#Rise of the Third Power

[satoshi-mochida]

Some indie game recommendations from ones I’ve played or know enough about them to suggest them to others(mostly in no particular order), Part 8.

Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9

LiEat

Rise of the Third Power

Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin

Indivisible

Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass

Eastern Exorcist

Everhood

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: The 7th Stand User(JJBA fan game)

Gravity Circuit

Rusted Moss

Laika: Aged Through Blood

Bramble: The Mountain King

Refind Self: The Personality Test Game

nameless(fan game for Hololive Vtuber Nanashi Mumei)

M.A.S.S. Builder

NAIRI: Tower Of Shirin and it's sequel NAIRI: Rising Tide.

Fatal Twelve

Fading Afternoon

The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa

Killer Frequency

Oh…Sir!! The Insult Simulator

Full Void

ENIGMA:

Seven Days

Siren's Call

Koumajou Remilia: Scarlet Symphony

Little Goody Two Shoes

Pocket Mirror ~ GoldenerTraum

Battle Princess Madelyn

When the Past Was Around

[smallgraygames]

I wrote a collection of brief reviews based on how well these 15 games managed to distract me from looming existential medical trauma. Check it out! I even included a patented scoring system (your distraction results may vary).

Games included are:

Dave the Diver

The Cowabunga Collection

Rise of the Third Power

Cult of the Lamb

Secret of Mana

Teardown

Dredge

Streets of Rage 4

Mother Russia Bleeds

Killing Floor 2

Ruiner

Idol Manager

Final Fantasy V

Dead Ahead

Elden Ring

[weatherman667]

Rashim:  Rise of the Third Power

Rise of the Third Power has some of the best characters in all of RPG history, combined with one of the best turn-based RPG combat mechanics.

But, my personal favourite is Rashim

Muslim sun priest Paladin, which I have wanted to play forever.

One of his powers is Lure, that increases the chance of enemies attacking him.  Each stack of Lure increases the chance.  Now, this works fantastically well, as a) some enemies are immune to Taunt, but not to Lure.  b) This doesn’t focus ALL of the attacks on him, just most of them.  Without the Shield from the priestess, no tank can survive all of the attacks from a late-game swarm.  So, giving him MOST of them dramatically increases his chance of survival, while still being a damage sponge.  He has the skill Lure, which is free, which grants 3 stacks of Lure.  He has two kinds of (mutually exclusive) counter attacks, that are free, and add one stack of lure.  He has a regen ability that grants one stack of lure.  He has 2 talents, one that can have him start with one stack of lure, which makes him the only tank that doesn’t have to try, (one stack isn’t that good, though).  The other one gives him a stack of Lure for every kill.  That doesn’t seem that much, until you consider the attack above.

This is Sunray.  He uses his rifle to fire a magic, all-target sun attack.  Which, FUCK YEAH, (his giant scimitar is used for counterattacks).  Now, this is his BASIC attack.  Now, a basic all-target attack, (the only free all target attack in the game), is balanced to have really low damage.  Well, this game lets you make things strong, let’s you work around weaknessess, etc.  So, a) it can be combined with the spy’s Poison Weapon ability, so poisons every-single-enemy every time you attack.  b) you can mix/max him for Sunray.  This reduces the rest of his damage, but his strongest aspects are being shiny (lure) and his all-target attacks.  He can sweep swarms of enemies, while tanking their damage and letting the blood of everyone that tries to attack him.

The downsides:  They turned what I hoped would be my avatar for the game and made him gay.  And then added gay babies, because they are vogue right now.

9/10

[lizord-lord]

BEHOLD MY R3P HANDCANONS

*ahem*. I had some thoughts about Reyna and various Shield Incidents and well one thing led to another, and I ended up drawing out some ideas for some of the other spellcasters and how their magic might affect them!

(Mild Spoilers for Rise of the Third Power under the cut, I am on my hands and knees begging y'all to play this game and trying to lure you in with pretty pictures)

Reyna was the one who got me on this train of thought- thinking about the constant combat a JRPG demands and how using that much magic might leave marks. First I imagined that her hands might end up irritated from the strain, and then I got to thinking about her backstory and how she's motivated by having witnessed firsthand all the dead a war leaves behind, and not having been able to heal them- and then I remembered the two times in-game she overextends herself shielding the entire party, first three people from a firing squad, then AN ENTIRE FUCKING SHIP FROM CANNON FIRE AND NEARLY DIES ABOUT IT. And I thought, wouldn't it be interesting if that left scars? If even healing, protection, support- even that gentle magic can hurt you, if you overuse it? If the sigil you cast like a warm light in the dark is still hot? If your hands come away red and raw? If you reach for so much power at once that the holy light burns you from the inside out and your palms are left with Shield burned into them like a brand?

And I decided to make it so.

...uh...Terribly sorry to report Reyna was as interesting and conceptual as it got lol. From here on, I'm having fun.

Aden gets the second most noticeable mark, but it isn't really a scar. Which is kind of funny, that the priestess gets magic burns but the warlock suffers 0 real side effects, but I mean... Aden's a lichspawn, so I'd argue he's built to handle it. Heartier Magical Immune System. So this is less a magical injury from overuse and more a magical stain from consistent use, y'know?

Anyway, this is Aden's Drain spell, which has the really cool visual effect of dragging blood out of enemies into this green vortex orb. I was picturing most magic being generated inside the body and then sort of following the nerves like electricity along wire, and then being expelled either through the hands or an object. But with a lifesteal spell I wanted to emphasize pulling something out of the world around you and into the body. So this stain travels from the tips of the fingers inward, and sticks to the bones as it does. Because, you know, creepy black magic <3.

I'm so sorry Rashim I have nothing interesting for you. These last two are really just me wanting to illustrate spell effects slash complete the set lol. Rashim's spells are also just..mostly basic light flashes so there isn't much to pull from. So this is just the color scheme of Sunray, though it ended up a lot pinker than I meant to now that I look at it again. whoops I imagine the aftereffects for Rashim (and Gage) are pretty temporary since they got that Military Discipline and aren't usually fighting alone. They'd linger for maybe a couple hours after a tough fight, like afterimages. So, I just added a bit of clinging red/pink, like when you shine a flashlight against your hand and it glows through the skin. Just a little lingering light and warmth peeking out.

Okay final one! Gage! Here I really focused in on the "magic travels along the nerves" idea, since we are in fact dealing with literal electricity. Very basic, lightning along the veins and then exiting at the fingertips- or more often into his spear and then out through that. The aftereffect is REALLY subtle, also because I get the vibe he doesn't use his storm magic all that often. The spear probably suffices most of the time- though I did give him some callouses for that reason. He is still a warrior prince! So yeah, the magic residue is basically just stray sparks. Clinging static electricity, and probably fades really quickly. He'd ABSOLUTELY give you a static zap if you touched him before it did lmao so actually he's just one of these

new headcanon for that weather sphere from the Ardo Rita questline. It's Just This Thing.

[ghostyolive]

God bless you yaoi warriors naoto shirogane and kanji tatsumi

[misteria247]

Me vibing in the Tmnt and Lupin III fandoms: Hahaha how cool! I love doing little switcheroos!!!!! Now I can finally relax-

Music playing in the distance ominously

Me: Huh? What's this? Music?

Music coming closer and a bit muffled: -pa-pa.

Me breaking into a cold sweat: Wait a minute, I know that tune.......oH NO-

Music blaring suddenly: NE NE PAPA-!

Me screaming as I'm dragged into hell: NO, NO NOT AGAIN PLEASE LITTLE ITALIAN NATION MAN LET ME GOO NOOOOOOO-

[rudo-lfium]

Read this behemoth twice and have begun to systemise my notes for future reference.

In today’s day and age this should be on everybody’s desk at home.

[girlcalledwhatsername]

USAmerican here. So we have something called the electoral college in the US. Which means people's votes aren't counted individually. Depending on what state you live in, your vote is worth more than other people. States like Nebraska and Wyoming have more votes than states like Maryland or Vermont despite having a far lower population. Those states have conservative majorities and those conservative majorities have more votes than people in liberal (not even leftist) areas. So elections aren't about convincing people in your state to vote, it's about convincing guys in Nebraska. Those guys in Nebraska want a conservative candidate. So the only hope of getting them to not vote conservative is for them to vote for a conservative democrat. Until this system changes, it is not possible to get a liberal much less leftist candidate in major elections. The elections literally do not matter unless you live in a few specific states.

Okay I had heard so much about electoral colleges and gerrymandering but it was never explained this plainly, thanks for sharing that! I thought it's referring to constituencies as usually happens with general elections. So there's the electoral college which means every vote isn't equal, and then the vote from there is just the "popular vote" and isn't the final deciding factor? So it's rigged twice over to not give much of a choice to the citizens, I had been wondering about those write-in votes all this time, and wondering that if voting really is the topmost important thing to get people to do then why aren't more people putting forward Bernie as a big candidate when they get people to vote instead of insisting they vote democratic, but it's making more sense now. And so is everyone who rightly said you can't keep reforming such a system it actually needs to be gone.

[booasaur]

Something really amazing happened in France, and I think it'd help us in the US to learn about it. Forgive the long read, but I think this is genuinely great both because of what happened and how.

So as some of you might have seen, in a decision historians will debate for years (mostly to figure out just WTF he was thinking, even though he is alive right now and can be asked), the French president, Emmanuel Macron, currently in power and THREE YEARS before the scheduled election, seeing the far right rise in popularity decided to dissolve the assembly and hold snap elections.

577 seats were up for grabs. Remember that number. Since half of that is 288.5, 289 seats are needed for a majority.

The first round happened last week and boy, was it bad. The far right made HUGE gains. It won or was in first place in so many races. And Macron's party ended up third!

Overall, this is how things ended up after the first round:

Far right bloc: 33%

Left bloc: 28%

Macron's centrist party: 20%

Conservatives: 7%

The way the French system works is that if a candidate gets over 50% of the vote, they win outright, and some of the far right did manage that. But, many races went to a runoff.

Immediate projections after were that the far right bloc might win anywhere from 240 to 310 seats, a catastrophe.

A shameful swing to the far right leading to the first time they'll be in power since the 1940s? Yes, but maybe not??

This is where things get interesting.

Unusually, a lot of these runoffs are 3-way, instead of a simpler 2-way choice. And in pretty much every case, that helps the far right.

So on June 30th, the night of the first round, this is how things went down:

Immediately, the left parties put out the call: anywhere they were third, they withdrew and their voters would go over to whoever was running against the far right candidate. Their goal: form a "republican front" to block the far right. The far right cannot get 289 seats.

Macron's bloc was not so...motivated. Different people put out different instructions: in some places, if they were third, they should drop out, but only to help the center left, not far left, in other places, see how far you are, only then drop out, that kind of thing.

The conservative party simply said they won't drop out and won't give their voters instruction either way in races they're not involved in.

Late night developments:

More people in Macron's party are now beginning to realize the situation and starting to coalesce around whichever candidate can beat the far right one. Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, from Macron's party, says clearly the priority is to block the far right. BUT, some Macron spokespeople on TV say they'll form a coalition only with the center left and conservatives, splitting the left bloc if needed. Some individual Macronists still saying they won't drop out, even if there's no hope of winning.

Lol.

So, now July 1st:

Only half so far. In one race, where the sister of Marine Le Pen (the far right leader and the face of their movement) was leading, the third place Macronist refused to bow out.

Excellent quote from another Macronist:

Perhaps realizing the same thing, that Macronist in the race against the Le Pen sister now drops out.

In some places, third place Macronists are dropping out DESPITE Macron bewilderingly telling them NOT to?

Halfway through the day:

Of the 311 3-way or 4-way runoffs, the number is down to 135 because of these candidates dropping out: 121 Left, 56 Macronists, 1 conservative.

Oh, there was this, in case people had any doubts about how terrible the far right are:

And to show the selflessness of the left:

July 2:

The deadline to decide if they want to stay in a runoff is today.

A dozen new third place Macronists who said they'd stay in have now dropped out. One got a call from both the PM Attal AND Macron to drop out, signalling the dawning understanding of the importance of this moment.

Even some conservative party members are now backing the left candidate who faces the far right.

A Macronist who had 30.55% of the vote in the first round and came in third to the far right's 33.11% and left's 32.73% and who would have been tempted to stay has dropped out.

The deadline to stay in or not has now passed.

Look at these far right shenanigans!

Macron still being a freaking loser:

July 3rd:

In the end, of the 311 3- or 4-way run offs, only 91 left. Some polls come out that have the far right getting between 190 to 220 seats.

July 4th:

New polls say the balance of the voting itself isn't transferring between the left and center and predictions have risen for the far right, now predicted to get between 210 and 250 seats.

July 5th:

New polls again, left voters now predicted to do better transferring vote to the centrists, decreasing the far right projections again.

However, scandalous reporting emerges: while Attal was trying to fend off the far right, Macron was not only NOT taking the far right seriously, he was undermining efforts to defeat them. His team shrugged off the first round results and celebrated a BIRTHDAY as the results were still coming in?

July 6th:

A few runoffs happened yesterday, nothing much unexpected, some left and center wins.

July 7th:

The day of reckoning. At this point, the expectations are that the far right won't come close to that 289 number but could still easily have the most seats.

GUYS.

It's over and the left are in the lead!

A LOT of cases where a leftist or centrist was 2nd in the first round and now won.

Amazing:

SO many lessons to take from this.

First, you have to vote! You have to. You can't do anything without voting. The freaking French, who'll protest for anything, are showing up to vote. If you're trying to achieve any kind of result and it's not going to happen by January 2025, you have to vote now.

But just as importantly, the left and center (and even conservative) parties made very key decisions. They were all lucky that Attal, who Macron chose, saw the big picture, bigger than indeed Macron could. A stupid selfish centrist leader could have still ruined everything if it were up to him.

TL;DR: After a disastrous first round in the national French elections where the far right was on the cusp of taking power, the left and center formed a strong coalition and through the power of voting and unity, overcame the far right AND their selfish centrist president to win.

[ceilidhtransing]

The discussions around whether or not to vote for Kamala keep being dominated by very loud voices shouting that anyone who advocates for her “just doesn't care about Palestine!” and “is willing to overlook genocide!” and “has no moral backbone at all!” And while some of these voices will be bots, trolls, psyops - we know that this happens; we know that trying to persuade progressives to split the vote or not vote at all is a strategy employed by hostile actors - of course many of them won't be. But what this rhetoric does is continually force the “you should vote for her” crowd onto the back foot of having to go to great lengths writing entire essays justifying their choice, while the “don't vote/vote third party” crowd is basically never asked to justify their choice. It frames voting for Kamala as a deeply morally compromised position that requires extensive justification while framing not voting or voting third party as the neutral and morally clean stance.

So here's another way of looking at it. How much are you willing to accept in order to feel like you're not compromising your morals on one issue?

Are you willing to accept the 24% rise in maternal deaths - and 39% increase for Black women - that is expected under a federal abortion ban, according to the Centre for American Progress? Those percentages represent real people who are alive now who would die if the folks behind Project 2025 get their way with reproductive healthcare.

Are you willing to accept the massive acceleration of climate change that would result from the scrapping of all climate legislation? We don't have time to fuck around with the environment. A gutting of climate policy and a prioritisation of fossil fuel profits, which is explicitly promised by Trump, would set the entire world back years - years that we don't have.

Are you willing to accept the classification of transgender visibility as inherently “pornographic” and thus the removal of trans people from public life? Are you willing to accept the total elimination of legal routes for gender-affirming care? The people behind the Trump campaign want to drive queer and trans people back underground, back into the closet, back into “criminality”. This will kill people. And it's maddening that caring about this gets called “prioritising white gays over brown people abroad” as if it's not BIPOC queer and trans Americans who will suffer the most from legislative queer- and transphobia, as they always do.

Are you willing to accept the domestic deployment of the military to crack down on protests and enforce racist immigration policy? I'm sure it's going to be very easy to convince huge numbers of normal people to turn up to protests and get involved in political organising when doing so may well involve facing down an army deployed by a hardcore authoritarian operating under the precedent that nothing he does as president can ever be illegal.

Are you willing to accept a president who openly talks about wanting to be a dictator, plans on massively expanding presidential powers, dehumanises his political enemies and wants the DOJ to “go after them”, and assures his supporters they won't have to vote again? If you can't see the danger of this staring you right in the face, I don't know what to tell you. Allowing a wannabe dictator to take control of the most powerful country on earth would be absolutely disastrous for the entire world.

Are you willing to accept an enormous uptick in fascism and far-right authoritarianism worldwide? The far right in America has huge influence over an entire international network of “anti-globalists”, hardcore anti-immigrant xenophobes, transphobic extremists, and straight-up fascists. Success in America aids and emboldens these people everywhere.

Are you willing to accept an enormous number of preventable deaths if America faces a crisis in the next four years: a public health emergency, a natural disaster, an ecological catastrophe? We all saw how Trump handled Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. We all saw how Trump handled Covid-19. He fanned the flames of disaster with a constant flow of medical misinformation and an unspeakably dangerous undermining of public health experts. It's estimated that 40% of US pandemic deaths could have been avoided if the death rates had corresponded to those in other high-income countries. That amounts to nearly half a million people. One study from January 2021 estimated between around 4,200 and 12,200 preventable deaths attributable purely to Trump's statements about masks. We're highly unlikely to face another global pandemic in the next few years but who knows what crises are coming down the pipeline?

Are you willing to accept the attempted deportation of millions - millions - of undocumented people? This is “rounding people up and throwing them into camps where no one ever hears from them again” territory. That's a blueprint for genocide right there and it's a core tenet of both Trump's personal policy and Project 2025. And of course they wouldn't be going after white people. They most likely wouldn't even restrict their tyranny to people who are actually undocumented. Anyone racially othered as an “immigrant” would be at risk from this.

Are you willing to accept not just the continuation of the current situation in Palestine, but the absolute annihilation of Gaza and the obliteration of any hope for imminent peace? There is no way that Trump and the people behind him would not be catastrophically worse for Gaza than Kamala or even Biden. Only recently he was telling donors behind closed doors that he wanted to “set the [Palestinian] movement back 25 or 30 years” and that “any student that protests, I throw them out of the country”. This is not a man who can be pushed in a direction more conducive to peace and justice. This is a man who listens to his wealthy donors, his Christian nationalist Republican allies, and himself.

Are you willing to accept a much heightened risk of nuclear war? Obviously this is hardly a Trump policy promise. But I can't think of a single president since the Cold War who is more likely to deploy nuclear weapons, given how casually he talks about wanting to use them and how erratic and unstable he can be in his dealings with foreign leaders. To quote Foreign Policy only this year, “Trump told a crowd in January that one of the reasons he needed immunity was so that he couldn’t be indicted for using nuclear weapons on a city.” That's reassuring. I'm not even in the US and I remember four years of constant background low-level terror that Trump would take offence at something some foreign leader said or think that he needs to personally intervene in some military situation to “sort it out” and decide to launch the entire world into nuclear war. No one sane on earth wants the most powerful person on the planet to be as trigger-happy and careless with human life as he is, especially if he's running the White House like a dictator with no one ever telling him no. But depending on what Americans do in November, he may well be inflicted again on all of us, and I guess we'll all just have to hope that he doesn't do the worst thing imaginable.

“But I don't want those things! Stop accusing me of supporting things I don't support!” Yes, of course you don't want those things. None of us does. No one's saying that you actively support them. No one's accusing you of wanting Black women to die from ectopic pregnancies or of wanting to throw Hispanic people in immigrant detention centres or of wanting trans people to be outlawed (unlike, I must point out, the extremely emotive and personal accusations that get thrown around about “wanting Palestinian children to die” if you encourage people to vote for Kamala).

But if you're advocating against voting for Kamala, you are clearly willing to accept them as possible consequences of your actions. That is the deal you're making. If a terrible thing happening is the clear and easily foreseeable outcome of your action (or in the case of not voting, inaction), in a way that could have been prevented by taking a different and just as easy action, you are partly responsible for that consequence. (And no, it's not “a fear campaign” to warn people about things he's said, things he wants to do, and plans drawn up by his close allies. This is not “oooh the Democrats are trying to bully you into voting for them by making him out to be really bad so you'll feel scared and vote for Kamala!” He is really bad, in obvious and documented and irrefutable ways.)

And if you believe that “both parties are the same on Gaza” (which, you know, they really aren't, but let's just pretend that they are) then presumably you accept that the horrors being committed there will continue, in the immediate term anyway, regardless of who wins the presidency. Because there really isn't some third option that will appear and do everything we want. It's going to be one of those two. And we can talk all day about wanting a better system or how unfair it is that every presidential election only ever has two viable candidates and how small the Overton window is and all that but hell, we are less than eighty days out from the election; none of that is going to get fixed between now and November. Electoral reform is a long-term (but important!) goal, not something that can be effected in the span of a couple of months by telling people online to vote third party. There is no “instant ceasefire and peace negotiation” button that we're callously overlooking by encouraging people to vote for Kamala. (My god, if there was, we would all be pressing it.)

If we're suggesting people vote for her, it's not that we “are willing to overlook genocide” or “don't care about sacrificing brown people abroad” or whatever. Nothing is being “overlooked” here. It's that we're simply not willing to accept everything else in this post and more on top of continued atrocities in Gaza. We're not willing to take Trump and his godawful far-right authoritarian agenda as an acceptable consequence of feeling like we have the moral high ground on Palestine. I cannot stress enough that if Kamala doesn't win, we - we all, in the whole world - get Trump. Are you willing to accept that?

And one more point to address: I've seen too many people act frighteningly flippant and naïve about terrible things Trump or his campaign want to do, with the idea that people will simply be able to prevent all these bad things by “organising” and “protesting” and “collective action”. “I'm not willing to accept these things; that's why I'll fight them tooth and nail every day of their administration” - OK but if you're not even willing to cast a vote then I have doubts about your ability to form “the Resistance”, which by the way would have to involve cooperation with people of lots of progressive political stripes in order to have the manpower to be effective, and if you're so committed to political purity that you view temporarily lending your support to Kamala at the ballot box as an untenable betrayal of everything you stand for then forgive me for also doubting your ability to productively cooperate with allies on the ground with whom you don't 100% agree. Plus, if the Trump campaign gets its way, American progressives would be kept so busy trying to put out about twenty different fires at once that you'd be able to accomplish very little. Maybe you get them to soften their stance on trans healthcare but oh shit, the climate policies are still in place. But more importantly, how many people do you think will protest for abortion rights if doing so means staring down a gun? Or organise to protect their neighbours from deportation if doing so means being thrown in prison yourself? And OK, maybe you're sure that you will, but history has shown us time and time again that most people won't. Most people aren't willing to face that kind of personal risk. And a tiny number of lefties willing to risk incarceration or death to protect undocumented people or trans people or whatever other groups are targeted is sadly not enough to prevent the horrors from happening. That is small fry compared to the full might of a determined state. Of course if the worst happens and Trump wins then you should do what you can to mitigate the harm; I'm not saying you shouldn't. But really the time to act is now. You have an opportunity right here to mitigate the harm and it's called “not letting him get elected”. Act now to prevent that kind of horrific authoritarian situation from developing in the first place; don't sit this one out under the naïve belief that “we'll be able to stop it if it happens”. You won't.

[weatherman667]

Rise of the Third Power: Characters

Rowan

A drunken former pirate.  He joined the navy during the Great War, and was kicked out for being drunk.  When he was asked if he was mad, he feels it was his own problem for being drunk.  He tried being a pirate, and it didn’t end well. He has nothing to live for, but something to die for.

He is the first tank you get, and the tankiest of the tanks.  He has talents that let him develop a LOT more rage when being attacked, this allows him to taunt an enemy army, tank their attacks, and use his most powerful attack every turn.  Considering he is the tankiest, he has the lowest natural damage of any character.

Well, unless you use his signature ability, Booze, where he drinks from his flask. This heasl 25% of his total HP, (he has a LOT of HP, so this is extremely useful), increases his damage by 25%, and reduces his defence by 25%.  The best way to use this is to have him tank until you thin out their numbers, and then drink to your damage to finish the boss off.

Corrina

She’s interracial, and her parents died when she was young.  She grew up in street gangs.  She is convinced she’s not going to live very long.  This means she can’t keep herself alive, but she can die well, and go and see her parents in the afterlife.

She is a rogue, and most of her attacks focus on creating vulnerabilities and then exploiting them.  If you do it right, she has the most powerful attacks in the game.  If you do it wrong, she is one of the weakest.  She also has the Death Blow ability, which is extremely powerful, but takes most of her energy.  She gets some of it back if she kills target.  If she can deal enough damage to kill enemies in one hit, she can take out two enemies before running out of power, and becoming a LOT less power.

Arielle

Finally a red-headed princess that uses the feminine version of her name.  As much a love The Little Mermaid, her being called Ariel has pissed me off for years.

Anyways, she picks up a Carronade.  Her attacks are power, but draining.  It’s impossible to have her actually fighting without getting at least some fatigue.  She’s the only one who does not have an attack that does not cost rage/energy/mana.  All of her attacks cost energy, and she has the ability to reload, which recharges her energy.  She can get four cannon balls before running out of energy.  Grapeshot costs half as much, while mortar shells take almost double.  She can prepare, which can be upgraded to deal double damage, and preparing is free.

She is extremely powerful, but also extremely vulnerable.

Reyna

Priestess of the Stars.  The religion that covers the gameworld has three main paths, Sun from Tariq (fantasy Arabia), Moon from Arkadya (fantasy Russia), and Stars from Cirinithia (fantasy Europe).

She is almost the only one that can heal.  She has a lot of great support abilities, a good attack that recharges half of her mana, and a powerful attack.  She can miin/max her default attack to become one of the most powerful default attack in the game, which reduces her healing abilities.  Most of the characters can be healed fully even if you do this, but the tanks are a different story.

Aden

Evil-ish Warlock.  He’s working with you because he wants to kill his sister.  His sister happens to be the most powerful opponent in the evil empire.  He actually does care about people, but just wasn’t socialized every well.

He is one of the best Warlock characters I’ve seen in a video game.  Most of the time they give you a bunch of demons that are generically different.  He has one.   It has high all-around stats, the ability to curse enemies with amplify damage, and the power to Doom anything but bosses.  In order to summon him you need a Dark Pact, which Aden gets by killing someone.  This works with any way of killing someone.  His basic attack is powerful, and heals him.  Next he has Plague, which does two stacks of heavy DoT to one enemy, or one stack to all enemies.  If you do it a few turns in the row, he can deal a lot of damage to enemy groups, or a lot more damage to one enemy.

Rashim

Arabian sunlight Paladin.

He has the Lure ability, which gives a chance to cause enemies to attack him based off the number of stacks you have.  His lure includes a regeneration, along with two kinds of counterattacks.  He is the only one with a basic/free all-target attack.  It starts off weak, but you can a) use the spy to poison his weapons, causing him to poison every enemy, every turn, for free, or b) min/max his damage for his basic all-target attack.

My personal favourite.

Natasha

Spymaster for the resistance.  She is fully committed to the cause, meaning she will do pretty much anything to see it through.  Good thing she’s on your side, or else she would be one of your most powerful enemies.

Her abilities focus on support, either herself or her allies.  She has the only other healing ability in the game, that can be upgraded to cure status effects as well.  She can give an ally another turn, (next round), poison an ally’s weapons, (even all-target attacks), mark enemies for you Princess of the Carronades. She can upgrade her basic attack to add 1 turn for all DoT effects.  This means you can have a bunch of people cause DoT effects, swap them out, and as long as Natasha attacks every turn, they will never expire.

(semi-spoiler)

Storm Paladin.  He is the least tanky of tanks, but makes up for it with powerful, often all-target attacks.  He can also learn to have his attacks mark targets for the Princess of the Carronade, meaning he doesn’t have to waste a turn to mark a single target.

All of the characters are incredibly interesting, have important roles in the story, dramatic moments, character development.

And you can make them as powerful as you want.  You can make min/max them, balance them.  They have different roles in the party, and picking the wrong one for a battle can mean your doom.  At least on Hard, which is what I’m playing on.

[calowlmitygoddess]

I was going to oc-fy my ffxiv characters bcs of the cool plot bunny i had but then i realized that instead of having to create a whole ass new fantasy world i could really easily fit them in Tanza with some changes and would fix my Lack of a choesive Second Arc. The problem now is that this new cool idea is now smack dab in the middle of my two unwrittenable uncohesive overcomplicated story arcs and i cant do shit aboit it

[lizord-lord]

all the other player characters: a motive embroiled in the current political circumstances and decisions driven by the pressure of their circumstances, with backstories that are intrinsically tied to the impact of the last war.

meanwhile, Aden:

[probablyasocialecologist]

The economic indicators speak of nothing less than an economic catastrophe. Over 46,000 businesses have gone bankrupt, tourism has stopped, Israel’s credit rating was lowered, Israeli bonds are sold at the prices of almost “junk bonds” levels, and the foreign investments that have already dropped by 60% in the first quarter of 2023 (as a result of the policies of Israel’s far-right government before October 7) show no prospects of recovery. The majority of the money invested in Israeli investment funds was diverted to investments abroad because Israelis do not want their own pension funds and insurance funds or their own savings to be tied to the fate of the State of Israel. This has caused a surprising stability in the Israeli stock market because funds invested in foreign stocks and bonds generated profit in foreign currency, which was multiplied by the rise in the exchange rate between foreign currencies and the Israeli Shekel. But then Intel scuttled a $25 billion investment plan in Israel, the biggest BDS victory ever.  These are all financial indicators. But the crisis strikes deeper at the means of production of the Israeli economy. Israel’s power grid, which has largely switched to natural gas, still depends on coal to supply demand. The biggest supplier of coal to Israel is Colombia, which announced that it would suspend coal shipments to Israel as long as the genocide was ongoing. After Colombia, the next two biggest suppliers are South Africa and Russia. Without reliable and continuous electricity, Israel will no longer be able to pretend to be a developed economy. Server farms do not work without 24-hour power, and no one knows how many blackouts the Israeli high-tech sector could potentially survive. International tech companies have already started closing their branches in Israel. Israel’s reputation as a “startup nation” depends on its tech sector, which in turn depends on highly educated employees. Israeli academics report that joint research with universities abroad has declined sharply thanks to the efforts of student encampments. Israeli newspapers are full of articles about the exodus of educated Israelis. Prof. Dan Ben David, a famous economist, argued that the Israeli economy is held together by 300,000 people (the senior staff in universities, tech companies, and hospitals). Once a significant portion of these people leaves, he says, “We won’t become a third world country, we just won’t be anymore.” 

19 July 2024

[nevermind-i-forgot-whats-that]

Sometimes, as much as I love internet communities and spaces, I really think a lot of people have spent so much time in sanitized, morally pure echo chambers that they lose sight of realism and life outside the internet.

I live in Alabama. My fiancée and I cannot hold hands down the street without fear of homophobic assholes. We have an abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest. We are one of the poorest states in the US with some of the lowest scores on metrics related to quality of life, including maternal mortality, healthcare, education, and violence. It’s not a coincidence that we are also one of the most red, one of the most Republican states in the Union. In 2017 the UN said the conditions in Alabama are similar to those in a third-world country.

Trump gave a voice to the most violently racist, sexist, xenophobic groups of people who, unfortunately for most of us in the Southern U.S., run our states and have only grown more powerful since his rise to power. The Deep South powers MAGA, and we all suffer for it.

We have no protections if they don’t come from the federal government.

I know people are suffering internationally and my heart is with them. However, this election is not just about foreign policy - we have millions of Americans right here at home living in danger, living in areas where they have been completely abandoned by their local leaders. We need this win.

No candidate is perfect, but for the first time in my voting lifetime I’m excited to vote. I’m excited for the Kamala Harris/Tim Walz ticket because they are addressing the issues close to home. They’re advocating for education as the ticket to a better life, but without the crippling student debt. They’re advocating for the right to love who you love without fear and with pride. Kamala has always been pro-LGBT+ and so has Tim. Again, if you’re queer in the South, we don’t have support unless it comes from the federal government, and we absolutely will not have support if the Republicans regain the White House.

Kamala speaks in length about re-entry programs to reduce recidivism and help people who have been arrested and imprisoned regain their lives. Tim Walz supported restoring voting rights to felons. In the South, you know who comprise the majority of felons? Members of minorities. It’s one of the major tools of systemic racism and mass disenfranchisement, and arguably the modern face of slavery (there are some fantastic documentaries and books that explain the connection between the post-Reconstruction South and the disproportionate rates of imprisonment for BIPOC). Having candidates who recognize this and want to restore the freedom and rights to people who have come into contact with the criminal justice system? And keep them from having to go to prison in the first place? That’s refreshing. That’s exciting.

I would *love* to live in a country where women’s rights are respected, where LGBT+ rights and protections are a given, where we treat former criminals and individuals experiencing mental health crises with respect and dignity. I would *love* to live in a country where education is free of religious interference and each and every citizen is entitled to a fair start and equal opportunities.

But I don’t live in that country. Millions and millions of Americans find their rights and freedoms up for debate and on the ballot.

Project 2025 poses the largest threat to the future of our democracy as we know it. We are being called to fight for the future of our country.

We have to put on our oxygen masks first before we can help others.

You don’t have moral purity when you wash your hands of the millions of us who are still fighting for own freedoms right here.

The reality is that a presidential candidate is a best fit, and not a perfect fit. But comparatively speaking? Kamala is pretty damn close.

[misteria247]

Here's some of my fanfics that I've written that I'm super proud of personally-

Universal Collision: My Tmnt/Rottmnt crossover fic. It's one of my personal favorites that I'm incredibly proud of. Despite it not having many chapters, I'm thrilled with what I've gotten down so far!

Of Love and Heartbreak: One of my Lupin III fanfics. It's a oneshot involving my favorite OT5 as well as a character study on Jigen Daisuke. Mainly the aspect of his love life and how his past effected him currently in the present. It's also one of my longest oneshots and I'm super proud of it!

The Roles We Play: Another Lupin III fanfic as well as my first one for the fandom ever. It's a fic that again is an OT5 kind of thing but instead it focuses mainly on the LupZeni/LupJig/JigZeni pairings. It also features an injured Zenigata and a feral Lupgang of which I love and adore.

The Princess and Her Dragon: A reader x Malleus fic for Twisted Wonderland. Basically it's a romance story that's got a twist in it. The main protagonist is actually a reincarnated princess who breaks a powerful spell that has been placed on Malleus and his group. Lowkey incredibly proud of this one.

The Dragon's Son: Also another reader x Malleus story but with the reader having grown up and leaving Twisted Wonderland. The reader accidentally takes something more with her though and six years later, she returns to Twisted Wonderland with her beloved son Elliott. Pretty pleased with this one.

My EngIta Week submissions: I'd been asked to join a Hetalia rare pair week last year and had a blast writing for it! I'm honestly incredibly pleased with how my little stories turned out!

These ones are the ones that I'm most proud of and are the ones that I put a lot of effort into them. While I'm proud of all my stuff, it's these ones that I feel like are some of my best written stuff that I've ever published within my lifetime.