#also i'm fucking dying to infodump about this but I have just Not done enough research to publish anything on this

[maybeamiles]

I just remembered this book that I got from one of my relatives when I was a kid that's about a major incident in union organization in Washington. It's probably the only thing i've ever read and thought "I have to turn this into a movie" and I kind of want to look at that again.

Unfortunately right now the book is at my parent's house and might be out of print (and I wouldn't have the money to buy a copy anyways) so for now I just have to sit on my thoughts and look at other sources (of which there are not many available for free and online).

[shmowder]

That's good info to know about your requests! I'm happy that general rqs won't be a problem because that's all my brain wants to come up with 😅

Thank you for the Stardew compliment :] I'm just about done with Spring year 1 and I blew all my money on the backpack upgrades (got lucky and grew a giant cauliflower!), and I'm constantly low on energy and running out of time to do things. Somehow this is reminding me of Pathologic 2 now, lol. I know that's typical of the early game. Still, it's comforting to know that other than a cutscene or two, there's nothing really missable as long as you have the patience to wait for the seasons to roll around again. Btw. The secret to getting to the lower floors in the mines quickly and without combat is to craft a bunch of staircases ;)

Anyway! I took a scroll through your whole blog and I must say the Daniil & Artemy treating the reader's "hysteria" concept? Inspired. Chefs kiss ✨

Who are your favorite adult characters in P2? Mine are Aglaya, Yulia, and Victor. Not that I can explain why but Yulia and Victor were the ones I was running around town like crazy trying to make sure they didn't die (along with most of the kids). Tmi time, I'm not often interested in men but I LOVE that sad old man.

I like Artemy and his little circle of old friends, too. Feel free to infodump, or not, if you want to ^^

🐿️ anon

Between all the Pathologic characters, I feel like only a handful would thrive as Stardew Valley farmers.

Daniil would want to replace Harvey's position since day one and never grow a single crop in his life.

Clara would depend on lucky drops, trash can dives and blackmailing Mayor Lewis about the gold statue money embezzlement fiasco to earn a living wage only for her twin to put his purple shorts in the soup pot during luau

Artemy would thrive there, I feel it in my bones. He would build a pretty good self-watering potato farm with a cow penhouse or two. Sticky and Murky would enjoy the Valley too, especially with all the supernatural things hidden around they can find.

And oh stairs in the mines! That explains why I progressed at the pace of a slug each day. I just raw dogged it each time and got my ass beaten only to grumbly go fish instead to unwind.

The thing with Stardew Valley is that there is no race against time so much but the limited Stamina and all the possible ways to upgrade and improve little by little each day makes it a game where the antagonist is your own ego. Or at least in my case, because I refused to use sprinklers that weren't iridum since what was the point!! But also, I finished an entire year without getting much iridium, so I was pretty desperate and burnt out from can watering every day by the time I did unlock them. Or how the npcs friendship depelates each day and it felt like such a personal insult to me to not have everyone like me so much at all times that I chased them every single day to talk and avoid friendship depletion.

I made Stardew Valley my own living hell by my own hands thanks to the stubborn human ego. Water by can everyday, chase down and talk to 30+ people everyday, only have enough time to progress 4 levels down in the mine before dying on the said 4th then rage quitting the game and reinstalling league like a normal person. If I'm going to get fucked by a game I rather it be my own teammates bending me over.

ANYWAY.

No I'm not finished.

Do you think Victor would do good in Stardew Valley? Not as a farmer but like as an npc. Oh god, can you even imagine what the kains would do to that town, I almost feel bad... almost. They'd perform all kinds of experiments to test the limit of that reality. They'd bother the wizard to work for them and lock the immortal farmer in some basement to find out just how they achieved the immortality.

He'd probably easily get people to follow him and rope the young adults into some utopian cult like he does in pathologic.

Yulia might chill there, becomes Gunther's roommate, visit the beach occasionally, and befriend Elliott and Leah. Yeah, I see Yulia getting happier in that town. Except for the occasional fits of saying ominous fate predictions she made about the villagers' future, to their face.

Aglaya would guillotine Mayor Lewis the second she steps a foot off of that train and into the town. And don't we love her for that!! My wife <33333

Okay now I am finished!

Hmm... My favourite adults. They're practically the same as yours, Aglaya, Victor, and Yulia. Oh, I really like Isidor too despite all the uh... non-fun things he has done.

I loved Aglaya even before the whole romance thing with Artemy which took me by complete surprise because I never expected to find romance in Pathologic of all things! Sure I knew about Daniil and Eva but thought they were a one off special case where it's mostly implied than obviously stated?

Then comes Aglaya, swinging and throwing you off your rhythm. You meet her and think, "Oh god, not another crazy person who talks sophisticated p throw-up nonsense and pretends its high-brow philosophy."

*Cough* The kains!!! *cough*

Like I absolutely did not care for her before meeting her. I didn't know her, and the cutscenes in the theatre about her the night prior felt like they were tying too hard to make me afraid of her. And I think they could've worked if approached differently. Only after meeting her and being faced with her brash brutal dialogue that I fell in love.

The biggest threat she resembled was death, and as a player, you know you have death immunity because who else would play the game, huh? So you never feel the need to tiptoe around despite her holding the power to immediately order your hanging outside.

I knew I was never going to die, so I never was careful with Aglaya. Although seeing that one cutscene of people lining up against the wall the day she arrives did make me feel a bit uneasy, especially with both Daniil and Clara there too looking almost intimidated.

The build-up to her reveal is so amazing. They show you the unmoveable power pillars of this town absolutely losing their marbles at her arrival. The same people who tried to manipulate you blatantly or never bothered to give you the time of the day were terrified to their core.

I don't think any other character gets as much reveal build up and theatrics about her like Aglaya. No other character in pathologic could cause the same stirr, could make the Kains, Saburovs and Olgimsky running around like headless chickens.

In P2, how worried everyone was when lining up outside the church to take turns and await their judgement. How it's the only time you ever see the stamatin twins out of their usual spots, the so proclaimed absolute freedom enthusiasts actually walking by their own feet to the inquisitor and follow direct orders! IT'S A CIRCUS SHOW!

Or the fact she literally puts up a hanging station right in front of the crucible, the kains' resident! The one family so obsessed with immortality and preservation are faced with the grim reality of not only death but being hanged to death by her, being killed, and put to display for everyone to see. Knowing she has the power to order their execution at any time.

What a power move of her.

AND IN FRONT OF THE POLYHEDRON TOO! Nine total nooses awaiting them. It's a direct threat she places in front of them with a clear message, behave or else.

You witness usually collected and rational Kains, the powerful leaders of this town, terrified to their core that day.

Georgiy isn't in his workshop like usual, he is standing outside to look at the symbol of death in the face.

Much like dads stand in the streets with their hands crossed to watch the aftermath of a car crash, except he is looking at the future with the implications it could be his very own car that ends up there.

He doesn't even talk to you, he's just staring. Dread sinking into his stomach as he watches the people walking in nervously before exiting the cathedral with their mind broken or tears streaming down their face.

The inquisition is absolutely terrifying. Especially when you consider how Nina on her own made the whole town walk on eggshells, how Aglaya's her sister.

Talking about Nina, guess who's portrait Victor sits on the floor in front of after seeing the hearing ropes outside.

Well...not her. I thought this painting was of Nina Kaina but apparently it's Maria's concept art which is kinda sweet.

BABY BOY IS HUGGING HIS KNEES

You talk to him and the first thing he talks about is the church and why they built it. How it distributes times to the clocks throughout the town.

How Aglaya's presence there is clearly affecting time and making it go faster, and yet Victor doesn't dare say a thing.

God, I love Aglaya. No one else could compare the aura of absolute power she is dripping with, the heavy presence she instils into the church. The walk up to her standing in front of a throne in P1.

There is also another scene where the executioners literally bow down to her as she arrives into town

While in P2, that imagery is replaced by her standing behind the gaint swinging pendulum of the church clock. It almost looks like a saw threatening to cut your neck off as you cautiously walk under it to reach her.

She arrives at the prime of conflict and plague, immediately gets down to business and stays awake for three whole days just to absorb as much information as she possibly can. She forcefully moves the plot along, opens the factories and pulls all the short strings of lies to expose them.

Not to mention how utterly massive the church is, it has three floors you can climb up to and even save your game in. Yet not a single soul is in there except Aglaya who easily fills up this empty structure with her own presence.

You make it past the hanging saw and reach her, only for her back to be kept turned towards you. You get the feeling that you're intruding on someone busy, the same churning of stomach you feel when you're just a kid nervously knocking on the school principle office and sitffly standing to the side, waiting for her to finish the paperwork before giving you permission to talk.

It's nerve-wracking how calm she is. If you cross her as the player, she immediately calls you out and reminds you who she is. Just who do you think you're talking to with that tone?

She is truly a mother's doll. The discipline, the respect she demands, the way you find yourself answering to her without question or second thought. She gives and orders, and it's carried immediately, no buts, no arguing and no talking back.

In a way, she does bring justice to Farkhad without being aware of it. He's been killed long ago by the Stamatin twins, or at least that's major theory, and he's the one who made the church. How fitting it is for the person who wants to destroy the polyhedron as revenge for her sister to seek shelter in the same church of his making.

As a final note, the inquisition symbol "the steel heart" greatly looks like her.

This is Aglaya Lilich. This symbol is absolutely how the entire world views her. A heart of steel and a frost dagger of a stare. You look at this and immediately understand you are in trouble. You made a mistake, and you must get punished for your sins. For your betrayal.

The top part reminds me of steppe symbols and sigils, it almost looks like Samn the circle of life.

She is always depicted as above people, as your greatest nightmare and investable demise.

-

I planned on talking about Victor and Yulia too but Aglaya stole the show and honestly I can't blame her.

Since they are your favourite characters however, and mine lmao, I'm very confident that you already get the basics and understand their core concepts.

So instead, I'll talk about the small easy-to-miss details I've noticed about them!

Starting with Victor, he is actually a very loving parent. He admits to missing Caspar, he has many pictures of Maria hanged around his wing of the crucible both in P1 and P2.

Which is so endearing with how he wants to appear rational and nothing else 90% of the time. How his way of speech is almost mechanical, unlike other characters, it doesn't matter what you say to Victor Kain because he rarely reacts to your words. He is straightforward and is only interested in saying what's on his mind, not in what you have to say about it.

And yet, he openly admits how much he wants his son back, Caspar.

He is one of the people who ordered the tower to be built, this is his life purpose and what's his entire family has been working towards since the beginning.

Yet he can't help but resent it for stealing his son.

Victor still does everything in his power to protect the power, that monster keeping his kid estranged to him, to be a good brother and keep true to his words, to fullfill his promises to his family, to truly build a utopia and change the world.

And it's chipping away at his sanity.

Imagine how he feels seeing Maria grow and lose her sense of being as she transforms into a mistress. As she desperately tries to fill the empty vacuum of space Nina left behind.

How did the father feel watching his little daughter stand in front of a mirror, same one he hanged in her room, trying on her late mother's crown and watching it slip off no matter how desperately she attempts to keep her head held high... But it's just too heavy.

He wanted to tell Caspar to come home, he wants to tell Maria to live her age and not let this town consume her like it did to her mother. But his two brothers keep his hands tied, they told him not to interfer with the kids in the polyhedron, Maria barely listens to him or acknowledges him has a dad, a father yes but not a dad.

In another twist of fate, both him and Aglaya share that habit of telling people to stay quiet for 40 something seconds while they think. They probably both learned it from Nina in the past.

In P1, the crucible design had more space and rooms. It looked like actual people lived there. You can even find Khan's room next to Maria's, you see his untouched furniture and the toys on his shelf, you see the two pairs of wooden practice swords on his desk and wonder if his dad made them for him. A picture is painted before your eyes of a younger Victor teaching a 7 year old Caspar how to hold a sword, how to swing, and how to block.

Did he let his son win? Did he surrendered after they sparred just to see a smile on Khan's face?

In P2, the door to his son's room is blocked.

You don't get to see many traces of Maria's childhood in her room, both in P2 and P1. Like she grew up too fast, or as if she threw out all the evidences of her past to make way for her future, slithering like a snake and wrapping itself around her to suffocate her and call it love, to restraint her and paint it as absolute freedom, to isolate her until all she could hear is the whispering of her mother's corpse from the grave.

It's like he knows he doomed his two kids by bringing them into this world. That they could never be kids once they were born Kains.

That they might not even survive.

-

For Yulia, i didn't talk to her much at the start of the game because I was performing an exploit. The game only acknowledge the existence of an npc once you actively talk to them. If you don't, then they aren't considered a possibility yet and can't get infected.

You have two chances to talk to Yulia at the start for flavour text, once at the Olgimskys' balcony and another at the makeshift theatre hospital. Afterwards she forces you to talk to her by sending you a letter to come to the trammel.

Listen- It was one less person to cure/protect from infection and I did what I needed to do. You can do this with Khan too actually, but it does mean failing a side quest and subsequently getting an entire area infected.

It is funny it a way how if you just don't talk to people and do only your main quests, they never get infected.

Wait is the game saying that the player is the actual plague in this situation wait hold on w-

Anyway Yulia! Lesbian Icon. She has a heavy implied relationship with Eva in P1 when Clara is trying to take advantage of Eva to manipulate Yulia into... yk a little trip the underworld. Tho it's only evident in Clara's route? Take my words with a grain of salt, I'm not sure how accurate their relationship was implied in p1.

You don't get any of that in P2, sadly. Or maybe it's just the Haruspex's route? In P1, as Artemy, you literally never have a single reason to talk to her once, not a single quest require her.

The only time I talked to her was like on day 10 or 11 because I was around the area and curious since we haven't even met yet. It was a nice talk, she's very polite and interesting with her words. Ik people like to compare her to Daniil Dankovsky and his obnoxious speeches.

But I think Yulia is a better conversationist than him. She explains herself more than him and doesn't necessarily come of as condcending but only passionate, Daniil talks over you while Yulia talks to you. It feels like she is coming to the conclusion just as she is explaining it to you while Daniil is revising a rehearsed speech he undoubtedly practiced before.

The interesting detial I noticed about her is how she is humble despite meeting all the required qouta to be a utopian. She is a genius through and through, and her ideas about fate and time overlap with the kains. At times, she is willing to put herself in danger just to see an experiment done. even just out of curiosity.

And yet, she is not one of them.

Instead, she is placed within the redemption-seeking sinners and helpless saints. She is in the same shoes as Lara who wants to do good but feels utterly powerless, in the same situation as Rubin who was the best student there ever was and yet none of his effort was ever enough.

Yulia is clearly keeping a secret, some side we aren't shown ingame. An effort to put some worth on a life she deems wasted.

She is gentle with the Haruspex in P2.

Yulia clocks you, Artemy, as someone who thinks with their heart since the start. She admits you will be able to see and understand things most people can't because of that, things she herself can never comprehend.

It's not even a backhanded compliment. Both Yulia and Daniil think with their brain, yet when met by someone driven by heart and emotions like Artemy, Daniil refuses to acknowledge your methods and clings to rationality while Yulia understands how both methods are of importance and to not underestimate you.

By the end, she offers you to be her assistant. You. Someone who doesn't like big words and doesn't know a lick of Latin. She sees great potential in you and is impressed by how you saved the town.

-

lmao what was very long. It took a couple of days to write but I enjoy it and it was fun! I wanted to include more pictures but alas the pictures limit in a single post is cruel.

I hope you enjoyed reading it! I'm unsure of how much to explore when it comes to each character in these posts because what if I'm just retelling something you already know?

On the other side, what if I go too niche and the reader can't relate or understand what I'm saying? Honestly it's headache inducing. I haven't been feeling well lately, life and all.

But there is beauty in creation and in talking about details in other's creations! So many games and stories have such thoughtfull details and subtle notes put into them, I adore digging for symbolism wherever I can find it. I feel like a detective hehe.

I hope your day is going well <3 I was thinking lately about how much I like the emoji you chose for your anon. Mostly because I saw a truly mind-boggling anon emoji choice in another blog- So bad I almost thought they were trolling- but they weren't.

Meanwhile a squirrel is literally amazing! What a great choice! Now I just imagine a tiny squirrel coming in my inbox leaving letters and eating the peanuts I leave Aaaa my heart <3333

[afniel]

Nevi Infodumps Upon Request: MMX2

Because god damn let's just make this its own thing and stop doing it on some other poor bastard's post, what did they to do deserve me happening to them.

Also I have to make a correction! There is no Z-Saber in X1, I just remembered that goofy. Zero doesn't give you shit if you upgraded your arm parts, he just dies. It doesn't even exist until X2. I have no idea why I thought that considering I played it recently enough but despite appearances I'm not known for my great recall of chronological order shit.

THIS IS GONNA BE A LONG POST AND I HAVE REMEMBERED THAT "MANNERS" EXIST SINCE YESTERDAY SO. I am using a cut. And lowering my voice. This too is "manners."

@longshotlink I have done the thing! It does not stop from happening.

OKAY SO TO RECAP.

Mega Man X1: *slaps X* this bad boy can hold so much survivor's guilt and self-loathing.

There, that's it, that's the recap you get.

My second favorite game in the series is X2 and you're about to find out that I like them in the order they came out in, so this is going to look chronological. It is not! Not really. This is a coincidence.

Six months after X got PTSD real bad from everyone he knows dying/being killed by him (except technically Dr. Cain I GUESS, I forgot he existed for a moment there) he's still tracking down Sigma's followers and presumably shooting the hell out them. He goes to an abandoned reploid factory with the Maverick Hunters, where Green Biker Dude dies after a glorious ten seconds of doing nothing but popping a sick wheelie on a Ride Chaser and getting shot to fuck.

Rip to a real one, I guess. Pour one out for Green Biker Dude while we're here.

(Because we source our art here, this is by Springqueen on DeviantART.)

X tears through the factory and kills a huge-ass mechaniloid—wait, you say, the hell is a mechaniloid, we got reploids but that hasn't come up yet? Well, see, there's normal robots, and there's people robots, and mechaniloids are the normal robots who aren't really self-aware, and you literally cannot predict who the fuck is which:

This is a sentient being, with a rich inner life and emotions equivalent to a human's! (Only the C-15 model from X1, though, after that they're mechaniloids.)

This man is just a really fancy computer who can't actually feel anything!

I am not even joking. This is canon. Figure it out! I sure can't. It is a mystery. Nothing makes sense and everything is confusing and quite possibly bad.

There are three dudes ominously watching X and talking about some kind of nonsense bullshit crap, and these guys are Agile, who is tall, smirky, and pointy; Serges, who is short, Dr. Wily, and pointy; and Violen, who is huge, dumb as a sack of hammers, and pointy.

No really, they're all kinda pointy. For some reason they specifically have pointy feet. And they're talking about 'the control chip' and being all m~y~s~t~e~r~i~o~u~s but let's just get it out of the way. These mofos are reassembling Zero for nefarious reasons. Why? Well, you see, when you're Keiji Inafune and you just made a game, even though you teased a sequel in the post-credits, you totally did not think this through (because you have never thought anything all the way through in your life and you are not beginning now!) and now you're stuck, because you WANTED to make Zero the main character, got talked out of it, and then somehow ended up killing your intended main character. And everyone else. The only surviving named characters are X and Dr. Cain, and like...now what, right? Shit. Fuck. You fucked it up. You were supposed to leave some guys for the sequel. Well uhhhh they're all robots, just...reassemble someone real fast. Like Zero. You wanted him to be the cool one anyway, let's try that again but not wrong this time!

But never mind that! It's all fixable. Everything is fixable. Even Zero! Well, no, X isn't fixable, he's a goddamn mess, but details, man.

This gets a LITTLE fucky to summarize because there's some branching paths, so I'm gonna flip back to the actual game side for a second. X2 actually fucking slaps as a game. It's got an extra math coprocessor in the cartridge! Did you know that? The Cx4 chip showed up again in MMX3, and was the reason X2 suddenly had WAY more onscreen sprites, transparency effects, and even 3D wireframe enemies. This shit was amazing on the SNES.

Also, X2 is another case of "oh no, these Mavericks are ex-Hunters again," so like. ACAB. Not all of the Mavericks are, but still more than none, which you'd hope would be the number. They have not learned shit about shit for vetting members. The call is coming from inside the house, guys! Maybe Hunter HQ should think about the implications of the fact that—*I am shot in the head by Keiji Inafune, who has never once thought something all the way through in his life and is not beginning now, killing me instantly*

In X1 there were basically three kinds of defector:

I'm So Bored Please God Kill Me Now

I Just Love Hitting Things

and

Whatever You Say Chief!

Well, and Storm Eagle's unfortunate little thing of

I Got My Ass Beat To Hell And Back Until I Said Fine I'll Kill The Humans With You Just To Make It Stop And All I Got Was This Terminate On Sight Designation T-Shirt

X2 is a little more varied than that. You now have the new exciting backstory flavors of

I Love Money More Than My Life And This Guy Promised Me A Raise, Sooooo... (Bubble Crab)

The Bad Guys Are Somehow Less Ableist Than The Good Guys (Overdrive Ostrich, who USED TO be able to fly, lost the ability in an accident, and retired because the Hunters were kind of treating him like damaged goods and he was over it. Editor's note I do not blame this dude at all, what the fuck!)

BLOCK OUT THE SUN (Flame Stag)

I Love Trash (Morph Moth, who was not a Hunter)

Idk I Was Already Doing Crimes, Might As Well (Crystal Snail, also not a Hunter)

Sigma Is My Literal Dad (Wire Sponge, made in one of Sigma's reploid factories. He came out wrong even for a Maverick. Good job, Sigma. Great quality control.)

There's Still No Virus In The Continuity But I Sure Caught It Somehow Anyway?? Help Me (Magna Centipede, who used to be in Zero's unit, but got 'brainwashed' somehow.)

(This happens a lot. This will keep happening. Zero collects subordinates who are just WAITING for an excuse. Also this will make a whole lot more sense once they retcon in the Maverick Virus and then MORE sense once they retcon in that it is coming from Zero specifically but we aren't there yet so right now it's just weird and kind of unfortunate!)

And you still have at least one I Just Love Hitting Things (Wheel Gator).

Also why are so many of these guys invertebrates? This is like the invertebrate game. X1 has two, but X2 has five of these things. (X3 has three, X4 has two again, X5 has three again, X6 has three, X7 only has one, and you will not see another game with five again until X8, the last one. I don't know why I went to count that.)

After X whacks a few of the Maverick stage bosses, there's a little cutscene at Dr. Cain's lab. The three shadowy weirdos from the intro call Dr. Cain to say like, "Hey, X, we named ourselves the X-Hunters for reasons you'll never be able to guess, and also we have Zero's parts. Meet us at the wherever the hell on the map we visibly teleport to after this in fifteen minutes for an ass-kicking." They hang up, Dr. Cain is like, "Well, it's fine, we still have Zero's control chip here and they can't really resurrect him without it, plus this is obviously bait, so maybe don't do anything too hast—"

X declares he's got to get Zero's parts back at any cost and runs the fuck off, because he's fine, okay. He doesn't wanna talk about it.

This scene is way more interesting in Japanese, where Serges and only Serges slips a bit and calls him Rockman X, which is sus, because nobody really mentions Rockman in the games, except for some reason Dr. Cain in English who calls him Mega Man X. Dr. Cain has actually read Dr. Light's notes so he's got at least a historical reason to be doing this, but Serges wouldn't know that shit, right? It is definitely unrelated that the Japanese materials describe Serges as having comparable intellect to a certain unnamed mad scientist. It is also certainly coincidence that despite Zero being an absolutely undocumented black box of a Wily creation, Serges somehow knows how to upgrade him too.

Let's assume for the plot that X does go through and collect all of Zero's parts, which is his head, torso, and legs. Now correct me if I'm wrong but his head did not actually fall off in X1...but meh, details, right? Once you have all three, Dr. Cain says he needs a little more time to get Zero's control chip installed, so go deal with the other Mavericks until then. Then, once you do that, he tells you it's going to take even MORE time, but hey, the X-Hunters are hanging out at the North Pole, like some kind of shitty dollar store Santa Clauses who come down your chimney and murder you. So X fucks off to the North Pole to do some violence, and shoots the hell out all three of the X-Hunters, like you do. In Japanese, Serges is kind of pissed that "Light's memento robot" defeated him, which again...yeah, that seems normal, nothing to see here!

Once X murderhobos his way through the rematch fights, he gets a random zoom call from Sigma, who invites him to come to the central computer in fifteen minutes for an ass-kicking, and once there he gets a nasty surprise: his buddy Zero is there, chilling, and Sigma is like, "Lol he's so mad that you let him die. Look at how upset he's getting. Look at his fists. They're balled. He wants to beat you up so bad." Except, assuming you collected all of Zero's parts, this is a shitty dollar store Zero with a palette swap, and the real Zero is offended as shit and shows up and kills the fuck out of his copy, saving you a fight. Sigma is like, "WHY are you not on my side though man you should be. You should totally be on my side and fighting him instead, it's your destiny." Zero's like, "Maybe so, but I still don’t like you!" <- Unlike almost everything else I keep putting in quotation marks, that's a real quote. I'm not making that one up. It's even better in Japanese because it's SO DISMISSIVE the way he says it. It's literally, "It's because I don't like you," but you'd almost have to localize it to something like "It's because I don't like your face," to convey the don't-give-a-singular-fuck disdain. He's just like, fuck your stupid destiny thing, do I look like the kind of person who cares.

I feel like this game is just kind of less interesting at the end than X1. Sigma did actually run off to Magna Centipede's level for his final stage for some reason, which is unusual. A lot of the implied angst in the first game exists, and X basically ignoring Dr. Cain's attempt at warning him to be careful because OH MY GOD WHAT IF HE CAN FIX THIS ONE THING AND MAYBE AT LEAST ONE PERSON HE CARES ABOUT WILL BE OKAY is pretty good. And once you blow up Sigma, he does have a little foreshadowing about Zero being "the last of the doctor's creations," or MUCH more specifically in Japanese, being "the last of the Wi...num...ers..." aka the Wily Numbers, aka Dr. Wily's robots, which is like...where'd you hear that, hm? Were you talking to that shady Serges guy again who was also basically your lieutenant? Couldn't be he's someone from the past who would know all this shit.

But I'm not gonna touch the epilogue just yet because let's say X decided that actually he should focus on the mission at hand and ignore these guys clearly trying to goad him into doing something stupid. Good call, X! You have finally learned a little self-preservation. Except, this goes badly actaully, because the X-Hunters will break into Dr. Cain's lab, not butcher him for some reason even though that would have been the logical thing to do if they really wanted to fuck with X and hamper his efforts, and steal all of Zero's parts, including his control chip.

I have a little headcanon about the reason they didn't bother, but I'll save that for a second or three later. For now...

X fucks off to the North Pole as before, deals with the X-Hunters (who are now shitty dollar store Santa Clauses who come down your chimney and STEAL YOUR DEAD FRIEND'S LEGS??), meets Sigma at the central computer, and Zero is there, only that's the real Zero, and X has to fight him. Maybe for the first time, but not for the last time, because reasons! X wins, which apparently slaps some sense into Zero, who for some reason apologizes for causing so much trouble (probably having been resurrected, reprogrammed, and then kicked in the head by your bestie until you're unreprogrammed makes you stupid) and says he's going to go destroy the main computer.

Wait, what main computer, like do you mean this entire stage? When did we ever establish about there being a main computer that needed to be destroooooh fine whatever go destroy the main computer and X can just fall down this hole where Sigma is. X is like, "Take care of yourself, Zero. I don't have time to put you back together again," and once again that's a real quote and I'm not just being flippant. Was that an attempt at humor? In Japanese it's just, "Do you intend to die?" which is like. God damn, X. I know this is the point in the game in which Zero exploded himself last time, but he JUST got here, he's not going to Death Hug the computer too. But ya boy is evidently having a flashback.

From there things proceed as normal, X defeats Sigma, and this time,

Two of them.

Joined by his friend Zero, Mega Man X gazes out over the sea. Sigma has once again been destroyed, but X wonders if the fighting will truly end. Was Dr. Light’s dream of a world in which Reploids and humans lived together in peace merely a dream? The price of peace is often high, X thinks to himself. Who or what must be sacrificed for it to become a reality? And when the time comes, will he be able to do it? The future holds the answers or…

It's a lot less of a downer than X1 was. The music is tense and kinda gloomy, but it's not the endless despair party that X1's ending theme was. X is like, okay, maybe this will work out. Sigma's defeated again, this sucks and all, but he's clearly the bad guy in this situation so there's less of an internal conflict about Was This The Right Thing To Do. Obviously so! It's less, was this right, and more, can I do this? And Zero's back, so maybe even some of the mistakes are fixable. It's not going to be easy, sure, but it at least feels possible.

Or maybe it's hopeless after all. Will the fighting truly end?

Haha, no. But don't tell him that right now, I don't think he could handle it. Can you imagine. Let the poor dude rest for five minutes. Just let him have this one little victory. God damn.

Anyway, let's leave those guys on their cliff and go over here instead for

HEADCANON TIME oh boy let's do it!!

So, it is not at all a stretch to say that Serges is probably some kind of AI incarnation of Dr. Wily. The game is not explicit about this, no, but it's heavily implied in the Japanese version, and Keiji Inafune, who has never thought anything all the way through in his entire life and is not starting now, is on record as having left it intentionally vague so that you can draw your own conclusions. Weird thing to tease, if there weren't a little truth to it.

This takes some of the later games' plot existing to make sense, but I don't think the X-Hunters really exist to be subservient to Sigma and just carry out his funny little genocidal reploid rampage. It's established that Zero was created by Dr. Wily, and if there's one thing that you can count on with Dr. Wily, it's that he is the kind of guy who will create a whole guy whose personality is summed up by, "I exist to kill this other guy and then after that I have no idea." He definitely did this with Bass. He definitely did this with Zero. In fact he went so overboard with Zero's Kill A Guy programming that Zero wanted to kill EVERY guy upon activation, which Sigma had to beat out of him (X4), making him weirdly normal.

(In fact the original recipe Maverick Virus was just a day-one patch for Zero's omnicidal bullshit tendencies to make him fucking stop it, dude, you have things to be doing that aren't creating new Pollock works all over the buried lab every time like a rat or something wanders in. But then because Wily is kind of a shit programmer but a really good scavenger of other people's shit, the day-one patch went, fine, you suck, I'm doing a world tour and getting stronger and coming back and FIXING YOU. Maverick Virus out.)

Now if you were some kind of AI version of Dr. Wily watching this—your favorite and final murder machine that you made specifically to kill Dr. Light's little baby-boo-bop hugs and love machine—and he is NOT doing that, he is in fact BECOMING BESTIES FOR LIFE with his enemy, this is not cool! This is just more proof that you are a bad programmer. Or, your original meatsuit self was a bad programmer, and now YOU are a program made of and by a bad programmer, which is arguably WORSE. It's enough to give a guy a FUCKING COMPLEX. Which is also a common thing to happen to any given Wily creation.

So your goal, here, because you think you're Dr. Wily or close enough to count, is to manipulate the situation into getting Zero to remember that he's supposed to be biting X to death with his teeth, not whatever the fuck pattycake he's playing with him right now, what the FUCK. WHAT the FUCK. Ahem.

If you have the X-Hunters kill Dr. Cain, well, that's not going to incentivize this happening at all. X is going to be so mad he kills you, and that's not optimal for shit. So fuck that guy. We ignore him. Unused variable. Just get Zero's parts and scram, because the important thing is rebuilding Zero, not fingerpainting with the innards of some human. (Even if Violen would probably be into that, but he's an idiot whose text box dialogue even appears more slowly than anyone else's, you can't listen to him if you want to get ahead in life.)

Sigma is really secondary to this too. He's very conveniently placed, and kind of easy to manipulate: just tell him that you know all about Zero (which is true) and that he's supposed to be on Sigma's side (which is close enough to true that he won't question it) and you can make this happen (you think you can. IT SHOULD WORK. Dammit. How bad of a programmer was your mental predecessor, anyway?). So Sigma kindly sets up everything for you, and you do your thing.

And they fight! Finally. It is glorious. Of course you are dead by the time this happens, probably, but maybe you aren't, because you have probably vacated your trashed-ass body into some other convenient system. (You will definitely not show up in X6 as some guy named Isoc, who upon finishing his work, goes absolutely inert like his whole-ass self just left his body, which you have definitely not just done and will not do again.)

EXCEPT GOD DAMMIT ZERO X HIT YOU IN THE HEAD HARD ENOUGH YOU CALMED DOWN AGAIN. GOD. DAMMIT. WHY THIS. FUCK. Okay, yeah, you're leaving. See y'all in X6, this sucks.

Anyway the real takeaway here is that Dr. Wily was just such a big fan of percussive maintenance that Zero occasionally needs to get beaten in the head with a wrench for a bit and then he's great for a while. If he starts twitching, that just means it's Wrench Time.

Anyway, that's X2, my second most favorite one.

Wire Sponge is a luffa, by the way. Loofah. However it's spelled.

This thing. That's what he is.

And I will not stop calling centipedes 'hyakuleggers' now because Magne Hyakulegger is way funner than Magna Centipede as a name.

[thewinter22]

Yay! Okay so I haven't played it in a while, but have recently started playing again, and actually mostly play ascii simply because I am so overly used to the hotkeys that I can't go without them, and also my brain has an easier time processing ascii graphics than the actual graphical version. It has a beauty to it. A way to focus on important things more easily. Not saying I dislike the graphical version, I find it beautiful and it has a lot of effort, it just isn't for me.

Anyway, for an infodump, I could tell you about all the various stories about glitches like cats getting so drunk they die on the spot, or babies mindcontrolling their mothers to death, or things spawning in and immedistely dying due to missing a head, but there's enough explanations of that on the internet. I actually do love those stories, because they show how the game is really so deeply programmed. Like, all those glitches all occur because of certain game mechanics all working together in the INTENDED ways, but making an unintended outcome.

Like, I love how most things that happen aren't explicitly programmed, but instead happen because one thing leads to another. Like, cats still get drunk. Not because they are progranmed to drink, but because they are progeammed to lick themselves clean, and there happens to be alcohol spills in bars, and they tend to walk through that, which makea their paws soaked in it, so when they lick themselves clean, they get tipsy. WHICH MAKES SENSE! AND NONE OF THAT IS EXPLICITLY PROGRAMMED! GODDD I LOVE IT!

Ahem, anyway as I said that's sirta not what I wanna talk about that much, since it has been talked about at length by many others (yet I still rambled for half my post about it sry). So I'm gonna talk about some stories that happened to me specifically.

I have AuDHD, and I have a hard timefocussing on one thing for a long time, so I tend to play a fortress for several in game years, but eventuall, forget about them, even though I really do want to, and intend to, play them for longer, and actual get some sorta conclusion. I still have had plenty of intersting stories however!

One I especially love is that of a military commander. Early on, he lost his wife, who had been hospitalized due to a wound from falling wood logs, and rventually teagically dehydrated because we had no water source. I swear I laid her to rest but apparently I actually didn't, so her ghost would come to haunt him, further bringing down his mood.

The first breaking point was reached soon after this however... As the first threat to the fortress had arrived - a were lizard. Confidently, I sent out my military. They were well trained, after all.

I haven't given a lot of advice in gameplay stuff in this post, but one thing you ahould take away from this... Don't send your military out to fight if for years, they have done nothing but train deep within your fortress. There is a thing called cave sickness. If your dwarves stay inaide for a long time, then the first time they come in contacr with sunlight again, they will feel sick. The longer they have been isolated, the worse it is.

So my military went out, and started vomiting, falling over, and got destroyed by the werelizard. Also it was raining. The commander survived however, and worst if all, the ghost of his fucking wife was there too. So it was overall not a good day for him. Losing half his squad, being in the rain, vomiting and almost dying himself.

I had to spend some time isolating rhem all, putting them in rooms to test if they were werelizards now too. One of them was, and I put them below, deep down. By this point, the commander had become known for throwing many many tantrums, raging and starting fights. I saw him say "I'm at my limit", and so I drcidrd to take away his gear. Back to being a civilian. Funnily enough, taking someone out of the military also worsens their moods. So this was the final breaking point. Wearing his clothes, no weapon and only a rock crown as armor, he went about his day, lime a ti king time bomb.

It did not take long for him to go berserk, which happened in the dormrooms... The plave where all the kids lived. This guy was about to do an Anakin and kill the younglings. But there were many kids. And they all fought back. And one heroic dwarf child grabbed his crown, and as soon as that was goney they all started bashing his brains in.

So yeah. I dunno how to conclude this story other than it being fucking awesome. And it all happened in this funny ascii game.

Another fun occurance is when the villains update had just released. I would get lots of obvious spies in my fortress. One of them a mummy lord. Mummies actually function the same way as necromancers, only that in worldgen, they don't do much, while necromancers actively do evil deeds. But when on the field they will raise the dead, and stuff like that.

Basically, I was in the middle of a siege one time, where a necromancer had sent various zombies and intelligent undead to me. Zombies usually being mindless and just going to any life to kill it, and intelligent undesd more... Intelligent, sometimes with magical abilities (I am so excited for the magic update)

Anyway, the mummy lord who had been a long time pstron at my tavern came along, and he casually punched his way through, splattering the undrad all over the field, basically feeling like he wabted a drink so bad and he was NOT gonna wait in line. So he single handedly saved me from the siege just to get his drink. And even revived some of the undead he killed AGAIN, which now seemed to have broken AI, because now they just *stood* there, and literally would not move for anything.

I have plenty more stories, and stuff I found in legends mode too! If that was not the kinda infodump you wanted, I am gonna do an info dump about game mechanics, so just check the other notes, I should have time to write it today.

Anyone want questions/wanna just be infodumped on about dwarf firtress, Cataclysm dark days ahead, space station 13 or lethal company?

[mistwraiths]

3.5 stars

The Golden Enclaves was a doozy in both the good and the bad way. It was a hell of a trilogy and I really liked the concept of magic and how it works, and the mals that constantly plague them all. Overall, I'm happy with how it ended but I definitely have some complaints too.

I love that this book picks up right where that cliffhanger ended. Straight off from the gate, El's emotions and actions are enough to bring me to tears because the desperation is there. She's trying EVERYTHING to save Orion, to bring him back, and it fails. This first part is so wonderfully written. It's a shame that after that, all the emotional parts really don't hit very well. We get told how El feels throughout the book but there's no depth or rawness to it that didn't hit me. There was several good quotes that did feel very emotional. But I do feel like this anger and grief gets labeled but we don't really get to dive into it.

The friendships that El made and also meeting her mother finally was something I was really looking forward to. I understand why she didn't reach out to anyone in the beginning. That grieving part was done well. But, throughout the book, El barely has any conversations with her friends or moments with her friends? Yes, they were country hopping around, but it just was incredibly disappointing. We don't get much with her mom. Aad, Sarah, and Liu are fairly absent, Liu understandably but still, and we spent those two books of El really gaining them to just have them barely there.

I am here for sapphic representation, I understand why it happened, but I didn't really like how it was handled and done. I mean, this might be a personal thing but if someone I LOVED ended up dying, I can't see myself fucking someone else to feel good a week later? I can wrap my head around it, but I don't understand it emotionally and maybe that's because I'm a cold person lol. Also, we're told Liesel never does anything without a calculated plan and we already know that Liesel wants El on her side to join her thirty year plan. Liesel says she didn't do it for anything like that but El throws the thought out there and it just doesn't leave a good taste in her mouth. Also, I kind of barely remember Liesel really from the books? Not like Sarah and Aad and Liu, so it is felt jarring to have her be so important suddenly. If it was one time, I could have made my peace with it. But it happens a second time, literally two chapters after having sex with Orion. There's NO emotional reason for this. El states that while she thought about seeing other people she only wants to SEE HIM. And still does this after. I know officially they aren't together, but it feels like cheating. It just does.

I figured Orion was alive and I was so glad he was! The whole reveal about him was shocking. I actually didn't mind his acting differently because that made sense, he wasn't entirely himself now. Again, these emotional hits didn't hit hard enough at all. Orion's mom was a bit of a surprise but altogether a weak villain? We're told she's super dangerous but other than what she did to Orion, it never seemed like she did that much. She's the villain of good intentions I guess but also super evil but you can't really buy any of that? She's just in the background noise until relevant.

I did really enjoy how the prophecy worked out, how the Sutras were essential, how the Enclaves were created and how easy it was to accept the horrid cost, and just the balance of El and Orion. I really enjoyed the whole of it. Mawmouths and breaking the Enclaves, etc. El is a great character but she's also notoriously exhausting in her long winded info-dumps that often feel more confusing than if you were to just TELL us. I can't tell you much about the belief, mana, malia, pocket dimensions, reality, etc that this book is about. I found myself zoning out a few times in the middle of infodumps.

The ending was a big dump of information as well but the final part was really good. I love that El helped killed him and saved him, and brought back the good that Scholomance was supposed to be. And that the future she was desperately trying to avoid isn't as terrible as she thought. It was done really nicely and I am happy that both are okay and alive and in love with each other by the end.