#and maybe having a monster form reveal as the final part of the sequence

[droolfang]

maxim and amandine seem to be the biggest names, as to be expected, lol

hi I’m curious if you’re still considering doing a wg drive when you have the time

ye yknow what send in characters you might wanna see in a wg drive from Me

[crunchyorochiru]

In honor of the Monster High live action, I've conceptualized a shitty yet viable Ever After High live action.

• It starts with a scene where Cerise gives some monologue about how "there's no place for people (half humans) like us," and it shows people discriminating against Cerise and Ramona. There could be a callback to the Jekyll-Hyde thing from the Monster High movie, and then Cerise explains how her parents couldn't agree on which society is safer for their kids to hide in, so they split up (Ramona with the monsters, and Cerise with the people)

•Just like the Monster high live action, this is a musical movie

• The mc of this is Cerise, but in the true spirit of live actions, her personality gets butchered. She's the protagonist, so she's quirky, hates fashion, not like other girls- (you get the deal)

• Years pass. It's Legacy year, and to cheer her up, Cerise's mom tells her that her dad and sister will reunite with them soon. Cerise begrudgingly goes to school, and she has no friends, because she doesn't want to reveal her secret

• If there's any singing, it starts here. The "Coming out of the dark" song is replaced with Cerise softly singing about stepping "back into the dark" and hiding who she is. Plus, we can include the rebels fearing Legacy day, and the royals have parts that sound upbeat, but they're just rewording what the rebels say. Maybe for good measure, Apple has the most princess-sy line, but it has the darkest implications

• Cerise mostly does fine blending in the background and keeping to herself, though she discovers her roommate for the year is Cedar Wood, the daughter of pinnochio

• Cedar asks Cerise why she wears a hood, and Cerise just snaps at her ahout minding her own business. Cedar apologizes and brings up how her curse compels to blurt out whatever's on her mind. Cerise also apologizes, though she becomes more determined not to befriend anyone to protect her secret

• Then there's a song about how evil Raven Queen is, and it's over the top (students describe Raven burning down houses and eating babies.) Immediately after, Cerise runs into Raven, and her hood comes off. Raven swears to not reveal her secret, but Cerise doesn't believe her

• To make sure Raven doesn't expose her, Cerise starts hanging around Raven. Immediately, attention is thrown her way, but she endures it for the sake of protecting her secret. Raven's just happy for the company

• Raven introduces Cerise to Maddie. Upon meeting Cerise, she points out how she knows Cerise thinks she's crazy, and she rambles how anyone would go crazy hearing bodyless voices 24/7, but since Raven trusts her, she'll trust her

• Maddie has a musical number about "the voices" and how she knows everyone's secret (including Cerise's.) Brooke appears in the mirrors in the background, and Cerise sees, but she thinks it's her imagination

• Legacy day comes closer, but Cerise actually enjoys being around Raven. Cerise, Raven, Maddie, and Cedar have formed their own little friend group. Cerise sings a reprise of the "Raven Queen is evil song" talking about how her life has changed since befriending Raven

• Kitty approaches Cerise and tells her she was there the day her hood fell in front of Raven. Cerise tries to go on with the day, but Kitty exposes her in front of the whole school

• Cerise runs to her room and grabs shit, planning to run away. She gets to the forest and starts singing an emotional song about how "Ramona was right, there's no place for people like me," but Raven interrupts her with a response line

• "There is a place for you, blah blah blah"

• Then half the school reveals themselves, and led by Raven, they sing about their own troubles fitting in and how "it's not right but we'll make it right" (of course there has to be a dance sequence)

• Cerise decides to continue attending school, this time with her hood down. There's the obligatory bullies, but the rebels defend her. Cerise sings loudly and has a full musical number about finally showing who she is (maybe there's a little bit of a tribute to Coming out of the dark in there.) Meanwhile, Headmaster Grimm looms in the background disapprovingly.

• The song stops a day before Legacy day. Cerise meets the Headmaster, who rudely tells her that she'll still need to sign her destiny (even if they're now not sure what.)

• Raven expresses to Cerise how scared she is about Legacy day, and how she might end up following her destiny and signing because she doesn't want to jeapordize everyone. Cerise blows up on her because by that logic, she's jeapordizing everyone just by existing

• Legacy day comes. Cerise and Raven sit apart from each other because of the previous day. Signing is alphabetical, and the Headmaster calls for Maddie, but she's locked in the bathroom. The Headmaster moves on to Cerise

• The storybook of legends shows Cerise as the Big bad Wolf and Ramona as Red Riding Hood. Cerise gives a speech about being who she is and rewriting her story, and she rips out her page from the storybook of legends. Nobody disappears, but reactions are split between disapproval and cheers. The Headmaster takes the book and runs

• Raven apologizes to Cerise for what she said, and the pair make up. Maddie shows up and leads them to the forest, where Briar is throwing a party with the rebels and a few royal-turned-rebels. Briar claims that she and the other new rebels have switched sides because they get Cerise's view (but at no point did they ever indicate this previously)

• The end song starts, and as the credits roll, everyone's just dancing and partying

• As a post credits scene, the family reunion happens. Ramona tells Cerise of Monster High and tries to convince her to join, opening up the possibility for a crossover

I really miss ever after high, but hopefully this monster high reboot does well enough to bring back ever after high (even if it's a crappy reboot, I'll just be happy it's back)

[kakitysax]

Okay so I just watched the first Frozen movie with my youngest sister because we’re both home sick? And. We STAN this whole thing being a mental health allegory???

Like, this movie is deeply relatable and like, resonant? To me. Specifically. Both of my younger sisters can attest to how scary and mean I was before I got help, and the sister closest to me in age (actually, the sister who has the same age gap with me that Anna has with Elsa) DEEPLY relates to Anna’s struggle to reach her older sister.

But what I actually want to talk about is the symbolism. Below the cut. This will literally destroy your dash, be warned.

Elsa’s ice powers represent something about herself - about her MIND - she feels the need to repress. That could be any number of things. Neurodivergence, emotion in general, maybe a personality disorder. Elsa doesn’t necessarily HAVE any of these things. The point is that the viewers might, and whatever this unnamed thing is, it can be both beautiful and harmful.

Her parents don’t understand, and unwittingly teach Elsa to be afraid of herself. 

As a result, Elsa starts to LOSE CONTROL OF HER POWERS. By teaching Elsa that this thing about her is something to be repressed, she becomes less and less able to ACTUALLY control them.

This increases her sense of isolation from other people, and she develops MAJOR anxiety and depression as a result. I mean, just look at the separation anxiety she felt when her parents had to leave.

“Do you have to go?”

Elsa is 18 here - terrified of herself and completely reliant on her parents to protect her and everyone around her from her powers.

ALRIGHT let’s skip the boring stuff

Blah blah blah, Anna’s lonely too, she needs love, falls in love too quickly, is desparate to marry Hans because she thinks this is the only day she’ll be able to form actual connections with other people...

All that stuff is really important, but what I want to talk about is the frozen kingdom that Elsa creates.

Overcome by feelings of freedom and joy, Elsa finally begins to regain control of the creative part of her powers, and one of the first things she creates is Olaf.

For everyone’s annoyance at Let It Go, it’s actually an amazing sequence and I relate to it a lot.

But what I find to be a BETTER reflection of the journey through Elsa’s psyche is Anna and Kristoff’s journey up the North Mountain.

I say “Journey,” but there’s really only three environments I want to talk about.

This is where Kristoff and Anna meet Olaf - a frozen wonderland of weeping willows. As they walk through it, Anna says “I never knew that Winter could be so beautiful.”

That line got me. Anna doesn’t actually know her sister. She likes a version of Elsa that exists in her head - a 13-year-old altered memory of a perfect older sister. But Elsa isn’t the warm fuzzy friend that Anna idealizes - she’s always been dignified, composed, and wonderfully creative - loving, yes, but in a cool kind of way. Anna expects Elsa to be a goofy playmate, and writes off the “wintery” parts of her as something bad, just like Elsa does. But walking through this wonderland, she sees a different aspect of the same Elsa - the good parts of the REAL Elsa. And THIS, fittingly, is where she meets Olaf.

Now something I noticed this time around is that during this scene, Olaf consistently looks towards Anna.

“I like warm hugs,” he says, turning to her, and he asks her for her name first.

He then relies on ANNA to tell him the names of Kristoff and Sven.

Elsa made Olaf for Anna. And because of this, Olaf is the EMBODIMENT of Elsa’s childhood love for her sister.

This is why he always goes back to Anna. This is why it didn’t count as an act of true love when Olaf was willing to melt for her, and why he is able to tell Anna what love is. Olaf’s love for Anna is Elsa’s love for Anna. Olaf IS love.

“Some people are worth melting for.”

Olaf loves summer. Thawing. Melting things. And it’s because, as we learn later in the movie, LOVE is the secret to melting Elsa’s ice, and breaking down her barriers.

Right okay back to environments.

The NEXT icy place they come across is THIS bitch

A hillside full of icy spikes that point towards whoever approaches. Another wall between Elsa and the people trying to reach her. Elsa consistently uses outward-pointing spikes to keep other people away.

Finally, they reach the CENTER of Elsa’s psyche: a palace made of ice.

Elsa’s ice palace is the culmination of Elsa’s creative powers, a reflection of her own mind.

But what’s really, REALLY interesting, is that like ice, it’s reflective. And after her conversation with Anna, the castle starts to change.

Immediately after hurting Anna, darkness spreads rapidly down the castle walls. The darkness is reminiscent of the fragile “dark ice” like the kind you would find on a fragile frozen pond. The ice is becoming less stable.

And later, when we see Elsa trying to regain control of herself, the color of the walls has changed completely to reflect her fear.

The spikes reappear, this time pointing inward - towards HERSELF.

Elsa’s mind is no longer a safe place for Elsa herself to be - and holy SHIT do I relate.

The last thing I want to talk about is the blizzard at the end of the movie.

Elsa is back in Arendelle, the very place she’s been trying to avoid the whole movie - the place she’s afraid of destroying with her powers. The whiteout is Elsa’s terror, furious and opaque. It’s BLINDING, not only to herself, but to everyone around her.

But the second Hans tells Elsa that Anna is dead

Everything Stops.

The wind stops, the storm receeds, snowflakes freeze in thin air. The world stops moving. Elsa stops feeling.

Hans drew his sword pretty loudly. But Elsa doesn’t care. She believes herself to be a monster, and no longer cares if she lives or dies.

This is basically the end of what I want to talk about, but I can’t exactly leave it here, so.

Anna saves Elsa, sacrificing herself in the truest form of love.

She does the Big Freezy thing and turns into an epic ice sculpture, which Elsa then wraps in what is likely the world’s most uncomfortable hug.

And then, starting from the heart first, Anna unfreezes.

The secret to Elsa’s powers is revealed to be love, not fear. And, sealing my love for Elsa with a fucking kiss, Elsa IMMEDIATELY latches on. She’s been searching for an answer for this for her entire life, and is able to apply the one she finds INSTANTLY. She lets her love for Arendelle and everyone around her reshape her mind into a place of safety and wonder. 

Everyone lives happily ever after, my sister cries, I nod stoically because I’m almost incapable of genuine emotion, Elsa is the most relatable Disney Princess and I adore her forever.

I know that none of this is a hot take but I really wanted to ramble about it anyway. This is a really good movie. Friendly reminder that just because something is mainstream doesn’t mean that it sucks. One time I was talking about how much I related to Elsa and Dad said that I was “a demographic.” Like. Okay? What’s the fucking issue with that? So Disney created a story that can resonate with a wide group of people, what’s the shame in being one of the people it touches? The real issue here is that so many young people can relate to repression and mental illness, like, what the fuck?

Anyway, thank you for coming to my Ted Talk. Join me next time (never) while I talk about the equally relatable Frozen Two’s arc of delving deeper into the knowledge of what you’ve repressed, Elsa’s obvious aromanticism, and the fact that the Trolls are evil masterminds who have deeply wronged both of the first movie’s male protagonists.

[duhragonball]

Hellsing Liveblog Ch. 62-67

I guess this image sets the stage pretty well.   This is the first part of the climactic Alucard vs. Anderson battle, featured in the story arcs “Hundred Swords”, “Might and Magic”, and “Psyoblade”.

So yeah, most of this is just action shots of Alucard and Anderson fighting.  The main story beats here are the different forms they take on through the course of the battle.   Alucard starts out in this Dracula form, which I assume is meant to depict how he used to look 500 years ago.  He’s got armor and big sword and a mustache.  

Anderson’s big idea here is that Alucard is vulnerable in this form, because he unleashed his horde of familiars to destroy the 9th Crusaders and Millennium troops.   Now that he’s temporarily separated from those creatures, Anderson thinks he can finally kill him once and for all.  

And it seems like Alucard isn’t opposed to the idea.   He calls Anderson his “beloved rival”, and seems to enjoy the prospect of meeting his end at the hands of a worthy human adversary.   But he’s also under orders from Sir Integra to destroy all of the invaders, and I’m pretty sure that includes Anderson.   Soon enough, Alucard reverts to his default appearance, trading in his sword for his handguns. 

This only makes sense, because way back at the start of this story, Alucard asked Walter to build him the Jackal, an even bigger, more powerful version of his original handgun, the Casul.   I mean, why wouldn’t he try it out?  Its bullets shatter Anderson’s bayonets with ease.  

And Alucard still has his horde of familiars, the absorbed souls of all of his victims.  There’s Ottoman soldiers, Wallachians, even those Brazillian cops that tried to kill him in his hotel room that one time.  

Okay, so we know what the Catholics are doing while this is going on, because Anderson told them to retreat while he faced Alucard alone.  But what is Millennium doing during all of this?    Not much, actually.   The Major just lost his entire invasion force down there, but he’s chilling out in his airship, enjoying the duel between Alucard and Anderson.  He orders Walter to make him some hot chocolate.   He seems pretty pleased with all of this...

And here’s a cool shot of Seras Victoria watching the fight.  

So now Anderson has to fight his way through Alucard’s familiars to get at the monster himself.  The odds are steep, but he’ll do it anyway, which pleases Alucard to no end.   He’s thrilled to see another human daring to challenge him this way, just like Abraham van Helsing a century ago.   Well, he doesn’t name names, but come on, we already saw him revealed as Dracula, so there’s no point dancing around this anymore.

Anderson’s arm gets badly injured, to the point where he has to carry it in his mouth as he fights on, but then his Iscariot colleagues show up to help.   Anderson is pissed because he told them to clear out for their own safety, but Heinkel and Yumiko are just as fanatical as he is, and just as eager to die for what they see as a righteous cause.    Anderson can’t talk them out of it, so he accepts their help.  

This guy kind of looks like Anderson with black hair, but he’s not.   He’s just some rando Iscariot dude.   As they get overpowered by Alucard’s minions, or fatally wounded, they set off explosives to take out as many enemies as they can.   So I guess they were just... carrying this stuff on them the whole time?  I think I see now why they lost so many of their guys defending Integra from the Millennium soldiers.  

At last, Anderson clears a path to Alucard, and he finally whips out his secret weapon, procured by Vatican Section III, the Matthew Organization.    In the Hellsing-verse, the Catholic Church seems to have 12 sections that handle their business, each named after the twelve apostles, with Iscariot as the secret 13th section that does all the black ops murder-y stuff.   Fun fact: After Judas Iscariot’s death and Christ’s ascension into heaven, the 11 apostles had a meeting and picked a new member, Mattias to round out their group.   So I assume Section XII is the Mattias Organization, and they handle... I don’t know, maybe making those little communion wafers.    But Section III handles ancient relics, like the one Anderson is holding in his hand.  

Alucard recognizes this at once as the “Nail of Helena”, one of the nails used to crucify Jesus.   I’ve heard of the others that Alucard mentions, but not this one.   The Holy Shroud was the burial cloth used to put Jesus in the tomb, and widely believed to be the Shroud of Turin, although this is disputed.   The Holy Grail, or “Holy Chalice” is supposed to be the cup Jesus used at the Last Supper, and was the subject of “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.”   The Lance of Longinus, also known as the “Spear of Destiny” was the spear that the Roman soldier used to pierce Jesus’ side when he died.    This got a lot of play in DC Comics, which used the Spear as a plot device to explain why the Spectre couldn’t intervene in World War II. 

The “Nails of Helena” refer to Helena, the mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine, who converted the Roman Empire to Christianity.   Helena went on a quest to find the cross used to crucify Jesus, and she supposedly succeeded.   And now Alexander Anderson is holding one in his hand like Wolverine.  

And this development takes all the wind out of Alucard’s sails.   Not because he’s worried about losing, but because he wants to fight Anderson as a man.   He knows that if Anderson uses the nail on himself, he’ll become some sort of miraculous creature, but give up his humanity in the process.    In other words, he’ll just be another monster like Alucard. 

But Anderson doesn’t care, because he’s not interested in such details.    Alucard wants to die to a human adversary, but Anderson just wants to destroy Alucard, period.   If the nail can make that happen, he’ll gladly use it.

And he does, and this leads to Anderson regenerating his damaged body parts with some sort of thorny tendrils.   One of the Iscariots, probably Heinkel, likens this to the crown of thorns placed on Jesus’ head at the crucifixion.    Alucard shoots Anderson in the face, but he just grows thorns in place of the wound.    Anderson cuts off Alucard’s head, but we already know that won’t stop him.   

Meanwhile, the crew of the Major’s airship are freaking out, because the ground forces have all been destroyed.    The captain asks the Major for orders, and he tells him to arm the crew and give hand grenades to anyone who can’t walk.   If they run out of weapons, then they can use steel pipes or whatever’s handy.   The captain objects, arguing that the battle has been lost and there’s no longer any point in fighting, but the Major scolds him for missing the whole point of this.  

This doesn’t really get explained in full until the end of the story, but I think it was already made clear that the Major’s sole purpose was war for the sake of war.    Now that the battle is turning against him, it seems like a lot of his own goons don’t understand how far he was willing to take this.   

One thing that confuses me is that the airship is apparently staffed by German naval officers.  Presumably these guys were Nazis turned into vampires too, but the captain seems to have different sensibilities than the SS guys that died on the ground.    It’s weird, because they’ve all been planning this invasion for the last 55 years, and so many of them still don’t understand the Major’s plan.   Maybe he just never saw fit to share it with them, or he’s been intentionally deceiving them so they’d cooperate.  

Anyway, the Major summons a pistol from his chair, and there’s this whole sequence where a mechanical arm hands it to him, but when he shoots the guy for insubordination, he misses.   Then he orders his loyal men to do the shooting for him.   Wait, so does Millennium have anti-vampire weapons too?  I mean, we’ve already established that ordinary bullets don’t work on vampires, so why was the Major trying to shoot this dude in the first place?  

Back to the fight, this is what Anderson looks like now, and he’s becoming less human as these thorn tendrils grow over his wounds.  

And he finally gets the drop on Alucard, running him through the neck with one of his bayonets, and getting all that thorny stuff into the wound, which seems to do a real number on Al.  One way or another, his army of familiars starts to burst into flames, so he’s in deep trouble.  

[alexseanchai]

Fanfic 2020 in Review

I got tagged by @kasienda @noirshitsuji and @marvelousmsmol and I am tagging whoever wants to play!

1) List of fics completed this year in the order they were finished:

*filters own works to complete and updated in 2020*

1 - 20 of 57 Works by AlexSeanchai

nope. *adds filter to include only works of at least 1000 words*

unless otherwise indicated, these are all Miraculous Ladybug:

“don’t bake it lying down”, post-reveal Marichat vs Felix Graham de Vanily

“veracity”, canon divergence from “Ladybug” featuring Mister Bug and Verity Queen (so also Marichat, I guess)

“(no request is too extreme, if) your heart is in your dream”, in which Hawkmoth wins, for the thirty seconds or so before Emilie saves Ladybug and Chat Noir’s lives

“tell me you love me and make me believe it”, in which trans girl Chatonne Noire ropes Ladybug into helping plan her civilian self’s escape slash social transition

“kingmaker, oathbreaker”, in which Hawkmoth wins and Emilie watches her son remove himself from the family

“stay and let me watch you break it down” (Twelve Dancing Princesses), a modern setting

“set a course for winds of fortune”, in which trans girl Chatonne Noire has already escaped and Gabriel and Nathalie are trying to bring Gabriel’s son home

“we ground love in a hopeless place”, in which post-reveal Marinette’s attempt to remain resolutely not in love with her partner dissolves like sugar in coffee when they start a pun war

“ring the bells that still can ring”, in which Alya is deeply confused about why Adrien and Marinette are planning a wedding when last night both were single

“burning wishes at both ends (the cold wind and long loud wail remix)”, in which Gabriel made a monkey’s paw wish and Emilie makes another

“words cannot espresso”, in which Marinette’s OC roommate is justifiably worried for Marinette’s safety, and meanwhile Adrien takes care of Marinette

“the compromise of truth” (the chronologically second-earliest part posted to date of nine lives, snake’s eyes), in which Adrien tells his friends how he won some freedom and respect from his father

“At The Present Time”, the Ladrien/Ladynoir marriage proposal follow-up to @art-deco-shrimp‘s  “Your Presents Required”

“j'ai rêvé (so I don't have to dream alone)”, in which the events of canon must just have been a series of dream sequences, Marinette and Adrien both think, until they both arrive at Chloe’s Halloween masquerade dressed as themselves from the dreams

2) Number of words written:

ahahaha no. I am not counting all my scattered fic drafts and trying to figure out what I did and didn’t write in 2020. I refuse.

AO3 says I posted 162K in 2020. it is counting all of keeps you guessing (like any real love), which (a) I started posting in 2019 (b) is co-written by @galahadwilder​; it is counting all of my meta snippets collection, much of which was written in 2019; it is counting the Vimeo passwords for my vids. but I probably cleared 150K by a safe margin.

3) Your most popular fic:

“veracity” has a four-digit kudos count, wow, when’d that happen? this is also the 2020 work with the most hits and the most bookmarks, but “tell me you love me” has four-thirds as many comments as its nearest competitor.

4) Your personal fav:

“cannot break us, not with a thousand swords”, no question about it. this is the one in which Ladybug proposes marriage to Chat Noir via Princess Bride meme on Tumblr. (if you intend to download the work or otherwise to consume it with creator style off, you want the accessible version instead of the primary version.)

5) Your fav scene:

aaaaaaaaa

—okay so this is cheating and I know it, since Uncertain Humors (the one where Marinette/Adrien is both Orpheus/Eurydice and Theseus/Ariadne) is nowhere near finished, never mind posted (maybe I'll get “Sanguine” done to post on my birthday?)

but it is still my favorite of the year. as you might guess from that description of the story, this scene has content notes for character death:

Hell is a maze. Marinette walks.

This acrid passage has little to see but damp stone, seeming blood-stained in the dim carmine light. At about the height of her heart, the faintly glowing thread cuts through the not-clammy air; it ought to be pulsing at the same rate as the heart it's bound to. She might be able to see her own reflection if she looked down at the open sewage pipe, or at one of the puddles that now and again she splashes through, dampening the canvas of her shoes. She might see reflected what's behind her.

She remembers Mme. Mendeleiev lecturing on human physiology. In healthy humans old enough to have learned how, urination is a voluntary action: one may not know which muscles one tenses and relaxes in order to do so, and probably isn't paying attention to those details when one is doing, but one has conscious control over whether one does. Usually. Stress and anxiety mean some people are unable to relax the relevant sphincter muscle and others are unable to stop themselves. It's voluntary for cats, too: it's one way they mark their territories. Cat-boys have other ways.

There is a moment in every human life when all one's muscles relax at once. Some Parisians have had several such moments.

The thread is braided with itself around her left fourth finger, rows of tiny red half-hitch knots, and falls loosely over the back of her hand to loop twice around her wrist. She holds it wrapped between the fingers of her right hand to keep it at a constant tension, as though knitting with this insubstantial thread, so fragile for something two (two dozen, two million) lives hang from—too thin to sew with, no thicker than one strand of his hair. As she walks, she winds it around and around and around her wrist.

Between her ring finger and her right hand, it loops twice.

Marinette's shoe lands in a puddle she didn't see. The rainwater splashes soundlessly onto her bare ankle and on the stone.

(With cat-like tread, upon our prey we steal— It's a very loud song.)

She walks on.

6) A fic or scene that challenged you:

where the firelight fades, no contest. this is the second story I’ve ever been able to stick with more than a couple hundred words past the 20K mark, but it’s easily the twentieth novel-length I’ve begun. (though also, you know that kedreeva post? well, 90K later, I’m less than 15K from completing this 10K fic! I think.) and I have been learning so much about long-form fiction.

there has also been a lot of weeping and tearing my hair. case in point: I just trashed the chapter 15 draft because I figured out the reason it wasn’t going anywhere! I can probably keep the first few hundred words of that draft without any editing, and another few hundred with some revision...

7) A line of writing you’re proud of:

from “j'ai rêvé (so I don't have to dream alone)”:

Everything about their partnership is fragments of sentences in the dream diary Adrien writes in ultraviolet pen. Disjointed flickers of thought even when examined under the black light he hides in the snack cabinet under packets of Super Yoyo sandwich cookies and bags of cheesy Monster Munch potato chips and boxes of petit écolier butter cookies (chocolat noir)—none of which explains the gym-socks smell. All fleeting incoherent flashes, invisible between the mundane lines of La Modification shelved at his bedside between Leroux and Dumas. None of it is solid. Adrien has more proof his room's haunted.

okay let me break this down for you!

* Adrien started a dream diary to make sense of the memories

* in invisible ink, in a book that (according to Wikipedia) is thematically appropriate and won’t (if Gabriel sees it) look like anything other than Adrien developing an interest in French literature

* shelved between Phantom of the Opera and The Three Musketeers

* look I didn’t come up with the name “black light”

* or “chocolat noir” for what English speakers call “dark chocolate”, or “petit écolier” (that is, “little schoolboy”) for that sort of butter cookie

* also not my fault that “chocolat noir” sounds remarkably like “Chat Noir”, which, attentive readers may have noticed, is not a name that appears in the story after the header and before Miraculous Cure

* I found the website of a store in Boston, Massachusetts that caters to French expats, and the yo-yo cookies and the monster chips were right there in the photos, y’all

* the snack stash and the black light live in the cabinet where, in canon, the Camembert lives; yes, that cheese smells in the real world like gym socks

* this story’s akuma was not able to affect anything but squishy human memory: nobody affected remembers anything about Ladybug or Chat Noir or Hawkmoth, not in any solid way, not even when they read news articles about the subject, and this includes Marinette and Adrien not being able to see or hear or remember their own kwamis—but you know what Adrien’s Insta post about his poltergeist and Adrien’s Insta post with the floating sock don’t show and don’t explicitly refer to?

* I love this paragraph so much (my housemates may have been lovingly mocking me over it)

8) A comment that touched you:

there are people (y’all know who you are) who said y’all are studying my style. I ded of blush.

9) Something that inspired your writing:

by volume of fic drafts that can be blamed on any particular person, the winner is probably @norakwami​

10) Your proudest accomplishment (that one scene; finally finishing that one fic; posting your first fic; etc):

so that longest-story-ever-written record I set in 2007 with the 89.5K story that, till where the firelight fades, was the only story I’d gotten much past 20K?

I broke that fucking record!

and then I deleted the draft of firelight chapter 15 😭

11) Do you have any writing goals for the next year?

I’m starting work on a fantasy novel, a Sleeping Beauty retelling in which I explore (among other things) the economic consequences of the king’s ordering all the spinning wheels burned, and I want to make significant progress on that. and I want to not make my hands any worse; I kind of need those!

(breaking news alert: bodies fucking suck. so does giving yourself repetitive stress injuries in doing one and a half to two people’s worth of work for an organization that was never ever going to pay you more than one person’s worth of pay.)

[only-by-the-stars]

the annotated Tome of the Wild

Part five: Babes in the Wood!

- A half-moon the color of yellowed pages hung high in the sky above the figures on the ground OH LOOK IT’S THAT SAME DAMN MOON AGAIN. DESPITE THAT DAYS HAVE GONE BY AND IT DEFINITELY WOULDN’T LOOK THE SAME AT THIS POINT.

- “Idiot child. Perhaps I should've done something to make you more intelligent, instead of just transforming your body.” And here we have confirmation that it was Koume that changed her into this.

- Of course, the centerpiece of this scene is the reveal of what Midna’s been up to this whole time. In the show, the situation for Beatrice is similar: she thought that Adelaide just wanted a couple of kids to do household chores, and was fine with just turning them over to her in exchange for the item she needed to break her and her family’s curse. Until, of course, she grew to like them and have second thoughts, as Midna does here. Which of course lines up with how Midna initially thought to just use Link in TP to help herself and her people, until his actions and Zelda’s made her reconsider her disdain for the people of the world of light. Here it’s her bond with Aryll and Link that makes her hesitate to hand them over: she really likes Aryll, and after a rough start with Link they’re now getting along, and she feels a lot of sympathy for his situation with Mipha. She doesn’t want to keep them from getting home even for a little while, and when she finds out about Koume’s true intentions she draws the line, as her moral code won’t let her hurt others for her own sake and she knows Zelda wouldn’t want her to hurt anyone on her behalf either. This conflict and growth are exactly why I had an easy time casting Midna in this role, and I loved being able to write her and develop the dynamics she has with Link and Aryll.

- “Only the voice of the shadow that lurks in the woods, the king of darkness that rules the night, concerns me...” King of Darkness is one of Ganon’s titles in the series.

- “There is only his way.” A line that will be echoed by the Beast himself much later.

- “Aryll, I know!” Link froze as soon as the words were out of his mouth. We’re at the point where Link is snapping at his beloved baby sister, showing just how stressed out he is right now. He was able to relax more when Midna was around, but now her betrayal is driving him further along that path to despair I’ve been mentioning. He immediately apologizes, to his credit, but he’s still starting to crack.

- “You are in grave peril, and your fate, your very lives depend on if you heed my words or not! The Beast stalks you, seeking your fall into his grasp... but you must not allow him to capture you, you must not give in to despair!” He’s not wrong! Listen to him!

- The shadow laughed, a long, low sound that seemed to ooze up from the deepest depths of the earth where eldritch creatures slumbered, forgotten by time and the gods alike. Calamity Ganon emerges from deep beneath Hyrule Castle.

- “You forget, do you not, that your daughter's safety depends upon keeping me happy?” The first hint of the deception that the Beast is working on Rhoam.

- Aryll is now calling her frog Alfonzo, after the engineer in Spirit Tracks.

- AND THEN THERE’S NAYRU AND KOTAKE. This was one of the most FUN things I got to play with. The episode this portion is an adaptation of is probably my favorite in the show, and I had an utter blast toying with expectations here just as the show did. Maybe even more! The show leads you to believe that the character Kotake replaces is the sinister and evil one, preying on the hapless young girl that Nayru is replacing, only to yank the rug out from under you and reveal that the girl is possessed and trying to eat the brothers.

now, Nayru is from Oracle of Ages. You meet her at the beginning, whereupon she quickly becomes possessed by the evil sorceress Veran. Kotake, meanwhile, is present as a villain in OOT and a linked Oracle game, and as a friendly shopkeeper in Majora’s Mask. We just saw the villainous version of her sister at the beginning of this chapter. So... is she evil too? If you’ve never seen the show, have played OOT and MM but not the Oracle games, you probably got taken in just like a first time viewer of the show is. Only to find out too late, as does Link, that Nayru is the people-eating one, and not Kotake, who is indeed her MM self and not evil.

- Nayru laughed too, a pleasant sound reminiscent of harp strings being played. Nayru gives Link the Harp of Ages in OOA.

- Aryll has switched the frog’s name to Dr. Calip, after the NPC in BOTW who gives you the Cursed Statue shrine quest.

- “It is thanks to you that I shall finally be free to roam the outside world, after all.” DANGER DANGER, the evil spirit wants to roam free and EAT MORE PEOPLE.

- Aryll spots the danger, but mistakes it for her desire to see Link end up with Mipha and no one else. Which we all agree with, of course, but it’s not the real reason she’s uncomfortable. Link, meanwhile, is oblivious to it, at least partially because he’s sinking deeper into despair and contemplating just letting Mipha go out of his intensifying self-hatred over what he’s done to her.

- Nayru's eager whisper broke into his thoughts. He glanced up and saw her eyes gleaming with a sort of hunger as she gazed across the room at him. DANGER DANGER, SHE WANTS TO DEVOUR YOU. Again, I choose my descriptive words very deliberately.

- Eerie purple light glowed around Nayru as she hovered in the air, and her face had been twisted into something that resembled a ReDead mask. Veran’s spirit form is indeed purple, and nobody who’s ever played OOT, MM, or WW can forget the ReDeads. my favorite monster I want them back dammit

- “Link?” Aryll pressed herself against his side and clutched at his arm. “There are a lot of skeletons in here...” Remember how Aryll was so excited about digging up a single skeleton back in Ikana? Not so fun anymore.

- In the show, the whole sequence of trying to avoid being eaten was creepy, but a bit more comedic too. I leaned fully into the horror that it truly would be here, not just because I wanted to write something scary, but also because I needed something that would traumatize Link enough to push him into the breakdown he has in the woods afterwards, setting the climax of the story in motion. His feelings of failure mirror what I headcanon he must’ve been going through just before he fell in Blatchery Plain as well, the despair he would’ve felt over being unable to prevent the fall of the kingdom, the deaths of his friends (especially Mipha, who he’s grieving the most), and knowing that he’s at his limit and about to die before he can get Zelda to safety. Which is another way that the appearance of that painting in the last chapter ties in.

- Aryll’s dream sequence! OH BOY. In the show, this is an entire episode, done in the style of 1930s animation, with musical numbers and everything. That doesn’t quite translate to prose, though, so I had to change and abridge it. More interestingly, though, there’s subtle hints in the show that the dream is not real, and is intended to lure Greg, the younger brother, into the clutches of the Beast. I decided to run with that. One of the hints in the show is that the gates you see seem to be made of ivory; in Greek myth, dreams pass through one of two gates, either horn or ivory. True dreams come through the gates of horn, while false ones pass through the gates of ivory. So naturally Aryll walks through gates of ivory to reach the tower.

The tower itself is the one located in the Cloud Tops in Minish Cap. Which, here, is ruled by Princess Hilda from Link Between Worlds, who has Aryll save her kingdom from the evil Yuga. This is all a HUGE hint that this is false, a trap. Because in ALBW, Hilda was conspiring with Yuga in a desperate bid to save Lorule. And who took over Yuga’s body as part of that plan? Ganon. BAM.

- And now the frog is being called Ezlo, after the talking cap in Minish Cap.

- Link is now so deeply in despair that the dekuwood is starting to grow around him, which is what motivates Aryll to make her deal with the Beast that brings everything to its eventual conclusion.

- A dark shape emerged from the curtain of snow; it was a small, plump man with a beard that covered the entire lower half of his face, rowing a rickety little boat. His eyebrows went up as he took in the sight of Midna lifting the unconscious Link into the air with her prehensile hair. “That is one strange fish you've caught there, missy...” This is the fisherman from Link’s Awakening.

- What Midna sees in the distance is the Great Deku Tree, but I wasn’t about to reveal that just yet.

and that does it for part five!

[shielddrake]

Psychonauts: Setup and Payoff Done Well (If Not Perfectly)

So about a year ago I posted a long lecture about how Final Fantasy XV and Kingdom Hearts 3 had major problems in the story department when it came to setup and payoff. I basically said that Final Fantasy XV had lots of scenes with payoff that were not set up very well and Kingdom Hearts 3 had some excellent moments that set up story elements but never followed through on them. And while I think some of those issues have been addressed with some of the DLC released for both games (I reserve my right to be a little salty Episodes Aranea, Luna, and Noctis were canceled) I still stand by my statement that these games have big problems with this.

 During the past year, I have received a couple of comments regarding my position on this, ranging from “Can you give a good example of setup and payoff?” to “Well, if you’re so smart, why don’t you come up with a better example?” And I thought, well, what kind of game would be a good example of excellent use of setup and payoff? What game or series would I say does the job so much better than any writer has or does, video game or otherwise?

 And then, the middle of a repeat playthrough I always do before a game’s sequel comes out, it came to me:

 Now Psychonauts has been out since 2005, so a spoiler warning might seem a little silly here, but I think a lot of gamers have been playing it for the first time since the sequel was announced, so just in case: Major spoilers for the original Psychonauts game under the cut.

 Whenever someone tries to argue whether or not video games can be considered art, one of the first games that comes to my mind is Psychonauts, and not just because of its amazing aesthetics. It has some of the best storytelling, script writing, level design, music, voice acting, and art direction I have ever seen. This game is possibly one of the best video games I have every played, despite the flaws that it does have (I’m looking at you, Meat Circus), and it is easily on my list of top ten favorite video games.  Is it really any surprise that Psychonauts 2 reached its crowd-funding goal of over $3,000,000 in about a month? And yes, I admit that I am one of those backers, just to put out there any bias I know I have.

 But this isn’t meant to be a review of Psychonauts.

 I replayed Psychonauts a few months ago with the idea of the first game being fresh in my mind when the sequel comes out, which is supposed to be sometime this year of 2020. I was absolutely inundated with examples of effective setup and payoff as I played, so it seemed like the obvious choice to go over how this story-telling technique can be used not only well, but also to the point where it’s almost like there are far too many examples.

 Honestly, I could go on and on and on about setup and payoff in Psychonauts’ story, but for our purposes here most of the focus is going to be on just three big things that are really important to the main storyline: Linda the Lungfish, bunnies and meat, and Raz’s dad.

 One thing about setup and payoff is that the setup has to actually happen in a way that the audience, in this case the player, can’t miss it.  There are several moments in the game that Linda is mentioned, the first time being in the opening cutscene, where Bobby teases Dogen about the monster at the bottom of the lake.  You can’t miss the setup when it is thrown in your face that way.

  But that’s not the only time we get references to some sort of lake monster. Before going into Basic Braining, the first official level of the game, if Raz talks to Mikhail, the adorable Russian psychic mentions a “giant, hairless bear” in the woods, asking if Raz has seen it and wanting to wrestle with it. Now, it’s not said for certain if Mikhail is talking about Linda or if he’s just referring to the telekinetic bears you meet later on, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if it’s supposed to be the former.

  The first time the player heads for the lake, Elton will run up to Raz and mention the “brain-eating fish” that supposedly lives there. Well, now we’ve got both a mention of the lake monster and the fact that it goes after brains.  Hmm, sound familiar in retrospect?

  Optionally, Raz can also talk to Elton about the fish being spooked by something in the lake.

  Although only the first lake interaction with Elton is mandatory (whether it’s when you go to see Milla or before then), both of these moments act as reminders of the setup of the lake monster established in the opening cutscene.  

 And then there’s the scene in the woods between Raz and Lili on the way to Sasha Nein’s Secret Lab. Raz says that something was watching him, a shadowy being that smelled like pond scum.

  I absolutely love Lili’s face in this scene, by the way.

 We kind of get distracted by their interactions and Lili basically trolling Raz, but that’s part of what makes good writing. The scene is foreshadowing something without making it overly overt…not that the game is subtle every time, but the point still stands. This game does a great mix of the obvious and the subtle.

 The game also has optional dialogue with Coach Oleander and Raz reporting on a UPE (Unidentified Paranormal Entity), which he suspects is aquatic in nature. And Oleander seems oddly insistent that the lake monster does not exist, that it’s just a camp fable.

 Finally we get to the Brain Tumbler Experiment. Needless to say, it’s in this level that a lot of the elements come together. We come across a demon in the form of a big, shadowy figure that spits out a diving helmet. Again, does that sound familiar at all?

  There is a minor mention of the lake monster in the mental vault below the spooky thorn tower (more on that near the end of this post), but other than that there’s a break in the game where the lake monster isn’t mentioned for a while. We don’t get another explicit scene about it until Raz and Lili meet Linda properly at the edge of Lake Oblongata…where Lili gets kidnapped, we go through the boss sequence under the lake, and enter Linda’s brain of Lungfishopolis.  And the final payoff occurs with the Hideous Hulking Lungfish transporting us to Thorney Towers and giving Raz her real name, Linda.

  Now would any of that be nearly as rewarding if we had never heard of the Hideous Hulking Lungfish of Lake Oblongata prior to her official appearance? Every single player would just have visible question marks hanging over their heads if Linda just showed up out of nowhere. Deus Ex Lungfish, anyone? But that’s not what the developers did.  They spent plenty of time building up to Linda, making her reveal not only make sense but also weaving her into the story so that her reveal is more than satisfying.

 There is just one thing I’ve always been curious about, a sort of chicken-and-egg scenario. Did the legend of the lake monster start because genetically-altered Linda showed up and starting attacking campers?  Or did the legend already exist and Oleander used it as an excuse to write off any “sightings” of the monster? Any ideas?

 Moving on from Linda, we come to the imagery of meat and bunnies.

 Without knowing the full ending of the game, most players would think that it’s a bit strange I would stick meat and bunnies together in the same category. Sadly, the connection between these things is a bit on the morose side, and they are actually first introduced at the same time as well.

 When I first played Psychonauts, the first time I actively thought about bunnies and meat being related somehow was during the Brain Tumbler Experiment, but that’s actually not the first time the game introduces these. Anyone else notice that Basic Braining has figments of meat cleavers, butcher knives, a pig, a duck, and a fox? I could logic that a meat cleaver and butcher knife fit with the whole army theme, but a pig, duck and fox?

  Kind of odd animals would be included in all this, especially animals that are either butchered or hunted. At least that’s what I thought at first.

 It is in Oleander’s mind that we first see the “meaty plant” that Lili saves from being squashed by Raz. It’s also here that we see bunnies hopping around the snowfield with the Gatling gun. This early in the game, is this important or just set dressing?  I’m ashamed to admit, but I thought it was just weird set dressing when I first played, but it makes more sense as the story goes on.

  Turns out it’s important all right, since the next time we see both meat and bunnies is in the Brain Tumbler Experiment. “Mr. Bun” seems like a rather random animal to have in Raz’s brain, but then again bunnies showed up in Basic Braining as well.  Is there a connection somehow? Sasha tells Raz that an animal may represent a primal fear or memory.

 He’s right on the latter, although a player going through the game for the first time might not know why (and I admit, on my first playthrough, I didn’t). And there’s more meat and meaty plants here. Raz doesn’t directly mention these (at least he didn’t during my most recent playthrough, to my recollection) but they are pretty obvious, to say the least.

 So that’s two things connecting the Brain Tumbler Experiment and Basic Braining.  Is this a normal occurrence? Maybe these things just show up in brains? Lili does mention she had been dreaming of meat plants, after all, both in Basic Braining and in the cutscene before Raz enters Milla’s mind. Maybe it’s a primal need for meat? Don’t tell the vegans I said that. The Vegan Police would be very unhappy with the final level of this game.

 After the Brain Tumbler Experiment is finished, we know that the brain interference was coming from Oleander, but it’s not explained why there are meat and bunny references up until that point.  There’s actually no mention of either at all in the subsequent levels until the last.  Lungfishopolis, The Milkman Conspiracy, Gloria’s Theater, Waterloo World, and Black Velvetopia are devoid of all meat or bunnies, which possibly leads the player to forget about the whole thing for a while (and when I say “the player,” I really mean me).

 In fact, we don’t see any sign of either until the final level of the game, Meat Circus. And, oh boy, Meat Circus.

  Yeah, it should come as no surprise that I hate this level. I hated it so much that on my first playthrough of this game in 2005, I rage quit and didn’t look at Psychonauts for several days. I eventually went back to it and beat it, but let’s say I was more than a little relieved that they lowered the difficulty for it in subsequent releases.

 But I digress.

 We reach Meat Circus, the combined consciousness of Raz and Little Oly, and the payoff of all the meat and bunny stuff we’ve seen thus far. We have Frankenstein-esque meat bunnies, platforms made of steaks, rail grinding on bones, trapeze and trampolines of bones and skin, and of course the dark versions of both Raz’s and Oleander’s fathers, who not only are evil but also become a giant two-headed monster.  When Sasha said that problems seem larger in your head than in real life, I should have known it would be taken more literally in this game.

  I mean, is it really any shock that Oleander is carrying some trauma after seeing his bunny friend be decapitated by his own father? It’s never said how old Little Oly is, but considering his behavior he is clearly younger than Raz, so this happened when he was in the single digits of age. That’s really not something a little kid should see. That’s just asking for PTSD.

 Anyway, back to setup and payoff, which is pretty obvious at this point. We have plenty of mentions of both bunnies and meat throughout the game, leading to the final boss that is both creepy and downright terrifying. Not only does this boss conclude Oleander’s trauma with his father being a butcher and killing his favorite bunny, but it also allows Raz to defeat his inaccurate mental image of his own father.  Both of them are able to move forward from that point on. Defeating this monstrosity acts as the ultimate payoff and conclusion for both Raz and Oleander.

  Speaking of Raz’s dad…

 Raz’s relationship with his father at the start of the game is strained, to say the least. When Raz goes to learn Levitation from Milla, the very mention of his father showing up to take him home from the camp makes him nervous. Not the best sign here, and his other comments regarding his dad don’t make it much better.

 Once Raz reaches cadet ranks ten and twenty, we get cutscenes of Raz talking with Cruller in tutorials for Pyrokinesis and Telekinesis. During Pyrokinesis, Raz first mentions that his father, Augustus, hates psychics and trained Raz in acrobatics to the point where Raz worried his dad was trying to kill him. During Telekinesis, Raz reveals his suspicions that his father is psychic as well. The memory vault we see of Raz running away from home only reinforces Raz’s perspective.

  We’re led to believe that Raz’s statements are the truth, which is a logical conclusion since he’s the game’s protagonist, but the end of the game shows otherwise. At first I thought this meant Raz was simply an unreliable narrator, but that turns out to not be the whole story. While Raz is an unreliable narrator in that there are a lot of things he just doesn’t know, it’s not malicious in any way. Raz simply doesn’t know that he father really does care about him. That’s the magic of using the third-person limited point of view.

 Up to this point, we’re led to believe that Augustus is a neglectful father at best, but it turns out that Augustus does love his son. He’s just apparently really bad at showing it. The very fact that he is the only one able to break into Raz’s “hard to penetrate skull” shows that there is a deeper relationship between them.  And Augustus is clearly distraught that his own son sees him as a monster in his mind. Poor Augustus.

  I think that a lot of the interactions between father and son in this game was cut out due to both budget and time constraints, because I feel like there is more to be said with these two than what we get in the final product. (I’m thinking we’re going to get more of that in the sequel, but that is up in the air at this time.) This doesn’t bother me too much though, since we do get effective enough setup and payoff that it doesn’t seem like it comes out of nowhere.  They do finally talk to each other and express their concerns, mending their relationship…in the middle of a battle with a two-headed father monster.

  Clearly these two have communication issues. The morale of this story is that it’s important to talk to one each other.

 And this is certainly paid off in the end cutscene of the game.  When Sasha says they want Raz to come along to rescue Truman Zanotto, Raz doesn’t just run off with them again.  He turns around and gives his father puppy-dog eyes, clearly asking for permission to go this time. And Augustus not only gives it, he gives Raz his blessing and encourages him to “show them all.” Contrast this to the backstory of the game, where Augustus flat out forbids Raz from having anything to do with the Psychonauts and Raz running away in secret.

  And if that’s not satisfying use of setup and payoff, I don’t know what is.

 That’s not to say that all of the setup and payoff in Psychonauts is perfect. To be fair, there are times when the setup can be missed, and therefore the payoff that comes later can be confusing. The most obvious example of this is the nightmare that attacks you in The Milkman Conspiracy. When I first played the game all those years ago, my first thought was, “What in the world? What is this thing and where did it come from?”

  Of course, on subsequent playthroughs, I did find the demon room in Milla’s mind, showing the same nightmares she had caged away. This is the difference between a sane mind and an insane one.  Milla has all her demons under control (although notice that they have not gone away) while Boyd’s run amok because he has no way of mentally dealing with them, since his brain is a little bit busy with this, well, milkman conspiracy.  The nightmares that attack in Boyd’s brain make more sense after I saw the ones in Milla’s brain. In this case, the payoff wasn’t bad since the nightmare miniboss wasn’t a bad fight, but context in the form of the setup made the payoff better.

  Other times the setup can be missed?  The other big one is the resolution of all the campers’ storylines. Unless the player spends time going around camp throughout the game and seeing the interactions the other campers have with each other, the little scene you have with each one once they are re-brained won’t make a lot of sense. The love triangle between J.T., Elka and Nils? J.T. and Chops having conflict about J.T. abandoning his best friend for his new girlfriend? Crystal and Clem attempting suicide to become more powerful? Chloe thinking she’s an alien? Maloof basically becoming a mob leader with Mikhail as his right-hand man? Elton and Milka’s blossoming love? …Just to name a few? Yeah, the context of all that is missed if the player doesn’t bother to talk to the other campers throughout the game, but I attribute that more to the player than the game.  The developers accounted for this in the story, so it’s more the player didn’t look for the setup rather than Double Fine just not bothering to include it.

  That’s just some examples of setup and payoff that I feel are probably the most important to the main storyline of Psychonauts.  They are far from the only examples. Really far from it. Oh boy, could I go on about the scenarios of setup and payoff that happen in this game.

 Dogen talking to the squirrels, who tell him that the short man is going to kill everyone, only for them to really be talking about Oleander?

 Elton saying that Oleander’s recruiting office in Basic Braining resembles a dentist office, only to find out that one of the main antagonists, Dr. Loboto, is in fact a dentist?

  Oleander having a mental vault trapped behind some mental cobwebs? Well, he has something to hide, despite him saying he doesn’t when you first play through Basic Braining. Of course, getting angry at Raz for snooping around a room with a curtain doesn’t give off the idea that Oleander has something to hide. Nope. Not suspicious at all.

 Agent Crueller having all the different personalities around the camp, hinting as his unstable mental state?

 The Hand of Galochio appearing in the lake as a reference to Raz’s family having a curse to die in water, and said curse just so happens to show up not only as a gameplay element but as a story element during Meat Circus?

 Raz being able to read Lili’s thoughts when she doesn’t mean for him to, then for him to do it two more times near the end of the game?

 How Lili’s cold stops her from sneezing out her own brain?

 Sasha’s hatred of tacky lamps having to do with his past working in a tacky lamp factory? Or the shoeboxes indicating his father was a cobbler? Or the bed as the location of where his mother was horribly ill and died?

 Raz needing to climb the “creepy thorn tower” in the Brain Tumbler Experiment, only to later need to climb Thorney Towers Home for the Disturbed?

 The mention of the town of Shaky Claim on the giant tree stump at the camp entrance referring to the sunken town that is (somewhat) explored during the boss sequence under the lake?

 Raz talking about being back in high school in Black Velvetopia despite being ten years old? Not to mention the stories the dogs tell about Lana/Lampita and Dean/Dingo?

 Lastly, do I really need to mention the incredibly weird and seemingly out of place mental vault below the creepy thorn tower? A brain chicken hatches out of an egg, meets a fish in water, goes to a circus, gets placed in a teacup, and blasts people to death? Kind of a summation of Raz coming out of the egg in the Brain Tumbler Experiment, meeting Linda at Lake Oblongata, entering the Meat Circus, and getting placed in a brain tank and defeating two people? Was the mental vault a foreshadowing of the main plot of Psychonauts? I don’t know.  What do you think?

  *Takes a deep breath.* See what I mean when I say I could really go on and on about setup and payoff in Psychonauts? There are so many examples that it’s kind of ridiculous. It could be said that there’s too much of this kind of storytelling in the game, but I fail to see how that is a problem.  There is such a thing as too much of a good thing, but when it comes to setup and payoff, Psychonauts is not it.

    Credits 

Screenshots courtesy of the following:

Comic Foil, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN-Y6XDe0oWyhgjcGunJqGw

 Global Gaming, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pjsxNSwSSA

 StoryGamer, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXZ1vDFp_dw&t=139s

 ThatNotSoAznKid, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ford0MGvWIc

[popculturebuffet]

Jake Reviews Amphibia: Handy Anne and Fort in the Road

It’s finally here... the second time i’ve said that in three days but hey, Amphibia is back! After a years hiatus due to the show being shoved out in a month to get it on disney plus faster (Yet they STILL don’t have wonder over yonder so I can finally watch season 2. God damn. ), one of the best new shows of a year stuffed with them is back! I was excited about this one from the start. A great premise, a gravity falls pedegriee, and the wonderful Brenda Song, who I had a crush on when I was younger despite not really watching the first suite life that much, though I will admit what I saw was pretty decent and had a wonderful cast especially song and Phil Morris as Mr.Mosby.. it was just overshadowed by i’ts two leads being really sterotypical (the cool but dumb hustler and the stick in the mud nerd) and I was more of a nick middle schooler anyway so I barely touched it. Granted if I could go back in time and trade which shows I watched i’d trade it for Zoey 101 in a heartbeat, another show with awful leads but the rest of the main cast was really good concidentally. 

Anyways I did watch more of on deck to  kill time and absolutley hated it. Seroiulsy the show really sucks: Zack and Cody were turned into basically worse versions of Zack Morris and Ross Gellar, worse because while their just as douchey as those two, Mark  Paul Gossler and David Schiwmer can actually act and Cole Sprouse could not yet. I do say yet since Cole Sprouse has grown because he wasn’t half bad in the one season of riverdale I watched. Riverdale, what happens when you have the entire writers room snort a line of coke and then tell them to write the most insane archie fanfiction they can and stitch the results together. Just with Archie alone from what i’ve seen in read he’s started a vigilante posse ala homer simpson, nearly joined hte mafia, been framed form murder, had the local cheerleaders do a number for him while he played prison football, escaped prison to hide in canda from both his former mafia boss whose also his girlfriend’s dad and the cult based on a  DnD knockoff, got mauled by a bear and LIVED, and now is a superhero apparently. WHy I haven’t gone back to at the very least review this clusterfuck is a mystery.  But the point is the twins were really terrible at the time, and if the fact Dylan’s only major role recently is in the sequel to After, that film based on self insert one direction fanfiction, which somehow got a sequel while Birds of Prey probably won’t because god really does hate me. So it was bad and she deserved better, got better with the social network but hadn’t done much i’d seen, so a new cartoon starting her in her elment and in a great show for once had me pumped.  And.. my faith paid off. The show is beautifully animated, ahs a wonderfully morbid and fully fleshed out world, top notch voice acting (including BIll Farmer who is so unreconizable as hop pop I thought he was voiced by charlie addler), great jokes, action and storytelling. Just a slam dunk that left be jonesning for me. And now in one of the best weeks for animation in a while, more is here. I do mean that: 3/4 of disney’s major animated shows returning and close enough finally airing it’s a good time.  When we last left our heroes: Hop Pop buired the box that brought anne there and lied to her about it which even a year later I think is a terrible decision.. one made for understandable reasons as he clearly knows something more about it than she does, but one that’s bound ot backfire whens he finds out her new grandpa lied to her and betrayed her. The plantars also spent the season preparing to leave wartwood. Soon after, Anne was forced to finally stand up to her manipulative, if to my utter shock still caring about her and possibly being into her? I mean it’s not like I haven’t seen the “villian whose overcompensating for a terrible past and likes manipualting people redeemed and ending up smooching the somewhat reckless but good hearted heroine” before. 

Anyways Sasha ends up nearly falling off a giant tower, Anne tries to save her, with the rest of her new family pitching in, and Sasha, realizing just how terrible she’s been just.. let’s her self fall, only saved because Grime caught her. And just remembering that sequence god dman.. the fact they actually got the rights to lean on me for it really dosen’t help. But the day was saved and while Anne had a huge bundle of trauma, the family was ready to finally set out soon. And now a year later i’ts time. Now i’ve gotten all the personal stuff out of the way, let’s hop to it and see what the new season has to offer. Full review with spoilers under the cut!

Handy Anne

So the Plantars are finally setting off. We don’t touch on the Sasha thing much, just a quick bit at the begining to show that while Anne is insiting she’s fine it really traumatized her. I do like kids shows starting to show more that sometimes heroes just DON’T bounce back after something like this, especially young ones. While it’ isn’t nearly to the extent of Steven Universe spending an entire season having his lack of thearpy and unresolved issues slowly destroy him, it’s still nice to see. But the main thrust of the episode is it’s vacation time brother!

Yup after a few episodes of build up last season with the valley clear, Hop Pop has bought a suprisingly nice and affordable wagon (As Polly excitedly explains someone died in it) so they can finally set out to hopefully find Anne a way home. Their going to Oregon! I mean To newtopia, the beating heart of Amphibia: a bustling metroplis built on knowledge where they can hopefully find a way to get Anne and friends back home, while Anne hopes to find Marcy. The rest of the kids are also excited just to get out of the valley for the first time.  Everyone’s pumped.. but Anne starts to worry when she finds out Hop Pop has asked his friend Chuck, the “I grow tulips” guy from the bug ball episode last season who I forgot about but was reminded why I love him and am glad to have him back, to watch the house as given Amphibia is hard enough to surivive on a good day, let alone if your a stationary building. And Chuck dosen’t insprie confidence so Anne decides to fortify the house. And her reasoning.. is actually really sweet and shows how much she’s grown: Instead of like most times where her impulsivness is the reason shenanigans and life thretaning situations happen here.. she’s hit with the hard relization her new family is basically risking everything, their home, their farm, their chuck, to help her get home. 

So Anne decides to armor up the house, getting a fuck ton of shovels and a ton of suplies from the blacksmith guy who suprisngly for once DOES have what she needs for her veggies, to the point his not backtracking weirds anne out, and gives her a tub of goo. This can only end well! Meanwile the rest of the family pack. Polly having maybe 3 possesions gets done quick, Hop Pop is being anal reteitive as always with his ascots (hilariously done and Bill Farmer really is the MVP of this series), while Sprig’s gone half insane just picking out which slingshot to take as he never left, which polly of course exploits.  But things natrually go wrong as the goo creates veggie monsters the family fights (with sprig even calling fight time because this is normal to them at this point) the next mornign and then one colosus that destroys the house... and Anne’s anger and heartbreak over it .. awakens something. See something I hadn’t heard about and didn’t notice at the ebgining of the series was anne’s eyes flashing blue while fighting the mantis in the first episode. Many couldn’t tell if it was leading somewhere or just an animation error. Here though her eyes go bright blue in close up with it being clear this is part of her.. the question what is it and why? Just what power does she have now? And will it save the world or destroy it? Questions for later Anne saves the day, an admits she screwed up but Hop Pop is understanding: He’s touched by her actions but also explains their not just doing this for her: their with her all the way and any sacrifice is worth it. And I like that part of hop pop: while he can be overbearing, just see next episode.. he does genuinely mean well and has genuine wisdom, something they sometimes forget with grandparent characters in animation. He’s crotchety and a stick in the mud, but he’s still throughly nice and understanding and it shows here: He’s going to get his daughter back whatever it takes.. almost.  Hop Pop calls on chuck who in a whilrwind of tools and tulips fixes the place.. and proves to be every bit the legend I thought him. He sells tulips and he’s great. We’ll miss you chuck. But as they get ready to leave Anne brings up the box and Hop Pop, remembering what he did, hastily says it’s better with their contacts. WHich again just seems short sided: while he is trying to protect her, especially since next episode confirms there was some sort of apocalypse once so odds are her being connected to it might not be the best, he can’t dance around her connection to it forever, and hiding the fact some apolcaypse was caused by it is only going to backfire when some vilian reveals it or anne finds it out for herself. Taking her to a place full of infomration where he’ll now have to work to hide the truth is just asking for this to backfire. Not bringing it is one thing, dangerous people could still get the box and use it for their own ends.. we’ve seen female newt sabertooth in the promos and we’ve met Grime. But not telling her is just setitng himself up for a big and deeserved fall soon. But with that settled our heroes set out! 

Final Thoughts I:  Overall this was a good start to the season: my one real complaint is the town didn’t really see them off or anything, so the large and loveable supporting cast is just.. absent unless the series returns to wartwood at some point and it would’ve been nice to see them once last time. Even star vs, as bad as season 3 was, knew we wouldn’t be seeing most of the earth cast for a whie and had marco have a meaningful sendoff before he left. But.. given how tight the phacing seems to be this season judging by episode titles alone, and they only had 11 minutes here. I do think it could’ve been in hte next episode, but it dosen’t ruin a decent, fun start to the season really rooted in character stuff. Not the series finest 11 minutes, but still really good and a good way to start us off. 

Fort in the Road: 

First off your welcome for that episode screencap. Now this one’s also simple, but ends up having a rather sizeable revelation nestled inside. The Plantars are going down the road and while the kids want to you know explore, see places, actually enjoy the trip especailly since Sprig and Polly have never been anywhere else before, Hop Pop, being hop pop, instead just wants them to sit and be quite and follow his rules. I mean it is hte grind but you can at least make it FUN for htem; Just look at this guy. 

It took an episode longer than I thought to refrence the trail to oregon given this season is about a wagon trip, but I’m glad to do it .. and do it again. I will fit pays to be an animal in here somewhere I swear it. WE’ve got time left in the road trip.  Anyways this goes down terribly, though some rules like not posing dramatically as it smacks of hubris and never ends well. But understandably the kids are annoyed about it: Anne can’t even compallin because i’ts not in the rules.  So naturally as Hop Pop should’ve seen coming at the first opprotuunity Anne fakes being cart sick and they run off to see a weird looking ruin with Hop Pop chasing them and leaving the cart to polly because that can’t end well but he’s on a short time.  And this is where the season drops a 10 ton atomic bombshell. Anne being kinda magic in the last episode and it being fully part of things now is intresting and shocking.. but this is miles ahead of it and casts Hop Pop’s actions: Turns out whatever the clamamity box did set techniology in amphibia back to a little above the dark ages. I mean they have full light thanks to lightning bugs, but their still leagues behind.. but were once up to at least mid 2000′s levels of technology. The machine seen requires a disk to stop, but it’s still far beyond what I expcted from this world. Naturally Hop Pop shows up furious, then gets stuck on the assembly line with the kids deseprate to save him, with spirg ending up doing sow ith the rule book. Also we get Anne’s wonderful repsonse to Sprig asking what a disk is:  “I don’t know! i’m from another dimension not the 90s!”  They surivive, the factory blows up and the kids apologize and agree to go back to the boring way things have been going.. but Hop Pop thankfully realizes he’s been a bit overbearing and actually gives a good reason why: He’s never taken then out of the valley before and simply got overprotective. This is his family after all, all he has left of his kid and all he really has left beside Sylvia and the farm. It’s understandble he’d go a bit overboard. But Hop Pop decides to compromise a bit in a nice moment: while the impalment fields are obviously a non starter, he does get the kids ice cream (Anne even admits at this point she dosen’t pick the bugs out anymore), and they genuinely enjoy the trip while Sprig (in a hilarious bit of lampshadng as he does it repeadtly) wonders jsut what they were making.. and as I spoiled it was robots.. one of whom is now following them. Wether this means new doom or the plantars getting a new robot family member I don’t know i’m hoping for the latter. Everyone needs a vision in their life.   Final thoughts II: While having a bit of an obvious conflict with an obvious resolution the character work combined with the MASSIVE plot bombshell really make this enjoyable and I hope to find out more about just what the hell happened and what these robots are for. Just another good solid episode and an excellent duo to start the season.  Next week: Things take a turn for the western and Anne learns to hunt and more about the glow. And with the glow you need to grow to glow... until then i’ll likely have mor ereviews on this channel, I recently reveiwed all of season 1 of close enough if your curious, and until next time.. play us out Willie!

I love what i’ve seen of this throughly stupid movie. Bye ya’ll! 

[killscreencinema]

The Last of Us Part II (PlayStation 4)

When this game came out in June, I could care less.  I enjoyed the first game well enough, but here’s the thing with Naughty Dog - once you’ve played one game in a franchise, you kind of know what to expect from that point forward.  I really enjoyed Uncharted:  Drake’s Fortune, but damned if I remember any other game in the series, as they’re all so similar they kind of blend in with each other (although I will admit Uncharted 4 was a little more stand out).  My brother bought the game and offered to let me borrow it while he was out of town for two weeks, so I figured... what the hell.  Why not? 

The Last of Us was a neat Naughty Dog take on the exhausted zombie genre, with compelling characters and decent, if extremely repetitive, gameplay.  With the previous sentence, I could just say I also reviewed The Last of Us Part II, and just wrap things up here, but I won’t do that to ya.

SPOILER WARNING!

TLOU 2 picks up about five years after the events of the first game, with Ellie and Joel both living peacefully in a bucolic town called Jackson.  Their peace is shattered when a mysterious girl named Abby abducts and murders Joel to get revenge for his mass murder fest in the last game’s climax.  Consumed by vengeance, Ellie follows Abby’s trail to the decaying metropolis of Seattle, where feuding factions are about to explode into all out war. 

So two things I want to cover about the story:

1.) Before the game’s release, there was a lot of manufactured outrage over the game being some kind of “SJW” vehicle.  This came about after the reveal in one of the trailers that Ellie is a lesbian (although Ellie’s sexual preference was already revealed in DLC for the first game).  When people start losing their minds over shit like this, and start throwing terms like “SJW” around, I immediately dismiss is hysterical nonsense.  While, yes, there are certainly media out there that shamelessly panders to minorities or the LGBTQ community more as a form of marketing than inclusion, I still support representation, even if its terrible and obvious exploitation. 

That being said... none of that is at play in this game.  Yes, Ellie is a lesbian, but other than an implied sex scene and a little PDA, the game isn’t “shoving it in your face” any more than the cis heterosexual relationship between Abby and Owen later in the game.  Ellie’s sexuality isn’t part of the plot whatsoever, beyond very mild unresolved tension between herself, Dina (her GF), and Dina’s ex-boyfriend Jessie.  Even then, it’s not a big deal.  There’s maybe one scene where Ellie and Dina are hassled by a bigot, and yes it feels a little hamfisted, but it’s hardly enough to condemn the game as an SJW Clap Trap.  So fuck all that noise.

Besides, being a lesbian is minor compared to the fact that...

2.) ...Ellie is a goddamned monster.  Granted, she was raised in a violent world full of *actual* monsters, but the way Ellie cuts a bloody swath through Seattle, murdering men, women, and dogs alike, is deeply unsettling, and made all the more so because the game *forces* the player to do it.  There are even moments in the game when you disarm an enemy and they beg for mercy, but the only option is viciously murder them anyway or, if you grant them mercy, they attack you anyway.  It would have been nice if, for those moments, you could just knock them out or something.  Ellie doesn’t even attempt to open a dialogue with the opposition ever - it’s just kill kill kill.

This becomes all the more onerous once the game switches perspectives and you play as Abby, where you get to see that the people Ellie is butchering aren’t the psychos she’s convinced herself they are.  They are, n fact, not much different from the community in Jackson, albeit more militaristic.  Abby’s motivations for killing Joel are 100-percent justified, not only on a personal level (because he killed her father), but because Joel’s actions fucking doomed mankind.  Although, Abby didn’t have to go about it so cruelly, torturing Joel before finally murdering him while making Ellie watch.  That was shitty.  Nevertheless, once the game goes out of its way to show you the other side of the coin, even going so far as to make you FIGHT Ellie in a penultimate “boss battle” of sorts, it’s extremely difficult to be sympathetic with Ellie’s psychopathic desire for revenge, especially in the final confrontation, when she INSISTS on fighting Abby to the death. 

Before this, Abby and her young surrogate brother Lev are captured by a vicious gang called the Rattlers while looking for a rumored Firefly enclave in Santa Barbara.  A couple months later, Ellie follows Abby’s trail to the Rattlers, and finds out, after freeing the Rattler’s other prisoners/slaves, Abby and Lev have been “sent to the polls” for attempting escape. 

So Abby has been tied to a poll, similar to a crucifixion, for several days and has obvious physical signs of starvation and extreme dehydration.  Lev, who is a child, is in just as bad or worse shape, so Abby’s immediate concern is to escape to safety and tend to their condition.  However, Ellie, who by this point is on the verge of bleeding to death due to a stab wound, is all like, “No, my bloodlust must be sated!  I must get revenge for my murderer father figure!”  This whole time, as I was fighting, I was screaming, “OH COME ON ELLIE!  THIS ISN’T EVEN A FAIR FIGHT, YA VICIOUS BITCH!”  This is all the more galling considering Abby showed mercy for both Ellie and Dina during their last confrontation, after beating Ellie into a bloody pulp, albeit reluctantly and only because Lev talked her down. 

I guess my point is, after that big, long, spoiler filled rant is I left the game never quite certain who to root for.  That might have been Naughty Dog’s intention, although I can’t help but feel they still expected gamers to ultimately side with Ellie.  I’ll give them credit though - the story is compelling enough that it got me yelling at my TV and that’s not nothing.

Gameplay wise, though, it’s exactly the same as the first Last of Us - you walk around dilapidated buildings, collecting supplies to upgrade your weapons and abilities, before occasionally fighting infected zombies or hostile humans.  The stealth elements feel a lot tighter, though, which made these action sequences more interesting for me as I like me some stealth.  The game even flirts with the concept of an open world sandbox, similar to that part in Uncharted 4 when you drive around the plains of Africa to look for bad guy outposts.  I wish The Last of Us Part II had gone all out with the open world gameplay, as it would have worked well considering the bulk of the story takes place in one location.  Also, scavenging would feel less tedious in an open world, as it would feel a little bit more like treasure hunting than scavenging (kinda like how you can scavenge random houses and bunkers in Far Cry 5). 

As it stands, The Last of Us Part II isn’t breaking any new ground, except for maybe impressive advancements in graphics and character model animation.  However, if you loved or even liked the first game, I think it’s fair to say you will enjoy this one as well.  If you hated TLOU, and Naughty Dog games in general, well, this ain’t gonna change your mind.

[themachiavellianpig]

The Walking Dead, Episode 2: Motherhood and Loyalty in Rotting Skin

We Are the End of the World gives us 44 minutes of Whisperers-only action, largely focusing on Alpha and Beta, our resident power couple in this weird little cult of the dead. As well as some valuable insight into their founding and their current day-to-day life, this episode may also give us some hints as to a possible downfall for the group - although hopefully not before we get some stellar acting out of Samantha Morton, who continues to impress in the role of Alpha. 

Full review and spoilers galore below. 

As we might have expected from a villain-centric episode, we get to see a little of the past as well as the present. The flashbacks take us back seven years to a pre-Whisperer Alpha and Lydia; there’s no pack built up around these two yet, just a fairly messed up woman and her kid trying to scratch out a living in post-apocalyptica. They’ve figured out the use of guts to move undetected through the herds, but that’s as far as it goes at first; Lydia even has little earmuffs to muffle the sounds of the dead. But the sight of a woman being eaten alive is too much for her and the pair are forced to shelter from the dead in a building inhabited by a suitably menacing Beta (Ryan Hurst). 

We get to see two very different relationships develop in this abandoned asylum: between Alpha and Lydia, and between the yet-to-be-named Alpha and Beta. Alpha is still deeply protective of her daughter, threatening Beta to ensure her safety, and far more obviously maternal than we’ve seen before. While she’s still clearly focused on getting Lydia ready to survive in this world, she also cares for the child as a child, washing the blood off at Lydia’s request and, in a sentimental moment that was genuinely inconceivable to me previously, offering Lydia a much-loved cuddly toy rabbit at bedtime. 

These moments of maternal affection are, of course, nicely contrasted with clear hints of the insane Alpha we came to know last season; when Lydia makes an obvious effort to grow up a little, claiming that she wants to be more like her mother, Alpha’s quick to reassure Lydia that she will abandon her daughter to the dead if it comes to that. She also explicitly begins to reject the title of Mama, which we knew was coming due to Alpha’s reactions to Lydia last season. 

The culmination of Alpha’s particularly unhelpful form of parenting comes when little Lydia covers herself in walker guts and sets off on a minor quest to prove her bravery, a sequence which was entirely worth it for the sight of an obviously scared Alpha following her daughter’s bloody footprints through the building; for all her posturing, Alpha was and still is vulnerable when it comes to Lydia, as we saw last season when she revealed the existence of the Whisperers to Hilltop in an attempt to get Lydia back.   

The flashbacks also give us a front-row seat to the initial stages of the Alpha-Beta dynamic; this Beta is initially only wearing a balaclava, rather than human skin, but he still manages to increase the creep factor throughout the episode, telling Alpha that “I like it. The sound of the dead. It’s the only song I never want to end” and then later casually crushing two walker skulls with his bare hands. There are, of course, some small flashes of more than just a monster; he does allow Alpha and Lydia to shelter in his building, and he does save Alpha from a walker. And, in all fairness, Alpha doesn’t seem to mind the creepiness at all, telling him matter-of-factly that she “likes killing with [him]” and waxing lyrical about the new state of the world. 

The final nail in the coffin of whatever sort of man Beta was pre-Alpha comes when Lydia releases the walker he was protecting; his grief and fury at the walker’s death at Alpha’s hands mirrors the trauma of the Governor when his daughter was put down by Michonne, or that of Hershel after the Barn. But while we’ve seen plenty of characters who were unable to put down their loved ones, we’ve never seen anyone honour their beloved dead by wearing their face before. The reveal that the first walker-mask was a way for Alpha to convince Beta to join her is an interesting twist; I’d assumed that Alpha would have been the first to wear such a mask and that others would have followed her example, but apparently not. 

The fact that Beta is still wearing the same mask seven years later tells us something fairly unsettling about the durability of dried human skin, but may also mean that the mask is more sentimental than practical - which could potentially lead to some interesting fireworks should Beta lose his precious talisman in a later episode. 

In the present day, we get to see Alpha and Beta working together to control the pack of Whisperers; there are clearly some tensions between the two, especially after Alpha shows unexpected mercy to a struggling Whisperer  who we first met briefly last season, when Alpha forced her to abandon her baby outside Hilltop. This young woman is still mourning her child and struggling with her own part in the baby’s supposed death. Even after being cajoled back into line by a surprising display of mercy from Alpha, she finally snaps when she sees a walker with a (thankfully empty) baby carrier and has a damn good attempt at getting Alpha torn apart by walkers.

The would be assassin is dealt with when her own sister chooses to save Alpha instead. As a reward, she is promoted to the lofty heights of having a name: Gamma - only the third Whisperer to be named in seven years, then, which was perhaps long enough for Beta to convince himself that his place at Alpha’s side was unique, and possibly serving as justification for the quiet fury on his face throughout the naming ceremony. This promotion was not, I would assume, run past the second-in-command before being publicised, and it’s tricky to tell if it’s the lack of consultation or the promotion itself which has so offended Beta. Whatever his precise motivation, he is clearly displeased. 

This displeasure increases tenfold when Beta figures out the truth - that Alpha did not kill Lydia, as she’s apparently told all of the Whisperers. The fact that he figured this out by seeing Alpha holding the same toy rabbit that Lydia outgrew in the flashback makes it all the more fascinating; Alpha’s been carrying around an unnecessary item for seven years out of pure sentiment, hardly the action of the mindless animal that she insists that she is. Beta’s loyalty to Alpha, tested as it may have been, is still more than enough for him to promise to hide the truth about Lydia from the rest of the pack - although, given that Lydia is very much alive and unlikely to be allowed to sit out the entirety of the Whisperer conflict, I do hope that we get to see the rest of the pack respond to the truth. 

This lie could be a significant way to weaken Alpha’s grip on the pack; given that we see her use this claim of having killed her own daughter to strengthen her connection with two separate Whisperers throughout one short episode, we can probably assume that the story has been used repeatedly since Lydia’s departure to ‘prove’ Alpha’s loyalty to her true people. We can already see some signs of the pack splintering; one Whisperer brings up the existence of Hilltop, a settlement that Alpha claimed was impossible. Catching their leader in an open lie might be a good prompt for the Whisperers to reconsider their place in the world - and maybe claim a new place for themselves. 

But any such rebellion would have to be very carefully managed to escape the notice of both Alpha and Beta, who clearly understand each other in a way which is frankly terrifying; you can’t help but wonder how many lives would have been better had these two never met. Their final recommitment to each other, complete with terrifying oaths, shows them as a united front, more than ready to start the war they threatened last season. 

“We walk in darkness. We are free. We bathe in blood. We are free. We love nothing. We are free. We fear nothing. We are free. We need no words. We are free. We embrace all death. This is the end of the world. Now is the end of the world. We are the end of the world.”

[jessica-problems]

Ramiel’s fight from NGE 1.11 is hands down my favorite monster of the week encounter from anything ever.

This is the single most alien monster design I have ever witnessed. Just a blue polyhedron. No visible weapons. No sharp teeth or claws. What the fuck is this thing going to unleash? Is it mechanical? Is it made of water? Surely it’s not organic?

Right off the bat, it sounds like a mix between sephiroth’s backup choir and the sonar pings of a nuclear submarine. It’s a monstrous angel of the lord, as well as a silent enemy approaching unseen from the darkness. Boom. Character introduction DONE. all necessary traits have been conveyed.

 but then, you get in close, and it’s made of these minecraft looking cubes. It unfolds into some sort of unfathomable tesseract, with this weird meaty sound like skin being torn away from flesh, raising questions about what the fuck is even going on. Is it... hurting itself? It reveals some sort of central node. Normal logic would say this is it’s heart or brain or reactor core or whatever equivalent it has. Turns out this is the emitter for some sort of weapon. This is more like a dragon opening it’s mouth to breath fire.

 It unleashes some sort of power, but even it’s MOST BASIC ATTACK is completely invisible. God works in mysterious ways, right? 

Then, it shifts to a different weapon, complete with another weird impossible transformation, and this time is sounds like Alvin and the Chpmunks entering a berserker rage. This second attack’s activation sequence escalates the weirdness, having pieces actually appear from and vanish into thin air(as opposed to “just” changing size and shape), as a SIDE EFFECT of just arming it’s weapons. This thing casually and incidentally violates the laws of physics, and it may well be no more intelligent than a trained attack dog.

it fires the newer weapon, which is larger, and more destructive than the first, filling the entire screen, rather than just poking hole in buildings, and the we the NERV facility retract into the ground to lockdown for combat.

Then, it reverts back to its base form, which ends with a metallic clang. Maybe this is a machine after all. We’ve got a back and forth plot going just from audio cues. It floats above the city, framed from DIRECTLY below, filling the entire sky, and deploys some kind of drill thing to attack the underground NERV facility.

Then we have a shot from the distance that could almost be mistaken for a harmless child’s top. Cut to nighfall. It’s been rotating in place, drilling for several hours. It is slow and implacable, and confident enough to sit down and get to work directly on top of it’s enemy’s base. Notably, it’s drill is also rotating backwards to how a physical drill would. Even this recognizable, physical tool is weird and alien and just wrong.

There are various scenes about ‘oh no it’s drilling into the base’, and the heroes come up with a plan., Part one, the defenders send a barrage of missiles after it. It unfolds into this pinwheel orbital thing. Judging by its previous attacks, this radial symmetry suggests it’s using something like twenty nodes. We still don’t know much about this thing, but monkey brain says big number is more dangerous, so this must be bad. Then, it fires a single laser into space, and whips the now solidly linear beam around like a sword to smack the missiles away.

A concentrated barrage of artillery manages to catch it with it’s pants down(?) and it takes the first defensive action we’ve seen so far, which consists of turning into a heptagonal prism and making a bunch of little barriers to parry each individual projectile. There’s no literal melee combat happening, but we’ve progressed to more and more mundane attacks every time. Invisible force > laser > drill > basically an enormous lightsaber > lots of little shields

Then, it unfolds, and starts screaming. We don’t know a whole lot, but so far, that always means it’s angry. It fires a laser, evaporating the bunkers we’ve seen so far, but the heroes’ plan is working. They’ve procured so many missile launchers that it has to focus on parrying the incoming projectiles.

Now the basic plan to defeat this thing is that they have this huge gun that will use all the power in the entire power grid of japan to fire an enormous laser that should absolutely vaporize anything it hits.

From inside the EVA’s cockpit, we get a look at the thing through various lenses, and finally, the order is given to fire. Several beams are channeled through this big clunky cobbled together sniper rifle, as if the best the heroes have is a a crude parody of Ramiel’s multi-core laser beams, and it takes all the power of Japan just to fire it once. And here, ramiel has been throwing these beams around left and right.

The shot penetrates Ramiels defense, right through it’s core, the only thing it has resembling ‘important anatomy’, and it crumples/explodes/folds/ shifts into this starburst thing like a bullet hole hanging in the air, or shards of broken glass. Visually, it’s hurt pretty bad, probably. At least, we hope it is, unless this was just a weird dodge., but the audio sells it ten times over. It screams like a woman in enormous pain, not a good sound in any context, but so out of place here that it sparks a million questions just at the moment of this thing’s death. 

And a death it is, because this previously perfect, geometric abstraction crumples up and starts to sag like a dry leaf in the wind. But that’s no it. There’s one more thing. It spews literal lakes worth of bright red human blood. That’s a good sign, right? it’s smashed and bleeding, and it’s impenetrable divine facade has cracked to reveal, in a very abstract sort of way, a woman who bleeds like anyone else. Step back for a moment, and appreciate that they’ve managed to communicate the idea of dying and coming back to life with an abstract polyhedron.

But then, cut to the center of the impact, and it heals itself. the damage just folds away, and the bloodstains retreat back inside. It reverts to it basic d8 form, as if nothing has changed. Our heroes have blown out the entire power grid of Japan in a crude mimicry of this thing’s basic attack, and it got them what exactly? they drew its attention away from their base? Pissed it off? 

And then, the first thing it does after being all but killed is to IMMEDIATELY re-expose its core, and unfold another beam weapon. Then it keeps unfolding. And unfolding. this newest configuration is larger and spikier, and it’s got a whole five points rather than four. Without a single word or recognizable piece of anatomy, we can tell that the kid gloves have come off. It resembles nothing so much as a tesseract rotating in four dimensions.

It fires another invisible beam, this time with enough force to vaporize half a mountain. Shinji gets shook around inside the cockpit of the EVA, just by the back blast. We get a shot of Ramiel stopped for a moment, maybe recharging, or surveying the wreckage or something. Then, it’s drill penetrates the ceiling of NERV HQ. Apparently, Ramiel has been distracted this entire time, but now they’ve got it’s full attention, as it’s done drilling.

There’s a big rousing speech where the boss lady is like “no, give him a chance, he can save the day! we believe in you Shinji!”, during which Ramiel does nothing. Eventually, Shinji heroically gets the gun back in position, and looks down the scope to line up another shot, only to see that Ramiel is pointing directly at him, and charging up another blast. Before he can fire, it unloads, and the beam punches through the remains of the moutain, and devastates the outside of the ship. Luckily, Rei is there to jump in with a big shield and protect Shinji long enough to line up another shot. But there’s this moment of calm after she jumps in, there’s a beat, here she is, she’s saved the day and blocked the attack. But nope. The beam keeps coming. Ramiel doesn’t need ammo. It’s just opening the floodgates and pointing them at the heroes, and Shinji and Rei are surrounded by a blizzard of light with no sign of stopping. Rei’s shield slowly, layer by layer, burns away under the intensity of the blast, but before they’re obliterated, Shinji fires off another killshot.

Ramiel rapidly clamshells shut with a metallic clunk, but then a gout of fire comes out the back. That’s better than blood, right? apparently it can survive losing a lot of blood, but if it’s on fire, that’s gotta be progress, right? It explodes into a rosette of shards and screams again. Same as last time, but then irregular craters appear on its surface, and its cores explode one by one.

It comes and goes, and we never learn a damn thing about it. It’s just... a thing.

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball: Sleeping Princess in Devil’s Castle

Time for the second Dragon Ball Movie.  SPDC premiered on July 18, 1987, right between Epsiodes 70 and 71 of Dragon Ball, so I’m gonna talk about it here.

The opening sequence is gorgeous, but you can tell right away it only looks like this to introduce the legend that starts the story.  I sort of wish the whole movie would look this way, but I can understand why that wouldn’t be a great idea. 

So the story goes that there was this beautiful princess, and she’s trapped in a place called Devil’s Castle. 

Oh, and here’s this guy.   I guess he’s the devil. 

And here’s the title card.   Immediately after this is the same old opening theme we see in every episode of the TV show.   I like these kinds of openings, where everything’s super ominous and it all looks really terrible, and then the opening credits roll and heyyyyyyy, here’s Goku, and he can fix it.   He’s gonna bop that devil on the schnozz.

So the first seven minutes of this movie are just directly lifted from the episode where Goku goes to Master Roshi for training, and Krillin arrives soon after.   The only real difference is that Goku doesn’t bring back a bunch of strange women.   Krillin shows up almost immediately after Goku, and he does all the same stuff he did in the anime.   To be fair, Toei at least didn’t stoop to recycling the original footage, but it’s pretty dull watching a rerun, no matter how you slice it. 

Yeah, he’s watching aerobics, just before, only now the girls are doing butt stuff instead of leg stuff.

And Krillin’s riding a boat, just like last time, only now he’s in shadow, like this is some big mystery or something.   KIDS, DON’T REVEAL THE SECRET TWIST THAT KRILLIN IS IN THIS MOVIE.

Roshi insists that the boys have to bring him a cute girl before he’ll show them anything, but in this version, he doesn’t bother waiting for them to figure out what he wants.  Instead, he demands a specific girl, the Sleeping Princess in Devil’s Castle.  He then pulls out a map, not too dissimilar to the one he used in episode 69 to point out Fortuneteller Baba’s home.    Roshi explains that the princess was captured by a lecherous demon a long time ago, and she’s apparently super beautiful.    No one ever addresses the fact that she’d be much, much older after all this time, but Roshi’s over 300 years old so maybe that’s why it never comes up.  Anywho, first kid to bring her back to the island becomes Roshi’s pupil.   Second prize is a set of steak knives.   No, just kidding, second prize is nothing.

Meanwhile, someone else is researching the Sleeping Princess legend, and decides she wants a piece of that action.   Is Launch looking for a pichi-pichi girl too?   No, she’s seen this movie before, and knows what this is all about.

Roshi tells the boys that the castle is far to the west of here.    Every damn thing in this anime is to the west.    Bulma went west looking for the Dragon Balls when she found Goku, and then they went further west to find the rest of them.   But Bulma lives in West City, so Goku had to go west to find it.    Is there nothing to the east?  I know this planet is a sphere, and if you go far enough west you’ll get where you’re going, but still. 

Anyway, Krillin is a little shit for most of this movie, as he treats the competition very seriously and does whatever he can to sabotage Goku so he can get an inside track.  

Also, he rides the bus part of the way, which is kind of crappy since Roshi told Goku he couldn’t use Kinto’Un.   Well, it’s only cheating if you get caught, or at least that’s what all those heel wrestlers say.

Bulma and Yamcha drop by to visit Goku, and Roshi doesn’t want to tell them he sent him on an errand to Devil’s castle, so he makes up some thing about an amusement park.    They decide to follow Goku, and I guess Roshi told them exactly where Devil’s Castle is, because they managed to find it easily enough.

Near the end of the journey, Goku gives Krillin a helping hand, because he’s such a swell guy.   Keep that in mind.

And here’s the Devil’s Hand, a range of five mountains that surrounds Devil’s Castle. 

The boys head inside, and the whole place looks like an H.R. Giger painting.   Get used to it, because the rest of the movie looks exactly like this. 

Bulma and Yamcha get captured by monsters shortly after the sun goes down, and Bulma wakes up in a pretty fancy bedroom. 

The master of the estate greets her and introduces himself as Lucifer.   Yes, nothing suspicious going on here.

Bulma is smitten, but only for a moment before she asks what happened to Yamcha, Puar, and Oolong.   Lucifer doesn’t answer, and invites her to dinner instead (as the main course ha ha ha).

Down... stairs?   I have no idea how this castle is supposed to be laid out.   There’s a different area where Goku and Krillin are, and they get trampled by a horde of monster carrying machine guns.

Also this little pink thing is with them.   He’ll be important later.

Their leader is... this guy.   He never identifies himself, even though Goku and Krillin ask who he is.   His name’s Ghastel, for what it’s worth, but he really doesn’t matter.   He fights with Goku a little bit, and while Goku’s busy with that, Krillin tries to sneak away to search for the Princess.

Lucifer’s “dining hall” looks more like a big tower with rows of monsters standing around.   There’s this big four-poster bed which supposedly contains the Sleeping Princess, but he announces Bulma as the guest of honor, and has her seated on a throne. 

Then he turns into a monstrous form as he explains that they’ll be using Bulma’s blood to toast the reawakening of the Princess.   So were they just waiting for a girl to show up before they would go through with their plans, or did Bulma just pick the wrong night to show up?

By the way, Yamcha, Oolong, and Puar are running around in this place, too.  So did the bad guys take Bulma and leave the others alive?    You’d think they would have killed and eaten them by now.

Back to Goku, he ends up rescuing Krillin when he gets in over his head, but Krillin insists that he owes Goku nothing for that.  Ghastel has some sort of flying fireballs that he can ride on, so he has a mid-air battle with Goku on Kinto’Un, but then Ghastel gets eaten by a monster, so that takes care of him.   

All right, so Lucifer explains to his followers that the full moon will reawaken the Sleeping Princess, and I guess they don’t need Bulma’s blood to pull that off, it’s just kind of nice to have some blood to drink on this auspicious occasion. 

But suddenly--Launch!   She shows up and takes the Sleeping Princess from the bed before Lucifer knows what’s happening.  

Yeah, turns out the Sleeping Princess was a giant diamond the whole time.    I guess the legend about a girl being captured by a lecher was based on Lucifer’s custom of grabbing girls like Bulma, which got conflated with the diamond he probably stole at some point.  

While this is going on, Yamcha tries to free Bulma, but Oolong’s disguise fails, and then Paur exposes his own disguise when he notices this.   So now Yamcha’s captured.   Also Launch gets captured when she sneezes at an inopportune moment.

Goku gets the gem for a hot minute, but then Lucifer grabs Krillin and demands that Goku surrender the Princess for Krillin’s life.

And Goku agrees, much to Krillin’s amazement.  But Lucifer sics all his goons on Goku anyway, and that little pink feller bites Goku’s tail, so now they’re all captured.

Somehow, the light of the full moon gets focued through the castle and into the Sleeping Princess, which makes it all glowy and stuff.   

While this is going on, the gang is held captive in a block of solid granite?  How did they put this thing together?  I think the animators just didn’t feel like drawing anyone’s body that day.

Anyway, Goku notices the full moon and uh-oh.

The good news is that Goku’s sudden expansion frees the whole gang, but the bad news is that Goku chases after them and nearly eats Launch.

Where is Bulma and Lucifer while all of this is going on?  I thought he was going to drink Bulma’s blood before this whole thing started, and now he’s taking his sweet time about it.

Yamcha and Krillin grab Goku’s tail, Puar turns into scissors and yeah, we’ve seen this before.  Goku wakes up nude, wonders what happened, and then he borrows Oolong’s pants.

Back to the original part of the movie, this here is Lucifer’s Devil Castle Cannon, which is why he needed the Sleeping Princess to be reenergized.   Come the dawn, he’s gonna power this bad boy up and shoot it at the sun, which will supposedly destroy it.

See?  He’s got charts and everything to help him line up his shot.   I still don’t understand why he’s only just now getting around to this.   He’s had the Sleeping Princess for so long that it’s become a legend.  There’s a full moon once every 28 days.  Does he really need a chart to tell him where the sun will be?

I almost wonder if the cannon doesn’t even work.   He’s telling Bulma all this, but we never find out if he can pull it off (spoilers, Goku stops him from blowing up the sun).   Maybe he does this whole routine every month, and he’s been doing it so long that he’s too insane to consider that it never works.   Maybe he thinks he has to shoot the sun a million times to whittle it down.

Anyway, the gang arrives to save Bulma and save the day, and Goku and Krillin are finally working together, because Krillin realizes that Goku’s a good dude.   You know what that is?   Growth.

Goku can’t beat up Lucifer, though, so Bulma tells him to take out the cannon.   He fires a Kamehameha at it, but this only seems to destroy whatever it’s sitting on.   As it tips over, it fires, hitting Lucifer instead of the sun, and that’s the end of that guy.

So the sun rises like it always does.    Look at that smug bastard.   You’ve won this round, sun, but the war goes on...

Then the gang takes a selfie in front of the Devil’s Hand, which now looks like a peace sign because I guess three of the mountains got broken up during the battle. 

Back at Kame House, the boys explain that they failed, but Roshi is so pleased with Launch that he doesn’t care, and he agrees to take on both of them as his disciples, so everyone wins!  

I guess this movie’s all right, but it suffers from a lot of the same problems that plagued Curse of the Blood Rubies.    Way too much time is devoted to slavishly recreating moments from the original story, and I’m pretty sure anyone watching this movie would have already seen the original story by now.   I don’t think there’s a lot of fans who set out to watch the movies first. 

To me, the real hook of this film is Lucifer, since he’s the big new idea being presented here, except he’s not really that innovative, since he’s a vampire.  A jewel being used to power a super weapon isn’t particularly novel either.    The coolest idea is that he’s willing and able to destroy the sun, but there’s not really a good way to pay that off.   He can’t exactly succeed, and if he fails, then he’s just a crackpot with a big gun.

I like the idea of Blonde Launch as this devil-may-care bandit who would dare to steal a treasure like the Sleeping Princess from a literal horde of monsters, but that’s not what this movie was about.   They just shoehorned Launch into the story so she could satisfy Roshi’s demand for a cute girl once the Sleeping Princess was lost. Why not let the characters breathe a little?   We don’t need to see Launch play out the same role she’s already played out on the TV show.   You can do other things with her.

It is a pretty fun adventure.   There’s plenty of scenes of Goku and Krilin fighting monsters, and it’s kind of scary without being actually scary.    Lucifer’s henchman has a giant syringe to draw Bulma’s blood, for example.   It’s worth a watch, but as far as essential parts of the Dragon Ball franchise, this is definitely optional. 

[tarhalindur]

Apropos of certain chatter and fanart about the Breath of the Wild sequel, it occurs to me that Nintendo really has been leaving the equivalent of the proverbial hundred dollar bill on the ground wrt the Zelda series.  (Theoretically you could pull this off with another franchise, but thirty years of Zelda tropes would increase the punch.)

Consider the following hypothetical Zelda plot:

- Splash screen: “The Legend of Zelda: *Insert Title Here*

- In OoT fashion, you begin the game with the fairy (or equivalent) helper as the PoV character, being instructed by the Not the Great Deku Tree to find Link and bring him to the NtGDT.  (I’m not sure whether you’re better off rendering this as a cutscene ala OoT or making it an actual controllable section with the fairy as the PoV character - if the latter you’d probably want to make “shift PoV to the fairy to do things” a major game mechanics, and make both a couple of rooms in the starting area require flying to access and have at least one useful but not essential secret that’s only attainable by using the fairy at this point of the game.)

- You found Link.  Congratulations!  Now have him explore the starting area, possibly picking up an essential item or two (sword/shield might be too blatant an OoT reference...) and bring him to the NtGDT.  (I’d probably put a couple of puzzles and monsters in the way but not make it a full dungeon.)

- NtGDT opens the gates to Hidden Village and lets you out into the world proper to go to Hyrule Castle.  Head there, possibly passing through a smaller town and/or a mini-dungeon (monsters/bandits are forcing a quarantine of the town and/or set up a roadblock?).  Once you reach Castle Town (I’m pretty sure you want Castle Town in this version of Zelda), you have to find Zelda; either the NtGDT told you about this or you have to find someone in town who will tell you this (given Zelda meta, probably the former, but you need someone in town to reveal the secret access to the castle).  After yet another OoT reference in the form of a stealth section, you meet Princess Zelda, who tells you about *insert main villain here* (probably but not necessarily a Ganon variant) and that you’ll need to reclaim the Master Sword to defeat him.  (Optional: you’ll need to collect some components to open the lock first.  Optional of optional: You already got one of those plot coupons by defeating the mini-dungeon on the way to Hyrule Castle.)

- Proceed to do a dungeon or two, probably picking up one of the more useful items (the game’s Hookshot variant?) early for your trouble.

- At some point before Link would get to the Master Sword - OH SHIT THAT’S *INSERT FINAL BOSS HERE* AND HE’S LOCKED THE BOSS ROOM.  This final boss is genre-savvy and knows that a Link going around waving the Master Sword is going to be no end of trouble for him, so he tries to kill Link before Link has a weapon that can hurt him; he successfully defeats Link but funds he is unable to kill him, so instead he seals him in a crystal prison ala OoT Zelda.  (Ideally you’d do this right before the Master Sword, but given how heavily this hypothetical game is leaning into OoT already and the part where Link pulling the Master Sword is what messed everything up in OoT you might get more punch by having this happen right after Link defeats the mini-boss of the dungeon the Master Sword is in instead.) (Note: Theoretically *insert final boss here* could be a she, but I think that would be a misstep on multiple levels...)

- Except... there’s a reason the helper fairy was the PoV character of the first segment!  *Insert final boss here* didn’t think to imprison the helper fairy, and now said helper fairy will have to find someone else who can rescue the Hero of X.  (Again, could be a cutscene, could be another segment where you control the helper fairy directly.)

- At some point, possibly after evading enemies and/or checking up on a loose end or two (there was a wannabee hero who tried to clear the mini-dungeon on the way to Hyrule Castle but failed, but it turns out *insert main villain here* got him? too just to be safe, the helper fairy makes their way back to Hyrule Castle to talk to Zelda and ask her to recommend possible heroes to save Link.

.

.

.

- Zelda: “Hell, I always wanted to have some adventures anyways, and I know some nifty {skills and/or magic}.  I’ll do it.  You’re with me.”

- Helper Fairy: “Are you... sure you want to do this?”

- Zelda: “HELL YES.”

- Splash screen plays again.

- Splash screen transforms (Zelda finds her way into the splash screen and edits it with magic?).... into “The Legend of Link: *Insert Title Here*”!

-Zelda now has to escape Hyrule Castle and the surrounding city [another stealth sequence, since the guards and townsfolk will all drag her back], acquire a disguise/change of appearance, and clear dungeons.  Zelda plays differently from Link; she’s not a swordswoman, doesn’t use a shield, and doesn’t have nearly the same backpack arsenal that Link carries.  Instead, she’s more reliant on magic (probably foreshadowed by an abundance of magic refills during the Link sections) to solve puzzles and for defense (and sometimes offense/disables); for combat she augments this with some sort of close-combat weapon (could go naginata-equivalent if you want to play into Japanese samurai wife tropes, or that whip-chain thing Sheik uses in Melee if you want the fanartists to have a field day... or take a page from PMMM’s Kyoko and Mai-Hime’s Shizuru and do both at once...) and also the Hero’s Bow once she retrieves it from the dungeon it’s in (you might want an infinite quiver as one of the available item upgrades somewhere, given Zelda’s).  Also, my instinct is that this version of Zelda (and all Zeldas, really) should be a horse girl, so you might want some mounted archery segments, either via Zelda borrowing Epona or by her getting a horse of her own.  The only problem is that you need the Master Sword to seal/kill Ganon and Zelda’s not a swordswoman, so she does have to rescue Link before they can take on Ganon; once Link is freed he fills the same kind of role Zelda does in more recent Zelda games, with sections where you take over control of Link and/or have to use both Link and Zelda to solve puzzles.  (The final boss fight should probably be another callback to OoT, or maybe Wind Waker, except this time you’re controlling Zelda and have to work things so Link can get a killshot with the Master Sword.)

[tedlyanderson]

Annotations for Adventure Time: Beginning of the End issue 3!

Did you enjoy my annotations for issue one and issue two of this miniseries? If so, good news! (If not, shove off!) I have annotations for the third issue, right here waiting for your lovely eyes! Obviously, as with the previous posts, this will have great big massive spoilers for the issue, so take that into consideration. Please enjoy, my pals!

Pages 2&3: Okay, there’s a lot to unpack on these pages, haha. First and foremost is a reference to something other than Adventure Time for once: Jake’s monologue on these pages is a loose reference to one of the very best issues of classic Fantastic Four, number 51, “This Man ... This Monster!” In that issue, among other events, Reed Richards travels through the Negative Zone and muses to himself about the nature of reality:

There are cameos on these pages from a bunch of the “cosmic” things of the AT universe, including the Catalyst Comet, the Lich, a copy of the Enchiridion,  Glob Grob Gob Grod, the Finn Sword, and Prismo (in a rare 3-dimensional appearance). There’s also a herd of Time Lards with clocks on their bellies.

Also in this image, note the most minor and in-jokey reference in this entire series: the satellite on the middle-left with the word “FELIS” on it. In the episode “Fionna and Cake and Fionna,” someone asks Ice King where he gets the ideas for his Fionna and Cake stories, and he replies that they’re “beamed into [his] melon every night.” Later that episode, we see him sleeping as a pink laser zaps into his head, carrying images of Fionna and Cake. I chose to interpret this as a reference to one of my favorite authors, Philip K. Dick, who believed that he was receiving knowledge in the form of an information-rich pink laser beam from a satellite called VALIS. So this satellite, FELIS (get it? like cats?), is the source of the Fionna and Cake stories—in my version of the universe, anyway.

Page 4, panel 4: Chronologius Rex declares that he is the lord of Time, not meatloaf. Meatloaf has been established multiple times as Finn’s favorite food.

Page 5: And here we come to the crux of this issue: Finn’s possible futures. Issue 1 of this series was about Finn’s past, issue 2 was about his present, so naturally issue 3 is all about his futures. Obviously none of these should be taken as “canon;” I just came up with three possible paths Finn might take based on what we’ve seen him do throughout the series. I’ll explain my thinking after the third sequence.

All three of the futures are color-coded��the Candy Knight future is pink, obviously.

Page 6: I love Mari’s designs for Queen Bubblegum—the high ‘80s shoulders are great! My suggestion for Old Peppermint Butler was that he be smoother and shinier, as if he’s a candy that’s been sucked on for too long.

In panel 2, the “Dinner Kingdom” is kind of a half-reference to the Breakfast Kingdom in present Ooo.

And in panel 5, note old Finn’s Jake medallion.

Page 7, panel 4: I am not sorry for the “bunch” of banana soldiers joke.

Page 8, panel 1: Beards are indeed a factor in many of Finn’s futures: pretty much every time we’ve seen an older or artificially-aged Finn, he’s got a beard of some sort. I continue the trend in this issue.

Page 8, panel 5: This is a futuristic version of Founders’ Island, the main human settlement outside of Ooo, fixed up and fully repaired. The implication is that Finn not only returned to the human islands, he also helped fix the place up.

The color scheme for the Teacher Finn future is blue, connecting with the water and sky surrounding them.

Page 9, panel 2: I love Teacher Finn’s design so, so much, you guys. I described him as a lovable old professor, someone with his mother’s compassion and his father’s roguish charm, and Mari knocked it out of the park. Note his Jake hat.

Page 9, panel 3: “Homies help homies: always!” is the Adventure Time philosophy in a nutshell.

Page 9, panel 5: Note that Finn is still using his old, trusty sword Scarlett in this future. She’s even more nicked and battle-scarred, but I’m sure she’s still good in a fight.

Page 10, panel 2: Dodging eggs while fighting was part of Finn’s training from Rattleballs in his eponymous episode.

Page 10, panel 2: When it came to Finn’s human wife, I told Mari to make her look a little bit like a human version of Flame Princess. I figured Finn if has a type, it’s her!

Page 11: The third and final possible future is the Space Captain Finn future, which is green-themed for no particular reason. This future is based on the idea that Finn and his Candy Kingdom pals team up with the remaining humans to build a spaceship to take them away from Earth, which is about as likely as anything else in Adventure Time, haha.

Everything in this sequence is of course heavily inspired by Star Trek: the Next Generation, a show that I love and grew up watching. The Minerva A.I. is the ship’s computer, obviously, warning of “excessive sparks detected on bridge.” Jake is Finn’s right-hand-man, just like Riker was to Picard (and Finn even calls him “numero uno,” like Picard’s “number one”). Lady Rainicorn is the equivalent of counselor Troi, Fern is a bit like Data, and Jake’s skateboarding granddaughter Bronwyn is the hotshot kid pilot, like Wesley. Princess Bubblegum is the engineering chief—she always struck me as preferring the role of scientist rather than royalty, frankly—assisted by Frieda and BMO. Flame Princess, upgraded to Plasma Princess, powers the ship as a whole. And Finn himself sports a beard similar to Commander Riker’s—which is appropriate, as a future version of Finn was voiced by Riker’s actor, Jonathan Frakes!

When coming up with these futures, I thought about what the Finn we knew might be most drawn to doing, and boiled it down to three major options: fighting and defending (the Candy Knight future), teaching and training (the Teacher Finn future), or exploring and leading (Space Captain Finn). For what it’s worth, I don’t really have a preference, or any opinions on which future is most likely—one of the strengths of Adventure Time has always been finding ways to surprise its audience with something that makes total sense in retrospect. If Finn does have a “canonical” future, it’s probably something I would never have thought of, but which makes perfect sense.

Page 11, panel 4: Princess Bubblegum yet again mentions “zanoits,” which are maybe some kind of mysterious particle? It’s a funny word and deserves to be used more often.

Page 12, panel 1: I mentioned in my annotations for the previous issue that I felt bad making Susan revert to her simpler speech patterns, since by this point in the series she’s perfectly capable of using big words. I tried to make it up to her by making her the ship’s communications officer, who would use big words all the time.

Additionally, the “Tuffbone sector” is a reference to Meredith Gran’s Adventure Time miniseries, Marceline: Gone Adrift. In that series, Marceline explores space and meets other races, including the Tuffbones, dog-like alien critters.

Page 12, panel 2: Note that Shelby (the worm who lives in Jake’s viola) is wearing a bandolier similar to Worf’s. I was particularly proud of that idea, haha.

Page 12, panel 4: Jake’s exclamation of “Outrageous!” is a reference to another role by his voice actor, John DiMaggio: it’s the catchphrase of Aquaman, from the Batman: the Brave and the Bold series.

Page 16, panel 3: A “dead world” is another bit of unexplored Adventure Time lore: they’re apparently where people go when they die, but they’re not quite the afterlife as we think of it? Or it is, but there’s a lot of them, like at least fifty? Unclear.

Page 16, panel 4: I had to work in the title of the show somehow.

Page 17, panel 3: I wanted to make sure I referenced my favorite song from the show, “Everything Stays” by Rebecca Sugar, and this seemed like the perfect time to bring it up, as Jake discusses the inevitability of change.

Page 17, panel 4: When I described this panel in the script, I specifically mentioned the series Neon Genesis Evangelion, one of the weirder depictions of the end of the world you can find. I love the image of the enormous stone blocks sinking into an endless sea.

Page 18, panel 5: Chronologius’s epithet for Jake, “starchild,” references Jake’s actual origin as a half-alien creature. I checked the dates, and apparently I finished the script for this issue just a couple weeks after the episode “Jake the Starchild” aired, in which Jake’s parentage was fully revealed.

Pages 20-21: Finn’s final “confrontation” with Chronologius might feel a bit underwhelming—essentially, all he does is convince Chronologius to give them an opportunity to escape. There’s no big battle, no war of wits; it’s already been established that Chronologius is basically invulnerable, so it’s not like Finn could beat him in a fight. It’s not terribly exciting, but that’s kind of the point: over the course of this issue, Chronologius becomes more sympathetic to Finn and his plight, particularly after seeing all the good he did (and might have done) in the world. So it’s less about beating up some big bad dude, and more about convincing someone to act like a pal. In a way, Finn beats Chronologius by making him into a friend.

Would it have been better if the ending was more exciting, action-packed, crazy-style? Maybe! Looking back on it, I feel like I could have given Mari more chances to do cool art stuff—the first half of this issue has some pretty far-out sequences and nifty new things to draw, but the second half is basically three characters talking against a mostly boring background. Thematically I feel like it’s better to have Finn succeed by befriending the villain, rather than just punching his lights out, but it definitely doesn’t have the same visual impact. Overall, I’m still proud of it, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be improved.

That’s it for issue three! Join me next time for—issue four?!? Yes! This three-part miniseries is in fact a four-part miniseries, ending with Finn and Jake’s adventures through time! Look forward to it, my chums!

[randomwoohoo]

At least I will have time for studying or other stuffs after this

- .... . / . -. -.. / --- ..-. / ... . .- ... --- -. / --- -. .

Finnick: Previously on Zoomorphia, our bunny fox cops eventually beat the silver wolf.

Bolt: Yeah, once! But you know what? I can’t even be mad at them cuz after all this time, Officer bun bun finally became aware of her feelings for the Wilde fox! Too bad, I still had to get my job done. My crew and I used Savages to lure them into a blind alley. After knocking Hybrid out, I took Officer Hopps and the cheetah officer as hostages. Since we could not locate Officer Wilde back then, I gave him like 8 hours to hand over his driver in exchange for the hostages.

Finnick: It looks like you covered everything… What’s the point of me being here and doing this recap sequence again?

Bolt: Speaking of the last chapter, where were you? Shouldn’t you be there with other minor extras?

Finnick: I was there, in Mr. Big’s house. In fact, I was the one who helped Slick Nick lose some weight. And I’m not extra! I have dialogues, y’know?

Bolt: But you didn’t get mentioned in previous chap at all! Maybe you were overlooked because of your short height. Hahaha

Finnick: Excuse you…

Bolt: Oh… sorry...I mean you’re not short, you’re fun sized. Hahahaha

Finnick: How’s that better?

Bolt: It’s not?

Finnick: I’ll bite your face off!

Bolt: Uh-oh, gotta go. Enjoy chapter 18~

Fanfiction.net

.-.. . - .----. ... / -.-. --- -. - .. -. ..- .

Sunset’s rays shone through windows of one warehouse where Judy and Clawhauser were held captive against their will with their paws tied behind their backs. Because of their ankles tied with rope, they could not move freely, which implied that escaping was out of the question.

By the time Judy woke up, she had already in this unpleasant situation with her feline friend, surrounded by a hog Savage and a hippopotamus Savage in addition to three purple beasts she as Hybrid fought against earlier to being knocked out.

Besides, the two officers were being watched by the tundra wolf in a groovy black leather jacket, Bolt, who was sitting on one of the stacks of wooden crates.

“What on earth do you want!?” Clawhauser wriggled on the floor, yet the rope was not loosened one bit.

Due to not being present at Mr. Big’s front yard when Bolt attacked, he had no clue what the wolf was after.

Bolt did not answer since he was not paying much attention to him as he, looking at Judy’s transformation belt that was still on her since he could not remove it from her without wearer’s consent as a result of the device’s system, was thinking back…

After Mittens the black and white wildcat fixed Bolt’s part which was damaged by Hybrid’s sword, a professor who is a black sloth boar bear held an urgent meeting in their motorhome.

“We must take MidniDrivers away from those two no matter what.” Professor stated clearly at a table where he, Bolt, Mittens and Rhino the tan lemming gathered.

“The sooner the better” The wildcat added.

A light bulb went off in Bolt’s head. “I can accelerate and steal them-”

“Do you know where bunny fox cops keep their morphers?” She interjected the question, shooting down his idea.

“But if there are any Savages terrorizing the city, those two will show up with their drivers for sure!” Rhino said, sitting on the table, so he could see others.

“Still, we have zero clue when the next Savages’ attack will be. There’s too much uncertainty.” Professor puzzled over the problem “except… we arrange the next attack.” before he came up with the idea.

As a result, Bolt and his gang produced a plan for luring Nick and Judy out with controllable Savages in order that they can steal MidniDrivers from them before the drivers start-

All of a sudden, Bolt jerked, shaking the stack of crates under him. Judy and Clawhauser were accordingly startled by him.

“Oh Shiitake… I forgot to tell him which warehouse...” He had just realized he only told Nick to bring his morpher to him at this warehouse district but he did not specify which warehouse. This realization interrupted him looking back.

Fortunately, he did not have to be worried about that problem because Nick Wilde the red fox appeared at the warehouse’s gate in his favorite light green Hawaiian shirt and dark indigo necktie.

“I thought for a moment that we may have to check every single warehouse to find the right one.” Finnick the fennec fox complained from the driver’s seat in his van.

“Thanks for the ride” Nick, seeming solemn, thanked Finnick for dropping him off in front of the warehouse.

“Are you sure about this?” The squat sandy-furred fennec fox asked.

“It doesn’t matter anymore.” Nick replied with determined eyes.

Finnick put on his shades, “Ciao” then drove off.

“Nick!” Judy shouted her partner’s name.

“Wow, it took you 5 hours and 2 minutes~” Bolt pretended to look at his watch on his left wrist although he did not have any real watches on him at the time. “I hope you are clever enough to make a right decision~”

“Lately, I’ve wondered...” Nick started a speech.

“Why should I care? It’s not like this city is worth risking my life for anyway.” He walked slowly into the warehouse.

“I used to be discriminated, mistreated, called names, et cetera to the point of giving up trying to be something else aside from a shifty fox. But then, the naive little bun bun stepped into my life... She was so naive that she fell for my scam easily, so naive that she believes rabbits can be a cop… believes… an untrustworthy fox can be a cop too…” He lowered his voice at the end, yet his words echoed, so others did hear him.

Nick continued. “Despite being looked down, she kept trying and achieved the impossible in the end… The first rabbit police officer, the amazing cop… I’ve been thinking… She may not be naive after all… She’s confident and hopeful. Because she is a trier… true fighter, she will try… always persist in trying to make the world a better place.”

He then smiled tiredly. “If I give up again here, she won’t likely to forgive me.”

Following that, Nick brought out the arm-sized black device, MidniDriver. Bolt therefore hopped off the stack to get on his feet in order to receive Nick’s transformation gear. However, it turned out that Nick put his morpher on his waist.

“So, that’s your decision huh?” Bolt sighed, rolling up his jacket right sleeve before brushing fur on under forearm to avoid getting a zipper on his arm stuck on fur.

After unzipping his arm, “Switch on” Bolt, uttering calmly, pulled a lever which is a part of a mechanical arm underneath fake skin.

The very next thing happened was that electric sparks ran around the tundra wolf before one quick flash of his white fur. Shortly afterwards, Bolt successfully switched into his silver chrome form.

“Carrots!” Nick shouted to Judy while she was gazing at him in worry for him.

“Thank you, for everything!” He expressed his gratitude to her. “I’ll save you… whatever it costs.” He made a promise.

Subsequently, “I love you, Judy.” Nick pulled the syringe of his morpher, then pushed it promptly.

“RELOAD” His MidniDriver spoke.

“Nick! Wait! D-..on..t...” Judy passed out.

“Judy!” Clawhauser moved with difficulty towards the unconscious bunny.

Nick held the handle sticking out the right side of his black device before “Transform” he said and twisted the handle. “IGNITE”

Next, Nick’s MidniDriver released purple steam which unsettled all of the five purple monsters and then caused boiling mist explosion swallowing the red fox whole.

After the thick mist faded away, two emerald headlamps at Nick’s eye level and purple device core shining up, the armored mammal was revealed.

Nonetheless, this armored mammal did not appear the same as usual. Normally, Hybrid was a doe rabbit figure with fox features regardless of what forms the duo used.

Despite having the same black device on the waist, the mammal has a tod fox physique with characteristics of a rabbit such as a short snout and a short tail.

Furthermore, this hybrid between a fox and a rabbit is covered with a steel blue full suit head-to-toe bio armor.

The steel blue Hybrid also had a pair of emerald headlamps for eyes, no pattern on muzzle area unlike Hybrid’s other forms, crimson claw marks on the left cheek, a red neckerchief around the neck, a pair of claw gauntlets and, last but not least, digitigrade legs (standing and walking on toes).

“Dang! Intimidating~ A bit too edgy, but still impressive~” Bolt complimented Hybrid’s new form. “Bring it on!” He struck a fighting pose while Mittens was controlling the Savages to be on standby from the motorhome.

Suddenly, Hybrid screamed at the top of the lungs before storming off.

Stunned by the unexpected harsh manner, Bolt froze in place, while Mittens ordered the Savages to stop the blue armored mammal in order that the wolf had some time to get a hold of himself.

Right afterwards, Hybrid charged headlong at the purple wolverine, then grabbed of its neck with the right paw before hurling it upward. After that, the steel blue armored mammal jumped up and thrust the left claw into the wolverine Savage. It consequently met its end in the blink of an eye.

Clawhauser, Bolt and his team, only Mittens and Rhino except the professor, who were watching the incident live from their base were stupefied by the fact that this blue form of Hybrid could finish off one Savage in next to no time.

The feral armored mammal briskly hunted down other purple beasts, leaping over large Savage s like the lion and the hippo. Hybrid then dived towards the caprid and swiftly crashed it against the ground so hard that it died instantaneously.

The next target whom Hybrid mindlessly chose was Clawhauser. When Bolt saw that the armored mammal was running on all four in the direction of the defenseless tied up cheetah officer. He, “Accel!” yelling, grasped the hog monster near at paw violently before throwing it at Hybrid in order to prevent the steel blue animal from injuring normal mammal.

However, the armored mammal dodged the thrown hog Savage and caught it in mid-air, then pinned it down.

Hybrid , screeching at the hog, pushed the silver syringe roughly “ACTIVATE”. Immediately following that, the elbows grew blades. The steel blue armored mammal struck the pinned Savage with the elbows.

Thanks to its fat layer, it took quite some time for Hybrid to defeat this monster. Hence, “Come here!!” Bolt was able to carry the unconscious bunny body and the cheetah to the further spot, away from the wild Hybrid.

The hog monster’s motionless body started to vaporize, indicating its departure from life, still the armored mammal kept cutting its flesh with the elbow blades.

At that moment, Mittens ordered the remaining two Savage s to attack Hybrid. She thought that if the monsters could slow the going out of control mixed-breed down, Bolt would be able to accelerate and make the armored mammal detransform.

When the purple lion came so close to Hybrid, the armored mammal sprang to cling to the lion’s back.

The lion Savage tried to shake Hybrid off but it was useless because in an instant, the right claw of the armored fox with rabbit features stabbed through the lion’s neck.

After effortlessly killing another monster, Hybrid got off it. Since Savages cannot bleed, there was no blood staining on the steel blue suit of armor. However, it did not make this form of Hybrid less disturbing.

“This is what happens when predator’s body is used for becoming Hybrid huh?” Bolt chuckled nervously.

“Bolt! We have one more shot. I gonna send the last Savage to charge at Hybrid. Find an opportunity to change the fox back to normal.” Mittens spoke to him through their private wireless communication system.

The purple hippo then rushed towards the armored mammal but Hybrid bent the body to avoid being hit at exactly proper time.

Soon afterwards, Hybrid pushed the syringe “ACTIVATE” to activate spiked knee pads and hopped up, twisting the body in mid-air, before kneeing the hippo in the top of its head.

Bolt, who intended to go near Hybrid at first, was watching the monster being clawed brutally by the so-called hero…

Bolt then decided “Triple accel!” to launched himself at great speed so that he could catch the armored mammal.

Even so, Hybrid could dodge him with such a remarkable agility. As a result of too high force and speed, Bolt flew farther than he expected, crashing into the stacks of crates.

When he fell on the ground, “Shoot! Hybrid is going after the officers!” Rhino’s voice could be heard from the wireless communication system.

Bolt, already cancelling the acceleration to avoid his system overheating, hurriedly got up before seeing Hybrid standing so close to Clawhauser. The armored mammal was drawing the right claw up.

“Stop it!” Bolt yelled while the speechless cheetah shut his eyes in fear.

--. --- / --- ..- - / --- ..-. / -.-. --- -. - .-. --- .-..

After Nick pulled and pushed his syringe, “Nick! Wait! D-..on..t...” Judy blacked out.

She or just her consciousness was then thrown into an unfamiliar place where she saw an adult fox presenting his business plan for a bank loan. The fox was accompanied by a young red fox.

Judy looked fixedly at the young fox because he appeared familiar to her. She then shifted her focus to the older fox walking away from the loan officer’s desk. Apparently, his proposal got rejected.

Subsequently, she perceived that the young fox held up the stamper along with two small rodent bank employees, preventing them from stamping ‘rejected’ mark on the proposal.

The rodents shrieked, so the rhino security guard came to catch hold of the fox kit. Although he had already let go of the stamper, the guard was still carrying him towards the exit.

“Dad! Dad!” While the kit was calling to his father for help, the adult fox “Sir, I’m truly sorry but please let my son go.” begged the rhinoceros.

“You’re going too far!” Judy went to stop the guard but it turned out that he walked past her as if she was not there because in reality..., she was not there.

After that, the adult fox leapt on the rhino to save his son. As a result, the security guard released the fox kit and arrested his father instead.

Before he went out with the security guard, he spoke to his son. “It’s okay, Nicky. Dad will go home soon. Until then, be a good boy and prove that a fox is trustworthy.”

Next, Judy’s mind jumped to another place. She saw a vixen raising her kit on her own. The vixen even scraped up enough money to buy her son a junior ranger scout’s uniform. The scene reminded Judy of the story Nick told her about his past. That was when Judy realized that she was going through Nick’s memory.

Judy wanted to turn away from the scene of young Nick weeping alone after he was bullied by prey animals in scout uniforms. It was the day Nick gave in to the horrible stereotypes or that was what he said to her.

She found that despite feeling conflicted, Nick occasionally tried to prove that he could be more than a sly fox. Nonetheless, the world was constantly against him. Although he studied hard to earn good grades, some mammals would claim that he cheated.

It was hard for him to apply any honest jobs just because he is a fox.

It was difficult for him to get any loan approvals just because he is a fox.

Therefore, he eventually gave up and became a con artist, a sly fox that the world saw.

Lying, hustling… If those were what mammals expected for foxes, so be it.

Subsequently, Judy reached the memory of the first time Nick met her and tricked her to pay the jumbo pop for him and Finnick. She even perceived his thought.

Back then, Nick saw Judy as a hypocrite since she carried a fox repellent, yet she acted nobly. That upset him to certain extent.

He disliked her more when she pressured him to help her solve the missing otter case. However, after seeing her working hard in the investigation and genuinely caring for the otter, he thought that he might be wrong about her.

“I think you’d actually make a pretty good cop.”

At the time Judy told him that, he just thought she must be joking because nobody would truly believed that a sly fox like him can possibly be a cop.

That was why the moment Judy handed him a police application form meant a lot to him. This mammal really believed in him. She wanted him to be her partner. Even though he did not want to serve society anymore unlike his past self who wanted to join the scouts, he was happy to be wanted and trusted.

And that was why it hurted so much when she betrayed his feelings by showing her bigotry against foxes.

Nick wanted to hate her. Then again, he came to realization that everyone made mistakes, so he decided if she changed, maybe… he could give her a second chance, which he did not regret that decision at all. She grew up, learned her mistake, came back to him and fixed the crisis with him.

He finally found a mammal who trusted him, had faith in him and believed in him while he did not believe that he could be more than that awful stereotype.

Besides, he thought She was so freaking reckless and too naive. How can l leave her alone? , which irritated Judy.

For these reasons, Nick made up his mind to be by her side as her friend and her partner.

The more they spent time together, the stronger Nick’s feelings grew. Hence, He fell in love with her.

Nevertheless, he had to persistently remind himself to forget the idea of being in a relationship with her because he is a fox, an ex-con artist. He believed that he would bring her down… His past could come back to haunt not only him but also Judy as long as they were together romantically.

I’m a fox. The world just sees me as a shifty hustler. This thought echoed in Nick’s head.

After going through his memories and thoughts, Judy, her chest feeling tight, came across a black large free space which was burning with flames here and there.

In the middle was a savage fox on fire.

“Nick!” Judy approached the burning fox.

The flaming wild fox growled at her but she still advanced towards him.

“Nick!” She called to him again.

When she was so close to him, he leapt on her, pinning her to the hot floor and snarling at her face.

Even so, she was not scared. She reached out and pulled him into an embrace.

“I believe in you, Nick.” She patted the back of his neck, “You won’t hurt me like that. I’ll be fine. You’ll be fine. We’ll be fine… together.” tightening the hug despite the fire on him.

“I’m sorry for all this time I didn’t know what you have gone through, how heavy your burdens are, and… how many emotions you bottle up.” She then moved her paws to his face. “But please take off your mask… let me know your true feelings.”

The fires subsequently died out, revealing Nick Wilde with a depressed expression.

“I’m sorry” Nick apologized. “Even though I’m a cop now, even though I got promoted, it seems I can’t ever be good enough...”

“If you’re afraid that you won’t be as good as I hope, don’t worry. I don’t have high expectation in the first place.”

“Ha ha” Nick laughed sarcastically.

“Nick, you’re not just good. You’re fantastic! You’re better than what world thinks of you! Have more faith in yourself, O.K.?” She stroked his cheeks.

“I’ll try.” Nick rose slowly while gentally helping Judy stand up.

“And I’ll be there for you… be by your side, so you’ll be by my side too~” She beamed at him.

“Sly bunny~” He put on a genuine smile before the mental black free space faded away as both he and Judy united.

--. --- / --- ..- - / - --- --. . - .... . .-.

Clawhauser, lying on the floor defenselessly, shut his eyes in fear when steel blue Hybrid drew the right claw up.

“Easy peasy~”

He heard Nick’s voice and felt that the rope around his wrists and ankles became loosened, so he opened his eyes to see the armored mammal, who went totally berserk earlier, standing in a relaxed way.

“Are you hurt?” Judy’s voice came out of the armored fox with rabbit features.

Noticing that the rope had already been cut by the steel blue mixed-breed, Clawhauser got up hurriedly.

“Judy! Nick! You two okay now?” He asked.

“Pretty much~ I just let an autopilot run a bit and it looks like it did a fine job.” Nick jested as he turned Hybrid’s head to look around. There were vaporizing lifeless Savages’ bodies on the floor.

“Sorry for the loss of your pets~” He jokingly apologized to Bolt.

“You can hand over your drivers as an apology.” Bolt joked as a response, stepping off the pile of broken wood pieces.

“I’m afraid we can’t do that.” Judy said, putting Hybrid’s guard up.

“I figured.” Bolt uttered.

“Clawhauser, would you look after my body?” She asked him.

The cheetah picked the unconscious doe’s body up and kept their distance from the silver wolf and the armored mammal.

Once Clawhauser together with Judy’s body were out of a danger zone, “Accel!” Bolt moved near Hybrid like lightning, then “Volt Strike!” swung his glowing knifepaws at his opponent in order to paralyze the united duo.

The steel blue armored fox with rabbit characteristics briskly ducked to avoid the blow easily.

Seeing that his attack failed, Bolt lowered while sweeping one of his legs.

Hybrid could avoid the attack with ease again by springing up. However, that was what Bolt aimed for.

He assumed that it would be difficult to dodge in mid-air, so “Double accel” he straightened up and was about to attack the armored mammal in double-quick time.

Hybrid stuck the right claw at Bolt but he, still accelerating, sidestepped, dodging the sharp claw.

The accelerated silver wolf then thrust his glowing left palm with an intention to strike the armored mammal’s flank.

Unexpectedly, Hybrid agilely bent the body, which caused Bolt to miss his target in a split second.

Directly afterwards, the united duo seized Bolt’s extended arm, then drew Hybrid closer to Bolt and used the momentum to swing the kick which hit him right in the side of the face.

Next, the armored mammal released the hold on the silver wolf while he was falling sideways. He took a step to the side to regain his balance as the steel blue mammal landed on the feet effortlessly.

“Mittens… I’m gonna get serious a bit.” Saying quietly, Bolt stopped accelerating. He did not pay attention to his team’s response and went straight to “Electro blast!” discharge an energy ball from his chest.

As the energy ball was flying towards Hybrid , the united duo twisted MidniDriver’s handle back “CRITICAL BREAK” before crouching, avoiding the attack in the process.

At a later second, the steel blue armored mammal jumped up, flipping towards the silver wolf.

“Acce-” Bolt was about to charge at his opponent.

“Don’t move!” The duo yelled, making the wolf halt without being aware.

Hybrid then rushed down to land a right side kick… on the floor. Bolt stared at his opponent being down on one knee while one foot stayed in contact with the ground at the same spot that the kick landed.

When Hybrid stood up and lifted the right leg, it could be seen that the spot which the armored mammal’s foot hit a moment ago was holed. Bolt also noticed that there were spikes under the toes of Hybrid before those spikes were drawn back.

“You know that if you moved just a little bit faster, you could get kicked right?” Judy put a rhetorical question to Bolt.

After he was silent for a few seconds, “Triple accel” he uttered calmly, then disappeared into thin air.

Clawhauser was going to shout in celebration of the victory but suddenly, Hybrid turned back and stuck the sharp claw out at the silver wolf. It appeared that Bolt accelerated his system to attack his opponent by surprise.

“Wanna continue?” Nick asked.

“Just wanna give it another shot.” Bolt tittered before he vanished.

“Where is he now?” Clawhauser wondered.

“He’s gone now.” Judy answered.

Subsequently, the armored mammal went to Clawhauser, asking him to kneel down, so the rope tying the unconscious body of the doe could be cut. Following that Hybrid removed the rope from Judy, the united duo pulled the syringe, drawing the blood into it, to detransform.

The suit of armor released purple steam before it disappeared. Nick consequently turned back to normal while Judy woke up in Clawhauser’s arms.

“Wakey Wakey princess~” Nick pushed the syringe to inject his blood back to himself in order to cure his tiredness.

Without hesitation, Judy got off Clawhauser’s arms, then approached Nick hurriedly.

“We did it, Carrots~ We won-” No sooner did Nick finish his sentences than Judy punched him right in his gut. Nick collapsed to his knees as a result.

Jaw dropping, the portly cheetah covered his mouth in shock.

Next, she pulled Nick’s tie to draw his attention to her before she ranted.

“Dumb fox! What the heck did you think you were doing, risking yourself like that!? What if everything didn’t turn out fine? What if that transformation made you’ve gone completely berserk and will never recover!? You think that I’m naive, dumb and too reckless to be left alone, don’t you? Then why did you decide to sacrifice anything to defeat that wolf… especially after you confessed to me…?”

Her eyes then started getting watery. “If something horrible happened to you, I...” She shed her tears.

“Sorry… for making you worry...” Nick averted his eyes, feeling guilty.

“You gave me too credit… I almost gave up several times and I did give up once before.” Judy clenched her badge on her chest, remembering the time her badge was nearly taken away during the missing otter investigation.

She remembered the mammal who saved her from losing her dream was none other than Nick.

She remembered that she returned to Zootopia and successfully crack the Night howlers case after giving up because of none other than Nick.

“All this time…, the reason why I can keep trying, fighting and protecting our city, our home, is… I have you, Nick.” She touched his cheek gently, turning his face, so he would look at her.

“I love you.” She stared into his emerald eyes.

“I love you too.” He stared back into her amethyst eyes.

“Aww” Clawhauser exclaimed, moved his paws to his chest.

And then, both Nick and Judy closed the gap between them, hugged each other and shared a kiss. Their lips were pressed against the lips of one another. They felt a warm sweet sensation radiating throughout their bodies as they got lost in time.

.- ..-. ..-. . -.-. - .. --- -. .- - . / -.-. --- -. ..-. . ... ... .. --- -.

At a later time after Bolt lost to the steel blue Hybrid and came back to his team’s base, the motorhome,

“What actually happened? Shouldn’t predators go out of control if they use MidniDriver to transform with their bodies?” Mittens the wildcat wondered, swivelling round in a seat.

Meanwhile, Rhino was busy waving a hand fan for a large mammal like a bear to cool down the tundra wolf, Bolt, who was lying on one of the couch.

“It’s probably because the fox has received quite amount of the rabbit’s blood mixed with his blood.” Professor the sloth bear theorized. “Plus, their synchronization’s possibly increased.”

“If it was the case of what I’m thinking right now…, oh, dear, I’d be seriously worried about the bunny officer.” Professor’s face grew concerned.

- .... . / . -. -.. / --- ..-. / .--. .... .- ... . / --- -. .

- --- / -... . / -.-. --- -. - .. -. ..- . -.. / .. -. / .--. .... .- ... . / - .-- ---

[zippdementia]

The Main Resident Evil Games, Ranked

I’ve been playing Resident Evil games since Resident Evil 2 first terrified me as a 14 year old. I have fond memories of having to have my friend play through the sewer sections in that game, the ones involving giant spiders... and I also have fond memories of eventually overcoming those fears to achieve the coveted A Rank on the game and unlocking Hunk and Tofu (God, I had way more time back then). Since those early days, I’ve played through every main game in the series and have mostly kept up with the lore of the side games. It remains one of my favorite go-to franchises for its atmosphere and fun mix of horror and action, not to mention its over-the-top story, which always feels a little bit like Capcom browsed Reddit for its favorite fan fiction than turned it into an official game.

That said, this list looks at only the nine main games in the series (that’s Resident Evil 0 through 7, plus Code Veronica) as those are the only ones I’ve played, outside of obsessing for a month or two on Umbrella Chronicles... oh, and a brief, extremely un-fun run through Outbreak.

Because I started the series so long ago, I have a love in my heart for the old school fixed camera games and those that give us a healthy dose of survival horror over action, but I’ve tried to be as objective as possible in creating this list, keeping in mind that of course such things can never stray too far from the subjective. Also, as an added bonus, I’ve included a “scariness” ranking for each game separate from the main ranking. This, of course, is COMPLETELY subjective.

And with that, let’s do *assumes dark growly voice* RESIDENT EVIL: RANKING.

#9: Resident Evil 6

Resident Evil 6 is a mess of ideas and intentions. From the beginning, its development was hampered by too many cooks in the kitchen as various directors and producers continually changed their mind as to what the game should be. Eventually they settled on making it everything by breaking up the game into three extremely different short games, one that relies heavily on horror aspects, one on action aspects, and one on shooting aspects (including heavy use of a widely panned cover system). Unfortunately, these three approaches are intrinsically opposed to each other in terms of genre, gameplay, and aesthetic. Instead of pleasing all fans, this approach guaranteed that no matter who you are, you are going to like exactly one third of Resident Evil 6 and hate two thirds of it. It also highlighted for fans that Capcom no longer knew what its series wanted to be. The asinine story which arguably jumped the shark as far back as Code Veronica now captured that shark, put a saddle on it, and rode it around an arena while Chris Redfield did steroids. In short: the story was so nonsensical, it seemed to leave nowhere else for the series to go (a problem they just sort’ve ignored in Resident Evil 7). Resident Evil 6 has some fun elements to it, and it fixed many of the problems people had with bad companion AI and clunky run and gun mechanics, but it wasn’t enough to make the experience a good one.

Scary rank #9: In addition to being a poor game, Resident Evil 6 almost completely moves away from the game’s horror routes. Leon’s campaign has some nice tip of the hats to the old series, but the game never becomes scary. The fact that you run around with a partner for the entire thing and that those partners quip ridiculous lines like “it’s really powerful, especially against living things” means you’ll be cringing in embarrassment more than fear from this title.

#8: Resident Evil 0

Released in 2002, Resident Evil 0 feels like the final evolution of the old school style and systems of Resident Evil’s fixed camera games. The controls are smoother, the use of weapons easier, you can drop items directly on the floor and the game will keep them there for later retrieval, and there is the buddy system which represents a very early attempt at cooperative AI. Unfortunately, despite all of these improvements to the mechanics, the experience itself feels too well worn by this point to be very exciting. You can tell that the developers themselves were growing tired of the formula as they start to move away from zombies to other monsters... like, er, frogs. Yes, unfortunately the replacements aren’t very interesting: frogs, baboons, a giant bat, and an operatic villain feel like weak additions to the series and make it seem like the developers were out of ideas. The story fills in some of the backstory of the mansion incident but ultimately doesn’t push us forward towards anything new (which is what fans really wanted and wouldn’t get until RE4). Aside from an incredible opening sequence on a train and the criminally underused character of Billy, Resident Evil 0 is a very polished but very bland experience.

Scary Rank #6: The scariest thing about Resident Evil 0 is managing two characters. Trying to gather enough supplies for one person in Raccoon City is a trick in itself. Having to keep both members of your team well equipped, well healed, and ready to deal with the plethora of enemies they will face can be harrowing. It’s the rare occasion where having two does not feel better than having one. And then there’s the leechmen. I don’t know if it’s because they are sturdy or seem to pop up whenever you least expect it, or maybe it’s that music that plays when they attack, but the leechmen will freak me out and leave me with the jitters every time they show up. None of the other enemies are very frightening, though, and anytime I get too scared I just think back to that cinema scene of Markus singing opera to his leeches... and burst out laughing.

#7: Resident Evil Code Veronica

After the events of Resident Evil: Nemesis, no one was sure where Capcom could take the story next. Raccoon City had been destroyed, Umbrella Corps had fallen, and all of our heroes had been given somewhat happy endings. Enter Code Veronica, which blew open the possibilities again by reintroducing Albert Wesker. By now, Wesker is so well associated with Resident Evil as to be a cliche, but it was a huge surprise in 2000 when he was revived, green lizard eyes and all, to take on Chris Redfield once again. Suddenly people were talking about Resident Evil again and where it might go in the future. This success, however, is less impressive now that that future has arrived and there are better games to play in the series. Code Veronica always favored innovation over polish and it has not aged well as a result. Most notably, the game seems to demand more speed and fighting ability of its player than previous entries, pitting Claire and Chris against such fast moving villains as the Matrix-inspired Wesker and his pack of lightning quick hunter beasts. Combats tend to be fought in tighter quarters, sometimes to extremely frustrating effect, such as the infamous “Steve” battle (also, I hate Steve), or the Tyrant fight in the back of an airplane. Players who have not properly kept up their inventory with powerful weapons and healing items can find themselves stuck in these places, struggling with the clunky controls to try and dodge extremely damaging attacks. The atmosphere and story make Code Veronica worth the experience... but only barely.

Scary Rank #4: A lot of Code Veronica’s scares are due to the feeling that you can’t handle what the game is throwing at you. This is, as described above, a mixture of awful controls and enemies that are far too fast and resilient for most players to be able to take on with that control scheme. Still, it does make the experience harrowing. More legitimate scares come from the creepy gothic atmosphere and the bizarre nature of the Ashford twins. Alex is... ridiculous. But his sister Alexia brings to bear all the things we all hate about creepy little girls and then throws in some incest and patricide to boot. Alexia is a genuinely disturbing addition to the Resident Evil roster.

#6: Resident Evil 7

Resident Evil 7 had the Herculean task of redeeming Resident Evil as a series after the missteps of Resident Evil 6. And, for the most part, it succeeded at this. Choosing to return to the series’ horror routes, RE7 draws upon the influences of other games in the genre, most notably Alien Isolation and Outlast, to craft an experience that feels modernized and on par, atmospherically, with some of the best Resident Evil titles. There are moments that are absolutely terrifying and the game doesn’t stop feeling tense until very near the end. Gamers like myself who grew up with RE1 and RE2 love this return to form and find that the first-person perspective retains the feel of the old fixed camera without being as restrictive, creating a horror experience where you are constantly wondering what’s behind you (but at least have the ability to turn around and check). Even fans who are newer to the series seemed to collectively breath a sigh of relief when they played the game. Reading forums and Reddit threads reveals that most gamers find the game to be fresh and smart, and are happy that it lacked the emphasis on lore and the over the top mustache-twirling villains that dominated previous titles. Objectively, though, there are flaws that I think will not be looked on favorably the more it ages. The blocking system, for instance, feels shoehorned in as a quick fix to disguise the fact that you can’t dodge or easily slow an approaching enemy down. Then, too, the game tries to be an action game near the end and utterly fails at it, only highlighting its unsatisfying shooting mechanics. The Molded are scary but overall a let down as enemies, with little variety between their forms, and the boss fights are the worst in the entire series, being clumsy and frustrating and a weird tonal break from the rest of the game. So for as much as it gets right, Resident Evil 7 is hopefully a stepping stone to something better.

Scary Rank #3: For the most part, RE7 does stop being scary after the first couple of hours, but holy shit those first couple of hours. There is more terror crammed into the initial exploration of the Baker house than in the entirety of most of the other games in the series. I was actually glad when the scares let up a bit to give me a breather, but it never quite reaches the same “heart attack” level again. That doesn’t mean there aren’t moments of terror sprinkled throughout: the wrecked ship has wonderful atmosphere, and despite having terrible boss fights, the battle against Margueritte is a stand out experience, making you constantly spin around to see if that creepy woman is crawling around behind you. More often than not, just as you turn, she’ll drop on you from above. Seriously, I don’t know how people play this on VR.

#5: Resident Evil 5

As the game that introduced functional multiplayer into the series, Resident Evil 5 remains popular to this day. As I type this, there are probably at least a dozen people live-streaming the game on twitch for the billionth time, and people are still tuning in to watch. Resident Evil 5′s lasting power comes from an absolutely incredible campaign that takes players through a wealth of diverse environments. Its combat situations are well crafted and each one feels a little different from the last, demanding different things of its players in each new area. Whether it’s fighting your way out of a crowd or solving puzzles while keeping back hordes of enemies, Resident Evil 5 keeps throwing new things at the player to ensure they don’t get bored. Its boss fights are similarly diverse and well paced (with a couple exceptions... that stupid jeep fight key among them). Graphically, it still looks good and mechanically some people think (myself included) that it actually plays a little smoother than its successor, Resident Evil 6 (some people say it looks better, too). The game’s main failings come from the fact that it is about 100% less fun to play as a single player experience and from the fact that the game let go of pretty much any horror elements, opting instead for pure action. The result is a game that is one of the most fun to play in the entire series even while it is also the furthest removed from the roots of the series and probably feels the least like a Resident Evil game.

Scary Rank #8: Resident Evil 5 traded in dark nights for African sunshine and switched out zombies for... tribal warriors? No matter what RE5 does, it just seems to be less scary then when it was done before. The Lickers make a triumphant return... but aren’t as scary as they were in Resident Evil 2. The El Gigante fight in the jeep is frustrating and feels like a weird arcade game. Only the fight against Jill and Wesker manages to be tense and even there tension is somewhat broken by Wesker’s drawling accent and ridiculous dialog. Resident Evil 5 is an action game first and foremost, which does little to sell it in the scariness department.

#4: Resident Evil 1 (REmake)

Resident Evil 1 (even before being remade in all its graphical and mechanical glory on the Nintendo Gamecube in 2002) had all of the right elements to create a lasting franchise. It featured incredible sound design and cinematic camera angles, designed not only to keep you guessing what was around the corner but to emulate camera shots used in actual horror movies. For the time it was released, it was mind blowing, unlike anything else on the market in terms of both ambition and quality. More than anything, it was its precise timing that was so impressive. For a horror experience to be good, the timing has to be perfect. That’s easier to do in a film, where the director has control over what the audience experiences and when they experience it. But in an interactive game it’s very difficult. There has to be just enough breathing room to get the player comfortable. Musical cues have to be spot on. That jump scare has to happen at exactly the right moment to have its full impact. And for all of this to work the director has to be able to anticipate what the player will do and where they will go and when they will do it. Resident Evil understood these barriers and crushed them with a key understanding of how gamers play. REmake only improved on this with added enemies (like the infamous Crimson Heads and Lisa Trevor) and new jump scares. The result? Very few of the Resident Evil games since REmake have felt quite so well made. Some took bigger risks, and some are more memorable, but the one that started it all established a formula so good that everything else the series does has been informed by it. Wesker, the Tyrant, creepy mansions... they are all here and as good as ever they will get.

Scary Rank #1: Resident Evil 1 never stops being tense. You never seem to have enough ammo, never enough healing items. You always wonder if this time through the hallway will be the time something jumps out at you. The remake makes this worse with the inclusion of Crimson Heads, which make zombies rise from the dead faster and more resilient (and with a heck of a scary growl), but even the original kept the mansion scary by throwing in those damnable Hunters just when you thought you’d cleared the place out. Speaking of the Remake, can anyone say Lisa Trevor? Dear lord, she alone gives this the number one spot on the list. It may never make your heart pound as hard as Resident Evil 7 does in its most intense moments, but Resident Evil 1 keeps the pressure on for longer and it truly is a sigh of relief when you get picked up by Brad’s helicopter at the end of the game. The first is still the best when it comes to putting your heart in your throat.

#3: Resident Evil Nemesis

Resident Evil Nemesis is a roller-coaster from start to finish, packed with so much action that it is hard to remember that it is possibly the shortest game in the main series. Nemesis doesn’t waste space, transforming Raccoon City into a constantly changing arena. Running around the ruins of Raccoon City as the zombie invasion hits full swing, you witness the city fall further and further into destruction as the streets gradually fill up with harder and harder enemies. No area feels safe in Nemesis, as even spots you’ve cleared previously can repopulate with new enemies. I say “can” because Nemesis keeps players on their toes with a randomly generating enemy system that changes where and when certain enemies appear, meaning you can’t get too comfortable in Raccoon City, even on subsequent playthroughs. And any time you do finally get some breathing room, the quiet is interrupted by a deep voice growling out “STARS...” Originally intended to be only a side story, Nemesis earns its rightful place among the main series mostly due to its titular villain, who is the most impressive of all of Resident Evil’s monsters. Years before Papa Baker would chase you through the halls of his bayou home, the nearly unstoppable Nemesis was already terrifying players by breaking all the old rules of where an enemy would go, chasing players around huge portions of the game’s map, breaking through doors and walls to continue the chase and even equipping a rocket launcher to target players at a distance. There are other innovations that shouldn’t go unnoticed here, either, such as a last-second dodge feature that encourages players to be more aggressive and get up close with enemies. There’s also the “choose your own adventure” timed choices that pop up in intense moments, like when the Nemesis is bearing down on you and you have to choose to jump out of a window or try and blow him up. Sometimes one option is better than another, and sometimes the option changes the story, leading to high replayability. And if you ever get tired of the main game, there is the unlocked Mercenaries mode. That’s right, it wasn’t Resident Evil 4 that started that. Like so many things, Nemesis did it first. All of these quirks and innovations, alongside the incredible non-stop pace, make Nemesis still a blast to play today and one heck of a send off to Raccoon City.

Scary Rank #2: Because the action moves so fast in Nemesis, you will never get a chance to calm down. Not to mention Nemesis himself is a walking jump scare. If Resident Evil 7 proves that being chased makes for some of the scariest moments in a video game, then Nemesis makes you feel chased for the entire game. The only thing that keeps it from being as scary as Resident Evil 1 is that it is over sooner.

#2: Resident Evil 4

Resident Evil 4 represented a revolution in the series, ushering it from its old-school fixed camera routes into a more modern over the shoulder style of play. I struggled with this change throughout my entire first playthrough, upset with the fact that it abandoned the old formulas. Gone were zombies, gone were most of the scares, gone were most aspects of survival horror. But then I also found myself dreaming of it, saying “heheh, what are you buying?” until my girlfriend asked me to stop, and starting over and playing it over from the beginning as soon as I had beaten it. Despite the change in direction, it was a game I didn’t want to end, and I’ve gone on to purchase it on nearly every system its been released on. I’m not alone in this: Resident Evil 4 is one of the most successful games in the franchise and indeed one of the most influential video games of all time. It didn’t only redefine what Resident Evil was for an entire new generation of gamers, it also redefined how people thought of third person shooters, opening the doors for everything from Gears of War to Uncharted. If you load it up today, you’ll find it takes an hour or so to get used to the older controls, but the game was so well designed that once you do you’ll see how everything in the game caters to those controls, creating an enticing run, stop, aim, shoot cycle that is addictive and never stretches beyond its limitations. Of the over the shoulder Resident Evil games, Resident Evil 4 feels the most complete, not requiring a co-op experience to make it good nor relying on years of lore to understand and care about its story and characters. Resident Evil 5 may have been fun, but it never got quite this good again.

Scary Rank #7: Resident Evil 4 is often tense, because of the nature of its gameplay, which forces you to stand still while shakily aiming at oncoming enemies. It never really gets scary, though. Enemies are too slow and your bullets too numerous, your spin kicks too awesome, to make you truly feel vulnerable. It does get props for a certain boss that chases you relentlessly through a certain caged area... oh, and for the Regeneradors. The Regeneradors, with their constant snuffling sound and their twitchy gait, are among the scariest enemies ever in Resident Evil. But a few minutes of pure terror isn’t enough to ignore the heavy focus on action and the fact that Leon carries enough firepower to wage his own war.

#1: Resident Evil 2

Resident Evil 1 may have started the franchise but it was Resident Evil 2 which jumpstarted the fan base. Resident Evil 2 had a lot to prove, mainly that this series could survive (pun intended) more than a single outing, that it could expand its scope, grow its cast of characters, and build on its setting. And boy did it deliver. If Resident Evil 1 broke ground when it came out, then Resident Evil 2 dug deeper. One mansion became a city. The two selectable characters did more than have different items and slightly change the order of events. Now, you had to play both characters one after the other to experience the full story. As if that wasn’t enough, the game changed depending on which character you played first, and in order to see everything the game had to offer, you had to play four times. Granted, two of those times would feel awfully similar, but the A&B scenarios changed just enough about the story and scenarios to make it well worth every second. The scares of the first game remained mostly intact but now a healthy dose of video game action was thrown in and boss fights became more numerous and dynamic, creating what remain the series’ best and most diverse boss fights. Simply put, Resident Evil 2 is a masterpiece of realized ambition that hasn't been matched by any other game in the series. It’s one failing now is that it is old, both graphically and in terms of controls. There’s a reason that fans have been clamoring for a remake of this for so long! But I’m glad Capcom waited so long to do it. Resident Evil 2 needs more than a new coat of paint. It is a carefully constructed experience and care is going to be required to give it a second life on par with the original experience. Here's hoping 2019 delivers on that.

Scary Rank #5:  One of the best things about Resident Evil 2 is that you aren’t playing special forces this time around. Claire Redfield is a simple citizen and Leon Kennedy a rookie cop. They feel, from the opening cutscenes, completely out of their element which added a wonderful connection between them and the player. Unlike the first game, you don’t start off in a safe situation that grows worse the longer you explore. No, you start off in a goddamned car wreck, surrounded by zombies and not nearly enough bullets to fight them. From the beginning, Resident Evil 2 highlights that you need to run to survive. Then it introduces Lickers, which add a whole new element to jump scares and you think that the game may be too frightening to keep playing. But also around this time it introduces you to grenade launchers and shotguns and lots of ammo for both of them. This makes the Resident Evil 2 scares manageable because the reaction to anything that moves in that game is to scream and then douse it with either buckshot or acid rounds.