#and makes good use of his og skills (magic res)

[musubiki]

So now that Lime's on the m34th, will cat ears be a separate character? Possibly a love rival for Lime 👀

honestly im not sure what will become of cat-ears!! cat-ears as a concept as well as the underground ring were both created as catalysts for giving lime a decent skill-set upgrade thats proportional to his role in the story, and now that that is effectively replaced by the m34th i will most likely scrap both those ideas altogether!!

SIDE NOTE no one is a love rival for lime 😤 mochi has two hands and they are both for holding limes face..,,,, other men are there just so we can see lime get jealous and face his feelings faster LOL

[the-lightning-strikes-again]

Posting this for @pilotkinkade​ in response to their recent post made here, regarding concerns about VLD and how it includes white savior complex or potentially smears Allura’s character with that complex. I’m not reblogging directly because this is a long response lol. Thank you pilotkinkade for chatting earlier; I hope you find this post interesting at least and would be curious of your thoughts in return!

---

I do agree with your general sentiments, that VLD takes on a disquieting savior complex throughout a good portion of the show, even more so than in previous Voltron iterations. For me, it feels most apparent in the way that Voltron as an all-powerful machine in VLD is piloted by its second generation.

To compare: In the original OG alliance (Alfor, Zarkon, Trigel, Gyrgan, and Blaytz), multiple major races were represented, functioning as one to save their own collective galaxy from threats. So even among the OG paladins, there were checks and balances (maybe Zarkon had the strongest military skills personally, but Alfor had the alchemy, etc.), with mass racial diversity. This seemed like a pretty innovative and cool addition to the Voltron franchise. The s3 finale also clarifies that, unlike VLD’s second-generation, all of these paladins were leaders of their people. This meant they had political and legal authority/experience that an average warrior or citizen wouldn’t.

By removing that whole structure and retrofitting Voltron with (mostly) a group of unprepared teenagers from a single planet entirely uninvolved in the universal conflict, it created a lot of strange hierarchies...

We see much of the known universe raise up people who had zero prior experience with war, and little to no military or diplomatic training, as well as very little awareness of the traumas or people groups involved in this war. (Shiro is possibly the exception here.) But suddenly, all of these paladins also had unfettered, largely unquestioned access to ultimate power to carry out whatever vision they felt was right in the moment. Because simply “might is right,” we see even highly experienced commanders like Kolivan become castrated in authority compared to Team Voltron. Various alien groups express upset or side-eye Team Voltron’s well-meaning actions but obvious insensitivity to/ignorance of their problems or fears. Even at the paladin-level, a princess trained to fight and lead is subordinated to a boy with zero leadership training whatsoever (which is very different from previous iterations where Keith was actually very competent, more experienced, and wanted to be a leader).

And when Voltron plays the unchecked judge, jury, and executioner across the entire universe, the new paladins as a whole also do not have the political or legal authority the OG pallies did in the boundaries of their own galaxy. The second-gen paladins are not authorities of their people or representative of the people groups affected in the war they’re now leading. The OG pallies built the actual legend of Voltron in less than 28 decaphoebs, clearly going beyond their 5 nations to help others suffering from natural disasters or unknown needs, which might raise some eyebrows perhaps because we don’t know what all that entailed. But while we see that the Voltron machine eventually got celebrated, the OG pallies are never shown personally soaking in some kind of savior celebration…

(Photo ID: Alfor says, “Why I joined up this band of scoundrels, I’ll never know.” Trigel responds, “Because we’re the only band of scoundrels that would have you.” Third screenshot is of the paladins celebrating their alliance win by themselves.)

…compared to second-gen paladins (or some anyway) who pretty clearly soak in the love and prestige they’ve received based off the historical and legendary precedence of the OG alliance’s work:

(Photo IDs: Lance taking selfies with aliens excited to be around paladins. A second screenshot of Lance daydreaming about being a universal savior, stomping on Zarkon, planting a flag to mark ownership, and having Allura stare up at him in worship.)

In fact, a lot of the pro-Voltron war propaganda relies heavily more on recreating the legend already built for them, than on the actual competency or experience of the current paladins:

(Photo ID: Pidge complains about the war propaganda scripts, “This isn’t even factually accurate.” Coran replies, “Well, this is the Legend of Voltron, not the documentary of Voltron.”)

On that note, we even see the scripts reverse who is actually the most competent or capable of performing.

(Photo ID: Coran says, “Ladies and gentle-aliens, bear witness as the Paladins of Voltron attack Zarkon’s base to save the helpless Princess Allura!”)

Coran’s script, however well-meant, pretty massively infantilizes Allura as someone who needs to be saved by an external force, rather than mentioning her as someone who is an active and critical ally of the Voltron paladins in this war.

Unlike Coran’s script, Princess Allura isn’t helpless. In terms of the second-generation paladins, she’s has the most war-time experience, and is also the one that the paladins lean on constantly to create a meaningful connection with other people groups who are otherwise hesitant about Voltron.

(Photo ID: Allura speaks to the Balmeran people, “Balmerans, this is Princess Allura. You don’t know me, but I am here to help. I know what it’s like to watch your home planet die.”)

Allura is the successor to the Altean monarchy and a direct victim of the OG galaxy wars. So unlike other second-gen paladins, she has some semblance of legal/political authority that she was actively trained for, as well as personal skin in the game. She is ultimately the only paladin who has experienced a mass omnicide of her home and people, similar to other victims of the Galra regime. She also still accepts the authority of her father, whose AI tells her in season 1 to be prepared to sacrifice everything to undo his mistakes.

We see Allura from that point onward functioning under that directive from her father and king—to sacrifice everything she has to end Zarkon’s regime. One could potentially make the argument that, within this structure, Allura might suffer from a certain subset of “white knight syndrome,” in which one feels they’re worthless if they’re not sacrificing for others. If I have my facts right, it’s a different psychological state from white savior complex (in which I define white savior complex as “when someone outside the issue at hand barges in to make a change that may or may not benefit the recipient, simply to make themselves feel better or appear useful, without regard to the recipient’s wishes or real needs”). But I feel even the comparison of “white knight syndrome” gets dicey. Because Allura is shown as acting happy without necessarily sacrificing things (in fact, she acts progressively depressed s7-s8, the more she has to give up intrinsic things about herself or her identity). But when Allura chooses to assist or sacrifice, the sacrifice she makes has a very relevant and functional impact for the people she helps.

In season 1, she chooses to sacrifice herself to save Shiro. Shiro was, at that time, the Black Paladin and leader of Voltron, so Allura saw herself as functionally the less important of the two to save since she did not pilot the universe’s only weapon against Zarkon.

With the Balmera, she similarly chooses to act because the Balmerans themselves acknowledge they are entirely out of options, and also because the Balmerans (and the Balmera itself) accept her help she offers. At this point in time, she has already established a deep personal connection with them by virtue of their shared trauma of losing their home planets.

(Photo IDs: Shay says, “We’re lost! All are trapped with no chance for escape!” Allura says, “We can’t give up.” Shay responds, “But what can be done?” The group realizes the Balmera is regenerating beneath the ship, and Shay wonders why. Allura says, “The Castle!”)

Here, Allura assumes that the Castle—which is powered by a Balmeran crystal itself—could be regenerating the Balmera. But a Balmeran elder corrects her:

(Photo ID: A Balmeran elder says, “Not just the Castle, but you, as well.”)

So Allura did not even recognize at first that she was in any way a part of the solution to the Balmera regenerating.

Regarding the Balmera act itself, I’m not sure it satisfies the conditions for a white savior complex? I’m curious about your thoughts here, because I guess I saw it happening differently, from a witchcraft perspective...

We know from both Coran and Shay that originally, Alteans were one of the historical races who sacrificed some of their own energy to replenish the Balmera when seeking a crystal:

(Photo ID: Coran saying, “In the days of old, when Alteans were given the gift of crystals from a Balmera, we would repay its sacrifice by performing a ceremony. A sacred Altean would re-infuse the Balmera with quintessence. In this way, we had a symbiotic relationship.”)

We see that Balmerans were a voluntary part of this energy exchange by virtue of their unique connective powers (which is likely why we see them kneeling and activating said powers during these ceremonies).

Shay herself seems to indicate she is highly aware of these old ceremonies:

(Photo ID: Rax says, “Everyone comes to Balmera and takes, but gives nothing in return!” Shay says, “In the past, those who took the Balmera’s crystals would replenish her with energy. It was an equal exchange.”)

Shay agrees that the ceremony itself involves a sacred exchange of life force.

So I would argue that in this case, the Balmerans are not kneeling to Allura specifically or worshiping someone—it seems to be just the imagery associated with magical spells/magical transfers (where one object in the middle is the main conduit/focal point, and the other objects surrounding help to create and sustain the spell/protective barrier, etc).

One of the basic practices in real-world witchcraft is casting a magic/ritual circle. The circle creates a space where the spell, ritual, or form of protection can be performed. Forgive the stock image, but here’s just a super basic example:

(Photo ID: A magic circle in the form of a pentagram, with a candle in the middle, compared to a screenshot of 5 Balmerans surrounding Allura in the form of a pentacle, creating a sacred space with Allura glowing in the center.)

The five points in particular mimic standard pentacle-based ritual circles designed to create a sacred space of some kind. We do see various configurations of witchcraft imagery used in other instances throughout the show, such as when the druids have to help Haggar sustain her spells:

(Photo ID: Haggar centered in a magic circle, surrounded by druids helping her complete the ritual. Haggar kneels against the glowing symbols to complete the ritual.)

I think, similar to the druids that Haggar relied upon to help her complete a spell, it can be argued that the Balmerans were an active part of the regeneration spell with Allura. We see across the entire Balmera that they magically connect to help sustain the energy transfer, because it’s a planet-wide, massive undertaking:

(Photo ID: Balmerans activating their connection to the Balmera in the middle of the sacred ceremony to regenerate the Balmera.)

To me, it felt like the Balmerans were necessary to complete this ceremony--without their agreement to this energy exchange, and without them connecting to the Balmera to assist the transfer, Allura might not have been able to connect her life force and transfer power to the whole planet.

And to complete the ceremony, Allura herself kneels as well, just as Haggar did and just as the Balmerans around her do, in connection with the Balmera:

(Photo ID: Allura kneeling alongside Balmerans to complete the ritual.)

(Which means she’s technically kneeling to at least three other Balmerans in front of her.)

So I think the kneeling imagery would not correlate to some white savior complex event as suggested.

One other thought I had is that I feel help from a “white savior” is often haphazard and pushed onto recipients regardless of their thoughts or real needs. In comparison, we know that the Balmerans were willing to try this spell with Allura and accepted her idea of attempting the ancient ceremony. The only person who expressed hesitancy is Coran, who warns Allura that this attempt could kill her.

(Photo ID: Coran warns Allura, “To heal an entire planet, it could take more energy than you possess.”)

I do think it could again be argued that Allura seriously undermines her own value and worth in an attempt to help everyone, no matter the cost, which potentially gets more into white knight syndrome born out of trauma than white savior complex born out of privilege. She snaps back at Coran for being concerned about her well-being, and then she proceeds to enact the ceremony, not knowing for sure whether she’d live or die. But Allura also knows that her life force is uniquely tied to Voltron and that she is the only one with this kind of connection to the Castle ship’s battle-class Balmera crystal—all of this makes her a very powerful capacitor in a lot of ways. Which is why she looks like this after the ceremony:

(Photo ID: Allura having collapsed in Shay’s arms after regenerating the Balmera, but her physical features are not otherwise affected.)

And not like this:

(Photo ID: A screenshot of an Altean named Petrulius from season 6, whose features are distorted after having had the life/quintessence sucked out of him.)

So to me, it seemed that Allura was enacting an ages-old, magical ceremony approved by and wanted by the Balmerans—simply on a scale that no one had ever before attempted. And it’s likely that no one else would or could attempt it, because Allura is the single character in the entire universe whose personal life force is tied to Voltron’s regenerative energy (by virtue of Alfor’s alchemy on her as mentioned in episode 1). It’s an even deeper tie to the whole machine than the transient bond between paladin and lion. No other Balmeran or Galran or Altean had that kind of tie in their life force. Likely, even Alfor would have died if he’d attempted this act himself without being connected to an infinite power source.

And after Allura saves the Balmera with assistance from Balmerans, we also do not see her like this with the Balmeran people:

(Photo ID: Lance soaking up a savior fantasy as previously mentioned in this meta.)

Instead, post-Balmera resurrection, we see it’s actually not even the Balmerans themselves who thank Allura. The Balmerans simply convey the will of the Balmera, which Allura cannot hear:

(Photo ID: A Balmeran says to Allura, “Yes. The Balmera lives. It thanks you.”)

So backing up for a second, I do think there are much larger issues happening in the narrative with Voltron itself, with the unequal power dynamics of having young, inexperienced people from a single planet make and enact all the big universal decisions. But in the instance with the Balmera, it seemed like Allura was openly welcomed to help save the planet, using magical ceremonies as approved by the Balmerans themselves for millennia, and that the Balmerans were not passive in those ceremonies but a necessary part of their success.  

In general, Allura doesn’t seem to embody the “white savior complex” vibe at all to me, unlike some others in the show. Even in season 8, when Allura planned to make The Really Big Sacrifice, she asked her team to keep her actions a secret. She literally didn’t care for any respect or acknowledgment or prestige in exchange for sacrificing her life. She was doing what needed to be done because she was, once again, one of the few who could even perform at that level:

(Photo ID: Shiro says to Allura, “Most of them won’t know the sacrifice you made so they could live.” Allura replies, “And they’ll never need to.”)

(As an aside, I would argue that it was entirely unnecessary that the narrative would demand Allura sacrifice herself at all when she was literally standing in the universe’s seat of power alongside other powerful beings like her own father or the billions of other magic-wielding dead people, because apparently the lines between life and death blur in that space.)

(I also think there are some questionable “master race” vibes in the VLD universe in general, given that it forcefully pushes, even against the wishes of Alteans themselves, that Alteans are the only ones who can wield the big power to do big things. It’s clear that other groups and beings can wield magical abilities, but the larger narrative very oddly pins the “purest quintessence/bluest blood” back on Alteans time and time again in later seasons, leaving Allura in basically a no-win, no-help-available situation until other Alteans come along.) 

So yeah, I hope something in this meta might help settle some concerns about Allura as a representation of white savior complex? Or at least that this would open conversation for further discussion about what could be done in future iterations to avoid that messaging. Because yeah, I agree with you that the unquestioned savior complexes in this show are a topic that can and should be discussed! And also that, despite early world-building to suggest otherwise, the narrative especially in s6-s8 pushes that Alteans have a “purer/more alive” life force compared to any other race or form. Which is just…hm. Like, the master race vibes of all that are weird and definitely not even inherent to the Voltron franchise. (In previous iterations, humans, Galrans/Drule, and Alteans could all perform incredible levels of magic. For example, in Dynamite Voltron, Keith, Lotor, and Lotor’s siblings had all been taught magic.)

There’s definitely some weird images and unnatural power dynamics in VLD at times. It seems like more often than not, the narrative does strive to make Allura sacrificing something the only viable resort for anyone ever. In those circumstances, I’m just not convinced that she herself functions as an embodiment of white savior complex, by virtue of her behavior in those instances. But it’s definitely weird that the narrative places so much weight on her when the larger Team Voltron narrative is supposed to be about found family and strength in unity.

(If you read this far, thank you! Sorry I’m not succinct.) 

[grailfinders]

Fate and Phantasms #98: Cu Chulainn (Alter)

Today on Fate and Phantasms we’re making Chaldea’s favorite teratophilia target Cu Chulainn Alter! All the Cu Chulainn goodness you’ve come to expect, wrapped up in a crunchy outer shell of sea monster bones.

Check out Cu’s build breakdown below the cut, or his character sheet over here!

Next up: God save us from the queen!

Race and Background

The OG Cus are all some variation of Aasimar thanks to their father, but you’re a monster of a man with a bunch of seafood inside of you, and that’s a Simic Hybrid. They get +2 Constitution and +1 in another ability. We’re choosing Strength here, because spoilers, you’ve got a lot of that. You also get 60′ of Darkvision and Animal Enhancements, extra features we’ll talk about more in level 1 and 5. Finally, we’re going with the same variant noble background we gave Carmilla and Vlad. You’re a king, but you’re definitely not nice about it. That gives you History and Intimidation proficiencies.

Ability Scores

Make your Strength as high as possible. You are berserker, you hit hard. Second is Constitution. You are berserker, you get hit hard. After that is Dexterity. Everything else is dulled by your madness enhancement, but you’re also lugging around a lot of extra weight now that you have a tail. After that is Wisdom, you’re sort of an animal now, and they’re wise for some reason. Your Intelligence is pretty low, but you leave the thinking to your master anyway. Finally, dump Charisma. You’re scary, but you really don’t do much else.

Class Levels

1. Barbarian 1: Barbarians are big and beefy, you’re big and beefy, it just works out. At first level you get proficiency with Strength and Constitution saves, as well as Athletics and Survival. You don’t really run a “country” so much as a bunch of very angry men, so you have to be good at fighting to stay on top.

You can also Rage for up to a minute, adding extra damage to your strength based attacks, gaining advantage on strength checks and saves, and resisting physical damage types. You also gain an Underwater Adaptation, allowing you to breathe in water and you gain a swim speed equal to your walking speed. You also have Unarmored Defense, giving you an AC based on your dexterity and constitution. Turns out all that carapace is good for something, despite the fact that it doesn’t actually cover anything important.

2. Barbarian 2: Second level barbarians can make Reckless Attacks, gaining advantage on all their attacks for a turn in exchange for enemies having advantage against them for a round. You also get a Danger Sense, giving you advantage on dexterity saves from effects you can see.

3. Barbarian 3: You all knew this was coming, you’re a Beast barbarian, meaning that when you rage you can pick from one of three natural weapons that spontaneously grow on your body. Your Bite heals you once per turn if you’re bloodied, your Claws deal an extra attack each action, and your Tail as 10′ of reach and you can use your reaction to add more AC against your attackers. It’s a shame you can’t have all of them at once, but you’ll be able to switch between them pretty easily by the endgame.

You also get some more Primal Knowledge, giving you another skill proficiency from the barbarian list. Might as well grab Perception, there’s no reason to pass up on free stuff.

4. Barbarian 4: Put your first Ability Score Improvement into Strength. You stab people, and strength will help with that.

5. Barbarian 5: You now have an Extra Attack each action, as well as Fast Movement and a Carapace giving you 10 extra feet of speed and an extra point of AC as long as you’re not wearing heavy armor. Having Curruid shoved into your body came with its share of problems, but at least you don’t have to worry about buying platemail any more.

6. Barbarian 6: Sixth level beastbarians have a Bestial Soul, giving you another Pick One From Three effect that you can swap out on short rests. You either gain a swimming speed and the ability to breathe underwater (which is already covered by your race features, but you do you), gain a climbing speed that doesn’t use ability checks regardless of terrain, or you can add an athletics check to a jump once per turn. Honestly your hops are going to be pretty silly by the end of this build anyway, but either way you have some mobility. Also, your beast weapons are magical for overcoming damage resistances.

7. Barbarian 7: Your Feral Instinct gives you advantage on initiative rolls, and you can’t be surprised if you rage on your first turn. You can also make an Instinctive Pounce when you rage, moving half your speed.

8. Barbarian 8: Use your next ASI to become a Piercer, gaining an extra point in Dexterity to improve your AC. You can also re-roll one die of piercing damage per turn, and when you deal critical damage with a piercing weapon, you add an extra die to the damage. Yeah, you’ll get brutal crits eventually, but this is a brutal critical now!

9. Barbarian 9: Oh hey it’s Brutal Critical. 

10. Barbarian 10: Your Infectious Fury seeps into your natural weapons. You can force a creature hit by them to make a Wisdom Save (of DC 8 plus your proficiency plus your constitution modifier) or they’re either forced to attack another creature or take psychic damage. You can use this a number of times per long rest equal to your proficiency bonus.

You also get a second round of Primal Knowledge for some Nature skills. A good king is as well rounded as he is terrifying.

11. Barbarian 11: Your Relentless Rage keeps you fighting even after hitting 0 HP. When you would drop to 0, you can make a DC 10 constitution save to activate your Guts skill, stopping you at 1 HP instead. Each time you use this feature, the DC increases by 5, resetting on a short rest. Some people die when they’re killed. You’re not some people.

12. Barbarian 12: Use this ASI to bump up your Constitution for more health, a tougher shell, and more Furies.

13. Barbarian 13: Another Brutal Critical means that you now add 2 extra dice to your critical hits, or three if you’re using your spear, bite, or tail attacks. Your spear makes more spears in people’s bodies. That’s going to cause a lot of damage.

14. Barbarian 14: Your final beast feature lets you Call the Hunt, giving a couple of creatures near you the option to deal extra damage with their attacks once per turn. For each creature that joins you, you gain 5 temporary HP as well. You can use this feature a number of times per long rest equal to your proficiency bonus. A good king leads by example, and your example is “Rip and Tear”.

15. Barbarian 15: At 15th level you have a Persistent Rage, meaning your rage doesn’t end early if you fail to attack a creature or take damage on your turn. Despite your enhancement, you’ve got a good focus. When it comes to tearing things apart, at least.

16. Barbarian 16: If you’re using the standard array, this will be the ASI where you max out your Strength for the most damage possible. It’s almost like your entire purpose for existing is to be a warrior or something.

17. Barbarian 17: One more Brutal Critical! Three extra dice on regular criticals, four on piercing crits! 6d8 is pretty chunky for something that isn’t coming from a spell slot.

18. Barbarian 18: Your Indomitable Might means that the minimum total you can ever have for a strength check is your strength score. Since you have a maxed out strength, you’re pretty much guaranteed to pass anything that isn’t blatantly impossible. This also syncs up well with the jumping option in your Bestial Soul-now you always add at least 20 feet to any jump made while that’s active.

19. Barbarian 19: Use your last ASI to maximize your Constitution to be the most difficult to kill Godzilla expy you’ve ever seen. This also improves your Infectious Fury and Call the Hunt.

20. Bard 1: Just kidding, of course it’s the capstone of barbarian. Twentieth level barbarians become a Primal Champion, giving you infinite rages and a +4 to Strength and Constitution, raising your maximums as well to fit them. You’re a simple man, but you do what you do very well.

Pros:

You can deal a lot of damage with massive critical hits and an oversized strength score. Just point yourself at the enemy and watch them turn into red mist.

You have an AC of 20, rage damage resistances, the ability to add even more AC if you’re somehow hit, advantage on dexterity saves, and beyond all that you have almost 300 HP. You’re really, really hard to kill, is the point I’m getting at here. Beyond all that, you can even heal yourself by eating whatever it is you’re fighting.

You’re weirdly mobile given your bulk. With your jumping soul active, you have a 30′ vertical leap, and are guaranteed to clear a 45′ gap in a single long jump. Alternatively, you can swim for ages without issue, or climb up walls if they think they can escape you just by being on the fifth floor of a building.

Cons:

Despite your mobility options, your range is still limited by how far you can throw a spear. This probably won’t be an issue against anything but flying creatures, but it’s still something we have to cover.

To make up for your excellence in combat, you’re pretty bad at almost everything else. Outside of maybe terrifying people you’ll have a tough time in social encounters, and Medb help you if you have to think through something.

On a related note, your soft saves are pretty bad too. Without ways to protect yourself from charms and banishments you (or more likely, your party) could have a rough time.

[aerithagainstabusers]

So I saw Greg’s review of the Final Fantasy 7 Remake and it was so dumb I had to pick it apart so here we go. Spoilers for the remake below

This starts off bad. Immediately Greg is whining that the game isn’t what he wants. He complains about knowing the characters too well which is an absolutely insane thing to complain about. The deaths of the AVALANCHE don’t mean much in the original. You meet them a few times then they die. You have no connection to them

By getting to know them more - like Wedges love for the Sector Seven cats and how Jessie was an actress before her dad became gravely Ill after working for Shinra, they become more human. You can relate to them more and there’s more investment there. So when the fall of that plate comes? Losing them is more impactful than in the original

The battle system can be set to the same as the original in classic mode except you can’t physically attack (that is automatically done for you) so Greg can’t really complain about that. Sounds like he’s mad he died at bosses he didn’t die to in the original

His complaint about Sephiroth is weird. He’s the main bad guy. He needs to show up. With Sephiroth in the OG, you only hear about him a few times while in Midgar, where the remake is set. They need to bring him In much earlier and show Cloud suffering PTSD to understand this guy is a threat.

He also complains about not having a lot to do. And yeah while it’s not as open you have way more to do. The side quests are actually side quests - with the original, the only side quests you really have before leaving Midgar is dressing Cloud up and getting the perfume, tiara, and underwear. Otherwise? You’re stuck doing what the game tells you to do

You might ask “why are you always saying ‘in the original when you’re in Midgar’and I’ll explain that now

This. Is. Not. A. Spoiler.

The creators said from the start it would only be in Midgar and it would be an episodic game. All the promotional materials showed the game only in Midgar. It was obvious that IT WAS ONLY IN MIDGAR. Greg has no right to complain.

Now yes. You don’t have the same free travel but there is more to travel and there’s so much more content to make up for the fact you can’t leave the city. And by doing so, Midgar comes alive. So when you leave? It feels more of a loss and like you are leaving somewhere you have a connection to. Now this was disappointing because I was definitely wanting more. Like I wanted to keep playing in because it was dragging me in. But it was clear from the start and they were transparent with this. Greg clearly wasn’t looking all the things that were coming out about the game since you knew what was going on.

It even says on the back of the box it’s going to be the story in Midgar and that it’s the first game of the remake “project” and would go deeper into the city

Why is Greg surprised and acting like he’s being cheated out?

His next complaint is.... very worrying

Nanaki in the original never acted like a pervert with Aerith. He acted like he was aggressive to lower Hojos guard but that’s a nitpick. But the rest? Holy fuck Greg, STAY AWAY FROM WOMEN

in the remake, Hojo does not have plans to crossbreed Aerith and Nanaki. Instead? He wants to have SOLIDERS repeatedly rape her so she can “breed” and laughs in her face as he tells her all about how he ripped her mother’s corpse to shreds so he can continue to investigate her. There’s only molecules left of Iflana. He also tries to kill Cloud, Tifa, and Barret so he can show aerith their corpses to kill her hope she’ll be saved

But more importantly, Hojo's proposal in the remake is far more horrifying than in the original. He wants her to be raped over and over. Why the fuck doesn’t Greg see this as being bad an as a “P.C. culture” addition? What is wrong with you, dude. How do these things not show how insane he is

The cross-dressing is a stupid complaint. So you don’t get to go to a brothel and watch a small cutscene. Who cares? You get to see Cloud perform on stage at a cabaret and he is dressed up while on stage while you do a mini game. And that isn’t fun? Okay, Greg.

The events he’s talking about by the way? You fight in a Colosseum, you can choose to help Johnny, and/or you can do the iconic squatting game. Then you go to the Honeybee Inn, do a dancing minigame, and perform on stage. 

As opposed to the original where you talk to a man and tell him what dress you want. Do the most squats, Buy some wine at an inn, have a bath with a bunch of men, and give a woman some medicine. The amount of time you spend doing that will take you the same amount of time to do one side quest in the remake. Of course, the original had it’s restrictions because of the platform it’s on, but the remake definitely did go out of its way to expand that and make it feel like you were doing more.

This is a bit more valid. Like I get having nostalgia for the OG game and preferring it and that’s okay! But the Harry Potter comparison ruins it. Also Greg doesn’t seem to realise the difference between a remake and a remaster. The game is being remade. Of course the gameplay is going to change. Turn based games aren’t viable anymore and considering how good the graphics are, it would ruin the immersion. They had to change things like this to make it more modern. Remember, they aren’t just making this for fans. They’re wanting to bring in new people. 

MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW FOR THE REMAKE

SO PLEASE

IF YOU HAVEN’T FINISHED IT

READ THIS NEXT PART WITH ABSOLUTE CAUTION OKAY?

OKAY

SPOILER

WARNING

OVER

I really hope this is just a joke that Zack wasn’t mentioned before he appeared. But considering this is Greg, and how he really doesn’t seem to understand this game, I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t know the significance of this scene. He says later in this article that it took him 24-40 hours to finish the game. Which, if you actually complete it (by doing all side quests, unlocking all limit breaks for everyone, getting master materia etc) it should take you ninety hours. Which makes me think he never went to Nibleheim and saw the cutscene of what happened to Zack and Cloud. Because FF7 is a very quick game if you just focus on the main quests. If you actually dig down deep? You can go way past the timer and have it frozen at 99:99:99. I don’t think he did anything in the original game and just did whatever the game told him to do without looking at anything else.

I really hope this is just a stupid edgy joke because Zack is a well-loved character but you never fucking know with this moron.

I understand his complaints about Nanaki. Nanaki is always in my party in the original so I was bummed you couldn’t play him, but he appears in the penultimate chapter. The writers probably didn’t feel it was worth their while to add him as a party member, and instead, make him a guest who helps.

The Sephiroth complaint is stupid because he’s missed the point. Up until he appears in the Shinra building, he isn’t actually there. Cloud is hallucinating. He is shown as being mysterious and unreachable as Cloud tries to get to him or freaks out whenever he sees an image of him.

Honestly this just sounds like Greg is mad it’s not the exact same as the original.

Which would just be boring, in my opinion.

Y’know what I said about Greg doing what the game told him to do and nothing else? Yeah this is proof. You have an All materia. It’s called ‘magnify’. And unless you didn’t look for treasure or looked at the new materia when you collected it? You would know this is the all materia. The summons in this game aren’t what they are in the original. You can’t use them in every battle and they only come in boss battles or otherwise difficult encounters because in the remake, it’s made clear that they are incredibly powerful. They come to you maxed out. Which he would know if he paid attention.

I will agree with him to an extent about the maxed out materia. Materia is easy to obtain in the remake (Cloud says this to Aerith when she playfully brags about having it), so if Greg had critical thinking, it would be clear that they don’t sell well is because .... well, it’s easy to max out. Everyone is doing it. But I will agree with him that the game is ‘too short’ in a sense, since having Firaga in only Midgar can be problematic for later games. I do have to wonder what they’ll do in the next episodes. Will you have to level up the magic power after upgrading it so Firaga does the same damage in later dungeons as it did in the sewers of Midgar? It would also be neat to physically ride the chocobos through Midgar to make life easier but I also understand why they had the carriages  as it makes it less weird when Tifa suddenly appears in one when she’s going to Don Corneo’s only to never see a carriage in Midgar again, and the loading screen when they ake you from place to place does make it quicker for you to get places.

Still, it would be nice to ride them at some point so I will give Greg this complaint.

Like I said above, if you do everything in the original it should take you 90 hours. If it took Greg 2 days cumulatively at his highest estimate, he’s not completing the game, and he’s not achieving anything.

For comparison, here’s my latest game

As you can see, it’s at 44 hours. I have done all the sidequests (excluding the one mandatory Fort Condor which would add more time on to it but I didn’t want to do that this time around). I have reached the bottom of the crater, however, I have not done anything further and am now focusing on doing the rest I need to do. Like getting to level 99 on everyone, maxing out my command, summon, and magic materia to get the master materia for those three. Or maxing out all four enemy skill materia. Or getting everyone's limit breaks, or beating the weapons. Because these things take time. I could easily run and kill Sephiroth in that run right now. I could finish the game. But as I’m wanting to complete it as much as I can, then I can’t do that. And that’s not me doing a perfect game where you need to get 99 of each item you can (excluding things like the battery where you can only get three of). If you’re doing a perfect game, it takes even longer but honestly, that’s not something I’d say you’d need to do to ‘finish’ the game. That’s only if you want to challenge yourself.

Also might I add, the remake? It takes about 40 hours to finish it (I don’t know if that includes sidequests). This means in one part of a game  is the same length as the original if you don’t do any sidequests in the OG. I don’t know what Greg is talking about by ‘achieving less’. Yeah you don’t go to as many places, but considering this will be in different parts like the original, you do way more in the remake than you do in the original while in Midgar. 

The random encounters are definitely less in the remake. They don’t happen every a certain number of steps. Instead, you stumble across them in a realistic way rather than have a screen transition. It is way more immersive and again, is something that makes the game feel alive. It feels like an obstacle to overcome to get to the next place rather than an interruption like the original game random encounters (which I do love by the way, but it is very much a product of it’s time)

The next part also makes me laugh. He seems to think that because the other game has things finish ‘faster’ means it’s more productive. Which really shows he thinks his channel is great because he does more videos in a short period of time. Which, yeah, on a surface level it is more “productive”, but it’s not exactly exciting game play, is it? 

For comparison. Aerith says in the original that Sector Six is dangerous so she’ll help him out... but it takes about two minutes to go through and the random encounters are incredibly easy. It’s also not explained why the place is in ruins.

In the remake however, Aerith leads Cloud through it as Cloud is unfamiliar with it, and it is more of a challenge to get through, and he actually needs her help to get through the rubble. She explains part of the plate collapsed the tunnel and that’s why it’s such a mess. You get attacked by bandits on the way there and you spend an entire chapter trying to get through sector six, as it becomes the threat and the difficult path Aerith describes in the original. Rather than a place you just pass through with no issue, making you wonder “why the hell is Aerith insisting she goes with me?” outside of her having a crush. 

It’s small details like that which make the game come alive and actually makes you feel like you did something rather than it being a place you just passed through. It takes you longer, but it feels more like an achievement.

No one feels like they achieved something when you leave Sector Six and go to the park outside Sector Seven’s gates. Because it’s just a road to get to where you need to go. Your next challenge is trying to get Cloud chosen as the girl for Corneo but that is optional. I mean, if you prefer that it’s easier to get through as you like just seeing the story than solving dungeons, that’s fine! But this just shows Greg’s ‘quantity is quality” mindset. 

Also, when you climb up the plate to get to the Shinra building? IN the original, you climb up some pipes. The hardest part is the swinging pipe, which is incredibly easy when you time your jump to the squeaking of the pipe. They tell you it’ll be difficult to get to the Shinra building... when it takes you all of five minutes.

The remake has you climbing up the plate and broken buildings, using a grappling gun to get to higher ground when your walking path is done, while you get attacked by Shinra soliders trying to stop you from getting to higher ground when they recognise you as AVALANCHE. While it’s not hard it definitely feels more of a challenge than “climb up this pipe. jump onto that pipe, now climb up another pipe” in the original. And with the Shinra soliders while you can stop them easily, it does make you feel that getting there is going to be a struggle, or at least something that’s inconvenient and it’ll be ‘hard’ because people will try and stop you along the way.

Although I do wish that when you were in the Shinra building, you had to do more sneaking in the higher floors like you did in the original, but at least the game does give you a reason why you don’t need to sneak around. The mayor’s off hand comment about hating Shinra as he gives you a keycard in the original is expanded to the Mayor being a member of AVALANCHE who is actively helping you.

 I also think it's funny he complains about “mundane tasks” when the original game is full of that, too. All JRPGs have it

Basically, this entire review of Greg’s can be “WAHHH IT’S NOT THE ORIGINAL WHY IS IT MAKING ME WORK HARD!” and it’s hilarious

[uraharashouten]

Pohjola, spirit dimension near Finland, late 1500s

“A letter of transfer?” Kielo eyed the document in her husband’s hand suspiciously.

“Our Queen is requesting our presence in the Eastern Branch of Soul Society,” replied Ilmarinen. “And by our presence, I mean our permanent relocation, and by requesting, I mean ordering.”

Kielo was speechless for a long moment. “We’re… being sent away?”

“So it would seem.”

“That’s – tantamount to banishment. Exile.” Shock was now giving way to angry frustration. “Why?”

“It’s -- really not... we’re meant to be ambassadors, in a sense. And you know why. Most of the folk to the south have become followers of that Hebrew fellow. When they die, their souls seem to be stuck with him. They don’t believe in the cycle, and they don’t come here. Even in the North, most no longer fear Queen Louhi, and Tuonela’s been all but forgotten. I blame the Swedes...” he trailed off, disgruntled, before recalling he was trying to make a point. “In any case, that’s not so in the East! ---Only there, they call it the Soul Society. And lately, the Living Folk are increasingly taking to ships and making their way to Eastern Seas. And dying there. Tuoni must’ve petitioned her for some representation.”

Kielo’s eyes narrowed. “That sounds like the official party line.”

“What do you mean?”

“I bet she’s still bearing a grudge over the rake. She never forgave your grandfather, your namesake, for making that thing to dredge up the scattered bits of Lemminkäinen from the river. He shouldn’t have pursued the Queen’s daughter. She gave him an impossible task for a reason, and I’m sure she would have preferred him to rest in pieces.”

“The rake was the least of the things for which she never forgave Grandfather. It was he who shouldn’t have gotten mixed up with any of her daughters. He was a decent husband to the first, but he failed to keep her from being eaten by wolves – and then he stole the second and turned her into a seagull when she refused him. Not to mention the embarrassing interlude in between where he tried to re-create his first wife from gold and clockworks. ---He had a spotty record with women. It’s a miracle he ever managed progeny.”

“I never believed that seagull story, and neither should you. She just couldn’t stand his singing, so she left. I refuse to include it in the official records.” Kielo sighed, already beginning to resign herself to their new fate. “Well… what’s done is done, and at least I have you. A good and decent man.” She threw her arms around her husband and kissed him. “And you may not be the great seppo he was, but you’ve certainly learned the arcane art of making magical rakes.”

“Indeed, ours is a harrowing tale,” Ilmarinen returned dryly, with a sigh, embracing her and pressing his lips to the crown her head. “But it seems to be our row to hoe, as it were. Our plot to plow...” Making mystical farm implements for the Queen of Pohjola was, after all, their family trade. At least… it had been. And now, it seemed they were being summarily dismissed from service.

“I’m sure there will be a place for both of us with the Shihouin Vault,” she replied encouragingly, sensing her husband’s despondence, and now trying to find the silver lining.  She thought the reminder that Soul Society, too, had its guardians of heavenly artifacts and godly gears might be helpful.

He brightened at her words. “You think so? I’ve always wanted to try my hand at making… anything other than farm implements. And perhaps, our son – should we be blessed to have one—will rival Grandfather’s skill, and invent a heavenly artifact greater than the Sampo.”

“We’ll have to learn Japanese.”

“It can’t be that hard,” he grinned. “Certainly easier than convincing all of them to learn Suomi.”

“The writing, though,” she fretted.

“You’ll manage it. You always do. You’re a brilliant archivist, far more brilliant than you give yourself credit for,” he reassured his wife.

“And we’ll have to take a Japanese family name,” she added, not quite flattered enough to be mollified. “You know how bureaucratic they are.”

“That’s simple. My family are career makers of cultivating tools, aren’t we? It’d be nice if we can take a bit of our home with us, and pick something that describes ourselves in our old tongue, yet which also plays well with the new. Let’s just call ourselves… well, you know ‘Ura’ can mean either career or furrow, and ‘Hara’ means cultivator.”

“’Urahara”, she drawled, letting the cobbled-together, freshly-coined Suomi name roll off her tongue. “But what does it mean in Japanese?”

“Ah…” His face became sheepish. To answer the question would mean he’d already looked it up – which would mean he might have kept this letter of transfer from his wife longer than he’d care to admit. “As far as I can work out, it means ‘Field by the Bay.’”

“Well…” Her smile darkened into an accusatory smirk as it dawned on her what his guilty look meant. “With any luck, maybe we’ll find one on which to build our new home. Do you think they have beaches there?”

“I suppose we’ll find out.”

Kielo drew in a long breath through her nostrils and let it out slowly, eyes sweeping the beams of their oak-hewn home. Change, she supposed, was inevitable. “Without me around to keep the record straight,” she muttered, “Someone’s going to put that ridiculous seagull story in an epic poem someday.”

[[ see under the cut for notes on what the heck this is and why I wrote it ]]

For years, Kisuke’s parents have eluded me. Having had this blog for... five years now, I’ve revisited the question periodically. First, I imagined him as coming from some kind of agrarian background, some poor farm-boy from a vassal family to the Shihouin. That later evolved to them being members of the Onmitsukidou. At some early point in his life, he lost them. But beyond that, they’ve remained a mystery to me. Who are they? Where are they from? How did they come into the service of the Shihouin, and what were they doing during that time? And why does Kisuke have blond hair and blue eyes? 

Enter Kubo’s Burn the Witch, and the Western Branch of Soul Society. Which... frankly failed to live up to my expectations. All the soul-balancing still seems to be handled by the Eastern Branch; this feels like a Hollow-harvesting field office. But at least this new material from the author allows for the possibility of other spirit-dimensions around the world, other regionalized death-management administrations. I’d long-wondered if Soul Society was meant to be a universal afterlife; I’ll just take that as a no. (I’m also going to assume that the Quincy are a cult offshoot of Judaism and Christianity, which don’t subscribe to reincarnation and hence problematically remove souls from the cycle, but that’s the topic of another meta.)

I was inspired by an epic of Finnish folk tales encapsulated in the Kalevala. They speak of a mythical land to the far North ruled by a cruel Queen named Louhi. Under her auspices also lay a land of the dead, Tuonela, which seemed about as a bleak an afterlife as Soul Society is to me. It felt like a good fit to Bleach’s whole holding-cell-for-souls-awaiting-reincarnation take on life after death.

This epic is long, and I’m scarcely familiar with all of it, but OG Ilmarinen was the smith of the gods. For a bride-payment for Louhi’s eldest daughter, he was compelled to create the Sampo. It was a sort of cornucopia of bountiful, endless harvest; a magical artifact of indeterminate type that brought riches and good fortune to its holder. 

Smith and inventor of the gods, who created a magical wish-granting artifact? This was... beginning to sound a little familiar. Ilmarinen’s tales are many and tragic, and a bit too legendary to claim a direct connection to, so I imagined him a grandson. Someone with a pedigree, with the gene for gadgetry genius, but relegated to a life of relative obscurity.

As for the name... a few years ago I was playing around with phonemes, and just for fun went digging to see if I could find a cognate of ‘Urahara’ in any European languages. Thank you, Finnish!

tl;dr: Seretei: The Living World’s shores are crawling with Dutch! Western Branch send help! Some backwater of Northern Europe: sends their third-tier mechanic and his wife.

Sources: On the rake in question On Finnish spirit-realms On Tuonela On the Sampo On the Kalevala On Finnish speakers learning Japanese

[domesticangel]

ok ive been wanting to do an OC redraw/redesign for a while now and uh, well here it is !!! top is obv the revamp and bottom is these three’s original designs ,,, the bottom pic is 9 years old (holy smokes) so i made them during my middle school emo/scene phase when i was like 12 so thats why they're.........Like That lmao but left to right in both pics is jude, elliot, and skipper!!! this was? so fun honestly

ummm lots of info/backstory about them under the cut lol

so in the original pic/designs… if I remember correctly jude and skipper were in police academy training to be cops and elliot was some punk ass kid theyd end up seeing around a lot cause he was in and out of holding for Delinquent Things, and ofc they magically became friends. Im pretty sure they were all 16/17 when I first made them which makes no sense at all (teen cops??? Ok) but like when ur 12, teenagers are Practically Adults BUT none of that is Canon TM anymore. In their redesign they range from early to late 20’s; I usually peg jude around 26-27, elliot is probably 23-24, and skipper is 21.

jude was the very first oc I ever made so shes always had a special place in my heart… I started churning out rapid fire ocs when I was in middle school that id toss when I was bored with em but shes the one that always stuck around!! Shes been a big honkin lesbian ever since her conception, so id use her a lot to express BabyGay feelings I didn’t really know how else to process. design wise I kinda just simplified her look; I have no fucking clue why she used to have an eyepatch and cat ears (I mean, I do, its because I was a weeb) but I got rid of those along with the scene hair and gave her longer hair with more natural waves and some freckles from spending a lot of time in the sun. her gray eyes and hair were always kind of her signature, so those got to stay! She mostly just wears anything that’s easy enough to move around and get work done in; tank tops, loose long skirts, etc. think futch hippy. anyways jude is now just a simple plant witch who uses her skills and connection with the elements to run a modest local farm, and even though shes fairly content in her lifestyle, she wants nothing more than a gf/wife that she can work hard to give a good life to :3c shes a hopeless romantic and has a bad habit of falling a little bit in love with every woman she meets, but shes mad shy when it comes to flirting, so more often than not shes just a sweaty ball of pining and infatuation. Whenever shes feeling some type of way about a girl she either obsessively takes on projects around the farm or house to distract herself or rants to her plants about how shes too afraid to express her feelings. RIP useless lesbian jude. Anyway shes the oldest of the trio, so shes very protective of elliot and skipper in a mother hen kind of way. She gets embarrassed when she realizes shes lecturing them like a cranky old maid, but they secretly don’t really mind it and often come to her for general life advice. I think her sign would be Taurus :3c (and probably an air moon since she’s kind of a space cadet)

elliot was REALLY FUN to redesign bc I honestly just wanted him to look like one of those people who had a HUGE scene phase way back when and just… never completely grew out of it lmao so I gave him the two-tone mullet he deserves, grown out roots hes definitely not gonna bother to re-bleach and re-dye, and piercing scars under his lip from where he used to have some tacky ass snakebites that he probably had to take out to get a job or something lol. he couldn’t completely give up piercings though, so the labret and gauges got to stay. Dudes not COMPLETELY stuck in 2007, but he does still enjoy a lot of the OG emo/punk bands and the fantasy of making it big in his own band and touring the country in a fashionably clunky van. He doesn’t exactly have a band, but hes working on that. Hes halfway decent on vocals and a guitar so he spends a lot of time combing through the local college town he lives and works in in hopes of finding some people who’d wanna play some gigs with him. But in the mean time, he works as a barista in a local café, which usually hooks him up by letting him do some acoustic sets at night every now and again. Hes a very warm and upbeat person, and will happily engage and talk the ear off of anyone close enough for him to do so, stranger or otherwise. He also regularly reminds jude and skipper how much he loves both of them and how glad he is that theyre all friends; He doesn’t really have much in the way of embarrassment or apprehension when it comes to what hes feeling. Hes the official unofficial “plan-maker” of the friend group and is able to bring them all together for quality time, because hes not at all passive like jude or skipper, and… usually has the most free time out of all of them lol. elliot is pure Leo and that’s about all there is to that

And finally, congratulations to skipper, who against all odds, looked normal enough that I didn’t really have to change anything at all about his design! Just had to ditch the uniform for your typical Tired Gay mustard sweaters. Skipper is an English major in his sophomore year of college who, like most people in their 20’s in liberal arts programs, is desperately trying to figure out what he wants out of life and also doesn’t know what sleeping or self-care is. He really enjoys writing, but doesn’t really know if he wants to do it for a living or if he even could. He grew up with pretty cold and distant parents, so on top of knowing they don’t really approve of his major, he pretty much always operates under the assumption that if hes not working himself to death hes not justifying the space hes taking up or the air hes breathing. Emotionally speaking hes more emo than elliot will ever be and his blood is probably 75% caffeine. He having kind of a rough time tbh but hes gritting it out in hopes that things become more clear eventually. He’d be way worse off if he didn’t have jude or elliot, who hes more thankful for than he can ever bring himself to express. They were essentially his first real, close friends, and despite skipper being incapable of asking for help, they always seem to know when he needs someone to talk to or even just a brief distraction; Jude has an open door policy for her farm and will let him come over and cuddle some rabbits or sit and talk over tea on her porch whenever he needs to, and elliot cant remember the last time hes made skipper pay for anything he ordered from the café, or the last time he even had to ask skipper what he wanted. Because hes the youngest of the three its sometimes their instinct to protect him, which embarrasses skipper out of his mind, but he knows they mean well. Hes the physical embodiment of Just Doing His Best and is a stone cold Capricorn

They’re still besties but basically met just from living in the same town; jude and elliot met when jude started providing the café’s local roast from the coffee beans she grew on her farm so elliot saw her fairly regularly and of course was like Oh Friend? Jude always liked how forthcoming elliot was as it complimented her generally reserved nature, and elliot always thought living on a farm and growing your own food was pretty punk rock and therefore pretty dang cool in his book. They both got to know skipper because he came to the café every. single. day. to ingest ungodly amounts of espresso and study all day, and when elliot took an interest in skipper, jude suggested he invite him to one of his gigs since the poor guy kinda looked like he needed a break. Skipper initially kind of politely shot elliot down, but jude took a chance and found skipper later to tell him how much itd mean to elliot, and that if it made him feel better she’d go with him, since going to events like this was different for her too. skipper apprehensively agreed at that point, and the rest is history !!! they all kinda hit it off after that

tl;dr

[kisaragizan]

Aqua Force [V-EB08]

I’mma keep this really simple and quick because although set is nearly completed, things are subject to change due to a few more cards unreleased and official play testing, especially against the current meta (This isn’t to say I didn’t play test these, I’m saying I only tested them in a vacuum rather than how good they are vs [x] deck). I’ll re-post this in a more extensive format similarly to how I usually do my things (so don’t expect any fancy stuff, at most I’ll link things). And lastly, this will be going over V-Standard due to how minimal this booster affects the Premium deck.

I believe this booster did a pretty decent job at supporting the clan. Could be better, minor nitpicks here and there, but overall things that can help keep us afloat until the next support wave.

I feel what it did right, aside from giving us a power house finisher grade three (which I’ll briefly touch upon when I talk about the decks themselves), and better grade ones since our current ones, aside from Penguin, were “ok” some of the times or had conflicted with attack patterns which is a no-no. We only got one grade 2 which is an instant inclusion to the deck.

https://cardfight.fandom.com/wiki/Coral_Assault_(V_Series)

Coral’s good because hitting 24k by himself with no Accel Circle and being able to fuel soul and draw for playing the clan is nice. You won’t use that skill all the time unless you know he’s gonna get retired.

Lastly, we get to the main grade 3 of the deck.

https://cardfight.fandom.com/wiki/Blue_Storm_Supreme_Dragon,_Glory_Maelstrom_(V_Series)

As I said before, he’s the power house finisher as he can force your opponent into guarding scenarios where they must perfect guard an attack or take it due to the restriction. Regardless of whether Aqua Force wanted a skill like that from Glory or not, the point is that we got it, so we have to make do with what we have until the next time.

So while the deck will definitely be built around Glory Maelstrom (and to some extent OG Maelstrom if you’re happen to be stuck on him), I feel that there are multiple ways you can go about it due to our upgraded grade one line up that more or less influences our grade two line up. Again, I’ll go over new grade ones in their respective featured decks. These decks are to be seen as a base concept: while I do think it’s preferred to stick to the same cards of each deck (which will be explained why), card copies can be played around with to get a desired result. Triggers I’ll go over at the very end since I feel those are personal preference.

This deck is meant to have a strong grade one to grade two transition, by either riding the Wheel Assault or Storm Rider, Nikoloz (I have the original card of Wheel for proxy purposes, don’t chew me out). Nikoloz especially giving you the ability to tutor out your Algos from the deck is really good since any form of tutoring in an aggressive deck is always welcomed. While it does make the deck even more of a high-roll, you have two good on-rides and you can always use Nikoloz throughout the game. Calm Assault is really strong to pump your attacks by an extra stage while on Glory (preferably to either force a heal trigger to guard or to become a “perfect guard or take”, which will be known as “the unguardable threshold” for the remainder of this post) and increases the pressure of the rear-guards who can trigger the original Maelstrom’s re-stand. Basil is here because given the nature of Glory, you want to have units that can hit that unguardable threshold, and since Basil goes above Force and hits a 14k magic number (for decks like Blaster and Brandt), he’s much preferred than any of the others for the time being. Resource wise, this deck is pretty balanced, not eating up too much of a specific resource. Riptide is a really strong card that continues to push in Standard for this clan. The only issue is that this build trades flexibility for the high-roll (borderline gimmicky), since every card here is important: you can’t afford to take out a card without running into some drawbacks.

This second build prioritizes flexibility and stability. While every card here is important, you’re able to swap out cards should the format call for it. Since you don’t have Algos tutoring, Tidal takes his place since the later doesn’t use up counter blast that can be saved for Glory, Maelstrom, and Basil. However, the deck leans heavily on it’s soul blasts (Tidal and Calm Assault who can be used twice a turn), so you’ll have to consider playing Battle Siren, Viviana to fuel soul, who also happens to go really well with Glory since attacks will be too large to guard, thus guaranteeing the on hit draw and +3k to another unit. I don’t think there’s much of a draw back to this deck except maybe running out of soul too quickly.

This last build is more of a “Power oriented” deck, focused solely on getting to those unguardable threshold. Lazarus by himself is a magic number to Protect/Accel decks with no cost, similar to Riptide only without the additional 20k. Like the previous deck, it’s completely flexible if the meta demands you to run a specific card. The only draw backs I feel is that, for now, your grade two alternatives don’t offer much that isn’t Tidal or Algos. There is a grade 2 promo via Tear Knight, Halpalos but it isn’t not available in English. Additionally, the nature of this deck values power over the multi-attacking via small pokes that Aqua Force is known for, without your enablers like Tidal/Algos, you have to commit a bit more than you would normally to achieve the same number of attacks, which does require hand. This also affects how much you have to commit to have a decent turn should you ride regular Maelstrom.

Triggers: Criticals or Fronts?

Honestly, doesn’t matter. Fronts push your numbers higher and can over power the value of any damage triggers your opponent should check. Critical triggers give your vanguard pressure, and can push for damage even before you ride to Glory, meaning the chances of damage triggers are lower the higher their damage is. Personally, I value critical triggers as you can see from the lists because I’m trying to push my opponent as quickly as possible, regardless of my match up and/or my resources (if I bricked, kept getting rear-guard hated, so on and so forth). I also feel criticals are better with original Maelstrom because they have to pick and choose whether to take the criticals now on the vanguard swing, or take it later with a possibility of re-standing my vanguard.

Closing Notes

I believe that one of these three builds will see play depending on what is valued more: whether it’s the highroll, flexibility, or pure power. Something I didn’t touch on before was that there is also a possibility of not having to play the original Maelstrom and going 4 Glory, 3-4 Riptide, and some other grade 3 like Diamantes/Bleb Bomber Dragon/Navalgazer Dragon, considering you just need to ride Glory twice for the full effect. While I have tested it, I feel it’s better to just ride any Maelstrom than having to ride a non-Maelstrom into 2 Glory’s thus slowing down the process. That’s all for today, I know it’s been a long time since I posted something on here. I’m usually on twitter or discord (which leads into Google Docs) with my discussions/rants unless it’s big enough to warrant people seeing. Again, I’ll probably make a second post with a more definitive deck that will reference back to this post. So look forward to that.

[fullmetalirin]

FMA Brotherhood: Episode 19

FMA Brotherhood Episode 19: "Death of the Undying"

Kain Fuery manages to save Hawkeye, with Mustang coming to defeat Gluttony. Alphonse meets up with the group and they pursue Barry, who chases his body into the depths of the third laboratory. The group splits into two teams. Mustang and Havoc are ambushed by Lust, resulting in both men being grievously wounded and left for dead. Lust then confronts Barry, slicing him to pieces. Hawkeye, believing Mustang to be dead, desperately shoots Lust repeatedly with minimal effect. Before Lust can kill Hawkeye, Mustang appears, having cauterized his wounds, he repeatedly incinerates Lust until her philosopher's stone is depleted. No longer able to regenerate, she crumbles to ash. Barry's soul survives, but his blood seal is scratched out by his human body, which kills both of them. Edward returns to Resembool and heads toward the Rockbell residence where he sees his father Van Hohenheim at the grave of his mother Trisha Elric.

Mustang flashes back to Hughes' death when Riza doesn't respond and freaks out.

Then we cut back to Ling expositing. Oh joy.

Gluttony is strangling Riza. She's emptied her clip into his head but he's not dying. It's pretty gruesome, we see his wrecked eyeball. She empties another clip and pushes him back a little, but they're out of ammo again. For some reason, they just stand there like idiots instead of running. Fortunately, Mustang steps out of his teleporter and uses magic to generate force out of nothing to throw Gluttony out the window.

Riza yells at Mustang for saving her because lolwomen. Later she does thank him and then he's the one telling her to keep in professional, because women are just crazy nagging hags who don't say what they mean and need strong manly men to keep their heads in the game.

I really don't like the cracked-skin effect on the homunculi. It looks so fake, like a low-res CGI model.

How did Alphonse know where they were? Did Ling tell him?

Al informs them about homunculi's powers. Despite this they're going to continue to waste all their ammo shooting Lust later, because they're idiots.

Mustang uses Barry's rampage as an excuse to investigate the laboratory, which is clever. Barry doesn't kill anyone because serial killers are such polite people. Al has cartoon face during this, which I guess is appropriate since he really doesn't fit in here.

Lust shows up and Havoc gets distracted by her jiggle physics when he looks at her tattoo. As Tumblr helpfully explained to me, this is actually groundbreaking feminist representation because while it looks indistinguishable from normal anime objectification see it's actually making fun of Havoc for being a pervert and no, Tumblr, it's pandering. Perv pandering doesn't stop being perv pandering just because a woman drew it. But okay, sure, it's not that bad by the very, very low standards of anime, so maybe I can put up with it as long as it doesn't…

…do… that.

Guys, this is not making fun of perverts. Havoc is a hero and Lust is a villain. This is letting perverts be in on the joke. Tumblr, please for the love of God shut up about Brotherhood being so tasteful in its depiction of boobs, because it's not.

Anyway. Lust taunts Mustang about Hughes' death and then… looks actually pained when he shoots her (where Gluttony barely flinched). Why did she do that if bullets actually hurt her.

There is some gross banter about getting Lust on her knees. I'm sure this has also, through some strange Tumblr alchemy, been transformed into groundbreaking feminism.

Then Lust shows off her Philosopher's Stone because the author needed a way for the characters to learn a homunculus' weakness and couldn't think of a way to do it that didn't involve handing Lust the idiot ball. I've heard this is slightly less stupid in the manga and she only does this after Havoc gets injured, is that true?

Like I said before, this reveal utterly baffles me. So after all that buildup, the homunculi are just... monsters powered by magic. That’s so boring. They can no longer be used to ask questions about personhood and humanity -- I mean, maybe they could if the show actually committed to them being alien and different, but it doesn’t. What this comes down to is just that Philosopher’s Stones and rulebreaking magic is cool, so the homunculi have them so they can be cool boss monsters. Except they’re not cool. In OG, they were puzzles that required special knowledge and preparation to defeat; that’s cool. In Brotherhood, as we’re going to see, you beat the homunculi by just punching them in the face until the author decides they’ve run out of HP. They’re just damage sponges. And just as I revile damage sponges in video games, I revile them in TV shows too. Characters just throwing the same attacks at each other for five episodes is not interesting.

I also hate that this means Philosopher’s Stones are absolutely everywhere in this continuity instead of something actually special, a theme that will continue.

Lust says homunculi still have human feelings. Wow, what a dumb idea that no one would ever want to read about. It sure is a good thing Brotherhood decided to completely forget about this and just make homunculi boring boss monsters, huh?

Then, despite Lust using her claws as instant-kill ranged attacks in every prior fight scene, she now switches to sloppy, easily-dodged melee swipes, because Lust is really hogging the idiot ball today.

Mustang says he can decompose the water into hydrogen and oxygen to create an explosion even with wet gloves. This is totally inconsistent with what we're previously told, which is that creating oxygen is the easy part for him. He shouldn't need a spark to manipulate the air content, that should be a separate thing. This just seems like the author showing off a trick she remembered from chemistry class. It sure would be interesting if alchemy actually worked like this all the time, but Mustang never needs to do anything like this elsewhere.

Then despite having just been told that homunculi don't die when they are killed they walk right back into the room, because the idiot ball's really getting around today.

Cartoon when Mustang complains about being treated like a match. Because a climactic battle is definitely the time for that.

Then Lust FINALLY uses her spear-claws and stabs Havoc through the spine which, in a rare appearance of consequences, actually does paralyze him until the epilogue when Dr. Deus ex Machina heals him because consequences are for losers. I'm also a bit unclear on how she severed his spine without also severing his aorta.

Mustang realizes he can use Lust's Philosopher's Stone to heal Havoc and rips it out of Lust's chest. Lust screams in agony, implying this does actually hurt her, so again, why did she show it to him?

Lust's body disintegrates, but she's able to reform around the Stone. It's really gruesome. Somehow this does not crush Mustang's hand in the process, but she does finally stab him… nonfatally, because she's got the idiot ball again.

Bradley shows up outside.

Lust says Mustang was a candidate for sacrifice but she's killing him anyway. Uh, did she run this by the others? She then leaves him for dead instead of finishing him off because the idiot ball is strong this episode.

We then catch up to Barry, who tells us souls reject incompatible bodies. Al freaks out at this, but fortunately this will never matter for him.

Lust shows up to whine about how she has to kill Al. No, you don't. Just leave. You control the government. Bradley can give you another hideout at a moment's notice. The most important thing hiding here was you, and you just blabbed all your secrets anyway. Just cut your losses. You idiot.

Lust once again taunts someone into shooting her and once again staggers and screams in pain, because the idiot ball's terminal now. Shouldn't she also know she's running out of lives and this is maybe not the best idea right now?

Al vows to protect Riza because he’s tired of watching people die. It’s a nice moment that also happens way, way too early in his character arc. I like Al as the childish, out-of-his-depth foil to Ed’s easy confidence. This moment works better as a climactic ending reversal than as an offhand detail a third of the way through the story. If he’s just another noble heroic alchemist, he’s redundant with all the others we already have.

Meanwhile, Riza is hysterical and ineffective because she's a woman in a shonen anime.

You know, more seriously, I would like to point out that giving a female character awesome gun skills doesn't actually mean anything in a story about how non-guns are really awesome. We see a lot of great gunplay from Riza, but it's always alchemy that actually saves the day and gets all the focus. It's moving the goalposts. Sure, we'll give the woman a cool skill… that we will then choose to make useless in the context of the story. It's such tedious faux-feminism, going through the motions so you can say, technically, that you have a "strong female character" without actually doing anything to respect them or integrate them into the narrative. For every "strong female character" in Brotherhood, there's a male character who's stronger. Women are still, fundamentally, supporting characters – they're awesome because part of the male fantasy is an awesome support staff, but the boys get to be more awesome and the boys get to be who the story's actually about.

I really want us to start being more critical of representation like this. Treating strong female characters like a list of checkboxes is so totally wrongheaded. Characters don't exist in a vacuum. A skill that's impressive in one narrative or one power level may be completely meaningless in another. We need to look at characters within the context of the narrative they inhabit, relative to other characters and the framing of the work.

To prove my point, our resident Gary Stu has just appeared to show Riza up and beat the boss fight literally without moving a single step.

BUT TELL ME AGAIN HOW THIS SERIES IS GOD’S GIFT TO FEMINISM.

Mustang is using Havoc's lighter for a starter, despite explicitly establishing that it was busted earlier.

Mustang fireballs her again.

He also drew a perfect transmutation circle in his own blood and perfectly cauterized his internal bleeding despite explicitly saying he doesn't know medical alchemy. Now that his jacket's opened, we also get to see he's been hiding a Superman physique this whole time. You could put this in a parody of male power fantasies and I'd say it was too unbelievable.

Mustang fireballs her again. We get a gruesome close-up shot of her skin burning off.

Mustang fireballs her again.

Mustang decides he can kill this regenerator monster powered by the thing that supposedly has infinite energy by just killing her enough times, because he's read the script.

Mustang fireballs her again.

We get a closeup of her Philosopher's Stone, and coincidentally also a closeup of her tits.

Mustang fireballs her again.

And again.

I'd like to point out that every single one of these fireballs is ENORMOUS. Alphonse has to create a stone wall to hide behind so Riza isn't charbroiled too. We can see the entire room lighting up. I'd also like to point out this is in a SEALED UNDERGROUND ROOM, and FIRE REQUIRES OXYGEN. OXYGEN IS NOT INFINITE. If he lights the whole room on fire, he is DONE. HE USED UP ALL THE OXYGEN IN THE ROOM. HE CANNOT KEEP SPAMMING FIREBALLS. And I don't care what fanwank you can pull out to justify this, because the bottom line is that someone winning a fight by endlessly spamming the same move is terrible writing. This is not a climactic boss fight, this is just the Gary Stu showing off how awesome he is.

And through all of this Lust has done absolutely nothing except writhe and scream in agony, because Mustang is a Gary Stu therefore fire stunlocks everything. Only at the very end does she actually try to attack him, remembering she can spear people through the brain just in time for him to kill her while her spear is INCHES away from his face, because he's very awesome.

Also, HOW IS HE NOT BURNING HIMSELF HERE. HOW. HIS ARM IS IN THE EXPLOSION. HOW.

Meanwhile, Lust can still talk but somehow not extend her spear one more inch. Her Philosopher's Stone disintegrates, so the woman has nobly died to teach us that you can kill homunculi by just hitting them until they run out of HP, because that's so interesting.

And then Mustang collapses from his wound now that it no longer matters, invoking the very important power of the Not-Sue: see, he did all that while he really was one step away from death, that totally makes him less sueish and not more!

Mustang ignores Riza to praise Al for protecting her.

Bradley, our other resident Gary Stu, is revealed to have been watching the whole thing. He for some reason does not kill Mustang, thus establishing who has the greater Sue power.

Winry is sulking and hoping the man comes back safe because that's her purpose in life.

Then we end with more Barry, because we really needed that. His body is somehow still not dead, and erases the seal on the one part of the armor that stayed intact, killing them both. What was the point of this?

Then the show remembers Ed is supposed to be the protagonist. We cut to him for five seconds to discover Hoenheim has conveniently returned to Resembool at the same time as him.

Conclusion

A lot of people tell me that OG was misogynist garbage and Brotherhood is super progressive.

I don't know what anime they watched, but I just saw the sole female antagonist – and let's take a moment to reflect on the fact the sole female antagonist is Lust – die a gruesome, disgusting, sexualized death less than a third of the way through the story because she was too busy flashing her tits to actually fight, for no other reason than to show how awesome a dude is.

This is my breaking point. There is no coming back from this. I don't care how awesome Olivier is. Anyone who recommends this show as full of ~great female characters~ without thinking this content deserved even the teensiest of caveats is not anyone whose judgment I trust.

And sure, let's be real here, I watch anime, I'm willing to put up with some misogynist crap if there's something else worth my time. But this has established, very definitively, that there absolutely will not be anything worth my time. Lust, as we will see when we continue with OG, was an incredibly important and complex character in the original anime, absolutely crucial to the narrative of the homunculi and many of the things I loved about the story. And this is what Brotherhood does with her.

And that's not even the only awful thing about this episode! Ed wasn't in it at all! Mustang's takeover of the narrative is complete. He's the one who got to solve the mystery, fight the villain, and save the day, pretty much singlehandedly. And I'm sorry, but even if he wasn't an insufferable Gary Stu, Mustang just doesn't interest me as a character as much as Ed. I like him as a deuteragonist to Ed's protagonist, not the other way around. So no. This episode really hammers in that there is absolutely nothing here for me.

But lucky you, I read a plot summary of all the episodes after this, and I know the very next one is something I want to complain about too! So we'll keep going for one more episode. One last nail in the coffin.

[bloodthirstymoonstone]

Imperial Walter in Heroes

I thought I’d make a follow-up post on that one I made a few months back about Walter if he was added into Heroes. How would his new, Imperial AU version fare in the mobile game?

First off, it’s important to keep in mind that Walter counts as an Armored Red Mage in this version, too. I have even less justification for this than I do OG Walter because he doesn’t have the leg brace thing going on, but considering the Ylissean Christmas and Love Abounds events, I feel confident that no one’s going to complain that he doesn’t somehow LOOK “armored” enough for it to count. 

Let’s take look at his stat spread. Just as a reminder, here are Valter’s base stats:

Hp: 42 Atk: 32 (50 with Cursed Lance equipped) Spd: 31 (33 with Cursed Lance equipped) Def: 34 Res: 19

BST: 158 (Without weapon)

And here are normal Walter’s:

Hp: 33 Atk: 17 Spd: 22 Def: 7 Res: 45

BST: 124

Opalite Walter’s stats are as follows:

Hp: 45 Atk: 34 Spd: 20 Def: 28 Res: 34

BST: 161

At 161 BST, Imperial Walter does slightly lag behind other ranged attacking armor units (all with a total of 165), but it seems fair because his legendary tome is better than all of the zany holiday-themed weapons they all have. He would definitely carve out a name for himself in the meta game, I think, due to his weapon effects. (He’d be a TT exclusive unit, though, so forget about tailoring his IVs perfectly or creating an ultra super merge of him. He can’t be TOO strong--)

His stats are much more rounded compared to his normal iteration -- though his speed went down slightly and res went down quite a bit, he massively makes up for it in HUGE gains in his attack, def, and HP. He is no longer a wimpy glass cannon (without any fucking ammo) -- this Walter can take quite a beating and still hit back HARD.

Opalite Walter is a Druid, which means he would have access to dark magic (which is default red, just like light is default blue) as opposed to just anima magic like a sage. To emphasize that, I wanted to give him a legendary tome named “Keen Fenrir”. Since Fenrir is both an actual dark magic spell used in Fire Emblem, but also a reference to the Norse god who’s usually portrayed as a monstrous wolf, I wanted to follow in Heroes Lyon’s footsteps and make his weapon sort of an even stronger Keen Wolf tome. This tome would not be able to be inherited.

On its face, it’d seem like pretty standard stuff. 14 Mt, and the description reads: “Effective against cavalry foes.” The animation would probably be something like the normal Wolf Tome, but mostly black with some purple around the edges. Which is, of course, aesthetic af.

The coolest part is the fact that it can be refined! (Which has basis in the game, as no Raven tomes can be upgraded, including Lyon’s tome, but even Keen Wolf tomes CAN be.) Aside from the usual +Mt, +Spd, and whatever else upgrade, upgrading its effectiveness would transform it into “Binding Fenrir” and grant it: “Effective against cavalry and flying foes and neutralizes their bonuses (From skills like Rally, Fortify, etc.) during combat restricts movement to one space through their next action.” (Weapon effect changed for balance reasons.) So yeah. Get fucked, Valter.

The skills he’d be able to learn right off the bat would be:

Special: Glacies

A: Mirror Stance

B: Wary Fighter

Compared with OG Walter, Opalite Walter is obviously a much more aggressive, yet tanky unit. You’d be able to do tons of damage with him, and even blue units (especially mages) would probably struggle against him with just his base kit. 

Give him Warding Breath, and he’d probably even be able to annihilate Reinhardt, especially with his tome’s effects. With Close Counter, he’d basically function like a poor man’s Winter Tharja. And, of course, with 34 base res, this guy would run ploy skills incredibly well, too. 

Of course, like any good unit, he still has his weaknesses. Micaih would probably have his ass for lunch, as would any unit with an armor slaying weapon (possibly with the exception of green foes, but his def isn’t THAT grand, all things considered). Also, sneaky ways of chipping down his Wary Fighter using the likes of Brave Weapons would also probably hurt. Other armored foes, especially the likes of Hardin and others with brave / vengeful fighter, would be terrible -- I feel like he’d even struggle to dispose of a Winter Tharja due to his slightly lowered stats. Lastly, dragons, especially blue ones, would be forces to be feared, as he doesn’t really have the tools to deal with them properly (unless their movement is flying).

So keep him away from those things, and he should be fine! He’s strong, but he’s by no means a one-man army like Hardin, Hector, or Ayra. Make sure to give tons of love and support to him with his allies and he should go far!

[dailydoseofcolor]

Taking Stock of Units in Fire Emblem Heroes, Part 3

I’ve already written a small novella at this point, but I have the motivation, so it’s time to keep going. Next is character archetypes in this game that I don’t yet have merged, and would be beneficial to my enjoyment of the game. At this point, I’m in T21 for Aether Raids, and consistently make T24/T25. I do not need to be T27, that’s just too much. On the other side, I’m usually T19.5 in Arena. I just don’t have the resources to keep up with Arena scoring. I actively dislike that mode, All I need are units that will get me through every aspect of the game and keep me from falling to T17 in Arena. 

Now for the hard part. I think what I would really love is to, one day, have a +10 character on hand for every combat role in the game across a large variety of weapon/color types. Obviously there’s Player Phase, Enemy Phase, Mixed Phase, and Support. But within those, I feel like there’s more niche roles: Player Phase:  1) Nuke / One Shot (Lilina, Lysithea) 2) Galeforce (OG Eliwood, Tibarn, Raven) 3) Double / Quad Builds (Maybe a subset of Galeforce, but serves a different purpose on maps with inflated stats; Est, Cordelia, etc)

Enemy Phase:  1) Retaliatory Nuke (Rinkah with Bonfire) 2) Sustain Tank (Aether Builds like Legendary Ike) 3) Stall Tank (Brave Ike and other more niche builds) Mixed Phase:  1) DPS (Special Spiral Builds like NY!Alfonse) 2) Duelist (Ross, Donnel, Itsuki, etc) 3) Omnitanks (More of an AR choice, but the characters that can dish it out either in PP or EP; Again, Brave Ike, Ross, Echidna)

Support:  1) Full Support (Dancers/Healers with zero combat prowess) 2) Tank Support (Tanky Healers that can be on the front lines with Close Counter; doesn’t always require actually high defense) 3) Closers (Those random characters that accompany you on maps that only see combat every now and again due to one very specific niche they handle, or are good at moving characters around the field, and can block an entrance for a hit or two if need be / or support characters with combat prowess, like Dance!Reinhardt and Dance!Ishtar). _____ 

So if we take those roles into account, the characters I already have fully merged or are Merge Projects are: Nowi (+10): Enemy Phase Sustain Tank Sothe (+10): Player Phase Double Build Ross (+10): Mixed Phase Duelist Lyon (+7): Enemy Phase Stall Tank Micaiah (+5): Enemy Phase Retaliatory Nuke OR Player Phase Nuke (Depending on the enemy type) Mia (+3): Her most obvious build is a Desperation build for a Player Phase Double, but I submit that her Res stat is actually pretty good, and she’d be a decent Mixed Phase Duelist OG Eliwood (+3): Player Phase Galeforce, honestly one of the best ones Joshua (+2): Mixed Phase Duelist (that high Res stat tho) Donnel (+2): His stats allow for so much flexibility: Player Phase Quad with his new Refine, Enemy Phase Sustain Tank, Mixed Phase Duelist....he fits a lot of niches now that I think about it. Rath (+2): Player Phase Double Build Saber (+1): Honestly more of an Enemy Phase Stall Tank, but he can move into a Mixed Phase DPS given the right build.  Black Knight (+1): Again, super flexible because of the Fighter skills; but likely a Player Phase Double build with Bold Fighter. I have plenty of Bold Fighter fodder, and would love to watch him delete things off the map.  Nephenee (+1): Best niche is as an Enemy Phase Retaliatory Tank with Bonfire/Ignis Altena (+1): Pure Enemy Phase as a Stall Tank, especially against Bows. Even some Green units just can’t touch her Young Minerva (+1): Again, super flexible because of her speed. I like her as an Enemy Phase Stall Tank, though Matthew (+1): Enemy Phase Stall Tank, although magic really kicks him in the ass

____

Okay. Zero support units and very few Player Phase units. I def have a preferred playstyle. Although, I’ll submit that the units I get a lot of use from that aren’t merged helps cover that. Let’s go through and see if I have any options for Merge Projects that are sitting unmerged right now: 

Sword: Roy: Roy’s our boy! Roy’s our boy! I have his merges available, but I’ve been waiting to bite the bullet. His Res is just on the underside to make him a full Omnitank, so he’s definitely more of a Enemy Phase Sustain Tank. But he is getting a Resplendent soon... Soleil: Major Player Phase action. Honestly, along with Mia, could be an actually good contender for any future Close Call/Repel fodder I get.  Ares: Unlimited Bonfire makes for a strong DPS candidate. I worry that merging him and Eliwood would be too much, even though they serve completely different purposed. I hesitate only because I don’t know anything about him, really.  Fallen Ashnard: Fuck. His design is just *chef’s kiss.* I need to build him, and I have time, since he won’t hit the Grail market for another two months at least. But I feel like Ashnard, Altena, Young Minerva, and Myrrh would be a hilariously physically bulky team. 

Lance:  Valter: Disgusting villain, one you just love to hate. Smaller grail cost than others, since he’s been around a while. And he has to be up for a refine within the next 6 months. He’s high on the list. He could serve as a strong Player Phase Nuke Cormag: Much higher grail cost than Valter, but with a more balanced stat-line. More of a dream than anything.  Effie: Is it past time to build Effie’s? She was all the rage a year and a half ago. Although she can still put in work with her attack stat, and her speed is more than covered by Fighter skills. I just really have a hard time with Armor units.  Est: I see Est builds floating around and people rave about her. I wonder if it’s time to bite the bullet and build one myself.  Ferdinand: Shitty stat line, character I detested from 3H...why did I even put him on this list.  Oscar: Before this: WHERE IS BOYD. For fuck’s sake, it’s been years. Boyd deserves to be in 3H if Oscar is. Again, not a character I love, but has a refine that gives a niche(?). I honestly never see Oscar builds around, which tells me all I need to know.  Axe:  Raven: Easy to merge, great refine, easy to use Player Phase potential. One of the stronger Galeforce infantry units. Worth consideration.  Cherche: Similar to above, but as a nuke. I’ve seen her just delete characters off the map.  Titania: Super strong support capabilities. Tactics skills are pretty fucking dope most of the time.  Bow:  Norne: Incredible stat line, and I have a Midori that I could sink into her if I feel so inclined....now I just need merges. Clarisse: Honestly, her new refine is pretty sick, although she’s a very high level Grail cost. Might need to wait and see on this one, at least until her refine is fixed. Claude: I legitimately think that, if I decided this is what I wanted, I could get a +10 Claude. But that would me a LOT of Lull fodder that I don’t use. I’d love this, but I don’t think so. Halloween Rolf: Fucking adorable character and design, Grail cost is too high. 

Dagger:  Kronya: Stupid character, amazing options. Hard to justify with Sothe and Matthew above her in priority of characters I love.  Tethys: I dismissed Tethys way back when she launched, but I actually feel like she’s found a niche with her high Res stat? Again, hard to justify, though.  Winter Jaffar: Great character art, honestly. Top Tier. Decent combat potential, but his green coloring hurts him pretty hard. Also he’s armor, I just have a hard time with armors. 

Red Mage: OG Tharja: She’s on a similar level as Nino, for me. But has a refine that gives her a really interesting niche. I go back and forth, I need to test her out in combat more.  Aversa: Incredible support, especially in large maps like Grand Conquests. Her merges would be mostly about getting that HP stat up. I don’t really need her to be combative.  Arvis: I love his character design and he can have some really fun builds with his special B skill. I’m waiting for a refine before I make any decisions, though.  Iago: New character that I don’t love in terms of base game, but interesting support potential.  Male Morgan: He’s shown up so many times I could build two +10 versions of him (which crosses my mind sometimes). I wish his defensive stats were higher, it would make for a slightly more interesting unit.  Blue Mage:  Fallen Delthea: I realize that I really do love a lot of the Fallen character’s designs...except for Celica. Delthea has a strong presence and she could be worth the Grails. Brunnya: I’m seeing Brunnya everywhere on Reddit. I should pay more attention to her builds, I think. Why are there so many decent Grail units?? Reinhardt: Not a hot take: don’t love Reinhardt. But fuck if he isn’t super useful sometimes. It’s really remarkable how well he’s stayed either inside or right outside the meta. Still not gonna build him.  L’Arachel: I love her character and personality, and I just have this sinking feeling that her refine is gonna suck. So idk, hard to tell at the moment. 

Green Mage: Soren: Also capable of the Triple Chill strategy, but with more Combat Prowess. I don’t have enough for a +10 though right now. Definitely on the backburner.  Halloween L’Arachel: A person can dream, right? I have one and would love more. Maybe in the future.  Staff:  Silque: One of my favorite characters from SoV. And I just love defensive healers. I could get her to +2 right now, and I think it might be worth it to have her be a long term goal.  Forrest: I don’t have enough to +10 Forrest, but I do love his design. It leans into the aesthetic very well. His stats are pretty lackluster, unfortunately.  Mercedes: Pretty sure I could just copy and paste from above. Mercedes is one of the best characters from 3H, but her stat line and a lack of copies at the moment...hard to justify.  Brady: Another great defensive healer. Easier to merge than Silque, but his personality is kinda meh for me. Pass. 

Dragon:  Myrrh: Myrrh was on my “most wanted list” with OG Ephraim for forever. I only pulled an pitybreaker Myrrh a month ago. Her refine is INCREDIBLE, and I would love to try to get more merges for her. She has an upcoming banner coming up, and if I can score a couple of merges, I’ll be a happy camper. 

Beast:  Reyson: I’m close to being able to +10 Reyson soon. He gets a decent amount of work just as a dancer, if I fully kit him, he’d be able to hold highly with L!Azura in terms of usage, if only because of his weapon effect. Good solid passive healing is always hard to come by unless you use the healing specials. He’s worth a further look. 

I’ll analyze the rest of this tomorrow...Part 3, Section 2 will have to wait. 

[jonboudposts]

Calling Out to My Past: Rap Music and Suburbia in the 1990s: Part 1

It begun with a record.  Bigger and Deffer by LL Cool J.  My older brother got hold of it, played it regularly and I could not help but listen. For a young boy with attention problems, this had the amazing effect of bringing me some kind of centre point for a while.  After lots of pestering, he recorded onto cassette for me and it rarely left my Walkman. It is obvious to say, but in the mid-1980s outer-London suburbia, this was a new sound; a genuinely unheard type of music.

These articles will not be any comprehensive history of hip hop culture; this is just about how it affected my life; how it helped me form my character and switch me on to a world outside; of injustice and the need to fight back; of a world where imagination to create was not restricted or sneered at. This is not nostalgia because that disease needs killing off; this is just about life.

I grew up in the suburbs of Hillingdon.  Not a place full of diversity, nor originality.  While the social upheaval of Rave was going on somewhere in the country, ‘going out’ in my world meant going down the park, or sometimes to Harrow or Uxbridge shopping centres.  Live music did not exist and record shops were not on the agenda; we bought our 7” singles in Woolworths.

Houses were either the post-war verity or the new builds that look like show houses for your own remake of Village of the Damned.  Some were pastel; many had a Vauxhall of some verity on the driveway.  The music these people listened to was universally appalling.  I somehow knew from early on it had nothing to do with me.

They like things the same and are not into relating to difference. These are the sort of people Heart FM and Magic were invented for.

The cover of Bigger and Deafer had a many in slick clothes and a chain around his neck, standing on a car bonnet.  Somehow I knew it was New York City.  The sound, as the cliché goes, was like nothing I had ever heard before but really, that’s the truth.  Beats were not coming from a drum kit; there were no guitars or synths and central to it all was one confident man with amazing word skills.

Even kids in my primary school had no idea who LL Cool J was.  As my brother got bored with the record, I got that too.  I would not have thought of myself as the type who liked poetry but something went in my head when I heard things like the opening lines of My Rhyme Ain’t Done:

 ‘The president woke and he called the pope

The pope planted heaven on a golden rope

PS the Lord raised Michelangelo from the dead

So he could make a fresh painting of my head’

Now bragging is something that became tiresome in rap music and everywhere else pretty quickly but lines like that were at least a little inventive; calling upon the almighty to raise a great artist purely to paint your portrait. The wordplay was something that always impressed me. Rap music was from another world and that was before it fully opened my mind to the social reality of American life.  This was giving us news, while we were still recovering from the BBC re-cutting footage of the miner’s struggles at Orgrieve.

The next few years passed without incident musically (or much else). Music came from the radio and rarely stayed in the head for long, although as mentioned there was something brewing in the fields that you occasionally caught wind of, perhaps while watching late-night Channel 4, but that was as close as I ever got.  My life was a tired, cultural wasteland.

Then, I became a teenager.

One day, it must have been in 1992 or early 93, I was walking to the train station when I saw some kid with a Public Enemy t-shirt.  It looked like my thing; the three main members sitting around a skull, Flavour Flav smiling with his mouth full of gold teeth; some uniformed heavies standing behind them.

Later, probably in an Our Price, I took a punt on the album Apocalypse 91: The Enemy Strikes Black, whose cover was the t-shirt design.  I remember first hearing it on a Saturday night; it made an impact.  Public Enemy’s best is generally accepted to be It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and Fear of a Black Planet and I agree; but A91 will always have a special place for me – my introduction to the harsh beats of The Bomb Squad’s production that can still loosen your teeth and the rhyming dominance of Chuck D on songs about the lasting legacy of slavery, police harassment and brutality – all so sadly relevant today.  The unrelenting nature of this music, not letting you up for air yet still having positive messages, was very influential.

This music was almost always a Walkman thing.  As I got further into the genre the amount of naughty words were going to be a problem if my parents over-heard (although it is debateable they were ever switched off enough to not really know), so bar the odd-Saturday afternoon when everybody was out, music listening was a clandestine affair.  I could be in the same room as the family, moronically staring at the TV for another episode of Only Fools and Horses or Noel Edmonds on whatever weekend pap was allowing us to forget the oncoming Monday morning; but I had a different soundtrack pumping through my earphones.  They got served the mainstream; I sat at the back of the living room with a revolution beginning in the head.

Public Enemy became a staple but then there was Ice-T.  A former criminal turned rapper who documented life on the tough streets with an authentic voice, inventing Gangster Rap in the process.  He bragged a little, but specifically made the point that he (and you) were as good as anyone; Going from a broken family, passing through gang life then moving to Beverley Hills to a big house full of guns, in case anyone took a real dislike to his presence.

Another boy in my school, a posh white boy from the pricey end of Northwood, leant me Power and OG (Original Gangster).  These albums contained a fully-realised artistic vision; the tales of modern street life, criminality and consequence; standing up to authority and learning to stand up against injustice.  The message was ‘I may have been poor and black in America, but now I am rich and black and not backing down’.

However this is not a rosy look back; consumption of the music of Ice-T was not without it’s problems. His attitude towards women was pretty shit; nothing but fuck machines really, but that has always blighted the genre.

Similarly Ice Cube had indulged in this sort of thing, but he also gave us the undiluted rage of what it was like to be on the receiving end of police harassment and brutality.

When we saw the LA riots on TV, it was of course shocking but there was zero attempt

by the news to enquire why this was happening – why were some people calling it an uprising?  To begin to answer questions like that, we had to turn to The Predator.

In an interview with Hip Hop Connection magazine, Ice Cube had praised the response in LA to the acquittal of four police officers who had been caught on video severely beating a man named Rodney King.  He expressed regret that some people had been hurt, but pointed out that ‘America doesn’t hear pickets and protest singing, she just hears mass destruction’.

The Predator was an historical document according to one writer at the music magazine MOJO.

Through listening to that album I learnt who Darryl Gates was (‘that’s where all the hate went’); through Cypress Hill’s Black Sunday I learnt about how to mix musical style from punk intensity (as Public Enemy had done) with a more laid back style that did not compromise on the content on the song.

Through the 2 Live Crew (yes they were shit but still), Ice-T and Body Count, I learnt about censorship and how it worked and who it targeted.  Why was there a live version of a Phil Collins song on Capital FM where he talked about a woman who ‘may fuck up your life’ and my parents didn’t have a problem with him?

I was not a mainstream suburban boy; I never had been and it was clear never would be; now I had my own taste, a growing interest in politics and the stories of the dispossessed; plus my wardrobe was changing to include t-shirts of my favourite artists and jackets with a logo of some US football team called the LA Raiders.

Everything had changed.

 End of Part 1

[placetobenation]

When the 2017 NBA Draft just a short time away, PTB’s Brian Bayless checks in with his thoughts on what could—and should—go down at the Barclays Center on Thursday.

This is a team-by-team mock draft. So, fans of the Cleveland Cavaliers, Golden State Warriors, Los Angeles Clippers, and Memphis Grizzlies will not see their team here as they do not have picks in the draft.

ATLANTA HAWKS

1st Rd (19): C Justin Patton, Creighton

2nd Rd (41): PF Cam Oliver, Nevada

2nd Rd (60): SG Damyean Dotson, Houston

The team just traded away C Dwight Howard for pennies on the dollar and will likely lose PF Paul Millsap via free agency, so those positions need to be addressed in the draft as this team is in rebuilding mode. Patton will likely not be able to contribute as a rookie but has shown the ability to score down low in college. He also needs to gain strength. Oliver is an excellent rebounder and can knock down three-point spots and could turn into a solid starter if able to adapt as an NBA stretch power forward. Dotson is a bit old for an NBA Draft prospect (23) but can also shoot from behind the arc as the Hawks might also have to replace Tim Hardaway Jr., who could also depart via free agency.

BOSTON CELTICS

1st Rd (3): SF Jayson Tatum, Duke

2nd Rd (37): PF Ivan Rabb, California

2nd Rd (53): PF Alpha Kaba, France

2nd Rd (56): PF Isaiah Hicks, North Carolina

After trading away the No. 1 overall pick in this draft, GM Danny Ainge stated that there was a good chance the player they wanted with the original pick would be there at No. 3. At this point, I assume it’s Tatum over Josh Jackson, who has cancelled workouts for the Celtics. Tatum is a scorer that the Celtics desperately need. Its also quite possible the Celts package their picks for a star player. With three second round picks, the C’s can use that to help out their front court. Rabb’s draft stock has plummeted and there are reports that his workouts have not gone well but he can rebound and is certainly worth a shot here. He was projected as a possible lottery pick last year as a freshman. Hayes can also rebound and block shots and can bring much needed athleticism to the team’s front court. With three second-round picks, they can select an International player like Kaba as a draft-and-stash option.

BROOKLYN NETS

1st Rd (22): C Jarrett Allen, Texas

2nd Rd (57): SF Wesley Iwundu, Kansas State

The Nets are a team that should really take the best player available with their picks. Its going to be a long time before they are in a position to become competitive again. Allen would be a good value at No. 22 and with the team trading away their best player in C Brook Lopez, would have a shot to get playing time right away. Iwundu is a swingman that can defend well and has shown improvement as a shooter while in college.

CHARLOTTE HORNETS

1st Rd (11): SG Luke Kennard, Duke

2nd Rd (31): PF Caleb Swanigan, Purdue

Before trading for Dwight Howard, I had the Hornets selecting C Zach Collins in the 1st Round. Now they can address shooting with Kennard from Duke, whose stock has risen rapidly due to his impressive shooting during team workouts. Swanigan is a tough presence inside that can rebound and score. The Hornets will need to make the most of their picks as the team’s cap space is limited.

CHICAGO BULLS

1st Rd (16): SF Justin Jackson, North Carolina

2nd Rd (38): SG Tyler Dorsey, Oregon

With all of the rumors surrounding Chicago trading Jimmy Butler, there is as strong chance he will get moved. If he is moved, then I suspect they select Jackson here. If not, they can look to address the front court. with Jarrett Allen, Justin Patton, or John Collins. Dorsey can help add shooting off of the bench where the team has very little at shooting guard behind Dwyane Wade. He even played the point in college and could possibly be a combo guard for the team.

DALLAS MAVERICKS

1st Rd (9): SG Malik Monk, Dallas

The Mavericks have just one pick this draft and have holes all over their roster. They need to rebuild and have very few young pieces. Monk is one of the most explosive players in this draft and can go as high as 5th overall to the Magic in this draft. He might never be an NBA-caliber starting point guard but is a scorer. The Mavericks could also look at point guards in this draft like Ntilikina or Dennis Smith but if Monk’s still on the board then they should take him without hesitation. Zach Collins is also in play here at center.

DENVER NUGGETS

1st Rd (13): SF OG Anunoby, Indiana

2nd Rd (49): SF Jaron Blossongame, Clemson

2nd Rd (51): PG Kobi Simmons, Arizona

Anunoby might miss his entire rookie season due to a torn ACL suffered this past January but has the skill set the Nuggets need. This team has a horrible defense and Anunoby can defend four positions as well as shoot and drive to the hoop. He’s worth a gamble here, especially since this team is not in a position to contend. Blossongame is another strong defender who struggled to shoot as a senior but had been a reliable shooter the rest of his career. With Emmanuel Mudiay looking like a bust the team can stand to improve its point guard situation. Simmons has potential but struggles to shoot and might have to settle as a combo guard in the pros.

DETROIT PISTONS

1st Rd (12): PG Dennis Smith, North Carolina State

Smith could be a huge steal here. This is not the biggest need for the Pistons but I also do not see Reggie Jackson finishing the year with this team. Smith can get to the hoop as good as anyone in this draft class and is getting better as a three-point shooter but can be erratic at times. They could also look at center if they deal Andre Drummond with Zach Collins being an option if he is still on the board. They also have to get better shooting from behind the arc and that makes Luke Kennard an option too.

HOUSTON ROCKETS

2nd Rd (43): SF Dillon Brooks, Oregon

2nd Rd (45): C Anzejs Pasecniks, Latvia

The Rockets need front court depth more than anything else but it will be tough to come by here. Pasecniks apparently impressed scouts during a workout in Los Angeles with his athleticism and could be a nice draft-and-stash option for the team as he will need to improve his defense and add strength to play in the NBA. Brooks can score and had a really good collegiate career. Its not the biggest position of need but the team does have Trevor Ariza and Lou Williams as free agents at the end of this coming season and its doubtful both of them will be retained. The only question about Brooks is what position will he play in the pros as he might end up a defensive liability.

INDIANA PACERS

1st Rd (18): PF John Collins, Wake Forest

2nd Rd (47): SG Sterling Brown, SMU

This team is very likely having to prepare for life without Paul George. Collins fills a need at power forward although the team could also consider someone like TJ Leaf here. The team also needs help in the backcourt and will have to likely do that in the second round. Brown was an efficient shooter in college and defended the perimeter well although the only question with him is will his lack of athleticism hurt him in the pros. Replacing point guard Jeff Teague if he departs will likely have to be done via free agency.

  LOS ANGELES LAKERS

1st Rd (2): PG Lonzo Ball, UCLA

1st Rd (27): C Tony Bradley, North Carolina

1st Rd (28): PF Isaiah Hartenstein, Germany

Ball seems like the obvious choice here provided the pick is not traded away. Although, the Lakers have been coy about their plans here and could end up taking Josh Jackson or another point guard in De’Aaron Fox. Its also been reported they love Markelle Fultz but will likely have to trade up to get him at #1. The team already dealt away D’Angelo Russell and needs someone to facilitate the offense. The front court needs a lot of help too. Despite acquiring Brook Lopez, he is a free agent after this season and the trade seemed designed to create cap space to sign Paul George next season meaning he is likely not a long-term solution. Bradley is agile with upside while Hartenstein is a skilled big man who they can stash away in Germany for a year or two.

MIAMI HEAT

1st Rd (14): C Zach Collins, Gonzaga

With one pick in this draft the Heat can look to address the front court, which really lacks depth. I see Collins going as early as #9 to Dallas here but I think he would be the pick for Heat if still on the board. He should be able to pair up nicely with Hassan Whiteside. If Dion Waiters leaves via free agency then they can look at a replacement with Donovan Mitchell as an intriguing option if available.

MILWAUKEE BUCKS

1st Rd (17): C Bam Adebayo, Kentucky

2nd Rd (48): SF Semi Ojeleye, SMU

The team re-signed Greg Monroe but still needs a physical presence in the post. Adebayo came on late this season for Kentucky and has a lot of upside plus the ability to become an excellent rebounder in the NBA. If not Adebayo they can consider other players like John Collins or even a stretch four player like TJ Leaf and Kyle Kuzma. Ojeleye is one of the better shooters in the draft but offers little else. Still, you need shooters in today’s NBA and Milwaukee is lacking in this area.

MINNESOTA TIMBERWOLVES

1st Rd (7): PF Lauri Markkanen, Arizona

The Timberwolves have some young pieces to build around. However, there bench was a major weakness so taking the best player available might be the way to go with the 7th overall pick. There are reports that the team wants Markkanen and he would fit in well with the team. The team also could go for a guard, with Malik Monk, Dennis Smith, and Frank Ntilikina as options too. Monk would be a great scoring option for the team off the bench.

NEW ORLEANS PELICANS

2nd Rd (40): SG Josh Hart, Villanova

This team needs a lot of help in the back court. Hart has the chance to contribute right away with his ability to shoot and defend. He could start for this team at some point as a rookie due to their lack of depth. Other wing players like Semi Ojeleye, Dwayne Bacon, and Wesley Iwundu are options too.

NEW YORK KNICKS

1st Rd (8): PG Frank Ntilikina, France

2nd Rd (44): SF Devin Robinson, Florida

2nd Rd (58): SG Sindarius Thornwell, South Carolina

This team needs a point guard and rumors are floating around that Ntilikina is who they are targeting. He also has the skill set that can help him run the triangle offense. Malik Monk and Dennis Smith are other possibilities too. They also need help on the wing and on defense. Carmelo Anthony is not getting any younger and they have little else behind him.

OKLAHOMA CITY THUNDER

1st Rd (21): SG Terrance Ferguson, Australia

Surrounding Russell Westbrook with talent is the top priority with this team. Ferguson is one of the top shooters in the draft and could be a great value here. Andre Roberson is a free agent and Victor Oladipo seems lost on this team. A stretch four could fit with this pick too with TJ Leaf as another candidate.

ORLANDO MAGIC

1st Rd (6): SF/PF Jonathan Issac, Florida State

1st Rd (25): PG/SG Frank Jackson, Duke

2nd Rd (33): SF/PF Alec Peters, Valparaiso

2nd Rd (35): PG Frank Mason, Kansas

The Magic really need to improve their offense. Isaac is similar to another former Magic player in Rashard Lewis. He’s athletic and can score inside and out. Adding strength is a must though but he does have a ton of upside. It does not seem like this team is sold of Elfrid Payton given the inconsistent playing time he received over the season so adding a pair of guards in Jackson and Mason helps if they decide to trade him or even if he stays as both are good on offense. Peters is a forward that can shoot but could also prove to be a liability on defense. Other first round choices are Malik Monk and Lauri Markkanen or a point guard.

PHILADELPHIA 76ERS

1st Rd (1): PG Markelle Fultz, Washington

2nd Rd (36): PF Jordan Bell, Oregon

2nd Rd (39): PG Monte Morris, Iowa State

2nd Rd (46): PF Mathias Lessort, France

2nd Rd (50): SF Tyler Lydon, Syracuse

Fultz appears to be the top choice in this draft. He could help from a solid nucleus with Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons. Plus, I do not see how someone like Ball would fit in well with Simmons on the court as both are not good shooters. Even with Fultz, they could still use more help at the point where Morris can end up a steady backup in the league as he is lauded for having a high basketball IQ. The team does not seem to want Jahlil Okafor as part of their future plans and he did disappoint last season so Bell can replace him. The team can stash Lessort in France for a year and Lydon is a shooter, something the 76ers need to improve as they head into the future.

PHOENIX SUNS

1st Rd (4): SF Josh Jackson, Kansas

2nd Rd (32): PF Jonathan Motley, Baylor

2nd Rd (54): C Eric Mika, BYU

If Jackson is off the board then the Suns will likely take Jayson Tatum. Jackson would be a good value for the Suns, whose biggest position of need is at small forward. He would pair up nicely with Devin Booker. If the team decides to deal Eric Bledsoe they can look to draft a point guard such as De’Aaron Fox or Lonzo Ball if he manages to slip to the 4th pick. Motley is an athletic power forward and Mika is a rebounder and seven-footer as the team might have to look for a replacement for Alex Len.

PORTLAND TRAILBLAZERS

1st Rd (15): PF Harry Giles, Duke

1st Rd (20): PF Kyle Kuzma, Utah

1st Rd (26): PG Jawun Evans, Oklahoma State

With three first round picks and limited cap space due to a lot of bad free agent signing last season, the team will likely have to address it needs through this draft, although I do not see them keeping all three picks. They could trade up and take someone like Jonathan Isaac. Giles is a wild card as he was one of the top prospects heading into college last season but missed games due to knee issues and struggled when he played. He’s worth a gamble with the 15th pick. Kuzma is a forward that can play both spots and can shoot, which will help this team. With nothing behind Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum in the backcourt, Evans can give them a good ball-handler coming off of the bench. The team could also use the 26th pick on Jonah Bolden and stash him overseas.

SACRAMENTO KINGS

1st Rd (5): PG De’Aaron Fox, Kentucky

1st Rd (10): SG Donovan Mitchell, Louisville

2nd Rd (34): SF/PF Jonah Bolden, Australia

The Kings have young talent in the front court but need help everywhere else. With one of the 1st round picks the Kings will address the point guard positions as it appears Darren Collison will depart via free agency. Fox seems like a solid choice here at #5 but if Jayson Tatum or Josh Jackson are still on the board then I figure they’ll select one of them and hope a point guard like Frank Ntilikina or Dennis Smith is around at #10. Mitchell can help at shooting guard and chance to become a lockdown defender, which will be needed with the strong guard play in the Western Conference. Bolden is a versatile forward with potential who can play overseas for another year before coming over.

SAN ANTONIO SPURS

1st Rd (29): PG Derrick White, Colorado

2nd Rd (59): PF Nigel Hayes, Wisconsin

Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili are shells of their former selves and need to be replaced. White is a bit old (22) for a draft prospect but was effective and can shoot and distribute the basketball. Even if they get Chris Paul another point guard would be needed. Hayes is athletic with a giant wingspan that could carve out a nice bench role for the Spurs.

TORONTO RAPTORS

1st Rd (23): PF DJ Wilson, Michigan

With just one pick the Raptors can fill a need at three-point shooting and at the stretch four position with Wilson, who had a strong performance in this year’s NCAA Tournament. With both Patrick Patterson and Serge Ibaka free agents, its doubtful both of them will be retained. If Wilson gets tougher and adds strength he could end up being a steal here.

UTAH JAZZ

1st Rd (24): PF TJ Leaf, UCLA

1st Rd (30): C Ike Anigbogu, UCLA

2nd Rd (42): PG Edmond Sumner, Xavier

2nd Rd (55): SF/PF Aleksandar Vezenkov, Bulgaria

Getting a stretch four like Leaf fits this team well. They can settle for a point guard in the second round with someone like Sumner, who would have likely been a late lottery pick if not for tearing his ACL this past January. If he comes back from that injury the Jazz could have a steal. Anigbogu provides depth behind Rudy Gobert where the team does not have too much behind him. They can stash Vezenkov overseas since they have four picks in this draft, although I would not be surprised to see them make a trade.

WASHINGTON WIZARDS

1st Rd (52): SG/SF Dwayne Bacon, Florida State

The Wizards are a team with a very poor bench. With one pick at the back end of the second round they should just take the best player available. Bacon is an athletic wing and that position will be in even more need if Otto Porter departs via free agency. Finding a potential backup point guard can be considered here with this pick too seeing how Brandon Jennings and Trey Burke failed in that role.