Of course this had to go to Connor, the ever-conflicted, messily efficient twinky android who is definitely dating Hank takes today’s standout character shoutout.

Tomorrow: No. 15; framed swordsman gets pissed off at a world-ending prophecy, bothers entire world for help.

[davidmann95]

So, what's the deal with Kingdom Hearts? I mean, it's a Disney/Final Fantasy crossover, right? Hard to see why would that cause such dedicated whatever.

I’ve had this in my drafts for a while, and given today’s the series’ 17th anniversary it seems like the time to finally get back and finish it. Simple answer: the music slaps and you just want the soft children to get to go home.

Long answer: Even now people joke about the baseline absurdity of a universe in which Donald Duck can go toe-to-toe with Cloud, and while I think 17 years in we’re past the point where it’s time to accept that this is just a part of the landscape for these characters, yes, that does remain objectively bonkers. It’s not a natural, intuitive combination like your JLA/Avengers, this is Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe-level “well, I suppose they both exist in…the, uh, medium of visual storytelling” stuff, other than I suppose that they both tend towards fantasy in this case. And then that whole wacko premise got hijacked by Tetsuya Nomura for an extended epoch-spanning drama driven by labyrinthine, (occasionally literal) dream logic mythology where it’s genuinely impossible to tell at this point what’s being thrown in by the seat of the creators’ pants and what was planned out since day one, pretty much casting aside the franchises that were in theory the main appeal as relevant parts of the plot even as you still hang out with Baymax from Big Hero 6. Step back even a touch, and there will always be a whiff of derangement about the entire affair - it’s simply baked in at this point.

My controversial opinion however: it’s actually good. There are structural issues and awkward moments and aspects ill-served, I’d never deny that, but even diehard lifelong Kingdom Hearts fans tend towards prefacing appreciation with at least two or three levels of irony and self-critique. I suppose it’s in part a response to the general reaction to it I mentioned before, but no, I absolutely think these are genuinely good, ambitious stories build on a foundation that’s still holding strong. An important note in service of that point: Winnie the Pooh, maybe Hercules, and with III Toy Story aside, I have basically zero childhood nostalgia for any of the properties involved. Wasn’t a huge Disney kid outside maybe very very early childhood, and only dabbled with Final Fantasy after the fact (still intend to play through XV someday though). It won me over young, yes, but on its own.

The building blocks help: the characters designs are great, the individual Disney settings in their platonic representations of various locales and landscapes make perfect towns packed with quirky locals to roam through on your quest, the Final Fantasy elements are tried and tested for this sort of thing, the original worlds each have their own unique aesthetics and touchstones and come out lovely, by my estimation the gameplay’s fun adventure/slasher stuff even if it’s had ups and downs over the years, the actors largely bring it, it all looks pretty, and as noted, the score is as good as it gets. They’re games that look, sound, and play good made up of component parts that unify into a sensible whole. And for me, the scope and convolution of the plot that so many leap at as the easy target - with its memory manipulations and replicas and time travel and ancient prophecies and possessions and hearts grown from scratch and universes that live in computers and storybooks and dreams - is half the appeal; I live for that kind of nonsense. Not that folks aren’t justified as hell in taking jabs at it, but I’ll admit I often quietly raise an eyebrow when I see the kind of people I tend to follow having an unironic laugh at it given *gestures toward the last 40 years of superhero comics*.

All that through is ultimately window dressing. The most powerful appeal of Kingdom Hearts is I suppose hidden if you’re going by commercials and isolated GIFs and whatnot, and even the bulk of the content of the average Disney world, charming as they are. It’s deceptively easy to pick out something else as the fundamental appeal too; even if I’d call them incredibly well-executed examples of such the character archetypes it deals in are relatively broad, and while it handles the necessary shifts in its tone from fanciful Disney shenanigans to apocalyptic cosmic showdowns for the heart of all that is with incredible skill - and that might be its most unique aspect, and certainly a critical one - a lot of that comes down to raw technical ability on the part of the writers, appropriate dramatic buildup, and demarcation between environments and acts of the story.

The real heart of the matter, to speak to my typical audience, is that Kingdom Hearts in a profound way resembles 1960s Superman comics and stories inspired by the same: it’s 90% dopey lovely cornball folk tale stuff, until every now and again it spins around and sucker punches you in the goddamn soul with Extremely Real Human Shit. Except here instead of being lone panels and subtext, it builds and builds throughout each given adventure until it takes over and flips for the finale from fairytale to fantasy epic.

That can probably be credited directly to Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi suggesting to Tetsuya Nomura to try treating this weird gig seriously instead of as the licensed cash-in it seemed destined to be, since if this didn’t have a soul the target audience would recognize it. But in spite of that seriousness, it’s perhaps its most joyfully mocked aspect in its entirely unselfconscious dedication to making Hearts and Feelings and Light and/or Darkness the most important things in the universe that lets it do what it does. It’s childish in the most primal way, absolutely, but what that translates to is that there aren’t cosmic or personal stakes that swap places as major or subsidiary at any given point, because in this world they’re always literally the same thing. There’s no major relationship where the fate of a primal power or a last chance at salvation doesn’t ultimately hang in the balance depending on how it shakes out, and there’s no prophecy or ultimate weapon or grand scheme that doesn’t have direct, fundamental ramifications on the life of an innocent or the memories that define them or whether they’ll ever be able to find a place to call home. ‘Hearts’ is an all-encompassing theme, whether in strength of will or redemption or questions of personhood or the ties that bind us, and by making it a literal source of power, it lends personal dimension to the unfathomable universal and the grand weight of destiny to whether or not someone can come to terms with who they want to be or apologize to those they’ve wronged. It’s a world where emotional openness and personal growth ultimately works the same way and achieves the same results as doing calisthenics in five hundred times Earth’s gravity does in Dragon Ball. and it’s tender and exuberant and thoughtful enough where it counts to take advantage of that as a storytelling engine.

That’d be why Sora works so well as the main character, because he straddles the line most directly between those poles. He may stand out as a spiky anime boy when actually next to Aladdin and the rest, but when it comes down to it he’s a Disney character, just a really nice, cheeky, dopey kid who wants to hang out with his friends and go on an adventure and believes in people really really hard. As the stranger in a strange land he’s a tether to a wider, sometimes more somber and weighty world when he’s sticking his head into the movie plots, but when he’s in the midst of stacked-up conspiracies and mythic wars that make all seem lost, he’s the one whose concerns remain purely, firmly rooted in the lives of those connected to him. Other characters get to go out there into bleak questions of self-identity or forgiveness, but while he might wrestle with doubt and fear Sora’s the guy who holds the ship steady and reminds all these classic heroes and flawed-yet-resolute champions and doomed Chosen Ones what they’re fighting for by just being a really good dude.

Given superhero comics are my bread and butter it doesn’t come up much, but Kingdom Hearts is really about as foundational to the landscape of my imagination as Superman and company, and while 100% that’s in part because it came into my life early it didn’t take hold by chance. It manages its stakes and its drama in a way and on a scale unlike just about anything else I’ve ever seen (even prior to getting to the weird mythology stuff that’s so profoundly up my alley), and somehow the aesthetics and gameplay and dialogue and all the million and one details that needed to come together to facilitate that story joined together into something that’s become one of the most curious, beloved touchstones of its medium. It’s a small, lovely bastion of warmth and sincerity in a way that only feels more like a breath of fresh air with time, playing out over decades a bunch of kids’ journeys to try and find the people they love most and help them and go home together when everything in the universe seems to be against them. It’s special in ways that will for me always be unique and meaningful, and I’m glad it seems to have plenty more in it before it’s through.

And seriously THAT MUSIC.

[paperficwriter]

Friendly Competition

This is a fic I wrote for @linesporadic, who requested a crossover between the two best animes of our time Mob Psycho 100 and One Punch Man. What results is this AU of rival espers, trying to be the best in Seasoning City! Well...sort of. One of them just has a very enthusiastic ‘assistant’...

Cut is for length, not for content!

Reigen and Saitama had never met, but they were at least aware of one another. After all, two renowned espers in the same city - even one as large as the Greater Seasoning Metropolitan, where Saitama lived in the east and Reigen in the west - meant that there was some overlap from time to time.

Especially when it came to rates.

“I’m not sure,” one woman said to Reigen as she looked over his menu of specials, like it was a variety of noodle dishes and not a guarantee of freedom from supernatural entities. “If I go across town, I know that the other office will give me a lower cost, since this is just affecting my apartment and not a whole building…”

Reigen’s jaw twitched, but he refused to let it affect his winning smile. “We have a money-back guarantee if you are at all dissatisfied with our service, ma’am. Would you like to see my ledger of refunds?” She nodded, and Reigen made a show of opening his desk and pulling out a blank piece of paper. “This is to show you how confident I am that we can handle your specific needs. Please, leave it to me.”

And Mob, he didn’t add, glancing at the boy sitting at the small desk by the door. His school was on break, and yet he was still wearing his uniform, sipping a mini glass bottle of milk. “I do not own any more professional clothes,” he had solemnly explained, and Reigen promised before he went back that they would go clothes shopping as a bonus for his hard work during what should have been his free time.

When she still looked uncertain, Reigen reached over the desk to touch her hand. Sometimes clients needed that little extra charm to seal the deal (something that he had heard rumors was not the strong suit of Saitama, who possessed a tendency to come off awkward and distant despite his good results). The client blushed and bowed in her chair, cheeks red. “Of course! You’re right, let me just get my credit card.” As she dug around in her purse, she glanced up, batting her eyelashes at Reigen. “Does your office have any policy on what you do in your off hours, Reigen-san?”

Without even breaking stride, Reigen pulled out a contract and pushed it across the desk with a pen. “Off hours?! I don’t even know the meaning of the thing! If you could just sign here, here and…”

---

“Sensei! I have the tea, and I picked up some of the onigiri from the corner shop! I also replenished your supply of soap and toilet paper and paper towels, since I noticed that you were running low! I hope you do not mind!”

Saitama jumped at the sudden reappearance of his new ‘assistant,’ who came in the door and was juggling several bags while taking off his shoes. It would be a lie to say he wasn’t a little grateful, given that his ‘office’ was an extra room on his apartment, and the lack of those things was not simply a problem for his business but for his personal life as well.

At least he had an assistant to do these tasks for him...of course, he hadn’t planned on having an assistant at all...or a business (which seemed to come with the assistant), for that matter.

Although Genos wouldn’t call himself an assistant..or an employee...no, he called himself his disciple.

“Oh, thanks, Genos.” He smirked as he took the tea and the bag with the snacks. “If I knew you were going to the shop, I would have given you a list…”

“I can go back out!” The exuberant young man’s dark eyes were wide with enthusiasm. His knuckles popped as he made fists, and his dark shaggy hair fell in his face. He should tell the kid to get a haircut. Wait, second thought, if anything happened and he went bald like him, Saitama would never forgive himself. “Tell me what you need, Sensei!”

Sensei. He sighed. “I need you to stop calling me ‘Sensei.’ Especially around clients. But here, you can just...put these away, okay?” He gestured at the bags he was still holding, dutifully, like he would have held them forever if he asked (or even if he didn’t ask, frankly).

“Yes!” Genos ran off towards the bathroom, leaving Saitama a moment to sit at his desk and get a reprieve.

Saitama watched him go, taking the opportunity to slide the crossword puzzle that had been occupying his attention under the stack of bills he actually should have been paying attention to. He couldn’t exactly turn him away at this point, knowing what he did about his circumstances. If he had just been some teenager, sure, but Genos was nineteen, out of school, and he didn’t ask to be paid at all. If anything, he had given him a stack of money for rent…

Yeah, most assistants don’t really move in, do they?  

When he first arrived just a few weeks before, Genos made Saitama listen to his tragic backstory, all about how he had lost his parents in a mysterious fire that claimed their apartment building several years before. Evidently there was also an evil spirit involved? And some doctor who thought that the evil spirit was perhaps hosting some serial arsonist’s soul? And Genos had been living wih this doctor before Saitama, learning about and enhancing his psychic abilities? Genos had talked about this a lot...even when Saitama didn’t ask.

When Genos returned, he was holding a stack of envelopes, which he gave respectfully with both hands. “Sensei! The mail is here as well!”

Saitama thanked him, not nearly as enthusiastic since usually all he got was bills and ads (and most of the time it wasn’t for his favorite stores anyway). He picked through them until he got to one envelope that was handwritten. “Ah? What’s this…” Tearing it open, he unfolded the paper inside.

It was...well, the best way to describe it was a screed of angry letters and scratched marks. Whoever had written it was in quite a mood… so angry that there were some parts Saitama couldn’t even read, but he got the gist.

Fraud. Asshole. Loser. Give up.

Saitama jumped when Genos appeared at his shoulder. “Sensei, please allow me to pay a visit to the hurtful individual who sent you this and explain the error of their ways.”

“Don’t worry about it, Genos,” he said, waving him off. He did turn the letter over, and there was something else: a little note about how he would never be as successful as Reigen Arataka, and how anyone would be a fool to go to him when the best spiritual master in the world was right here in the city. “Ah, looks like he’s a fan of that Spirits and Stuff guy…”

“He is wrong, Sensei!” Genos sat down beside him on his knees, so intense that Saitama could swear he could feel the anxiety vibrating around him, bright lines visible in his aura.

“Genos, please stand up, we’ve talked about this…”

“The person in that letter has no idea how amazing you are! Reigen Arataka is not even half the esper that you are! The fact that he even holds himself in comparison with you is...absurd! Has he ever said anything about this to you?”

“No...ah, wait.” Saitama tapped his chin. “Come to think of it, we did run into each other at the supermarket one time. He was ahead of me in the line to choose watermelons, and he got the last one, and he said...something, I don’t remember. ‘Tough beans’? ‘Get here sooner next time’? I don’t recall exactly…hey, what’s that look?”

“He will pay for thinking that he is better than you, Sensei! I will not let this slight go unpunished!” Before he could stop him, Genos was stomping to the door, putting his shoes back on and running out.

“Hey! Genos! Pick up some soy sauce and eggs while you’re -- damn, he’s gone…” Well, that was all right. It would give Saitama a chance to play with the video game console he “borrowed” from his friend King. After all, it wasn’t like he was in a rush for more work.

---

Mob was finishing up lunch when he heard a knock at the door. Actually, it was harder than a knock...more like a pounding. “Better leave it, Shigeo,” Dimple mentioned, the spirit floating close like a green balloon. “It’s probably Reigen’s landlord.”

Reigen had gone out to handle the spirit that the woman wanted exorcised, leaving them alone. “I don’t know...the last time we left someone outside, they were here when he got home and it was even worse. Shishou was really mad…”

Mob stood up and opened the door, blinking up at a man who seemed younger than Reigen, with dark hair and severe eyes. He didn’t look like one of Reigen’s usual clients. No, he was unique, with his torn sleeves and jeans, the set line of his mouth. “My name is Genos. I am here for Reigen Arataka. He needs to be punished.”

“Oh,” Dimple said quietly, drifting off to the desk, “it’s that kind of caller, eh…you shouldn’t let him linger, Shigeo.”

Mob didn’t know what he meant, and he bowed at the stranger. “I’m sorry, Reigen-shishou is not here at the moment. He’s out on a job, but he should be returning shortly. Would you like some tea while you wait?”

“...very well.” Genos stepped inside and took off his shoes. For someone who was here to “punish” Reigen, he certainly seemed mild-mannered enough. He even sat down at the desk and folded his arms in front of him. Mob would have thought he would at least knock over the stack of papers in front of him… “Are you this fool’s disciple?”

Mob blushed a little at that. “Well, I work for him…”

“You should work for someone who does not lie and say he is the world's greatest psychic. Saitama is much more powerful.” Gens accepted the tea from Mob regardless. “Thank you.”

As he went to unplug the electric kettle, Mob struck his palm with his fist. “Oh, Saitama! I’ve heard of him. He lives in the city, doesn’t he? Is that who you work for?”

“I would never allow money to pass from Sensei's hand to mine. Also, do not get any ideas. I am Sensei’s disciple.”

“Of course not!” Mob pulled his chair over and sat down. “Is he kind? He looks nice in the pictures I’ve seen of him online.”

(Sensei certainly didn’t think so, Genos thought to himself as he sipped the tea. All he could talk about was the glaring sunspot that caught his head in every shot…still, he was glad at least someone in this office was mindful of Saitama’s prowess.)

“He is very respectful,” Genos said, “and quite humble, which is more than it seems can be said of this man.” He gestured flippantly at the picture on the wall.

“That’s true enough,” Dimple mumbled.

“Shishou isn’t humble, no, but he is a good man. He has done a lot to help me over the years with my own powers.”

Although Mob ignored Dimple - he had gotten used to doing so, since the clients could not see him - Genos glanced around when he spoke. “I sense something here…”

Mob was about to respond when Reigen came through the door.

---

By the time Reigen returned to the office, he was a wreck of sweat and grime collecting in his dress shirt. The “evil spirit” that had been shrieking in the night had been nothing more than a loose gasket on a hot water heater. Good thing he kept a few spare tools in his briefcase after the last home visit with the ‘water spirit that was actually a leaky toilet.’

When he opened the door to find the young man sitting beside Mob, it didn’t take more than a glance to know that he was angry about something. Judging from how that expression spiked when Reigen entered - hands around the tea cup he held tightening, jaw clenching, brows narrowing even more than they already were - that something quickly narrowed down to ‘him.’

Why?

Refusing to look ruffled, he closed his eyes, took a breath and said, “I had a feeling you’d be here. You’re still so troubled.”

“Shishou! Welcome back! This is Genos. He’s here to speak with you about Saitama-san.” Mob rose and returned to the kettle to prepare tea for him as well.

Mob...you couldn’t have done better if I had asked you to!

“Yes. Genos. I sensed the weight on your shoulders.”

Genos pressed his lips together tightly. “Do not pretend you know my tragic story. I can see right through you, Reigen Arataka.”

A tragic story. Okay. He could work with that. He smiled and gestured in the air with his hand before smoothing his hair back, touching Genos’s shoulder as he walked behind his desk. Wow, he actually was super tense… “You carry so much with you, Genos. I only want to help you. Has Saitama been unable to ease the burden you’ve had with you since that day?”

Was it too melodramatic? That line had backfired on him before…

Genos jumped to his feet, hands slapping the wooden desktop. “Do you know something about the spirit that started the fire?!”

Phew. Reigen reached out and rubbed his arms, eyes sharp and focused. “I know that it’s still with you. It’s trying to wear you down. It’s still trying to burn you down, Genos.” He turned and snapped his fingers. “Mob! We need the exorcism oils!”

“Yes, sir!” That had taken a while to bring Mob on board with (“I never use salt or oil, Shishou…”) but after watching the happy satisfaction of Reigen’s clients - most of whom were regulars - he no longer hesitated in helping.

Genos seemed to go along with it, and in only a short time, he was sitting across from him, noticeably less tense. The scent of lavender wafted in the air, and it had given Reigen a chance to change out of his nasty shirt. Win, win, win. Genos rolled his shoulders. “Well, I do feel more relaxed --”

“Consider it on the house!”

“--but this skill does not make you stronger than Saitama-sensei!” His loyalty restored, he straightened in the chair, resolute. “It is still shameful that you call yourself the most powerful psychic in the world!”

Reigen took a breath, swallowed down his pride (and defenses) and said gently, “Genos. If you set out to do something, and you are met only with success time and time again, what should you do? Reject your blessings?”

The young man stared at him, gaze only just wavering.

“And if you see someone else, who is not as successful as you, is it fair to say that they are better, just because they try to be? That’s not realistic.”

“But you still are not the best in the world! And Saitama is strong!”

“I’m sure he is, but...I am the best in my world. I can’t deny that.”

Dimple had been mostly ignoring the conversation, but now he returned to Reigen’s shoulder. “Don’t talk this boy in circles so he doesn’t realize you’re a fraud.”

Reigen twitched.

“You’re just trying to question him over and over until he leaves, and when he figures it out, you won’t have to deal with it. That isn’t even clever.”

“Quiet, you!” Admittedly, Reigen had not gotten as good as Mob in ignoring Dimple, especially when he was undermining him.

“Do you feel that spirit as well?!” Genos was on his feet again, pulling out an assortment of charms and trinkets from his pockets, scattering them on the table. He drew a circle (“Hey! Don’t chalk on my desk! That’s mahogany!”) and then chanted.

Dimple made a face, and Reigen peered up at him. Is it working?

The small green spirit scratched his head. “He’s making me all itchy, but does he really think those things work on something as powerful as me? Poor kid. I almost feel sorry for him.” Reigen let Genos continue trying, until he finally slumped down in defeat. “If only Sensei were here...he would know what to do! He can banish any demon!”

“Does he use all this...stuff?” Reigen pinched a bit of salt in his finger. It was larger grain than what he used… Maybe he should get some...

“Well, it’s different! He has strength and power! He creates energy directly from his fist and blows them away!”

Reigen smiled. Jackpot. “I don't need anything quite that intense. Behold!” he suddenly roared. “Ultimate Spirit Cast-off!”

(This was actually a technique that Reigen normally just yelled at Dimple, waving his hands to annoy and shoo him off when he was being particularly distracting.)

“Stop that!” Dimple glowered. “I'm more powerful than you will ever be! I won't be--”

“Shoo! Shoo! Scat!”

“Fine! I didn’t want to be here anyway! I can see you crash and burn any day!” With a red-faced huff, he disappeared through the wall and floated toward Mob’s home.

Genos blinked...and then immediately began to clap. “Reigen-san, I have been wrong about you! You exorced a particularly powerful spirit without the use of any supernatural tools!”

“Yes, yes, I know,” Reigen said, sighing in relief and straightening his tie.

“I am certain now that you would perhaps be a formidable opponent for Sensei in a battle of auras!”

A small shiver of discomfort passed through Reigen, although his face did not change. What the hell was a battle of auras?! “I would be happy to face him! Time permitting, of course...surely you can see why I am such a busy man.”

Genos nodded and bowed, first at him and then at Mob. “I thank you both for your time and hospitality. I apologize for taking your time, but please do rest assured that I am convinced that you are quite adept at the psychic arts.”

As he departed, Reigen sat down with a heavy sigh. “Shishou...shouldn’t we have just explained that Dimple was a spirit normally residing here? Did you have to kick him out?”

“Isn’t that what we are always doing, Mob? Kicking spirits out? Dimple may be one we know, but he is still a powerful entity. My tactics remain the same.”

Mob considered this, then smiled. “You are very right and wise, Shishou!”

“Yes, Mob, I know. Now, let’s take a break and see about those clothes I promised you!”

“Yes, sir!”

...an outing that certainly did not have anything to do with the possibility that Saitama might come take him up on his challenge...

[theonyxpath]

Since next week we’ll be going into full New Kickstarter mode for the Pirates of Pugmire KS, let me catch up on a few things we talked about in the Monday Meeting today, and expand on our thinking about attending conventions.

First, thanks to everyone who sent in questions for my interview with the Onyx Pathcast! We had a great recording session last week that, no surprise, ran extra long. So many things to cover, and I wanted to go into enough detail to deliver more than a corporate sound-bite.

Next, yes, I’m still all fuzzy-headed from pollen allergies. Thanks to all who asked, or provided solutions – medical or otherwise!

And, as far as I’ve been informed, all the backer rewards for the Scion Kickstarter should now be out in the trucks/planes/tricycles of the shippers our fulfillment shipper works with. USPS and Fedex mostly, but these days it is hard to pin that down as they all seem to subcontract with each other.

V5 Chicago art by Amy Wilkins

In a little over two weeks, Eddy, Mighty Matt McElroy, and myself, will be flying over to Merrie Olde Englande for UK Games Expo! This is going to be extremely cool for me, as my family pretty much all came from that part of the world, and I’ve never visited before.

Plus, we’ll be hanging out with Matthew Dawkins, and meeting Steffie de Vann, John Burke, Chris Allen, and Klara Herbol face-to-face for the first time! We are good at using other methods of talking together like Skype, and generally love the virtual office thing, but hanging out and getting to know our creators is still the best way to really understand each other.

But our kumbaya moments aren’t all we’ll be doing at the con! The gang are running all sorts of demo games, including a Chronicles of Darkness tournament where they’ll be running games for the CofD game lines and one player will advance to a special session of the Contagion Chronicle run by developer Matthew Dawkins!

This is a kind of connected con game we’ve never actually done officially before, and we’re really looking forward to how things play out! Plus, the are a lot of other demo games going on including Fetch Quest and Prince’s Gambit, for those who need a card game break from their roleplaying sessions.

I’ll be in meetings and podcasts and other interviews, but hope to get a chance to sit near, if not in, and enjoy the fun. So if you’re going, and want to chat, you can stop by the Onyx Path booth and find out where we all are if you can’t find us there.

One thing you won’t find there will be us selling games and books at the booth. We’re stepping away from making the booth a sales venue at UKGE, and we’ll be directing folks who want to buy our stuff to our friends at Leisure Games! In fact, here’s a handy map now of the exhibition floor:

Now, UK Games Expo is not the only convention we are trying out this new booth strategy with. In fact, we are going all in at Gen Con 2019, this year, and we’re not having any booth at all there.

Instead, we have pretty much doubled the number of demo games that will be run there, we’re still having our Onyx Path panels, and you’ll still be able to buy our games and books and stuff at the Studio2 and Indie Press Revolution booths.

Unsurprisingly, we have a map for that too!

But Rich, why? Why not carry on the tradition of the Gen Con booth? You guys have made a big deal out of your Gen Con planning every year since Onyx Path started (even a few years before that, actually).

The answer is in the question really. It has been a big deal. A huge deal.

One that sucked up our time, effort, planning, attention, and cash. Gen Con exerted a disproportionate gravity every year for the effect it had on our company and community. As a chance to see the same folks year after year, the booth was a great focal point – one we are going to try and move to the panels and demo tables.

I never saw the booth as a “sales venue” nor wanted us to drive it in that direction. That’s just not how I’ve thought of our presence there; it was always more of a communications opportunity. But what we’ve seen these past few years is that the need for the booth to be our big chance to talk to folks has really been left in the dust by our online presence.

For example, all last year at Gen Con, I heard from both new and long time members of our community how they love the Onyx Pathcast, or chatting with Dixie on Slack, or Matt and Ian on our Facebook pages.

And this hasn’t just affected the booth. For example, we used to get a huge reaction when we released the new Onyx Path Brochure at Gen Con – now folks have told us that they already know most of what’s in there because of our social media and these very Monday Meeting Notes blogs, so we’ll be debuting a new kind of brochure at the Mid-Winter Convention this year.

Shunned By The Moon art by Jeff (Silver Fox) Holt

Once we looked at all that; really went into the different ways that folks are getting info and a chance to connect with the company, we could see that the booth was a massive drain on our time in terms of running it, and a pretty big drain on cash that we could use in more proactive ways, and that there were better ways we could use to communicate.

Put that all together, and we’re going to try doing things sans booth this year and see what happens. Maybe it is a horrible idea. We’ll see. But if we just “do what we’ve always done” without examining those strategies to see if they are effective, we’re headed for the tar pits.

And nobody wants that. We want to evolve so that we can continue to deliver you:

Many Worlds, One Path!

BLURBS!

KICKSTARTER:

Our Pirates of Pugmire Kickstarter will be starting at 2pm Eastern US time on Tuesday, May 21st!

ONYX PATH MEDIA

Illustration by Charles Bates

On this Friday’s Onyx Pathcast is a special Pirates of Pugmire Design Diary pretty much totally by Eddy Webb, who has been recording sessions all through his process of developing PoP: https://onyxpathcast.podbean.com/

And Here’s More Media About Our Worlds:

No Onyx Path News from last week as Matthew was away, so expect a special edition this week to make up for the gap! As for actual plays, it seems to be a Scarred Lands-focused week! Please let the Gentleman Gamer on the Onyx Path Forum know if you have an actual play or review you’d like us to profile, new or old!

Onyx Path‘s YouTube channel has however gained an additional two parts of the Scarred Lands actual play Matthew is running for Red Moon Roleplaying. Check it out if heists, dragons, asaathi, and slitherin are your thing! https://youtu.be/cjbkpGHZhVM

The Story Told RPG Podcast have reached episode five of their Dragon-Blooded actual play, so if you’re interested in Exalted, please give it a listen: http://thestorytold.libsyn.com/fall-of-jiara-episode-5-a-dinner-to-remember

The latest episodes of Occultists Anonymous, the Mage: The Awakening actual play (with crossover elements are synopsised as follows: Episode 11: Across the Abyss. Half the cabal, twice the fun. They attempt to summon a Supernal being… Without any research! https://youtu.be/3y3ws45deyw AND Episode 12: Magical Girls’ Night. The conclusion of the summoning, and new plans are laid to develop tools to spellcasting. https://youtu.be/VgaxzDivbMc Give them a watch!

Back to Scarred Lands now, and Caffeinated Conquests‘ actual play of the Gauntlet of Spiragos continues (and they completely off-track from the published scenario): https://youtu.be/haNoWVTBjLc

Returning here to Scarn with Travis Legge’s Myths & Matchmakers, which has reached its 20th episode! If you enjoy your actual plays, please do check this channel out. Also, Travis really knows his Scarred Lands: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYIfQKyR5Vs

Devil’s Luck Gaming are always worth checking out for their fantastic Scarred Lands and Chronicles of Darkness actual plays, streamed live: https://www.twitch.tv/DevilsLuckGaming

The Keeper of the Archive (a new show on YouTube) has recently made lengthy strides into covering the Traditions of Mage: The Ascension (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAmGl_jV_qwLk33I706Dfxg3RTqPd6YGz) and Tribes of Werewolf: The Apocalypse (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAmGl_jV_qwKLTkw8JkX02zkOMzbtrS8k). It’s a new channel and they’d greatly appreciate your support

One of our frequent Mage freelancers, Rachelle Udell, was recently interviewed by Mage: The Podcast on the subject of the Mage Cookbook and other subjects! It’s well worth a listen, and an excellent channel in general: https://anchor.fm/mage-the-podcast/episodes/The-Mage-Cookbook-and-the-Ahl-i-Batini-with-Rachelle-Udell-e3tr3g

Please check any of these out and let us know if you find or produce any actual plays of our games!

ELECTRONIC GAMING:

As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is now live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is both rolling and rocking!

Here’s an update from the App devs:

We’ve been having trouble fixing the android bug that messes up the resolution for newer phones. I think we have a fix for that.  It was also brought up that the store display is wrong on most tablet devices, so that is getting fixed too. That should all be soon!

ON AMAZON AND BARNES & NOBLE:

You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).

If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue you bought it from. Reviews really, really help us with getting folks interested in our amazing fiction!

Our selection includes these fiction books:

OUR SALES PARTNERS:

We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire out into stores, as well as to individuals through their online store. You can pick up the traditionally printed main book, the Screen, and the official Pugmire dice through our friends there! https://studio2publishing.com/search?q=pugmire

We’ve added Prince’s Gambit to our Studio2 catalog: https://studio2publishing.com/products/prince-s-gambit-card-game

Now, we’ve added Changeling: The Lost 2nd Edition products to Studio2‘s store! See them here: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/all-products/changeling-the-lost

Scarred Lands (Pathfinder) books are also on sale at Studio 2: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/scarred-lands

Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

And you can now order Pugmire, Monarchies of Mau, Cavaliers of Mars, and Changeling: The Lost 2e! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/manufacturers.php?manufacturerid=296

DRIVETHRURPG.COM:

On Sale This Week!

This Wednesday, we’re putting up a ton of stickers on our RedBubble store! Symbols and logos and art and all sorts of stuff- but as stickers!

CONVENTIONS

UK Games Expo: May 31st – June 2nd From the US comes Eddy Webb, Matt McElroy, and Rich Thomas to join with Matthew Dawkins, Steffie de Vann, John Burke, Chris Allen, and Klara Herbol! Gen Con: August 1st – August 4th Save Against Fear: Oct 12-14 GameHoleCon: October 31st – November 3rd We’ll also be back at PAX Unplugged later this year.

And now, the new project status updates!

DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM FAST EDDY WEBB (projects in bold have changed status since last week):

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep)

M20 Victorian Mage (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Geist2e Fiction Anthology (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition)

Exalted Essay Collection (Exalted)

Scion: Demigod (Scion 2nd Edition)

Trinity Continuum Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum Core)

Masks of the Mythos (Scion 2nd Edition)

Wraith20 Fiction Anthology (Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition)

One Foot in the Grave Jumpstart (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #2 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Exigents (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Terra Firma (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Titanomachy (Scion 2nd Edition)

Crucible of Legends (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Redlines

Legendlore core book (Legendlore)

Monsters of the Deep (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Tales of Aquatic Terror (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Scion: Dragon (Scion 2nd Edition)

Kith and Kin (Changeling: The Lost 2e)

Second Draft

Tales of Good Dogs – Pugmire Fiction Anthology (Pugmire)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #1 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Across the Eight Directions (Exalted 3rd Edition)

TC: Aeon Ready Made Characters (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition core rulebook (Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition)

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

Heroic Land Dwellers (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

DR:E Threat Guide (Dystopia Rising: Evolution)

DR:E Jumpstart (Dystopia Rising: Evolution)

TC: Aeon Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Development

Hunter: the Vigil 2e core (Hunter: the Vigil 2nd Edition)

WoD Ghost Hunters (World of Darkness)

Oak, Ash, and Thorn: Changeling: The Lost 2nd Companion (Changeling: The Lost 2nd)

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed (Mage: the Awakening Second Edition)

Memento Mori: the GtSE 2e Companion (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition)

M20 The Technocracy Reloaded (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Creatures of the World Bestiary (Scion 2nd Edition)

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Scion Companion: Mysteries of the World (Scion 2nd Edition)

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

Chicago Folio/Dossier (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Let The Streets Run Red (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Cults of the Blood Gods (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Manuscript Approval:

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant core (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Pirates of Pugmire (Realms of Pugmire)

Blood Sea: Crimson Abyss for 5e (Scarred Lands)

Editing:

Spilled Blood (Vampire: The Requiem 2nd Edition)

CofD Dark Eras 2 (Chronicles of Darkness)

Distant Worlds (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Scion Ready Made Characters (Scion 2nd Edition)

Lunars: Fangs at the Gate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Post-Editing Development:

M20 Book of the Fallen (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

V5 Chicago By Night (Vampire: The Masquerade)

V5 Chicago By Night Screen (Vampire: The Masquerade)

CofD Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)

Witch-Queen of the Shadowed Citadel (Cavaliers of Mars)

Indexing:

Trinity Aeon

ART DIRECTION FROM MIRTHFUL MIKE:

In Art Direction

Ex3 Monthly Stuff  

Chicago By Night

They Came From Beneath the Sea!

EX3 Lunars

Hunter: The Vigil 2

Contagion Chronicle

VtR Spilled Blood – Contracted.

M20 Book of the Fallen – Contracted.

Dark Eras 2 – First set of sketches in.

CoM – Witch Queen of the Shadowed Citadel – Sending back feedback on sketches.

Pirates of Pugmire – KS art contracted, sketches and finals coming in.

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant – KS art started contracting.

Scion Ready Made Characters – Contracted.

TC Aeon: Distant Worlds – Reading through artnotes.

Marketing Stuff

In Layout

Dystopia Rising: Evolution – With Josh.

Shunned By the Moon

Trinity Continuum Core – Index is in.

Proofing

The Realm – At WW for approval.

Book of Oblivion – At WW for approval.

Signs of Sorcery – Dev comments back to layout.

Aeon Aexpansion – In 2nd Proof.

C20 Cup of Dreams Novel

Scion Jumpstart

At Press

Scion Hero – Shipped to backers, PoD proof ordered.

Scion Origin – Shipped to backers, PoD proof ordered.

Scion Dice – Shipped to backers.

Scion Screen – Shipped to backers.

Fetch Quest – Waiting for PoD proofs.

In Media Res – PDF out to backers, gathering errata with new sheet.

Geist 2e – PDF out to backers, gathering errata with new sheet.

Adventures for Curious Cats – PoD proof ordered.

Tales of Excellent Cats – PoD proof ordered.

Dragon-Blooded – Deluxe at printer. Signed off of Press Proofs.

Dragon-Blooded Screen – At printer.

Trinity Core and Aeon Screens – Files at printer.

TODAY’S REASON TO CELEBRATE: 

Today in 1964 a great nerd was born: Stephen Colbert. The man argues Silmarillion lore facts and kept a replica of Captain America’s shield on set. He drops references to his D&D game characters. Why are we in a golden era of “nerd culture”? Well, his overt love of our stuff has certainly helped!

[fatedcipher]

     It’s over.  I beat Kingdom Hearts 3, a game I’ve waited thirteen years for.  And now that it’s all said and done?

     I’m just disappointed.

     What follows is mostly my stream of consciousness impressions of the game, put to text more to organize and vent than anything else.  Be warned of strong opinions and acerbic criticism.

The Good

Roxas

It was one scene, but it was one hell of a scene.  McCartney fucking killed it.

The Sea Salt Trio finally gets justice.  Xion and Axel finally wear something besides the coat.

I had Sora walk around and take selfies while Roxas and Xion effortlessly demolished Saix.  So much catharsis.

Demyx

Yeah, I know, last thing I was expecting too.

Had exactly zero patience for series melodrama.  Every other word out of his mouth had me laughing.

Dude stabbed evil mcdarkness in the back to do the good guys a huge solid and got away with it scot-free.

Lingering Will

He was on screen for all of five seconds, but I cheered for all five of them.

Namine was the one who called him in.

Should have been him to finish off Terranort, but close enough.

Half the Disney Characters

Telling the obnoxious villains to fuck off.

Actually making them fuck off in a couple instances.

Put that Edgelord back where he came from or so help me!

Hayner!  Pence!  Olette!

Twilight Gang actually contributing to the main plot again.

Them giving a shit about Roxas when they didn’t need to.

Fucking bamboozled SoD, he just didn’t know how to react to their Scooby Doo shenanigans.

Mixed Bag

Some of the Disney worlds were pretty charming and had good cast interactions.

Frozen’s world was not.

Sora using the fallen keys was visually breathtaking and played in well to his power to connect to other people.

It was a reference to the stupid mobile game that has only polluted the plot further.

TWEWY world effectively confirmed in whatever is next.

I may not actually want to play whatever is next.

Music

It practically goes without saying at this point but, JESUS CHRIST THERE’S SOME GOOD MUSIC IN THIS VIDEO GAME

OTHER PROMISE/VECTOR TO THE HEAVENS ARRANGEMENT SLAYED ME

I LOVE YOU YOKO SHIMOMURA

The Bad

Gameplay

Plays like a janky version of 2 with a botox injection of DDD flowmotion that only makes the game feel more awkward.

Clunky melee combos have too much start-up, most have no invincibility or even armor to prevent being hit out of them.

Only a handful of the keyblade transformations are actually useful, all of which are a massive step down from drive forms.

Shotlocks still feel like extraneous instant damage and add nothing to gamplay flow.

Oversaturation of minigames leaves several worlds light on actual combat.

Attraction flow is too easy to get, not fun to use, lasts too long, and leaves you vulnerable to damage.

Worlds are simultaneously expansive by individual area and depressingly small on an overall scale.  Most of Twilight Town is inaccessible, Destiny Islands and Radiant Garden can’t be visited.

General Plot and Storytelling

Generally poor writing that fails to resolve several plot threads and introduces ridiculous retcons that only create more questions.

There’s a scene where all of the good guys are in the same room having a discussion about how convoluted the plot is and Jiminy chimes in that they should read the in-game summaries on the in-game phone.  This was when the game crossed over into self-parody for me, and not in a good way.

The total absence of Final Fantasy characters save for the mention of Cloud and Auron at the start of Olympus eliminates half the appeal of what is ostensibly a crossover series.

Awful pacing, having the Disney worlds as unimportant filler with the majority of the plot happening in the last few hours of the game, following what has depressingly become the norm.

General cutscene incompetence, from characters being effortlessly overpowered by enemies to standing around unarmed and slackjawed waiting for said enemies to cut them down.

Bad dialogue and direction clearly mandated by someone who doesn’t speak English mars a number of moments that could have been good.  The script shines primarily when it escapes that ignorant control, which is not as often as it should be.

Mass death and revival scene was entirely pointless, as were the multiple Heartless swarms everyone was suddenly incapable of even putting up a fight against.

Death is still largely non-existent save for a few characters.

It made me more bitter and fed up with this series than DDD did and that is a fucking accomplishment.

Sora

How fucking dare you treat my precious boy like this, Nomura.

Half the cast spends half the game demeaning him and refuses to listen to him for no discernible reason, despite the fact he immediately solves every problem he is introduced to.

It’s not as bad as DDD, but he’s still written to be way less intelligent than he was in 1-2.

He’s the only one who doesn’t get a perfect happy ending and the only who actually seems to suffer any consequence to his actions, despite those consequences being utterly nonsensical.

It’s not even clear what the fucking “Power of Waking” is and he never needs it save for the artificial death scenes.

Riku

Every other line in the script is shilling him and how he’s somehow better than Sora.

This Yozora clown is literally just a palette swap of him.

Three Rikus in one scene.  It is laughable in how stupid it is.

He gets two playable sections and fights the same shitty boss in both.

He’s the one who goes to pick up Namine, not Roxas, Sora, or Kairi.

You can feel how much Nomura loves him and it repulses me.

Kairi

Her lively personality is completely absent along with any agency she might have once had.

Despite getting a keyblade and training the whole game, she gets halfway through a single fight before she’s easily kidnapped, held hostage, and callously executed.

None of her statements about protecting Sora are followed through on and are empty allusions to the first game.

SoKai is finally all but canon, yet the characters themselves hardly interact in the game and the Oathkeeper charm is never even brought up.

Namine

Her in-engine model is only ever used in the character files.

The only thing she does in the entire game is have a single conversation with Sora in the afterlife, in which he still fails to properly thank her.  

Riku is the one to pick her up after she gets a body because Nomura felt like awkwardly shifting Versus XIII’s unused dynamic onto two characters totally unrelated to it.

She’s still wearing the same white dress she has been since her introduction in CoM.

Aqua

Loses every fight she’s in to cutscene incompetence.

Seriously, you kick Vanitas’ ass in her only playable segment for her to throw herself spread eagle in front of some fireballs he throws out, it’s embarrassing.

Likewise jobs to Terranort and has to be saved by the COME GUARDIAN who is apparently Terra’s heartless?

Her single contribution to the plot is finding Ventus.

The refusal to let her age is just bizarre, the same extending to Ventus and Terra.

Antagonists

Xehanort remains nonsensically overpowered and omniscient, using time travel, clone bodies, and other contrivances to achieve his goals and have the heroes play straight into his hands until his actual last scene.

Multiple members of team dark don’t even have a good reason to work for the old man.  The former traitors are the ones to remain unfailingly loyal.

They show up to vaguely talk down to the heroes and/or wipe the floor with them before smugly disappearing without a scratch.  The only instances where this is even slightly averted are a couple scenes with the Disney characters and the defeat scenes in the final boss rush.

The majority of the villains are given cloying and contrived attempts at casting them in a sympathetic light when they have only ever been shown to be selfish, merciless, and cruel prior to their final defeats.  Xehanort himself is the absolute worst offender, being cast as a well-intentioned extremist at the last possible moment, despite this directly contradicting the entirety of his character prior.

     So yeah, Kindgom Hearts 3 isn’t that good of a game and has a story that’s legitimately quite poorly written and told overall.  Are my expectations inflated by the amount of time I’ve had to wait for this game?  Absolutely, but the series has been on a downward slope in quality since BBS and this was their big chance to correct course.  Even with the promise of TWEWY involvement in whatever is in the future, I can’t honestly say I’m interested in playing another Kingdom Hearts game after this disappointment and that’s depressing for someone who’s loved this series for so long.  There’s still a lot I want to write for Roxas and the rest of the cast, but when most of that stuff is attempting to revise the canon, it can be pretty discouraging.  All the same, I don’t want to give up on this blond haired kid and his friends just yet.  Their story’s too important to me to let it end like this.

[atopfourthwall]

State of the Wall: 12-2-17

New State of the Wall post! Lotsa stuff happening, so click under the cut to see what's happening!

Schedule of Upcoming Episodes 12/4 – Clive Barker’s Hellraiser Dark Holiday Special 12/11 – Sensation Comics #14: The Story of Fir Balsam 12/18 – Steam Wars Christmas Special 12/25 – Christmas with the Superheroes #2 1/1 – My Top 15 Favorite Episodes of AT4W 1/8 – PATREON: Legion of Superheroes: The Great Darkness Saga 1/15 – Patreon Viewers’ Choice (NFL SuperPro #2, Chuck Norris Karate Kommandos #3, or James Bond, Jr. #1) 1/22 – PATREON: JLA/Avengers 1/29 – PATREON: Homestuck, Act 2

As always, the schedule is subject to change for any number of reasons, I’m pretty locked down with these choices… aside from MAYBE my Top 15 Favorite Episodes. I keep waffling on it, but for now it’s what we’re going with.

The Road to 500… and the 10th Anniversary 2018 will mark the 10th Anniversary of Atop the Fourth Wall! Needless to say, it’s going to be a big year for the show. If everything goes according to plan, there will be two storylines within it – the Contest of Champions arc that began in October as well as a shorter 10th Anniversary storyline whose name I shall reveal once we get to it, likely ending October 29th (if not the 22nd to coincide with the 10th Anniversary episode).

To celebrate this momentous time, every review that is not a Patreon-sponsored episode will be a follow-up to something from the past ten years! This would include sequel episodes to previous material, like another issue of something covered previously, a thematic follow-up like, say, from the same creators as a popular episode or could be thought of as following the same ideas as that episode. However, thankfully some of the Patreon-sponsored episodes themselves will be follow-ups, as indicated by the January 29th episode being the second act of Homestuck (which should hopefully make the many Homestuck fans asking for me to cover the next act happy).

Along those same lines, we’ll be doing the second Patreon Viewers’ Choice episode! The official announcement for the poll on that one will likely come at the end of the Top 15 Favorite Episodes of AT4W, but I’m letting you see the choices now to start thinking about it. The choice will be between three goofy tie-in comics I’ve covered previously – another issue of NFL SuperPro, another issue of Chuck Norris Karate Kommandos, or going all the way back to James Bond, Jr.’s first issue. I did return to James Bond, Jr. for a live show that hasn’t been put up yet, but we haven’t seen it on the show proper since the end of 2009. A comment on that issue is the source of the infamous “You’ll never be as popular as the BeeGees!” comment that is now immortalized on the back of the second DVD.

But of course there’s even another big even happening in 2018 as part of the 10th Anniversary – we’re going to hit the 500th episode! I definitely want to do some special stuff this year for the 500th, most especially being another livestream like we had for the 300th. It’ll take some time to plan, but here’s a list of ideas I have currently for it: -More testimonials, trivia, and anecdotes like in the 300th -Showing some otherwise-DVD exclusive content from all my DVDs, including the Movie -Showing the previous “100th episodes” – Sonic Live #1, Spider-Man: One More day, Holy Terror, and Marvel Super Special #7: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band -A live showing of the conclusion to Pokémon Omicron, where we’ll take on the Elite 4 -Various Longbox of the Damned episodes -Special guests -Live-riffing some shorts

These are all just ideas for the time being, so if you have any of your own, feel free to let me know! We’ve got 5-6 months until the 500th and I’d love to know what people think!

Platform Change 4: The Revengeance of the Whils VidMe has announced that they are shutting down their services as of December 15th. As such, there are going to be some changes in how things are handled around here. This is the FOURTH time that a platform has failed and I have had enough. We hadn’t even really finished replacing the vidme embeds on the LAST embed player change, so screw it: we’re going all in on youtube. There might be an option for Vimeo down the road, but for now, here’s in the broad sense what’s going to happen: -All Atop the Fourth Wall videos, from here on, will be thumbnail images of the title card that you click through to go straight to youtube. -All Longbox of the Damned embeds will be made into youtube embeds. Next year’s Longbox videos are currently up in the air, but hey – we’ve got ten months to figure that out and maybe have a tried and tested system in place. For now, it makes more sense to make them youtube embeds because of people’s nature in marathon-viewing videos and Longbox videos are short enough as-is. -New videos like vlogs, side content, and Let’s Plays will follow the title card thumbnail process being used for Atop the Fourth Wall. Old videos are up in the air, but they will likely be embedded videos just to make life easier on us as we once again replace everything. -History of Power Rangers… well, that’s a bit of a beast all on its own. Refer to the History of Power Rangers section below for more details.

As always, I ask for patience during yet another period of transition. Plenty of videos will be unavailable during this time (including crossovers in particular), but we’ll try our damndest to get things back to working order as soon as possible.

History of Power Rangers I’m happy to report that FINALLY, all of History of Power Rangers is back up after so many months of being down due to ContentID striking many of them from VidMe. Minor edits have been made due to the lengths of certain clips used…

…And you can only enjoy them for another 13 days because VidMe is shutting down. Or rather you can DOWNLOAD them for another 13 days using a third-party downloader.

Simply put: I’ve had it. These videos were made for a different time, when Blip was the main video host and longer usage of video clips wasn’t an issue. The platforms have dwindled and it’s down to youtube and I’ve already tried to upload these videos to youtube once before and it didn’t end well. The audio quality of these videos isn’t that great compared to my current standards and many of them utilized low-quality pirated versions of episodes recorded off of TV. I own all of Power Rangers on DVD now and new Power Rangers content that I put out has to come from legitimate sources like DVDs anyway. I simply cannot make these older versions work anymore. Don’t bother trying to suggest another video host like Vimeo or DailyMotion. Aside from both having their own ContentID systems, I am tired of trying to accommodate an inferior product.

Work will begin anew on the revised History of Power Rangers videos. While I had wanted to work on them in order, it took forever just to get the SLIGHTLY-edited versions back on VidMe due to my busy schedule. As such, I’m going to release them on youtube out of order, starting with Overdrive through RPM (Samurai, Megaforce, and Dino Charge already exist on youtube) because of their already-decent audio quality. If you want the old versions (and sadly that will now include the SLIGHTLY-edited versions that I have put up more recently), feel free to download them however way you can, because I am no longer going to try to support it. Let it not be said that I didn’t TRY to keep them up after so many years of fighting with various platforms over them.

I had planned to announce that it was likely the In Space History of Power Rangers would be delayed as it is simply due to the busy schedules of others needed to work on the “Under Pressure” section, but, well, here we are. Hopefully we can see HOPR restored to something better than it was once the dust completely settles.

Let’s Play Pokémon Omicron As stated in the last State of the Wall, the Pokémon Omicron streams are on hiatus due to finally reaching the Elite 4. Due to the various things I’ve had do to these last few months (not the least of which being concluding a storyline, Longbox, AND getting married) I’ve had little to no time to work on Omicron videos. As I’ve said before, I’d like to do a major stream for the Elite 4. If you look above, I’ve suggested fighting the Elite 4 as part of the 500th AT4W Episode Celebration Live Show and would like to hear some feedback on that.

Storyline Compilations In case you haven’t been following the youtube channel (which you probably should be at this point given what’s going on with VidMe – link HERE), the Game Show Reviewer (who does a lot of the special effects for the show) has put together compilation videos of the AT4W storyline! They feature JUST the storyline segments and occasionally a clip or two from a review for context (or because he felt a joke was funny enough to include). At this time, everything through the “His Blue Soul” arc has been released. The other compilation videos are done and uploaded, but I’m currently waiting for some ContentID claims on the Royalty-Free music to pass before I release the rest. Otherwise, you can enjoy the compilations currently available thanks to this hand-dandy playlist.

DVDs and T-Shirts Sale In honor of the holiday season, IT’S SALE TIME! All INDIVIDUAL volumes of Atop the Fourth Wall DVDs have been reduced to ten dollars (until December 26th), including the most recent – Volume 3: Character Reboot. In addition, Shark Robot is still running their Black Friday sale through December 6th – just use the promo code “BLACKFRIDAY17” on the two Atop the Fourth Wall t-shirts – “I am a Man” and “Because Poor Literacy is KEWL!” You can find those shirts HERE!

I’m working on getting some other sales ready for both the Screenwave store and the T-shirts, so feel free to keep checking back here for any updates on additional sales!

Event Comics Month II The first Event Comics Month was such a big success we’re doing it again next year! As before, it’s a vote by patrons at any level picking two DC and two Marvel event comics! You can check it out HERE, become a Patron, and make your vote known about what you’d like to see reviewed next year!

Patreon As a reminder, the Patreon-sponsored review tier for Patreon is still closed for the moment, with details you can read HERE. While I still don’t have a date yet as to when I plan to reopen them, I’ve been taking your feedback about it into consideration. A common train of thought is that any non-comic review should at least be in some way linked to comics, be it about superheroes or, at the very least, linked to something I actually regularly do/am in some way interested in (for instance, the occasional sentai reviews are fine given History of Power Rangers, or video games could be Star Trek or Pokémon or the like). I don’t think that’s too unfair a compromise given what people are thinking, but I wouldn’t mind getting more feedback about it during this time, so feel free to make your feelings about it known if you haven’t already!

That’s all I’ve got for now! Feel free to let me know your thoughts/concerns/questions for everything going on!

[tumblunni]

Huh, I learned a fact! Apparantly the japanese actually have a word for a particular relateable childhood thing. “Chuunibyou” or “eighth grade syndrome”, for the type of kid/young teen who makes up clearly false lies to sound cooler, and/or gets really into cartoons and games and stuff and pretends to be a superhero. But it could also just apply to any sort of ‘I have a secret, I’m only pretending to be socially awkward cos I’m a secret spy staying undercover!’ type of thing. The definition I was reading mentioned how the ‘i’m totally a gangster, i could totally kick your ass’ and ‘my uncle works at nintendo’ and ‘i’m totally rich and know all these models and have a girlfriend that’s just working abroad’ type stuff from later years of high school can also count. And honestly I think the more uniquely american ‘I buy so many guns and I’m sure that some day some sort of crazy liberal will attack me and i’ll totally save everyone from them and prove my guns were totally necessary’ type forty year old should count.

Anyway, I can relate to the cutesy eighth grade version, I used to pretend I was ‘a monster’ as a kid cos like.. that was the only way i could understand my undiagnosed autism. I must be some sort of changeling child or evil invader from space, that’s why i don’t act human enough. Like.. everyone was right to hate me, and the only consolation was a stupid made up hope that the magic aliens would come for me and take me back to my real family. But I never actually believed it, i just thought it was a fun story to doodle stuff for, and to distract myself from the fact that I didn’t have a real answer to any of these questions. And like lol sometimes it helped me make friends if I found people who were interested in the stupid story, and also it kinda helped weed out the assholes who’d make fun of me for like.. being a kid, playing games like a kid. Dude stop acting like you’re so mature, we’re both twelve! But then I remember how I kinda WISHED I could believe in it, or believe in anything, honestly. My parents’s religion didn’t help me feel better, just told me to be more ashamed of all the inhuman parts of my brain that I was scared about. So I guess crossing my fingers every night and hoping for some sort of stupid tv show thing to happen- ANY stupid tv show thing to happen!- was the only coping method I had. And I used to count numbers of bricks in walls or on barcodes or try and find trees that looked like faces or LITERALLY ANY OTHER SIGN THAT COULD MEAN ANYTHING EVER, and be like ‘maybe this is gonna tell me how long I have to wait til the magic thing happens’ And its funny cos I thought that some reality-shattering impossible thing would have to happen to let me be free from my abusive parents, and find out what’s wrong with my brain and somehow deal with it. But really I should have just been counting down to age 18 when i could just legally leave and enter a homeless shelter and have my own power over what doctor i see and stuff. And it happened and everything exploded and my life was better in a far more ordinary way! *shrug*

So yeah I think that’s when my stories first started becoming Actually Reasonably Decent, cos they weren’t just constant self insert crossovers with everything and super depressing stories of Everyone The Me and The Reason Why I Am Hateable, dressed up in a million sneaky spy hats. Like man i still remember I had some story idea about a kid who got murdered for being mentally ill and then strung up in a field as a scarecrow and then he came back as a scarecrow zombie and then... he just found a new loving family and had Completely Normal Life Adventures. lol so many of my wish fullfillment stories weren’t even anything exciting but just I Am An Evil Monster And I Get A Hug From Someone, Possibly So I mean my life isn’t perfect or anything but I’ve kinda been devoid of dreams for the last seven years. I had very little other aspirations beyond escaping the dad, and finding out why I was weird and different. I guess that’s why I’m happy with a life most people would consider shitty and ordrinary, but personally I find it a good policy to forever be wowed by the beauty in all normal things! I mean I was so constantly panicked its like i never really looked at anything until I was free! Also, it is more fun to write stories about literally anything else, and work on developing characters with their own individual personalities and stuff. It’s a good side effect that I’ve still remained very interested in writing, even after I don’t need to make up my own happy ending anymore!

[strayraccoon]

A Taste of Venderbight

A continuation of my crossover between Kekkai Sensen and Fallen London / Sunless Sea. [Link] Turned out bigger than I expected. Again, apologize in advance for mobile users

Everything in the Neath is absurd. You prepared yourself the moment you were taken into the Neath as London sunk, whatever the subterranean world would throw at you, you were determined to be relentless. Yet the absurd scene before you had thrown you off your feet. Figuratively and literally.

Darcy Pearce's lips met Klaus', for a brief seconds which felt like an eternity to you. Your literary rival seemed to be savoring Klaus' lips to the fullest before they parted. Klaus became extremely tense afterwards, the back of his neck and ears turned beet crimson. Darcy Pearce looked at you triumphantly, lifting his chin ever upwards, exhibiting his dominance.

'You thought you're going to kiss him first. But alas, it was me, Darcy' 

Your descend into Venderbight madness started a year after Darcy Pearce's attempt to pin you as one of revolutionary party supported, ending your literary career prematurely. Fortunately, an unlikely savior whisked you away minutes before the constables could get a hold of you. With aid from a vigilante group, Libra, you managed to clear your name, send your rival to exile, and was invited into the Shuttered Palace as strawberry on top. It didn't come at a price, obviously, but one you're willing to pay.

As one of new member of Libra, you're tasked in observing individuals and social circles within the Shuttered Palace, therefore adding another layer of complexity on your daily activities. There were other observers like you posted throughout the city. Compiled reports on odd activities and slight rumors might save someone in need. Similar issue occurred to your case as well. One of Libra members overheard Pearce's drunken boast and reported it to the inner circle. Hence sparking the incident.

For a year, you have been spending most of your time in the Shuttered Palace, reciting your poem and novels. Socializing with the higher echelon of society. Other than that, you would be in Libra's headquarters, bringing some snacks you smuggled from the palace's kitchen. Most of your time in the headquarters would be compiling reports and chatting with the lunch trio and Chain, sharing the day's loot (snacks and takeaways). On occasion, you would be joining the actions. Hard shooting lessons from K.K often saved you from a pinch. Though, you would be mostly running along with Leo in not-a-fighter club or getting thrown around by other members with better affinity at fighting. Libra's most feared enemy would be the vampires, elder beings who maintain their immortality by drinking blood. This is a good reason for Libra to provision their members with silver equipment. As for you, silver bullets and cross as a charm against blood-suckers.

On brief chances, you would be sitting in Klaus' greenhouse, drinking tea with him and discussing literary work. He's definitely educated in literature field and a good critic. Klaus, Steven, and K.K gave you a lot of inputs on your works before they are submitted to your editor. The Libra's executive director would sometime request that you would tone down the 'Master of Crime' character in your novels, knowing he's based on Klaus himself. To that request you would simply grin mischievously. Long story short, brief chances became an unspoken arrangement and you always looked forward to each 'Tea Party'.

On one day, Steven and Klaus mentioned a trip to Venderbight, one of the bigger Tomb Colonies due north of Fallen London. Death does not come naturally in the Neath. Those who died would remain as rotting corpses. These unfortunate souls would spend the rest of their remaining time, as much as their flesh allowed, in the tomb colonies. Far away enough from the living beings, preventing them from unnerving the Londoners. It is a fate shared by everyone living in the Neath.

'To Venderbight it is, we have to make the trip' Steven said as he set down a filer on Klaus' desk. His eyes were blood-shot red and stubbles decorated his chin, Steven had been overworked yet once again. 'I've made arrangement for the other items, but only this one require further inquiries'

The owner of the desk ceased playing chess-like game called Prosfair and read Steven's file. Klaus considered for a moment, scratching his chin while reading the file. 'I suppose so, we can't afford to turn this opportunity sour. Gilbert, could you make the arrangement?'

'Certainly, Young Master' Gilbert nodded gracefully, ever ready at his position behind Klaus. The butler didn't exhibit his utmost attention in his expression, yet he noticed your excitement. 'Who else will be going? I see our poeta is interested as well, ohohoho'

'May I?' you asked, but it was clear to the others that you were excited at the prospect.

Klaus covered his mouth elegantly in order to hide an amused smile, yet he was beaming 'I don't see any reason to prohibit you from it. I remember you need a struck of inspiration for your upcoming work'

'I did mention something like that' you answered and tried to recall whether you did mention suffering from a writer's block during one of your tea parties. You didn't catch Steven and Gilbert grinning.

'Oho~' . 'Heehe..'

'This is going to very much exciting! I have never left London before. After it's sunk, mind' you admitted honestly. 'To be fair though, I could not even remember London before it's covered in dark smokes and low hanging grey clouds'

'You're pretty giddy for going to place you were about to be exiled at' Steven commented non-chalantly, sipping his black coffee as he returned to his seat.

'No need to remind me of that'

Despite having almost exiled into the tomb colony yourself, you were intrigued in visiting Venderbight. You thought it would be a good experience and a chance to seek inspiration outside the humdrum of the Fifth City. A simple escapade away from London's stuffy air filled with smoke, sewage odor, and cheap musk. Away from prying eyes and gossiping noblemen in the Shuttered Palace.

You mused at the thought of Venderbight, your mind racing with the possibilities of stories unfolding within. A battle between a protagonist and bitter rival, perhaps? Chasing the villain through maze-like alleyways, ending it with a duel where only one escapes. The villain received unnatural power from an unknown patron, per chance? You were giddy with the possibility.

Ships of all kind and origin docks in Wolfstack Harbor, coming from all direction in Unterzee. The Docks itself were bustling with activity, with various produce/merchandise shipped in and out. Harbormaster and constables busy inspecting the cargo, ensuring there were no contrabands brought into Fallen London. Should one was caught carrying contrabands, there will be huge fine involved and possibly free lodging in prison. There were sailors both on and off duty traipsing about the harbor. There were also 'land lubbers' like you, who seek passage to other islands in the other side of Unterzee, far beyond home waters of London.

Strange wonders were in the far reaches of Unterzee. Iron Republic, elusive Elder Continent due south, an artificial sun callen Dawn Machine, an undergound Volcano, a palace made of ice due north, Seas of Coral, the Khanate, Fathomking's Hold where drowned dead reside, and so many other wondrous locales you wish to visit. For the time being, Venderbight beckons.

You walked along the docks, carrying a small suitcase for the travel, passing a few bars where fishermen and sailors alike enjoying their pints of beer during shore leave. The atmosphere were rowdy but honest, unlike masked companies in the Shuttered Palace. From within each tavern and bars, sea shanties could be heard. It gave off an impression that the sailors brought the Unterzee with them onto the land. Alas, you couldn't stay and listen for too long. You carried on until you reached a fish market.

Near the fish market you could see stalls selling seafood dishes. Most of them were using Unterzee fish instead, but they were delectable still. There were London staples such as fish and chip or fish pie. More exotic establishment offered sliced raw fish or cured fish. On good days, there would be fresh sea urchin on sale. Easterner fish market would provide a variety of fresh catch and cured products for specific clientele.

For a London-bred such as you, fish and chip or pie would be a more reasonable choice compared to those heavy on spice. Observing both stall owners preparing their dishes, you were mulling over which you would buy. Fish pie with gravy and mashed potato or fried fish and chip. Skewered grilled fish. Fresh clam with simple lemon and parsley dressing. Those were hard contender to choose from. In the end you chose fish and chips because the owner provided a practical paper cone made of old Gazette papers for travelers on the go.

'Sauce or vinegar?' he asked, pointing at two bottles which obviously contained the forementioned sauce and vinegar. He seemed to be anticipating your answer, so did the pie stall owner behind him.

'Vinegar' you answered, thinking you'll need something acid and fresh for fried food.

'Good choice there, always trust anyone who prefers vinegar' the stall owner grinned as he liberally poured vinegar over your portion of fish and chips.

'Please' the fish pie stall owner beside him scoffed 'Nothing beats fish and thick sauce'

'That's why you're stuck selling pie and I sell chips, damn bastard' replied the fish and chips stall owner 'Here you go, extra chips on the house for your friend'

'Eh, sure thanks. Friend?' You received the chips gratefully. The moment you turned your back, you found Klaus standing behind you. He was wearing a travel coat over his usual vest and suit. A blue shawl was left hung on his coat instead of tied around his neck, which made him appeared akin to Italian mafia don you saw in still movies. None of the stall owners were taken aback with Klaus appearance as they were used to shady characters. Gilbert was beside him, carrying a small trunk. Then you realized the stall owner was referring to them. 'Oh'

'Welcome, welcome. Young Master! Try a bit of my fish and chip, you'll get hooked in no time!'

'Don't listen to this bollocks, grab me pie instead. Made with quality dough and fresh eel directly from local fish market'

'Interesting' Klaus muttered after taking and tasting one of your piece of chip.

'Have you never had this before?'

'Unfortunately, no. Madam was quite strict with Young Master's upbringing. ' It was Gilbert who answered your question as Klaus was busy eating your fish and chip eagerly. Humming cheerfully as he did so. When you looked at your paper cone, there was nothing left.

'Eh...’ 

'Young Master...'

'M-my apologies, I'll buy you a fresh portion' Klaus stammered, realizing he had practically eaten your meal.

'Glad you like it, Young Master! Vinegar or sauce?' the stall owner grinned, clearly amused by the scene unfolding before him. He had prepared another batch for freshly fried fish and potatoes ready on his drying tray. To emphasize his question, he pointed towards his sauce bottles with vinegar and sauce within.

Klaus pondered for a second then said cheerfully, 'Let's have both, then we can share and compare. Also, one portion of fish pie please. Gilbert, I remember you talked about eating fish pie in the docks. So this one here is for you'

'Indeed I did, so you remembered it, Young Master' Gilbert said cheerfully.

'There's people like this too, huh?' the fish and chip stall owner commented as he prepared both portion as requested. 

The pie stall owner simply shrugged 'Nothing beats fresh fish, eh!'

'Yep, yep' replied the chips stall owner 'Can you even imagine curing fish? Hear tell people up in Norway eats rotten sharks!'

'Eh, remember that one fish cook in Uptown? He used to cook strangest of catch. From deep in Unterzee. I'd say our Surface brothers are far better compared to him'

Klaus listened to the stall owners chattering about an odd duck of a fish cook intently, at least until they handed him his orders. Klaus and you shared portions of fish and chips with vinegar and sauce, while Gilbert keeps his pie until he returned to Libra headquarters.

The three of you reached the dock where the sea vessel which would take you to Venderbight was docked. Some ship hands were busy working on the ship's cargo.  Another were taking notes of the ship's cargo and inventory. You recognized some crates of wines and mushroom for export purposes. There were separate cargo space reserved for ship supplies, whether spare parts or crew and guest meal. Then you noticed a stack of wooden coffin rattling some distance away from the other cargo. You knew right away those coffins contained tomb-colonists.

'Scary bunch, 'eh? Pay 'em no mind. They'll rot in the cargo hold' one of the sailors addressed you as he noticed your uneasy gaze towards the coffins containing tomb-colonists. He then pointed at a well-dressed man nearby. He was talking with Steven and K.K, who had arrived at the Docks earlier 'Captain's over there'

Steven noticed the three of you approaching and waved his hand. 'Took you long enough...anything left for me?' he said in pleasant tone, as he peeked into paper cones both you and Klaus held. He took one from the batch with thick sauce.

'Bah, sauce lover' commented the Captain. He turned towards the newcomers afterwards 'Welcome to my ship, the Odyssey. You'll have a fine trip to Venderbight, no problem. We'll just have a brief stop at Hunter's Keep then straight to Tomb Colony. Hopefully there would be no trouble aside from clouds of sea bats. We'll have no encounter with Sea Crabs enroute to Venderbight. Unless you're asking for a detour to Stone Sphynx or something'

'I'll leave the route planning to your discretion, good Captain' Klaus said as he bowed slightly, to which the Captain returned politely. In turn he addressed K.K 'How's your children, K.K. Will they be fine with you away from home for some time?'

'No need to worry, my husband is taking care of them' K.K answered, then glared at Steven 'It'd be better if I didn't become a pinch hitter, though'

Steven merely laughed weakly.

'I thought you were coming' you exclaimed in surprise.

'Unfortunately, I'd have to hold on. There's an incident in Veilgarden again, there's a lot of feather ruffled this time around' Steven said as he scratched his head. 'That's for me to take care of, you three have fun in tomb colony'

Klaus nodded excitedly, K.K sighed, and you replied excitedly. The Captain then called foe the threw of you to embark on the ship. Steven stayed with your group until the three of you are settled in respective rooms and leave minutes just before the ship departs from dock. He had to run back into city proper the moment he saw pillar of fire coming from the general direction of the city, with Gilbert behind him.

The Odyssey embarked out of Wolfstack Docks after thorough custom inspection and inventory checks. It's steam whistle resounded throughout the docks, signaling a departing ship into the darkness of Unterzee, far beyond home waters. Slowly but surely, the vision of home would be drowned beneath dark horizon. You looked at Fallen London from a distance. The gigantic city would be engulfed by darkness were not for its skyline and a certain pillar of fire somewhere within the cityscape.

 As It was the first time ever you sailed from Fallen London, constantly swaying ship was only the first of your woes. It didn't take long for continuously swaying ship and waves to induce seasickness into you. With your stomach churning and head spinning, you spend most of the time sleeping inside your cabin, utterly defeated. Even so, you found it difficult to sleep as the ship constantly sway due to unterzee waves.

Klaus and K.K took turns in checking your condition. It was mostly the nervous Libra leader, bringing mineral water and light meal.  In general he tried to make you feel  more comfortable. You swore you could hear K.K giggling outside your cabin.

The only times you were able to walk free on the decks was the moment The Odyssey docks in Hunter's Keep. An isolated island not far from the Fifth City, just at the border of home waters. A solitary mansion erected on the island. The captain was making supply drops for three noble sisters who lived in the island. All the while you and your company waits inside the ship as the captain warned you against taking a stroll around the island. It was for a reason he would not divulge but a good one nevertheless.

'What sort of affair are you having in Venderbight? Not many deliberately visit the tomb colony while they're…alive' you said to Klaus on one moment you're free of seasickness and the confines of your constantly swaying cabin. You recalled tales from Venderbight. Colonies of dead men wrapped in bandages. Only the bandages were not to cover wounds but rather tying rotting flesh together. Sea captain would bring tomb-colonist coffins whenever they are passing by Venderbight. Simple delivery made for good echoes, which in turn would be used for either a night in Venderbight bar or buying supplies.

Klaus, who leaned his arms on the deck's railings, hair constantly swaying under cold sea winds, answered, 'We're hosting a meeting with a dignitary coming from the Surface. For all purposes and intentions, we need to leave a good impression. Therefore we need to recruit a good chef. I heard from some of our friends in the Palace, there's a talented one working in Venderbight. He used to have a restaurant near palace district'

You knew exactly who he was talking about, as one of palace dignitaries couldn't stop raising praises, 'The Bandaged Poissonier in the Vengeance of Jonah, I recall. Supposedly prepare divine seafood dishes. Combining seven flavors while maintaining its balance? How is that supposed to happen?'

'It happens when you've cooked for prominent figures in the Neath. Before his journey to Tomb Colony, this poissonier used to cook for the Khan and even the Empress herself' K.K explained as he leafed through a dossier Steven left behind in a hurry. 'Hmmhmm, quite a reputation he built. I can't wait to sample his dishes~ I wish I could bring some for my hubby~'

'That is something to look forward to' Klaus said to you, encouraging you to be patient on the journey to Venderbight.

You could feel the blood rush to the back of your neck, and the edges of your ears felt like burning. You addressed K.K then, 'You look pretty fine, K.K. Do you sail a lot?'

K.K grinned, knowing full well your attempt at misdirection. 'I traveled for some time, yes. That's before I met my husband. One tend to settle down after establishing a family after all. What do you think, Klaucchie? Do you think you will settle down in the Fifth City?'

Klaus inclined his head, pondering for a moment then answered. 'Most likely, this is where our work is needed. Are you implying we should broaden our efforts to Khanate and Iron Republic as well? I must admit there's little information we have gained from each...'

''No,no, Klaucchie. That's not what I meant. Do you think you'll be able to establish a family here in the Neath is what I'm asking' K.K sighed in disbelief how gullible and serious the Libra leader is.

''Uh? Oh...um" Klaus uttered in exasperation after realizing K.K's real question. He scratched the back of his neck. 'I...suppose so"

''Hmmhmm, got a candidate in mind?" K.K inquired further, both in tease and pure curiosity.

You thought this has gone into a dangerous region, so you quickly attempted to divert the topic ,'So...so! Did you know that Norway men eats rotten shark and shark blood pudding?!'

''Wh-why yes! I had heard that sharks in Norway waters are extremely venomous and have tougher skin. So the locals have to cure them for at least a month before consuming the meat. Hear tell the shark meat is extremely pungent" Klaus chimed in, panicking.

''Oh, you two" K.K muttered in disappointment, but secretly was happy with the development.

Venderbight, the tomb colony where your rival was exiled into, was as dire as you heard in stories provided by sailors and Singing Mandrake guests. The city was dark yet unnervingly functioning. There was unnerving silence hung about the city, as well as permeating odor of preservatives. A dark humongous pillar stood tall in the middle of the city. On it's base were a few residence building and its top couldn't be viewed as it was far above visible skyline of Venderbight.

On the docks were normal human mingling with bandaged men. As it was in Wolfstack Docks, the bandaged men acted as custom officers and harbormaster or workers. They  were checking the shipments, especially so for wooden coffins containing tomb colonists. Indeed the shambling 'corpses' makes you unnerved most of the time, but the atmosphere was intriguing enough to call you for a brief walk throughout the city.

Both K.K and Klaus were not affected with at all. The ship crew, on the other hand, preferred to stay on board instead of taking the chance getting a leave on shore. There were a couple of bars down in the docks, but most men wouldn't risk taking a shore leave due to their fear of tomb colonists.

The three of you navigated the city, seeking for a particular restaurant owned by this well-known poissonier, the Vengeance of Jonah. An auspicious name for a store, but it's quite catching as a lot of Londoners speaks praises of the restaurant. With its sublime seafood cuisine in general, particularly the highly praised chef himself. The Fifth City lost a prominent figure once the poisonnier

Following directions provided by bandaged locals and shopkeepers, the three of you traversed winding alleyways. Fortunately there were a few boards directing tourists and locals alike to Vengeance of Jonah. Unfortunately for you, your literary rival was waiting for you in the middle of an alleyway as if he had known of your arrival beforehand. You knew there was a risk of encountering Darcy Pearce in the tomb colony, but assured yourself the chance was low it's practically impossible.

You cursed yourself internally for not being careful enough. Before any words were traded between the two of you, Darcy Pearce approached Klaus and did the unexpected. Both of you and K.K were stunned with Darcy's action. After he finished gloating, K.K instantly drew her handgun.

'Ah, ah, ah. Is this what you guys do to polite company? I was merely greeting him. You're going to be the one drawing the first shot' Darcy claimed, his tone indicated him being on the higher ground. He lifted both of his arms in mockery before continuing, 'I did no damage to you three'

K.K was having none of it, therefore she screamed in anger 'You damaged Klaucchie innocence, damn it!' as he pulled her handgun's trigger

Darcy Pearce remained calm, letting the bullet came to him, even on the last second he made no effort to evade the pullet. In fact, the bullet went through him effortlessly, as if he was mere fog. Klaus and K.K's eyes widened witnessing the sight, knowing what entails. Darcy Pearce was no mere mortal, he had turned into vampirism. Their on the spot conjecture was supported as Darcy smiled, revealing sharp upper fangs.  

'Who did this to you?' Klaus asked after wiping his lips with the back of his hands. His gaze which normally gentle turned determined, to the point where even the hardiest of soul would relent. By every Gods in the Neath, when he gets serious, it became intense.

Darcy trembled for a bit before returning to his smug behavior, 'A benefactor, I must say. Someone who would like to appreciate my art for eternity'

'You got a name, or do they think you're too insignificant to be a real acquaintance?' storm rages inside you, which you tried hard to quell but couldn't help but unleashing it in your sentences. Your stomach churned and it was not only from seasickness that ailed you these couple of days.

Your inquire seemed to make a real dent on Darcy Pearce's pride, as your question hits the mark.  He hissed, mixing in venomous words as best as he could, 'What of it? What matters is that I've got more than enough power to defeat you, take my rightful place in the Shuttered Palace. It's too good for shitty novelist such as you'

'Standard villain speech. 0/10' you commented.

Your words managed to taunt Darcy Pearce into acting. He disappeared in one second, and another appeared right in front of you, his visage filled with pure jealousy and hatred. You pulled out your gun, trying your best to remember K.K's teaching. Klaus, knowing that Darcy is directly attacking you, quickly approached your position trying to defend you. K.K on the other hand, went on the offensive. Bullets fired, coagulated blood shield appearing near you. Darcy's frustrated scream. Everything happened at once.

'Tch. I see your over the top characters wasn't all a figment of your imagination' Darcy spat. He didn't disappear quickly enough to avoid bullet hail.

'Reality is stranger than fiction' K.K grinned, her handguns ever focused on Pearce.

'This isn't exactly the right time for literature review' Klaus interjected, but his focus remained fixed upon the rogue poet. He observed that Darcy's wound isn't healing as fast as he thought. Darcy's has not been turned long for him to have better control on his new nature.

Darcy touched his bullet wound, he wasn't pleased with the searing pain and lodged bullet inside his flesh. He quickly retreated into the darkness of Venderbight alleyway. For reasons unknown to you, you dashed from where you stood, chasing after the disappearing figure. You could barely heard Klaus calling your name as blood rushed into your head. You could feel yourself boiling in anger. Not now, not now, not ever.

You followed a trail of blood deep into old Venderbight district, the residences and buildings around you gradually became older and decrepit. To the point where walls had shattered and fallen, only a few pillars and house frame remained standing. The moment you saw Darcy's figure at the edge of your sight, you shot. The gunshot noise echoed unnervingly. Darcy continued to retreat and the dance went on. Neither of you relent in an endless carousel dance.

At one point you arrived at ruins of an amphitheater. You could see the architecture in its glorious days. But at that moment, there were only remains of a golden age and emptiness. There were thin mist around you.

Darcy appeared before you, to which you automatically shoot your gun. But at that one point where you needed the most, the gun ran out of bullets. In your rage, you forgot to reload your hard earned Carrow's Steel gun. Seeing the realization in your face, Darcy grinned, two unnaturally sharp upper fangs decorated his white teeth. He slammed you onto the floor of the amphitheater. In a quick succession he planted his booted leg onto your chest. There was not enough force to break anything, yet it was enough to push the air out of your chest.

'Lucky bastard'

He kicks

'If it weren't for you…'

He kicks

'…my…dience…'

He kicks

'MINE!...ALL… …THEM!'

You covered your face and turned into a fetal position to protect vital areas as Darcy Pearce kicked you. Without anyone backing you up, you were literally a punching bag against newly birthed vampire. As weak as he is, Darcy Pearce was stronger than a normal human. When he was satisfied kicking you, he straddled you and reached for your neck. He was about to crush your neck when his hand started burning. You weakly reached for your neck and found silver chain and cross.

'AAAAAARGH' Darcy Pearce screamed in pain as chain and cross shaped wound didn't cease to burn his flesh.

At that moment, a gunshot resounded throughout the ruined amphitheater. A silver bullet drove through Darcy's right arm. He screamed in pain. Before he could react, a numerous amount of cross-shaped spears rained down on him. Klaus crouched beside you, checking your condition. You could feel the temperature around him raised to a dangerous degree. A glint in the darkness was the only thing you need to tell you where K.K was.

Darcy Peace didn't die that easily, he appeared from under cross-shaped spears. His wounds slowly regenerated. He addressed you then, 'I'll be making waves, big enough to engulf you all in it. For now, I'll just take this small victory' to which afterwards he deliberately licked his lips in the most seductive manner he could muster.

K.K once again shot at his direction. Klaus created a spear using his blood technique. But at the time the bullets and spear about to connect with Pearce, he had turned into fog, leaving the dangerous substances planted into nearby alleyway walls.  You could hear his laughter echoing till it disappears completely. 

In the end the thought of your rival coming back with worse force behind him made your malady even worse. You returned to the ship and confined yourself inside the cabin, not before the ship's doctor tend to your injuries and preached on about how one should take care of their own welfare and health. Especially after seeing what happened to unnatural deaths in the Neath. You felt disappointed for not being able to sample the Vengeance of Jonah's finest cuisine, but you would sense nothing even if you drag yourself to the restaurant. With less swaying on the boat you managed to catch a bit of sleep. Though your dreams were not peaceful.

You woke up to the ship's steam engine noise, sound signals signifying that the ship is embarking from Venderbight docks. You forced yourself to drink some water and exited your room. Your wounds aches still. When you reached the deck, Venderbight had been some distance away. What was in lesser distance was Klaus, who once again leaned his arm on the railings.

'Hey'

'Good evening'

Klaus' greeting made you automatically checked your pocket watch. It's 22.00 in the evening. They didn't need to embark so late at night, but the crew were more than happy to put a distance from Venderbight. You sighed, the trip you looked forward to became a complete fiasco thanks to your unrelenting rival.

'How's your…wound?' Klaus asked, hesitating.

'It's still aching. Here I thought writers could only lift pens' you answered, trying to lightened the mood.

'Is that so? Good to know' Klaus replied. You caught a short chuckle between breaths. Though there's still an awkward atmosphere between the two of you.

'How's the tasting?' you asked, trying to divert your mind from Darcy's unfortunate greeting.

'There were no words best to describe it' Klaus beamed in glee, recalling the dishes he had in Vengeance of Jonah. 'They weren't jesting in regards of the chef. The poissonier will be hired for the meeting next month. His prices and kitchen requirements are steep, nevertheless it's manageable and definitely worth the investment'

'That does sound wonderful' you commented, trying to hid your disappointment.

'He doesn't do takeaways, unfortunately' Klaus said in disappointed voice, then continued 'But you'll definitely have some of his cooking on the meeting. Please look forward to it'

'Oh right, that I will' Klaus reassurance perked you up.

You couldn’t help but smile whenever Klaus was around. You were too busy imagining kinds of dishes the Poissonier would prepare for the meeting to realize that Klaus was approaching you. He slipped an index finger under your chin and slightly lifted your face. Then he brushed his lips against yours ever so gently. Taking great care that his protruding fangs did not pierce your skin. It was short, but you could sense a hit of spiciness. Heat of chilies in the background. He left at the right moment, whether Klaus realized it or not, which left you wanting for more. You could hear him muttering under his breath shyly, '…all I can do for now'.

There was an uneasy silence between the two of you, which lasted for a short time. Mostly thanks to K.K appearing at the right time, 'Oh my God, Klaucchie, that was so BOLD'

'W-wait, this is not--' 'No, no! Not what you think!'

Steven merely laughed after he finished reading the reports, in addition to K.K's testimony to chain of events. Not the rest of Libra members. Whenever either you or Klaus present, they would deliberately use words such as taste, aroma, and other culinary related vocabulary. Both of you and Klaus would be beet red whenever the shenanigans occurred, and you swore you could see some white mist exuded from the Libra's leader himself. You were seriously considering to throw a thick dictionary at the rest of your colleague in Libra, especially on Zapp who continuously harassing you, as proxy for the more pleasant souls like Chain and Leo. After all, hitting Chain would be downright impossible and improper.

'Are you writing this into a novel?' Steven asked as he grinned, once again sipping his coffee from his favorite mug. He looked more disheveled compared to he was before you left for Venderbight.

'Probably not, romance is prohibited. I think…' you said, unsure, while re-reading your report on encounter with your former rival turned mortal enemy in Venderbight '…this counts as one, yes?A drama of sorts in the Shuttered Palace would be good. The nobles don't watch romances, you see. They like it but never admit it openly. You can't arrest something that does not exist'

'I noticed'

'Now stop grinning before I make you cast Mister Darcy. You know what that entails' you hissed.

To which Steven merely raised his hands in defeat gesture, but a smug smile still remained on his face. His smile grew into an annoying grin as he saw Klaus approaching, 'Ah, here's the Hatter. Have fun, you two'

[runicmagitek]

A Fanfic Writer Interview

Was tagged by the awesome @deemoyza! Many thanks, my dear :D

Name: What it says on the tin - Runic, at your service!

Fandoms: I jump all over the place, but if it's a video game, there's a high chance I'll play it and possibly want to write fics for it. The Final Fantasy series tends to be my comfort zone, especially VI, but I have a soft spot for Supergiant Games' stuff, mostly Transistor and Pyre. I also haven't stopped thinking about 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim since I beat it in March, so that's my life forever now.

Two-shot: First off, I had to look this up, because I've never heard this term before. Second off, I combed my works and this is barely a thing I do. Most of my oneshots exist on their own and even if there is overlap in themes and headcanons, I don't really write anything as a conscious follow-up. That said, for shits and giggles one Yuletide I wrote Untitled Yuletide Fic and the sequel no one asked for, Untitled Yuletide Fic: Madness Edition. And yes, it is exactly what you think it's about.

Most popular multichapter: Finally, Beautiful Stranger. Easily.

Actual worst part of writing: Starting :\ no matter how much I outline or research or get myself excited about a new story, sitting down and getting those first few paragraphs out is excruciating. I get such awful anxiety over it every time and I do not know why.

How you choose your titles: 90% song titles and 10% shitty attempts at coming up with my own stuff.

Do you outline: Always! Granted, not every 1k oneshot gets a detailed outline, but I do jot down ideas of what I'd like to see happen. The longer I anticipate a fic to be, the more time I'll spend on an outline. It's like preparing for a road trip; I want to know where I'm going and how to get there.

Ideas I probably won’t get around to, but wouldn’t it be nice?: Oh geez, I'm just going to bullet point this because my brain leaks out ideas:

Sailor Moon/Shadowrun crossover fusion

Legend of Zelda Asian-inspired AU where Hyrule is falling apart and no one remembers the Goddess' chosen hero

Another Legend of Zelda AU where Midna is also with Zelda during the 100 years trapped with Calamity Ganon

Aerti AU where Tifa and Aerith are childhood friends who grew up in the Shinra labs, ran away together, and tried to have a semi-normal teenaged life in the slums

The kinky Darkest Dungeon PWP where the plague doctor is banned from the brothels after the place shuts down temporarily to "clean up" and the hellion is absolutely into kinky shit and enlightens her when there are no available rooms to use (100% based on actual events in my playthrough THEY'RE GIRLFRIENDS YOU CAN'T CONVINCE ME OTHERWISE)

The continuation to that one Jaina/Kael Diablo fusion I wrote for a friend, because I still think about it but I need to clone myself if I want to get anything done anymore

The Pharmercy high school AU I absolutely will never finish either tho have 90k written so far

And more!

Callouts @ me: Honestly, just listing my ideas above was enough of a callout lol also stop adding plot and character development in your dumb smut fics wtf this is not the D you were supposed to work on.

Best writing traits: I've gotten to a point where I'm really comfortable with editing, which in turn has made me more aware of things like character arcs and pacing and hitting all the right beats to make shit work.

Spicy tangential opinion: Oh geez, bullet points 2.0, because I have Thoughts:

Fandom would be a much better place for everyone involved if people stopped approaching every piece of media with shipper vision, so to speak

Unless the author explicitly asks for feedback, no one gives a shit about your ~profound critique~ on a fic you actually didn't enjoy at 3am on a Sunday

If at any point you feel the need to be hostile towards another human being online over Fandom Things? Just turn your computer off, walk outside, and find a new hobby.

You don't magically abandon all the things you love when you turn 23 or whatever people think is old these days. Honestly? The best fics I've read are from "older" people, probably because they have more experience with both writing and life.

If I take the time to put up tags and warnings on my fic, it's not my fault if someone stumbles on it and doesn't like it.

For fuck's sake, do not tag every character and ship that makes a guest appearance in your fic. If I'm searching for my rarepair, I'm expecting an actual fic dedicated to them, not a mention of them holding hands on page 5 of chapter 14.

Series of individual works > a single work with countless, unassociated fandoms and pairings tagged.

Gen fic is not boring. Maybe you're boring.

And on that note, I'll be tagging @wingsyouburn @aliatori @dvske @fury-brand @rosemochi and any of my other writer friends who'd like to jump on this! 💕

[entergamingxp]

DualShockers’ Favorite Games of 2019 — Tanner’s Top 10

January 1, 2020 1:00 PM EST

While my list includes a couple familiar favorites, 2019 still had a bunch of other great games that I got to enjoy all throughout the year.

As 2019 comes to a close, DualShockers and our staff are reflecting on this year’s batch of games and what were their personal highlights within the last year. Unlike the official Game of the Year 2019 awards for DualShockers, there are little-to-no-rules on our individual Top 10 posts. For instance, any game — not just 2019 releases — can be considered.

Come one, come all. Gather ’round kids, it’s finally time to listen to Tanner’s tale about what he thinks were the best games of the year. This year was a bit of a slow year for games, to be honest, as 2019 really only picked up right at the tail end of the year. Like many, I feel like this year will have a lot of variety of opinions between people, rather than just the usual lists like every other year where a couple games dominate the conversation.

While you’re reading, please keep in mind two things: one, this is just my opinion of the games I had the most fun with this year. Some of these titles weren’t released this year, so I want to make that clear right from the get-go. Secondly, this is not comprehensive of every game released in 2019. I still have yet to play Resident Evil 2, Devil May Cry 5, and The Outer Worlds, among other titles. If your favorite game isn’t here, that doesn’t mean I didn’t like it. It might mean I just didn’t play it. Unless your name is Apex: Legends, which I did play, and hated.

Honorable Mention: Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

I started Fallen Order only a few hours ago as of the time of this writing and, honestly, I already wish I could put it higher on my list. Given the fact that I just started it though, I felt that was cheating a little bit.

That being said, Fallen Order‘s gameplay feels absolutely incredible and I can’t wait to see where the story goes from here. Despite a few graphical issues and bugs here and there, I feel like if I were to have played the game earlier, it would be very high on my list, possibly even my Game of the Tear. Sadly, I must keep pressing on.

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.

10. Fortnite

I’m kicking off my list with a couple of repeats from last year because I feel like they both, once again, deserve shoutouts. For as many problems I have with the game (mostly in terms of the building aspects), Fortnite had an absolutely killer year. Between its insane The End/Chapter 2 event and its surprising Star Wars crossover that added freakin’ lightsabers, the battle royale game garnered my attention too much for me to not put it on the list.

Something about the Chapter 2 event changed my opinion on this game and while I can’t put my finger on it, I’ve been having a great time with it ever since the update. For that, I feel it deserves a spot on my list.

9. Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links

Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links has been on my top 10 lists at DualShockers for three years now and, honestly, I don’t feel bad about it one bit. This game is absolutely phenomenal. Konami just keeps on adding content to the game and it’s rare that it’s not good.

In the past couple of years we’ve been getting content based on the anime spin-off series, but in 2019 Konami decided to change it up a bit by adding cards and characters based on The Dark Side of Dimensions anime movie (which was funnily enough released in America the same time that Duel Links originally was back in 2016) and, once again, it’s mostly all solid content. I still play this game on a weekly basis and don’t plan on stopping any time soon. Until that happens, I feel like it deserves a shoutout on every top 10 list.

8. My Friend Pedro

So this was a very late entry, only getting my hands on the title a few weeks ago after The Game Awards. My Friend Pedro is just pure fun. Plain and simple. It feels, control-wise, what the Deadpool video game should have been. The controls feel great and slowing down time while blasting enemies is so much fun; I legitimately get goosebumps every time it happens.

Do I care about the story? Nope. Do I have any ideas what’s going on in the world? Nope. Am I have fun doing flips, pulling off trickshots, and jumping on walls? Absolutely. My Friend Pedro needs to come to more platforms so more people have a chance to play it. Hell, bring it to Vita. It’ll probably feel right at home there.

Check out DualShockers‘ review for My Friend Pedro.

7. Trials Rising

Trials Rising, besides Yu-Gi-Oh!, is probably the most niche title on this whole list. Its gameplay is certainly not for everyone, but as a huge fan of the series over the years, I loved my time reviewing the title. Completely and utterly failing a level and still having fun at the same time is why the Trials series, in my opinion, really shines.

It’s ridiculous, and this game is absolutely no exception. It doesn’t try and take itself seriously, and that’s totally fine. For god’s sake, you can even use a tandem bike in Rising and it’s hilarious to struggle with controlling, even though you are quantifiably failing the level each and every time. Plus, the user-generated content allows for even more fun, ridiculous times.

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Trials Rising.

6. John Wick Hex

Well, I’ll be honest, I never thought I would put a strategy game in my top 10 Games of the Year list, and yet, here we are. John Wick Hex is a title that completely took me by surprise earlier in 2019. When it was announced, only the fact that it was being made by Bithell Games got my attention. But after playing it at E3 2019 and reviewing the whole thing in October, it quickly became one of my favorites of the year. The gameplay is tight, the art style is awesome, and it feels both authentically Bithell and John Wick.

Now, bring the title to consoles so I can play through it again!

Check out DualShockers‘ review for John Wick Hex.

5. Yu-Gi-Oh! Legacy of the Duelist: Link Evolution

I know what you’re thinking to yourself: “Two Yu-Gi-Oh! games on the same top 10 list? That’s a little cheap, don’t you think?” Honestly, I felt the need to put both on here because I liked both equally in 2019. While Duel Links does have a lot of content, it is a more condensed experience. That’s where Legacy of the Duelist: Link Evolution comes in.

This Switch title includes the full card lineup, full five-card field, as well as story and character missions for the first five Yu-Gi-Oh! series. Plus, since it’s on the Switch, I can also take the game on the go, just like Duel Links. And with more content coming in 2020, I’ll be playing Link Evolution even more as time goes on.

4. Ori and the Blind Forest

After not being able to get my hands on Ori and the Blind Forest for years due to it being exclusive on Xbox One, I was finally able to sit down and play it thanks to the game’s Nintendo Switch release earlier in 2019, and I absolutely loved it.

Between the game’s stunning locales and tight platforming, I adoring my time with the game. And the fact that I got to play it on Switch and take it wherever I went made it an even better experience. Now I just need Moon Studios to port the upcoming sequel Will of the Wisps on to Nintendo Switch, and all will be right in the world.

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Ori and the Blind Forest.

3. Super Mario Maker 2

I have to say, I’m not a Nintendo first-party fan. I didn’t grow up with these properties, so I have no affinity for them whatsoever. I’m only saying that because if I think a Nintendo first-party game is one of the best of the year, that’s really saying something. I’ll be honest, I’m not the biggest fan of Super Mario Maker 2‘s “story” mode (if you can even call it that). However, I am a huge fan of user-generated content, and in that regard, the game absolutely delivers. I spent hours just diving into the various user-created levels, in awe by the creativity that members of the community have.

Games with UGC included will always gain my attention to their–essentially–unlimited replay value. I could easily see myself coming back to the game in a year or so and seeing just how much the community has come up with.

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Super Mario Maker 2.

2. Death Stranding

Ok, so Death Stranding easily became my most anticipated game of 2019 when the release date was announced. I personally didn’t think it was hitting at that time, so when that got announced I was incredibly excited. Finally, we would be able to dive into the crazy world that Kojima had built for us.

After the first few hours of the game, I was hooked. I was ready to learn more. And then Chapter 3 showed up and that feeling went away after I realized I was going to be spending an insane amount of time in this one section. My friends and co-workers encouraged me to keep pushing forward, that the grind was worth it in the end. And once I saw the credits rolling, I found myself agreeing with that sentiment.

The story and performances found in Death Stranding are phenomenal. While Mads Mikkelsen and Tommie Earl Jenkins definitely deserve praise for their performances, I feel like Troy Baker’s performance as Higgs was also one of the best of year. I constantly found myself on the edge of my seat every time he would show up in the world, wondering what he would do next.

And there’s no way I can talk about Death Stranding without mentioning how gorgeous the game looks, even on a base PlayStation 4, which is where I was playing. Regardless of how you feel about the overall game, you have to respect how well-polished and visually stunning Death Stranding is. Was it worth the hype? In my opinion, yes.

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Death Stranding.

1. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

In my opinion, no other game had a better overall package than Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Everything in the title was top notch. The campaign was absolutely exceptional, leaving behind Call of Duty‘s traditional, action movie feel for a more nuanced, thoughtful experience. In addition, new life was brought to Captain Price, making him a more sympathetic and relatable character than his previous incarnation, while at the same time introducing new characters with their own unique personalities.

On top of that, the multiplayer is also incredibly solid and, beyond some balancing issues with claymores and shotguns at launch, continues to be the most fun experience I have had in a game all year. I may be in the minority on this, but I feel like Modern Warfare‘s map design is some of the best and most unique we’ve had for the series in years. Of course, I don’t like every single map in the game, but I feel like overall there are way more great maps than bad maps.

While I’ve put the least amount of time into Spec Ops, the little I’ve played seems to be a ton of fun. These are more akin to raids than anything else, which requires extreme coordination. While I haven’t really been able to sink my teeth in the mode, the little I’ve played of it is extremely fun and I could see myself spending hours in there when I get some raid buddies.

Is Modern Warfare perfect? Nope. But my top Game of the Year doesn’t have to be that. It has to be the game that I enjoyed the most this year and, in that regard, this title certainly takes the cake.

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.

Check out the rest of the DualShockers staff Top 10 lists and our official Game of the Year Awards:

December 23: DualShockers Game of the Year Awards 2019 December 25: Lou Contaldi, Editor-in-Chief // Logan Moore, Managing Editor December 26: Tomas Franzese, News Editor // Ryan Meitzler, Features Editor  December 27: Mike Long, Community Manager // Scott White, Staff Writer December 28: Chris Compendio, Contributor // Mario Rivera, Video Manager // Kris Cornelisse, Staff Writer December 29: Scott Meaney, Community Director // Allisa James, Senior Staff Writer // Ben Bayliss, Senior Staff Writer December 30: Cameron Hawkins, Staff Writer // David Gill, Senior Staff Writer // Portia Lightfoot, Contributor December 31: Iyane Agossah, Senior Staff Writer // Michael Ruiz, Senior Staff Writer // Rachael Fiddis, Contributor January 1: Ricky Frech, Senior Staff Writer // Tanner Pierce, Staff Writer // Laddie Simco, Staff Writer

January 1, 2020 1:00 PM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/01/dualshockers-favorite-games-of-2019-tanners-top-10/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=dualshockers-favorite-games-of-2019-tanners-top-10

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Street Fighter 2 is one of the only games that truly deserve to be called "genre-defining" -- today, 25 years after SF2's release, we can see that practically every fighting game out there has adopted its core game design principles as industry-standard gospel, with only a few tweaks here and there to stand out from the crowd.

If you're the average consumer or dev, or even if you're an experienced fighting game competitor, you probably aren't all that familiar with all the games that have tried to make major changes to the fighting game template.

So, in celebration of SF2's 25th anniversary, I'm going to walk through some of the fascinating deviations and beautiful experiments that fighting game devs took to try and change SF2's fighting game formula. Studying these games may inspire you in your own designs, or may suggest ways to tinker with the paradigm you're currently wokring within.

I'm going to try to avoid the other well-known franchises (if you know Street Fighter, you probably also know Mortal Kombat and Tekken) and focus on the weird stuff... for education's sake!

A quick note about me: I've written a (free) book that teaches fighting game fundamentals using Street Fighter, as well as educational fighting game streams and videos, and I'm the community manager for a free-to-play PC fighting game currently in public technical alpha called Rising Thunder. You might also like my previous Gamasutra article, Street Fighter for Designers: Top 8 Lessons from Evo 2015.

Asuka 120% Burning Fest (Fill-in Cafe, 1994): Clash system and simplified inputs

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SF2 may have set the foundations for the 2D fighter genre, but there are several notable games that have poked and prodded at some of the genre's conventions while keeping a similar format.

Shoutouts to ex-Game Developer magazine editor-in-chief Brandon Sheffield for introducing me to Asuka 120% Burning Fest, a Japanese 2D fighter from the post-SF2 boom. Not only did it swap the standard martial-artists-from-around-the-world fighter cast with high school girls representing their various club activities (including the chemistry and biology clubs), but it also made two notable system changes. 

One was the "clash system": in SF2, if two attacks collide simultaneously, both players take damage and go into hitstun, but in Asuka 120%, both characters will just go on into the next hit-phase of the move. The second was a significantly simplified input system -- pretty much everyone has the same special move codes, meaning that if you could perform one character's moves, you could perform all of them.

Combined, both systems made for a fascinating permutation of the SF2 standard. With the clash system, the number of hits in a move are relevant for determining who wins a clash -- and since the window to cancel a move into another move is fairly lax, players can clash across entire combo routes before one of them wins out and takes damage. All told, Asuka 120% does a lot with these relatively simple system tweaks to make a traditional 2D fighting game more accessible and less intimidating without feeling like a lesser SF2. The developers of Asuka 120% Burning Fest eventually went to Treasure, where they reused some of the core concepts in their fighting games.

Weaponlord (Visual Concepts, 1995): An online fighting game in '95

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Others have done good work unearthing Weaponlord's history as an interesting-but-ill-timed attempt by early American fighting game devs to challenge SF2's success, so if you want to know the whole story, check out the GameSpy interview with James Goddard and Dave Winstead, GameSpot's Forging Weaponlord, and the Hardcore Gaming 101 writeup.

From a modern game design perspective, the most notable contribution Weaponlord made to fighting games the active defense system called the "thrust block" -- a versatile parry that served as a high-risk, high-reward defensive option. This a relatively new innovation for the time, but more interesting to contemporary devs is this tidbit from the GameSpot interview with James Goddard, where he mentions that the thrust block was designed with zero-frame startup specifically as a concession to online play via the XBAND dialup peripheral.

That's right: A Super Nintendo game in 1995 was designed around internet play. Personally, as someone currently working on a fighting game built around online multiplayer over broadband, I can't imagine designing a 2D fighting game for ~250ms travel times, yet there they were, handling sync timing and tweaking frame data to make the game playable over a modem. Perhaps it shouldn't be a surprise that Goddard is currently design director on Killer Instinct for Microsoft, a game which has been lauded in core fighting game circles for having better-than-average netcode.

Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes (Capcom, 2000): The best team fighter

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Capcom had found plenty of success doing crossover fighting games during the late '90s, as their concurrent work on Street Fighter Alpha, Darkstalkers, and various licensed Marvel fighting games gave them plenty of readily reusable assets to keep the games coming. This peaked with Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes, a three-on-three tag match slugfest so chaotic that even genre veterans could barely parse what is happening on screen at any given time.

Capcom's earlier crossover games (X-Men vs. Street Fighter, Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter, and Marvel vs. Capcom) had treated tag-team two-on-twos much like a similar pro wrestling match: You had one character on the field responding to your controls, and certain moves would allow you to tag them in, summon them for a brief assist attack, or perform a joint hyper combo together. MvC2 largely kept the same basic structure, but the addition of a third team member shifted the emphasis toward developing teams that synergized effectively between the three.

The ideal MvC2 team must take into account how well any given character can use the other two assists; how much super meter the team needs to build for each character to do its job, and how long it'll take to generate that meter before the opponent does; how well the team can recover from opponent-inflicted forced tag-outs (called "snapbacks"); and several other factors before even considering how effective the player is at controlling any of their characters individually.

It's a strange testament to MvC2's design that even though competitive play revolves around roughly 1/5th of the 56-character cast, the dozens of permutations available with just those characters are enough to have kept the game interesting for over a decade. The net effect is that MvC2, by virtue of its three-on-three format, has gotten the closest out of any fighting game to a compelling competitive 'build-your-own-character' mode.

Guilty Gear (Arc System Works, 1998): The 2D fighter for people who love 2D fighters

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As Guilty Gear is still very much alive and kicking, I'll keep this brief. With GG and its sister series BlazBlue, Arc System Works has forgotten more about traditional 2D fighting games than most studios will ever begin to explore. Each GG character is practically its own fighting game at this point, often with resources and mechanics that exist only for that specific character -- and they're bound together by a set of core shared systems and mechanics that would be enough to populate five Street Fighters. If you're ever trying to design a character for pretty much anything, it's worth your time to dig through the GG library, because ASW probably did something like that way before you did.

Highlights include: Bridget, a young boy dressed as a nun who fights with a yo-yo that must be carefully placed and moved across the screen; Zato-1, a blind assassin who fights by summoning his shadow (which responds to the player's joystick inputs and button releases, meaning the player must simultaneously handle two characters with one controller, and time their button presses and releases appropriately); Venom, another assassin who lays pool balls across the screen to create intricate setups off their chain collisions; and most recently, Jack-O, whose minion-summoning mechanics draw more from a MOBA than a fighting game.

Bushido Blade (Light Weight, 1997): Real-enough samurai duels

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One frequent criticism of traditional fighting games is that they don't look or feel like a real fight does, leading a handful of developers to build games aiming for a more realistic experience without getting into the sporty nature of a Fight Night or UFC game.

When I put the call out on Twitter for suggestions for this list, Bushido Blade was hands-down the most frequent response. Instead of street fighting, Bushido Blade aimed to recreate the thrill of a samurai duel by breaking out from the 2D plane into free-roaming 3D environments and designing a realistic damage system; you could block or parry, but if you ate a clean hit it was either going to injure a limb or kill you outright.

When most fighting games were going for more systems, more characters, more stylized graphics, more combos, and generally digging itself deeper in a hole of genre esoterica, Bushido Blade felt simple and clean. Interestingly enough, its legacy is best felt not in any major triple-A fighting game, but in indie games Nidhogg and Divekick.

Fighters Destiny (Genki, 1998): Point-sparring in a fighting game

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Of all the core design elements to mess with, Fighters Destiny arguably picked the most-core element to change. Rather than determine a victor using health bars, Fighters Destiny implemented a point system inspired somewhat by competitive karate, where players would fight until one scored a point by inflicting a ring out, knockdown, or other specific conditions, at which point the action would reset and the fight would resume.

Fighters Destiny certainly didn't leave any lasting impacts on the genre overall, but it's certainly an experiment worth considering further. Contemporary fighting games built around life meters and the best-two-of-three rounds system make it easy to snowball early advantages into a victory, because players have to earn a mid-round reset by doing something to get the opponent off their back and into a neutral state, at which point the defending player is forced to play aggressively and make bigger bets to win the round from a life deficit. With the point sparring model, you get to emphasize the players' jousting for superiority from a neutral state over their ability to snowball a small advantage into a bigger one, leading to more exciting matches for competitors and spectators alike.

Buriki One: World Grapple Tournament '99 in Tokyo (SNK, 1999): 2D MMA

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Buriki One is a curious one. Where SNK's core lay in their 2D fighter pantheon (King of Fighters and Fatal Fury, among others), Buriki One was an attempt to tie the outlandish characters of a typical fighting game into a game that felt more like Pride, the Japanese mixed martial arts event promotion that swept the country in the late '90s and early 2000s. (Ryo Sakazaki from Art of Fighting actually shows up as a playable character!)

What we end up with in Buriki One is a game that looks like a sports-fighting game, like any pro wrestling, boxing, or MMA game, but plays on a 2D plane. Part of this change entailed swapping the attack controls to the joystick (up for a heavy, slow attack, down for a quick, light attack, and toward for a medium attack) and the movement controls to two buttons that move your fighter left or right.

Given the realistic setting, this actually makes a certain amount of sense, especially if you think of Buriki One as an attempt to convert Pride fans to fighting games. If your goal is to simplify a core fighting game experience, it makes sense to try focusing less on the importance of positioning in a 2D plane, which is often hard for new players to learn and understand, and more on interactions between the different attacks.

Virtua Fighter (Sega, 1993): Welcome to the third dimension...kind of    

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Bringing fighting games to the third dimension is not a trivial task, particularly because the established genre conventions call for the arcade-standard eight-way joystick and buttons to be used for both inputting move codes and navigating space. Once you've solved those problems, though, you still kind of need to figure out how to use the third dimension to, well, add depth to the actual fighting experience.

Sega's Virtua Fighter was the first fighting game to try 3D -- though when it comes to the actual gameplay, the devs kept it to fighting in a 2D plane until Virtua Fighter 3 introduced the sidestep mechanic to the series. VF's biggest contribution to the genre was arguably designing movesets around three buttons (punch, kick, and block) and a simpler set of motions -- usually combinations of single-direction inputs and button presses, often used in preset chains.

This made learning a character's moveset less about complicated joystick execution and more about memorizing a wider set of context-specific moves, which later turned out to be useful for freeing up the joystick so players could use it to more easily navigate a 3D space. Also, Virtua Fighter added ring-outs as another win condition; knocking your opponent off the platform immediately wins you the round.

Battle Arena Toshinden (Tamsoft, 1995): Sidestepping

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Battle Arena Toshinden was another one of the early 3D fighting games -- and that's usually the main thing people remember it for. However, it is generally recognized as the first fighting game to work in all three dimensions via the sidestep mechanic, where players can use the L and R shoulder buttons to dodge projectiles without sacrificing position. Most 3D fighting games now use different permutations of a sidestep, though DreamFactory's Tobal No. 1 was notable for using more of a free-roam style navigation system.

Soul Calibur (Namco, 1999): Full movement with eight-way run

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Namco had made a splash in 3D fighting games with both Tekken and Soul Edge, but the difference between the two games was mostly thematic (contemporary martial arts vs. fantasy weapon fighting) until its sequel Soul Calibur. Soul Calibur was arguably one of the first games to truly embrace all three dimensions; in addition to the simple sidestep, many attacks often included Z-axis movement as part of the animation, and players could actually shift into an eight-way-run movement stance that gave you access to a different subset of moves. The end result was that Soul Calibur felt like an excellent compromise between the samurai fantasy of Bushido Blade's free-roaming duels and a traditional fighting game.

Cyber Troopers Virtual-On (Sega, 1995): Mobility in sustained projectile fights

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When we look back at the fighting game canon, one thing stands out about SF2 and its numerous sequels: Projectile attacks are very, very important. Indeed, most of the subsequent Street Fighter series are largely defined by the systems they implement in order to avoid non-stop douken-fests. However, many later games decided to double down on projectiles, space control, and precision movement as the focal point of a one-on-one duel while feeling closer in spirit to a classic fighting game than, say, a first-person shooter.

At first glance, Virtual-On doesn't look like it has much in common with a classic fighting game; yes, it is one-on-one and uses health meters, but it's about robots dashing around in an arena blowing each other up, not people punching each other in the face. Spend some time with any of the Virtual-On games, though, and you'll find that it fits in far better with fighting games than any other genre. It doesn't emphasize aiming or weapon selection enough to feel like a shooter, nor is it about tactical positioning and attrition like a typical mech or tank sim.

Instead, the game is about attacking to force your opponent to dodge by dashing or jumping, then punishing your opponent for dashing or jumping while they're trying to counter attack and force you to move. When it comes down to it, Virtual-On is basically the Ryu fireball/Dragon Punch trap expanded into a 3D robot dueling game.

Touhou Suimusou: Immaterial and Missing Power (Tasogare Frontier / Team Shanghai Alice, 2004): Bullet hell 2D fighter

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In 2004, Japanese doujin devs took bullet hell series Touhou into 2D fighter-land with Touhou Suimusou: Immaterial and Missing Power (commonly abbreviated as IaMP). While the game appears to resemble any other anime-styled fighting game, it's actually built largely around projectile attacks (hence the bullet hell roots) and the "graze" mechanic, where most projectiles can be dashed through -- meaning that the traditional attack-block-throw triangle in fighting games is instead largely replaced by ranged attacks, mobility, and physical attacks.

Senko no Ronde (G.rev, 2005): Even more bullet-hell than IaMP

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If IaMP and Virtual-On gently push projectile combat to the center of the game, Senko no Ronde goes full-on bullet hell, complete with a change in perspective to a flat top-down 2D plane and the ability to temporarily transform your robot fighter into a giant boss form. The combat mechanics draw from a similar pool as Virtual-On, as well -- it's largely about using projectiles to force movement to open up more opportunities for damage.

It's worth noting that lots of other games have played in this space, to varying degrees: Taito's Psychic Force, Sunsoft's Astra Superstars, the Dragon Ball Z games by Dimps, and the Naruto: Clash of Ninja games by Eighting are some of the more notable examples.

Yuu Yuu Hakusho: Makyou Touitsusen (Treasure, 1994): Four players, two layers

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One-on-one is great, but what happens when we try to add more players to the party? These games open up the action to more players, which introduces control challenges, since you no longer can rely on the opponent-relative movement scheme that traditional fighting games use.

Yuu Yuu Hakusho: Makyou Touitsusen was another one of those Treasure games that was way better than anyone ever expects from licensed anime games -- unfortunately, since Yuu Yuu Hakusho didn't have a whole lot of clout in the U.S. at the time, we never got it here. The game was built around two-to-four-player combat, which they pulled off by borrowing Fatal Fury's two-layer stage design -- players can hop between a foreground plane and a background plane. Of course, this gets a bit tricky if you're working in the SF2 template.

Since Yuu Yuu Hakusho was designed for the Genesis, Treasure had to build a compelling fighting game around a three-button controller (which was more than Capcom was able to do; the Street Fighter II: Championship Edition release on the Genesis was meant to use a special six-button controller, and if you had a three-button controller you had to press the Start button to alternate between punches and kicks). They started by opening up the movement system so you could freely look in either direction, and simplified the input codes to only use down and forward in special moves, meaning that players didn't have to worry about facing the wrong direction in the process of executing a special move. Also, the three buttons were mapped to Light Attack, Heavy Attack, and Guard -- after all, SF2's hold-back-to-block system doesn't really make sense if you have an opponent on both sides of you.

The end result is a game that feels much better than you'd expect a four-player SF2 to feel. Fortunately, it wasn't just a one-off; the core design work was later recalled in Treasure's Bleach DS games, which are also excellent and worth checking out.

Super Smash Brothers (HAL Laboratory, 1999): A platforming fighting game

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In 2016, Super Smash Bros. Melee and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U tournaments are routinely topping the Twitch stream charts, so it can be easy to forget that Smash's status as a fighting game was contested for a long, long time. After all, changing the static 2D box arena out for levels that feel more like the original Mario Bros. and losing the health bars for the damage percentage mechanic essentially pull out two design elements so core to fighting games most players never even thought to question them.

It's fair to say that the standard four-player party mode, with items aplenty and stages that kill you rather often, don't really feel consistent or rigorous enough to encourage players to play it competitively. That's why the truly defining innovation in Smash isn't the levels, or the movement, or the simplified controls -- it's the way the team created a play space that is rich enough to sustain both party play and serious competition, and made the options available for the players to determine for themselves what they want out of it. Honestly, Smash wasn't a fighting game until the players made it a fighting game.

Power Stone (Capcom, 1999): Like Smash in 3D

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I'd be remiss in including Smash in this list and not also giving Capcom's Power Stone a shoutout; it was another party fighting game with items, engaging levels, and simplified inputs, but unlike Smash, it featured a free-roaming 3D arena. While it's certainly fun to hop around the various levels beating up your buddies, the tradeoff to free-roaming 3D in a party fighter is that the devs relied on a rather high level of auto-targeting in the attacks, which kind of diluted the player's feeling of mastery after a certain point.

Rakugaki Showtime (Treasure, 1999): If dodgeball was a fighting game

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Shoutouts to Ian Adams for pointing me in the direction of an interesting, obscure contender for the party fighter throne: Rakugaki Showtime, by Treasure. Like Power Stone, it takes place in an open 3D arena, but the combat is built more around projectiles, leading to a game that feels like dodgeball without the center dividing line. Play it to admire the scribbly, sketchy aesthetic and see how Treasure used targeting lines to visualize aiming projectiles in a 3D space.

***

Patrick Miller is a writer, fighter, and community manager for Rising Thunder. You can find him on Twitter, Facebook, Twitch, and YouTube. Or just sign up for his monthly mailing list.

Special thanks to Brandon Sheffield, Ian Adams, Andres Velasco y Coll, Bellreisa, Chris Pruett, Luis Garcia, and everyone else who suggested not-SF2 fighting games. Also, shoutouts to the poverty FGC for keeping this knowledge alive and kicking.