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crebby · 4 years ago

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PI Woods - A personal take on Homicidal Liu

Important Disclaimer

This entire post was solely written for fun! I do not in any way want to demean the original version of Homicidal Liu. The original creator seems v cool and if the only thing that may be considered ‘fixed’ is the way Liu’s DID works, as even the creator themselves has stated that if they had written Liu today, they would’ve approached things differently. The rest is all just me throwing out my own ideas.

Also, if any corrections are to be made about his DID or if I wrote anything wrong, please do let me know!

Additionally, I must warn that this contains mentions of s*icide, self harm, violence, murder and mentions of past trauma. Said content is all beneath the cut.

The past

Liu came from a troubled, abusive household and spent a good few years in an orphanage until he got adopted into the Woods family at the age of 7. Despite now growing up under a loving family, Liu has always sensed that something about him made him different from other kids, finding himself often stuck with memory loss. Meanwhile, his parents had to deal with sudden outbursts and tantrums, their son suddenly insisting that his name is Sully, and at other times they had to stop 'Liu' from doing anything harmful to himself.

The possibility of dissociative identity disorder wasn’t considered, and at the time, the Woods parents assumed this behaviour to be the result of trauma from Liu’s previous household.

In the beginning, Liu didn’t quite have a word to describe his experience. He knew there were others living alongside in his body in a way and it made things harder for him. It was only once he got older that he discovered what DID was, and things finally made sense to him. He’s absolutely certain he has it, but never felt this was something he could bring up around his family, not even his brother. It took him even longer to figure out how to achieve some proper normalcy with his alters.

Despite the difficulties, the Woods family has always loved Liu like he was their own.

The system

Liu is the host of this system, and there are three alters alongside him. Liu always used to be rather taciturn and introverted, but was very kind and polite. Between him and Jeff, their parents always noted that Liu was the most well-behaved out of the two, also being studious and responsible: something that came naturally as the older sibling.

Sully, on the other hand, has always been rather antsy and anxious, always on guard like something bad is bound to happen. He isn’t necessarily violent, but he is very reactive and therefore is prone to outbursts at times. Notably, Sully is a very avid lover of all things strawberry. Sometimes a switch occurs, leaving whoever fronts now wondering why there’s so much strawberry yoghurt in the fridge, only to then remember Sully probably went to buy groceries. He’s also prone to triggers as he holds certain traumatic memories. Generally, he still manages to be functional. He's the most likely to hold grudges (relevant for later) and his cautiousness usually makes sure nothing stupid happens.

Myra is easily the most responsible in the system, and is also the only female alter. Sometimes she forgets that she is residing in a male body, but has gotten used to it, though Liu has insisted on at least making himself appear somewhat more androgynous for the sake of her comfort when she's fronting, while also preventing discomfort for other alters. Myra is more in charge of solving things like conflicts and occasionally manages switches as well, but also makes sure regular tasks get done.

Calypso is… Quite the subject. He is the carrier of most of the system's traumatic memories, and is the least stable out of the four. They are most susceptible to self-destructive tendencies. Sometimes Myra, Liu or Sully will wake up feeling horrible and sore, only to realise it was because Calypso tried things the night before. Due to these tendencies, the system tries to make sure they don't front very often, both for their own and Calypso's safety, even if this isn't always pleasant for him.

The Incident

Things were quite shaken up after the night Jeff tried to kill the system, but it was Sully who underwent the direct experience that night, while Liu woke up, confused and in pain in the hospital after his memory stopped at him welcoming Jeff back home. Naturally, he was quite distraught and disoriented, as was Myra and Calypso.

Trying to achieve a new sense of normalcy was tough for the system, and it took a while to even recover from the initial shock. They were sent off to Liu's aunt, who was more than happy to take the system in, especially considering Liu was her favourite nephew.

After the attempt on the system's life, Liu became far more withdrawn, and got more and more absorbed by his studies. He still had no idea what lead up to Jeff snapping the way he did, but had managed to forgive him and simply wants a chance to talk to him again. Given the opportunity, he moved out, eventually working as a private investigator. When he was younger, he dreamt of being a detective, but all the incidents leading up to Jeff's decline left Liu with a permanent distrust towards the police, making private detective work the next best thing. Along with this, Liu has completely dedicated himself to finding out where Jeff went, and to hopefully talk to him.

Sully, on the other hand, may forgive but never forgets, and this time he couldn't forgive. Similarly to Liu, he has developed an obsession with pinning down Jeff's whereabouts, but he has far more sinister reasons for this, as he is quite vengeful towards Jeff. He isn't as stable as he used to be, either.

Liu and Sully's dedication to finding Jeff has been the source of a lot of conflict, as Myra - and Calypso to an extent - wants to be able to move on from what happened and return to living a normal life, heavily disagreeing with what the two are doing. At times, she has tried sabotaging their investigations, and the system still hasn't come to an agreement regarding this situation.

Homicide

Things only get messier from here.

Once Liu is set on a goal, there is nothing you can do to actually stop him. This means he's more than willing to turn to murder if it means furthering his goals. He has already murdered several people, most being related to the investigation into Jeff. However, he approaches this very methodically. His go-to method is staging suicides or accidents, and cooldown periods are quite long. He only kills if he deems killing to be necessary, and does in fact feel guilty about it. He tries rationalising what he's done by telling himself that Jeff would most likely be killed by authorities, and that this is a way of protecting him, but deep down he knows he's kind of lying to himself.

Sully is much messier, much to Liu's chagrin. On some occasions he intentionally kills, and in many other cases it's because something triggered the trauma experienced from what Jeff did, and he reacts violently. Many of the people Sully kills either resemble Jeff or remind Sully of him in one way or another. Contrary to Liu, Sully takes pleasure in brutally killing these people because to him, it's the closest to actually killing Jeff. Sometimes Liu instructs Sully mentally on how to dispose of the bodies, other times there's a switch and Liu does it himself.

Myra and Calypso are extremely against this, leading to even more conflict in the system. Self-destructive tendencies coming from Calypso end up worsening as a result, and they have attempted to consciously kill the entire system, feeling like it’s the only way to stop what they’re doing. In some cases, they have nearly succeeded, so all three other alters have to collectively block Calypso from fronting entirely for safety reasons. Despite this, he’s still very much present.

Extra (can be updated)

Myra, Sully and Calypso are eager to have an image of what they believe they look like, and as a result love recreating themselves whether it’s through art or through character creators like Picrew. This is how the system would make themselves on Picrew:

Liu

(He very intentionally portrays himself without the scars and stitches. They’re a huge insecurity of his.)

Sully

Myra

Calypso

If I have made any mistakes in the portrayal of DID, please let me know and correct me!! I wish to do my best, as I know it’s a heavily misportrayed condition.

#creepypasta #homicidal liu #creepypasta headcanon #creepypasta fandom #headcanon #character headcanons #liu woods #liu hodek #sully creepypasta #creepypasta sully #liu creepypasta #jeffrey woods #liu woods headcanons #homicidal liu headcanon #sully headcanon

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synthmusic91 · 4 years ago

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thoughts? kjfhlkjdfh asking bc i rb'd the original post from u a bit ago because i agreed w/ original poster but i just saw this rb of it and wanted to know what u thought. ciaran(.)tumblr(.)com /post/652413157345820673/there-is-a-genre-of-posts-thats-obsessed-with-the

well first of all i hope this isn't a bait ask. this reply really doesn't deserve the time and effort i put into refuting it, but there was a point in time when i was emotionally confused by these..."arguments", so whoever u are, anon, i hope this is helpful. i also recommend some distance - literally, "go outside and touch grass", which is a lot more difficult than it sounds, but it needs to be done. anyway, here's my "analysis":

for context, here's what the post in question said:

and the tags:

at a high level, we can see that what ciaran is saying doesn't really respond to what OP was talking about. for this reason, i'm not going to bring in much of what OP said, because it's uncontested in this context, and look at ciaran's reply. i'll try to break this up...

EDIT: i had a long-ass response here, but then i realized it was dumb because the source material is dumb. i cut out most of it, but here are the highlights.

"there is a genre of posts that’s obsessed with the notion that fandom is something much larger, more prevalent, and more able to affect the way media is processed and consumed, than it actually is in reality."

so, as we can all see on tiktok and, indeed, on the electronic lore olympus billboard that takes up a side of a literal skyscraper, fandom is no longer the niche thing that "fandom olds" make it out to be. also, we can't ignore how many (white) fandom players go on and work in the industry (cassandra clare, whoever wrote 50 shades, man idk much of anything so there's probably many more). so this comment is sort of myopic. and since this is what characterizes the rest of the reply, well...it's not great.

also don't look up lore olympus; it's basically a dd/////lg fanfic that happens to be one of the most popular series on the line webtoon app, which is rated for teens...and for $1 to the creator's patreon, you can view not sfw p*dophilic art, so. also obviously i didnt do that; there was a video essay about this. i can't find it though

"ironically but understandably, these posts are made by people who are so terminally fandom-poisoned that they ascribe phenomenal power to it, and think of it as some great evil that must be defeated (by making posts on tumblr, which is obviously a very influential thing to do)"

"fandom-poisoned" is such a nebulous term, especially since it appears to mean "has had some really significant, (in this context) bad experiences with fandom." this is, first of all, a huge assumption to make about a stranger, and second, not the own they think it is. i'm just going to link this post, and hopefully you can see how it relates.

anyway, the "making posts on tumblr is meaningless" is um...interesting, seeing as off the top of my head i can think of two very influential tumblr blogs that talk about really important issues, Gradient Lair and Red Light Politics. I don't know as much about Red Light Politics, but Gradient Lair is frequently cited by academics (not getting into academia nonsense now but... -_-). also, they sound more pissed that the original post did gain traction, but whatever. this paragraph doesn't really make sense, but nothing here does, because i wasn't given much to work with.

"...and then because these people have basically no imagination and unfailingly pick on others for their own faults, they project their own experiences on everyone they perceive as being more ‘in fandom’ than them,"

jesus christ. i'm going not say anything about the tone of this because i put too much effort into this for some rando to call me a cyberbully.

i think what they're thinking about is how there appear to be some "fandom critical" people who try to, holistically, "ruin everyone's good time" by "stirring up drama" about popular fandom artists/writers/whoever else idk. oftentimes these people will also make jokes about fandom whatever, seemingly picking on random people's interests.

however, if you look at the long history of fandom racism, fandom's normalization of p*dophilia, and even general fandom harassment, and then you look at fandom's visceral, unwarranted reaction to criticism regarding these things, you can quickly see that disillusionment towards fandom is entirely reasonable. as for the joking, well...this an oversimplification but not everyone needs to like what you like. it sounds like they just need to get over themself.

and go “You, a 27 year old queer blogger who is into [tv show/anime/movie] an embarrassing amount, are now going to be the face of Capitalism” with no self-reflection or critical thought given to how fucking cringe it is-"

so, i'm regretting putting so much effort into this because this is so fucking long and i have to analyze this nonsense...it feels like i'm back in my feminist thought class. nightmarish. but anyway, this seems to deal with- [CUT FOR LENGTH. nothing important was missed].

EDIT 2: actually here's a summary of what I had. it deserves better than to be a response to this nonsense, but first it detailed how this took 1. the op's post and 2. a comment that we don't even know if op agreed with and misinterpreted that, and threw quite a fit about this- and i hate to say this because this term is misused so often by redditors, but- strawman.

I then went on to discuss how, for example, PoC can uphold systems of white supremacy. while obviously no person of color is going to be the "face" of white supremacy, the discussion still needs to be had, especially within that group. similarly, while fandom constituents may not be the face of capitalism, there needs to be a discussion, within fandom, on how they support and are defined by capitalist (and other) systems.

it was really too good of a point to be making for this trash reply. I could go say more, but I'm still trying to stay on topic, unlike ciaran.

"to act like random people on the internet, end users with no influence over corporate decisions, are the ones personally responsible for the fact that late-stage capitalism has destroyed popular art and culture in an increasingly sordid attempt to make money."

we've been over the "no influence" bit - because in fact fans do have influence, especially since media creators are literally fans, etc etc. i'm tired of people acting like they have no power and using that as an excuse to support and perpetuate harmful, easily avoidable behavior.

also, to act like the nebulous system of late-stage capitalism is the only cause of bad media is ludicrous. first of all, someone has to make these so-called "corporate decisions", and the people making artistic decisions are, again, overwhelmingly members of "fandom." this comment is really trying to keep marvel trash and lore olympus-esque nonsense in the same atomic, indivisible category lest someone catches a whiff of nuance.

"the above post is a great example of this phenomenon because op admits freely that they only think fandom is destroying media because they have been spending more time in fandom and thus have an over-inflated sense of its importance in greater culture. posting your own Ls indeed."

i'm so tired. this person literally has 120 works on ao3 like...who is spending more time in fandom.

and the tags:

#i assure you that fandom has no bearing on my actual real life #and if it does on yours. then that is your problem #it's also a very funny problem to

now this is just egregiously tone deaf. you do not need to do more than a cursory google search to find a bottomless well of examples of fandom harassment, threats, doxxing, and violence, much of which is racially motivated. you can see why it would be bad to make fun of this.

also the way that “fandom has no bearing on their actual real life“...120 fanfics on ao3. 120.

conclusion:

the reply clearly misinterprets of op's point, and as such, does not refute it. they responded to another issue altogether, which is that of the sanctity of their ~coping mechanism~ or whatever it is. their argument in this respect was, in my opinion, delusional and pathetic, especially given that they wrote it on someone else's unrelated post.

FINAL NOTE: i cut out lots of this because the reply went in so many different directions, so some stuff might not make sense. let me know if you have any questions.

#answered #anonymous #fandom #long post #q slur #s

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liquidink21 · 4 years ago

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If I were doing the Avatar Remake

Just a list of things changes and tweaks to the original I would make to Avatar if I was in charge of this netflix remake, given that we’ve all lost hope in it and now I’m just speculating to make myself feel better. I’ve already made a list of things it really needs, and this list includes them, but I’m just going to go hog wild with my imagination and opinions on Avatar. In a rough order of when I think and them and what episode it becomes relevant.

How long are these new episodes going to be? I’d like to extend them for more story content, though am wary of overdoing it. How does thirty minutes sound? Enough for some more depth to some episodes.

I think it should be pointed out earlier on that there are more villages across the South Pole. This is canon, and would make the Southern Water Tribe feel more alive.

Aang’s friends from the past: in addition to Kuzon and Bumi, give him a Northern Water Tribe pal. He’s never been to the South Pole, and was deliberately coming to make new friends somewhere the Monks wouldn’t think to look for him. We can reference this friend again when we reach the North Pole.

Somebody, probably Iroh, mentions Zuko’s name in front of Aang. It’s always infuriated me that the Gaang know’s Zuko’s name suddenly in Warriors of Kyoshi without anyone telling them what it is. I don’t think it needs its own episode, just somebody says it while he’s captured.

The terms of Zuko’s banishment don’t restrict him from the colonies in the Earth Kingdom, so they don’t consider those colonies to be proper Fire Nation territory. I feel they should have their own name, just to make the politics of the show feel deeper. “The Eastern Protectorate” is a nice reference to the Chinese “Protectorate of the Western Territories.” Zhao can namedrop it when they go to his port.

The fact that Kyoshi Island has such a different culture from the main Earth Kingdom should be brought up. The answer is a mix between isolation and cultural exchange with the Southern Water Tribe. Katara and Sokka probably have a passing knowledge of the island. “Oh, that’s where we are.” Also, if Aang knew to come here for the Koi fish, how didn’t he know about there being Kyoshi revering settlements there?

There should be an adult Kyoshi Warrior training the others. She approves of Suki training Sokka, and comments on the rarity of outsiders and men being Kyoshi Warriors. I feel Sokka is the first outsider, but there was another man. Adult warrior gives the explanation that when she was a young trainee, a man working on the docks was teased for “fighting like a girl” so warriors taught him exactly like a girl.

There should be an Earthbending Kyoshi Warrior. I mean Kyoshi herself was a bender, the art can’t be exclusively a non-bending form.

Maybe point out that there are multiple villages on the island. This is in fact canon.

Haru’s mother and village could use some actual names.

We never see any non-bending Earth Kingdom soldiers. I loved how the Fire Nation has different uniforms for its bending and non-bending warriors, and I’d like to see the same for the Earth Kingdom troops.

I want to know more about those pirates? The captain is ethnically a Fire Nation citizen. Is there a story behind that? A navy deserter? Like an opposite of Jeong Jeong, deserting not for ethics but because he didn’t like duty getting in the way of fortune? I’m probably just overthinking it.

The names of the Freedom Fighters are obviously pseudonyms, and Jet probably urges the Gaang to adopt some themselves.

While I don’t actually feel that Aang lying to the two groups in The Great Divide is an unforgivable wrong, I feel the lie itself was a little demeaning and could have been a little more sophisticated.

I have seen that post saying there needs to be more Indians in Avatar than just Guru Pathik, given how many Indian concepts are in the show. Many people also share the opinion that there should be Indian airbenders, so yes they should appear in the flashbacks in The Storm (and The Southern Air Temple as well). Also some Earth Kingdom villages should be Indian based as well. I think the market from The Waterbending Scroll could be a good place to start, maybe the port from The Storm as well, though probably somewhere that isn’t just a background place as well. Maybe the nuns in Bato of the Water Tribe too.

Iroh could be less creepy with June.

Ah, The Northern Air Temple. Honestly I feel that while the ultimate message of Aang being okay with the Mechanist and his people settling in the Air Temple is okay, I feel it needs to end with a greater emphasis on the Mechanist’s people being more respectful to the site. Ramming pipes through historical mosaics and demolishing statues is really not on. Also, while Sokka being cool with industrialisation is in character, I do think he’d disapprove the desecration.

I feel the fact that a lot of the Fire Nation’s technological might (not all of it, though) is riding off the back of a blackmailed Earth Kingdom citizen is something that could be brought up more often.

Yue’s story with the Moon Spirit needs to be explained almost immediately, so that it’s not kind of an arse-pull when the plot needs it.

Legend of Korra makes a big deal about the South gaining independence from the North, but they’re already treated as separate nations? I think it should be mentioned somewhere, probably from Hahn, that the South is technically subservient to the North, though operates with a great deal of autonomy that comes with not being able to contact each other.

The North is pretty sure it’s the original Water Tribe, but can’t say for sure. Hahn thinks of the South as nothing but a colony, though Arnook is more progressively minded and notes there are no records of who came first and treats the South as a sister tribe.

I think there’s another character worth adding, a captain of the Northern warriors. He can appear several more times throughout the series, which I’ll elaborate on.

Zhao comments “there’s a reason they’ve survived a hundred years of war” whereas other comments suggest the Northern Water Tribe has been sitting out of the war. Apparently the North did take uniforms from soldiers 85 years ago, so I think the idea should be that they received one big siege back then, and since then they’ve been experiencing raids since then culling their villages and forcing them into that single fortified city-state. Since then, their ability to send ships out has been impeded by Fire Nation ships patrolling those water but not engaging the city itself until Zhao’s siege.

Yue, when mentioning the waterbenders learning from the Moon, should reference humanity receiving bending from the Lion Turtles, just to introduce the concept that bending could be given and therefore by implication taken away.

There’s a historical character I want to introduce: an Earth Kingdom general that was nearly able to push the Fire Nation out of the Earth Kingdom around half-way through the 100 Year War, but was taken down by internal Earth Kingdom politics. The Fire Nation had to do its conquests all over again because of him. It would help fill out a century of history that is poorly explained. I think he could be introduced by Sokka asking General Fong how they still have an outpost on the west coast when most of that region has been occupied by the Fire Nation.

Azula’s blue fire should be depicted like blue flames are in real life: very straight jets rather than the flickering things you see in the animation. Since it’s basically just powerful fire, I think it should be seen with a couple of other firebenders, though Azula is the only one that exclusively uses it. Jeong Jeong and Iroh would be good people to use it.

I saw a post once by a Korean rightfully upset that the only Korean characters in the show (Song and her village) are lumbered in with the essentially Chinese Earth Kingdom as if they’re the same culture despite Korea obviously being separate and having a poor history of China attempting to enforce hegemony over it. I think maybe something could be made of Song and her people being a distinct culture that has had a generally poor relationship with the Earth Kingdom at large. Maybe the previously mentioned Earth Kingdom general was screwed over for being of this culture.

I’m not sure how to depict the Swampbenders. They'll no longer be caricatures of the guys in the next studio, so they’ll be more respectfully treated and not hillbillies. I’m not sure if they should be Vietnamese (given the original characters have Vietnamese names) or southern Native Americans (given they’re waterbenders, and the other waterbenders are Inuits).

After failing to get Bumi as Aang’s earthbending teacher, they throw around suggestions. Since Aang is learning waterbending from Katara they consider a similarly aged Earthbender. Katara suggests they go find Haru, while Sokka suggests the earthbending Kyoshi Warrior I mentioned before.

I saw a post once suggesting that the Beifongs were collaborators, and while I think this is somewhat extreme, I would like to explore the interplay between their wealth and their position in the war. Also, the fact that Toph had been sheltered from the war and has far less of an emotional stake in it needs to be explored in more detail.

In the Zuko Alone flashbacks Azula really needs to be made out as a normal child with a bad influence (her father) instead of an inherently bad child. My sister points to this episode and claims Iroh or Ursa should have just drowned her and that’s something incredibly fucked up to say about a ten(?) year old.

In that vein, Iroh’s “no she’s crazy and needs to go down” line really needs to be changed to something more compassionate. Most Avatar meta states that Iroh doesn’t actually hate Azula; he’s just prioritising Zuko’s safety, and his line here needs to reflect that.

Aang should recognise the Lion-Turtle, and know that they gave humanity their bending powers. Just to keep that concept in mind, so that when it comes to the energybending climax it’s less of an arse-pull.

Wan Shi Tong’s morale compass and lumping a bunch of kids attempting to avoid genocide in with conquerors needs to be called out more, and I feel Katara should be the one to do it.

Suki gets to stay on for one extra episode and help fight the Drill. It also makes for a better explanation of how she got back. Right now it’s implied she went back across the Serpent’s Pass; in my own she’d explicitly head along the wall and go back with the ferries.

I want more discussion of Ba Sing Se’s social stratification. Was Jin able to visit the Jasmine Dragon? Or was she blocked from entering higher rings?

Toph’s lie detecting thing made into a spiritual or chi related thing. The whole heartbeat thing is pseudoscience.

The Northern Water Captain I mentioned earlier reappears, having met and joined his men with Hakoda’s. Hakoda praises his son with helping bridge the gap between the two water tribes.

Ty Lee gets more appearances in Book 3, even if just in the background. She got some nice development in The Beach and I want to see more of it as Azula’s brought her out of that circus and back into the Fire Nation nobility.

Sparky Sparky Boom Man’s tattoo has a different design that is not a villainised appropriation of a Hindu symbol. Something nice and geometric, maybe sun based.

Hawky at some point returns to Team Avatar. I want them legitimised as a member of the Gaang! Equal status to Momo and Appa! Also I suppose bringing a letter back from the Beifongs could have significance to Toph. But let Hawky return!

Hama has a more compassionate ending. I feel after she’s led away, Sokka figures it’s pretty fucked up that they’re handing one of their own over to the Fire Nation so they go and rescue her. They give her a choice between joining them to fight during the eclipse or returning to the South Pole to help rebuild the Southern Water Tribe (given that there’s Notherners helping rebuild she could help make sure they rebuild it in the style of the south and not a facsimile of the north). She chooses the latter.

No weird Guru Pathik during Aang’s hallucinations please.

While discussing the allies that Hakoda picked up, he mentions some people he couldn’t get: they couldn’t find the Kyoshi Warriors, the Sandbenders didn’t want to come, the Omashi Resistance wanted to use the eclipse to retake their city, and General Fong’s outpost had been overrun. Just flesh out things a little.

Sokka and the other Water Tribe warriors should be wearing that facepaint for the Invasion.

I want more interaction with The Duke, Haru, and Teo with the Gaang.

Chit Sang’s girlfriend and friend join with the second escape instead of being strangely absent. Also, who is he? Sokka probably looks him up to make sure they’re not bringing a serial killer into their midst. Preferably not, I like to think they were thrown in there for opposing the war.

I’d like Suki to learn from Hakoda that the other Kyoshi warriors are alive, if imprisoned.

Suki doesn’t like wearing prison clothes and attempts a facsimile of Kyoshi islander clothes by stealing Katara and Haru’s clothes.

Some more emotions between Sokka and Suki relating to her imprisonment please. There’s a lot of pent up trauma there and I’d like them to work through it.

People like to play up Katara’s “you obviously didn’t love her as much as I did” line into an insight to a horrible character rather than just something stupid said in the heat of the moment, though I do think Katara should apologise, if only to show the haters that this isn’t her personality.

Training with Aang, Zuko finds out he has the peace of mind to do lightning. He wouldn’t use it against Azula, but it would be a nice demonstration that his inner turmoil is more or less resolved.

The adult Kyoshi Warrior I mentioned at the very beginning of this reappears as a White Lotus member. She, for whatever reason, has a replacement warrior uniform for Suki, because I feel Suki shouldn’t have to go through the climax in a Fire Nation disguise. Also maybe Sokka should be wearing his warpaint too? I mean it’s culturally significant to him.

You want lightning? No I don’t. Azula’s growing inner turmoil denies her the use of lightning, mirroring Zuko’s original inability to use it when he was lost and confused. So when it comes to sneakily zapping Katara it’s just her fire, but a flame more concentrated (and by implication, rage-fueled) than we’ve ever seen from her. A veritable beam that Zuko has to put his all into deflecting, opening him up to an attack. A non-lethal attack; Azula still has that line about “the family physician”. She doesn’t want Zuko dead and leaves him be when he’s down. Despite going off the deep end there is a spark of compassion in her that stops her from doing that.

As I’ve stated previously, Aang needs to do something slightly more significant and spiritual in order to access the Avatar State again rather than that stupid rock. Some sort of spiritual lesson.

As I’ve said a few times now, the Lion-Turtles should be known to the audience by now, along with their ability to give bending to humans, so that the ability to take bending has been implied.

The weird orange-vs-blue lightshow with the energy bending was kind of melodramatic, though the corruption-vs-purity thing could still be visually represented by Ozai trying to physically overpower Aang and failing.

Possibly to be continued.

#avatar

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aspoonofsugar · 5 years ago

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Hi ! I'm re-watching Psycho Pass and there's one thing disturbing me that I thought you might have some idea of an answer ... I have the impression that Makishima has a fair answer to free will, system sibyl etc, but that the story didn't know how to integrate it with the original idea of following people who had agreed to serve the system Sibyl, so they made this character a murderer in order to facilitate the thing and balance - good bad sides for the narrative. Is it just me or ... ?

Hello anon!

Makishima, like all the other characters of the series has been written in a way so that he can be used to explore the ideas and themes the story wants to explore. The first thing about Psycho Pass that was probably born was its world aka the idea of a dystopian society which works in a specific way. Starting from there, they decided to develop the story in a way which both used and subverted many tropes used by dystopias. One of the tropes they subverted was the one according to which the hero of the story has to fight the system. In Psycho Pass they chose to write the person fighting the system as a negative character. The result was (imo) a very fascinating and complex character who says many true things, but is also hypocritical and unjustifiable.

I would say that Makishima has been written in a way that explores the positive and negative aspects of Sybil.

Sybil is a system which gives security (both in terms of personal safety and economic security) to the majority (?) of the population, but it does so by sacrificing minorities, contacts with other countries and two main human qualities. It sacrifices aggressivity (even a healthy degree of aggressivity which lets people react when in danger) and the ability to think critically.

These two human attributes are often discussed throughout the episodes and they are often the main theme of single cases. For example, episode 3 shows how aggressivity can’t really be eliminated and so how unhealthy mechanisms are tolerated in order to keep it in check. In the factory the MCs visit bullism is accepted and encouraged, so that everyone’s psycho-pass is kept under control. Similarly, it is shown multiple times how art and creativity are not encouraged by Sybil and that many artists are latent criminals. This is something explored in Yayoi’s backstory, for example, or in Rikako’s one.

Because of this, Makishima is a character who embodies both these human attributes. On one hand he is extremely intelligent and has an amazing culture. On the other hand he uses violent methods to reach his objectives. Tbh, I think that Makishima’s choice to nurture people’s violent sides is partially born by the fact that these parts are the ones Sybil actively represses.

We know that what triggered Makishima into becoming who he is in the series is his realization of not really being accepted by society. As a matter of fact Sybil not being able to measure his psycho pass means that Makishima is not really a human being according to it. Because of this discovery, it is understandable that Makishima would have started questioning Sybil much more than a normal citizen would have done. By doing so, he has managed to understand the system and its short-comings pretty well and he has found that it influences people into repressing aggressivity and into losing critical awareness of themselves and the world. Because of this, Makishima gives critical thinking and aggressivity importance. This happens because Makishima wants to negate Sybil in order to affirm himself (aka a person whose existence is not recognized by the system) and so he uses what Sybil negates.

This is also why Makishima’s attempts keep failing and he keeps discarding people. In the end, the ability to develop critical thinking is not linked to the ability of expressing one’s aggressivity without any restraint. However, Makishima keeps expecting the latent criminals he meets to immediately develop critical thinking just because he gives them the chance to express their most violent parts. Rikako is the best example of this. In the end, Rikako is a girl who is angry because of her father dying and leaving her behind. The system doesn’t give her a healthy way to process this loss and so she ends up harboring negative feelings which cloud her psycho pass until Makishima finds her and validates those feeling and encourages her to express them in a violent way. However, in the end Makishima discards Rikako like he had discarded others because he claims that she is not able to develop a deep enough point of view on things. This is not fair because in the end he is asking a teenager who is venting for her father’s fate to develop a highly deep and informed perspective on things. As if Rikako had any chance to properly think about things in the situation she was in and as if she had not all the time in the world to develop her personal perspective as she grew up.

In short, Makishima is a person who uses violence because Sybil wants to eliminate aggressivity from society as much as possible. What is more, Makishima’s choice is perfectly coherent with the information we are given about his character, his motivation and his past.

Of course, it could have been possible to write a character who embodied these two attributes, but who was more sympathetic than Makishima and had a more acceptable ethical system, but this would have meant not to explore a series of ideas and themes and would have ultimately (imo) made the story less interesting.

For example, let’s consider this scene:

Societies, just like people, have defense mechanisms which keep the truth hidden. The conversation between Akane and Kogami makes clear that what happened because of Makishima has clearly shown a series of contradictions of the Sybil System and its society. However, citizens will keep ignoring them and will try their best to go back to their usual lives. This is an interesting concept and it is linked to the idea that Sybil works not because it is perfect, but because it acts as if it were and people choose to believe it.

What is more, the way Sybil works is firstly introduced thanks to two minor cases: the case of episodes 4 and 5 and the one of episodes 9, 10 and 11.

Mido and Senguji, aka the two antagonists of the two cases, explore themes linked to identity and to the concept of immortality:

Interestingly, they both make references to Plato and their stories explore two different dynamics which will turn out to be key ones to explain how Sybil works.

Mido’s story is about a man who lacks a proper self-identity and who has chosen to escape in a world made of avatars. However, Mido has become so obsessed with these personas that he has chosen not to accept the fact that behind them there are imperfect people. Because of this, he is progressively killing these people and maintaining their avatars alive. He claims that after losing their original creators the avatars have somehow become perfect because they have been modified and made better by the ideas people have of them.

This concept is very similar to what Sybil says here:

In other words, Sybil is made perfect by the idea people have of it. This is why the system is so powerful and its society works.

Senguji is a man who has almost completely turned himself into a cyborg. He makes some interesting points:

Basically, he is highlighting how society has become too much intertwined with technology. The journalist’s dependence on her personal computer resembles the dependence of society as a whole on the Sybil System. What is more, Senguji claims that he is simply a step ahead of the rest of society when it comes to his dependence on machines. However, we are later told so:

In short, Sybil is far ahead of Senguji when it comes to this specific technology and so it is closer to immortality than him ever was.

In synthesis, Sybil works because of these two dynamics and pieces of technology which are commonly found in society. The difference is simply that Sybil has developed them to the extreme.

I really like that the series has gone out of its way to present these aspects in its introductory episodes because it fits with what a dystopia should do. Dystopias should ideally take aspects of the current society and exaggerate them to show how they can be damaging.

This is something Psycho Pass does very well imo because, while the idea of a hive mind who judges people’s mental health and their abilities might seem far away, avatars and cyborgs are not.

In short, Sybil exists not despite people, but because of people and it won’t be overcome until society refuses it, unless a person chooses to use violent methods like the one Makishima endorsed.

Another interesting aspect of the series is the fact that in the end Akane grows, but still chooses not to join Makishima and to work with the system.

Psyhco Pass is a dystopia inspired by some classics of the genre:

Makishima directly quotes and mentions them, so I think there is no doubt about it. In many classic dystopias it is often shown how humanity loses itself to the system so much that in the end the system is somehow accepted. This can happen because of different reasons. For example, in 1984 the main character in the end is tortured and lost the thing he had defined his whole humanity on.

Psycho Pass goes at it in a different way. In the end, the main point of view character chooses the system as a result of a character arc and of some personal growth. It is an ending which is powerful for different reasons and one of these is that when you starts watching the series you would not believe this to be something which can be pulled off in a believable way. This is simply because the society created by Sybil is not a society many viewers could truly accept when they start watching (and hopefully it is not one they come to accept in the end). However, the fact that the story develops in a way that by the end you are allowed to root for characters who want to stop a person who wants to destroy a wrong system is interesting and adds to the complexity of the whole story.

In short, things like the defense mechanisms society uses to protect itself and why people come to accept the system are shown to the viewers very clearly thanks to Akane being the main point of view character instead of Makishima.

That said, I would like to highlight that Makishima’s fair answer you talk about is not really lost because it is accepted as it is by Akane herself:

What Akane disagrees with are Makishima’s methods which she recognizes being born out of envy:

All in all the ending of Psycho Pass is an open ending:

Kogami states that if everyone were to be like Akane Sybil will not be necessary anymore, while the system states that if everyone were to be like Akane the Sybil would have reached its objective. Who is right?

And again:

Akane says humans will keep evolving and conquer Sybil, while Sybil says it will keep evolving and conquer humanity. Who is right?

Let’s finally consider the very last frame:

Is this a reference to Sybil? Or is it a reference to real justice which will conquer Sybil? Or is it simply a reference to Kogami’s character who is chained by his view on justice? All in all these are all questions left open and to which people can give different answers according to their own understanding of society and of humanity.

In conclusion, when it comes to your question, I would say that Makishima was written in a specific way for several reasons among which, as you say, there is the choice of wanting to explore the society through the eyes of people who are initially supportive or neutral to the system because they are much closer to the average citizen than a person opposing Sybil. However, I do not really think this is a cheap reason to make such a choice.

Thank you for the ask!

#psycho pass #psycho pass meta #makishima shogo #shogo makishima #asksfullofsugar #anonymous

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thesublemon · 5 years ago

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Jungle Fever (1991)

Watched Jungle Fever (1991) the other night, Spike Lee’s take on the (1991) state of interracial relationships. It didn’t feel as ruthlessly focused and still-relevant as Do The Right Thing, although several parts of the movie do feel like watching a present-day twitter debate. I’m not the right person to make calls about relevance, really. But it was compelling to me as an example of how to make art about a social issue in a way that feels complicated and challenging, regardless of what the issue might be. I’ve rarely seen a movie so explicitly political that was also so determined to not draw an exact conclusion. And yet it still leaves you satisfied that the movie did what it set out to do. The lack of conclusion didn’t feel aesthetically cowardly or morally wishy-washy. It felt right.

And a lot of that, I think, is down to the set-up of the story. The premise is that a well-to-do (dark-skinned) black man, happily married to a (light-skinned) black woman, with a kid, cheats on his wife with his white (Italian) secretary. The affair is quickly discovered, provoking everyone around them to air their many and various grievances about race and relationships. Meanwhile the protagonist’s older brother, a shiftless drug addict, lurks around the edges of the movie making increasingly desperate and invasive demands for money.

The reason that this set-up is so smart, is that it starts everyone—including the audience—from a place of judgment. It’s easy to use art to argue that interracial relationships are obviously good, and that people who judge them are obviously bad, when the relationship is a pretty Hollywood story of two people in epic, star-crossed love. It’s harder when you’re talking about an adulterous affair that is based, in large part, on racially fetishistic desire. Similarly, it’s easy to say that a family--or more broadly, a society--should support their children when that child is a successful architect who has made a single sexual mistake. It’s harder when that child is a chronic liar on a downward spiral that threatens to bring his instability into a family’s superficially safe, middle-class home.

In other words, the movie deliberately focuses on characters that its audience might not immediately find sympathetic, that people might have legitimate reasons to think are disturbing some social order. And doing this accomplishes two kind of amazing things. First, it gives all of the characters permission to speak their minds about what’s going on. If someone is racist, the unsympathetic circumstance gives them an excuse to be racist. But it also, for example, gives the protagonist’s wife, Drew, an opportunity to articulate the raw pain of her particular socio-sexual experience with race. It means that multiple realities will be true. Multiple perspectives will sound sort of wrong, and sort of right. You find yourself thinking that what someone is saying is a real, fair point to make, but not necessarily relevant to event that prompted it. Second, using unsympathetic characters means that any humane conclusions that the audience ends drawing will have been fully earned. People don’t need to be virtuous to be human. An interracial relationship doesn’t need to be perfect to be something that’s fine to do, or at the very least, something that one should not be legally or socially punished for solely for being interracial. The juxtaposition of adultery with an interracial affair forces one to articulate the difference between something that is unethical, and something that is merely, in a particular time and place, taboo.

(I say unsympathetic, but it really should be “unsympathetic.” The characters actually are sympathetic, but they’re sympathetic because they’re complexly written, not because the audience has been cheaply manipulated to like them.)

It also helps that the movie understands and addresses the bigger anxieties that cause human beings to be so damn tribal in the first place. If the movie were purely about interracial relationships, it would not have featured Gator, the drug addict brother, so prominently. Instead, the movie seems to be more about questions of security and belonging. It’s about both the fear of being cast out of society, and the fear that something will undermine the society that exists. It seems to suggest that the reason that people are afraid of interracial relationships is similar to the reason they’re afraid of adultery, and afraid to admit to adultery--and also, afraid of addicts and the otherwise abject. It’s the fear that your unit will be disrupted. That base human instincts and outside influences will corrupt the social fabric. Though the movie also loves pointing out the irony of the way that the fear of social disruption leads families to destroy themselves more than they ever would otherwise. Angie’s father throws her out of her house. Flipper’s father, who is heavy-handedly named The Good Reverend Doctor Purify, ends up shooting Gator. On the other hand, when Drew kicks Flipper out of their house, or sobs while having sex when he finally comes back, it’s clear that this damage to his domestic unit is entirely his fault. In other words, the movie treats the fear of instability as simultaneously rational, misplaced, and as a destructive, self-fulfilling prophecy.

(Really there are so many levels and instances of on the other hand with this movie, that you could just keep going. I’m not doing justice to how much ambiguity there really is, especially when it comes to Flipper’s anxieties about status and belonging. One of the reasons he gives for ending the affair is that he doesn’t want to have mixed-race kids who don’t fit in anywhere, who won’t belong. On the one hand, given the speech his wife gives about being mixed, and given Flipper’s outcast state at that point in the movie, that fear is not necessarily irrational. But on the other hand, the actual reason he ends the affair is because he doesn’t love Angie. And if he isn’t around for the child he already has, that’s on him. On the one hand, Flipper claims that he and Angie were really only interested in each other because of their race, but on the other hand, Angie is genuinely taken aback at this suggestion. Or, at one point in the movie there’s a very hard-to-watch scene in which Flipper and Angie are playfighting against the hood of a car, when the police suddenly show up and try to arrest him, saying that someone had reported an attempted rape. Flipper of course is scared out of his mind, shouting at Angie to stop telling the police that they’re lovers. On the one hand, Flipper’s fear is completely justified--the officers in the scene are the ones that killed Radio Raheem in Do The Right Thing--and it’s clear that Angie can’t even conceive a world in which the simple fact of them being lovers would be equated with rape, and punishable by death. But on the other hand, the playfight is shot in a genuinely ambiguous way, and the police accept their mistake pretty quickly. The dual reality that police can fail society by being violently racist and by being negligent is allowed to just sit there. On the one hand, you add these examples up, and you could say that the movie implies that a lot of Flipper’s racial anxiety is only in his head. But on the other hand, the beginning of the movie shows Flipper failing to get a very deserved promotion, and it’s pretty clear that the main reason he doesn’t is because he’s black. There’s a reason his name is Flipper: this is a movie and a character that flips between sides.)

Point is, whether or not Jungle Fever is a movie that people would still see themselves in, it is a fine example of how to make a movie that tackles contentious social issues in general. My takeaway was that, when making art about a social issue, consider:

1. Using ambiguous examples, and/or examples that an audience is not likely to be charitable towards. And then finding the human side of that example.

2. Using more than one example.

3. Letting people with different stakes in the issue articulate those stakes.

4. Having people be right, but wrong, and wrong, but right.

5. Going a level up, and seeing what bigger ideas encompass the issue you’re exploring.

All of which, really, are probably good ideas for any sort of story, political or not. The failure-mode of social issue art is propaganda, when the desire to persuade leads an artist to depict the world in a moralistically simple way. Watching the movie, it’s clear that Spike Lee has his own attitudes about what he’s depicting. But by complicating and contextualizing those attitudes, he avoids propaganda and creates something that is entirely literary. And ends up potentially more persuasive as a result.

#posts: art #movies: jungle fever

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happymetalgirl · 5 years ago

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As I Lay Dying - Shaped by Fire

Whatever this album ended up sounding like, it was never going to be an easy one to talk about, and when the band released their sixth studio LP in 2012, I would never have anticipated its follow-up to be one of its year’s most controversial albums.

I’m sure most reading this already know the horrible history between 2012 and this album: lead vocalist Tim Lambesis soliciting an undercover cop who he was led to believe was a hitman to murder his estranged wife. Lambesis was of course arrested, charged with attempted solicitation to commit murder, and eventually plead guilty after putting up a meager fight for under a year with the flimsy defense of the adverse effects of his ongoing steroid use driving him to do something so psychotic and abhorrent. At some point before his incarceration, Lambesis released a candid apology video in which he explained what had happened, his sentencing, and his shameful acceptance of the consequences, sans excuses for himself. He was originally supposed to be imprisoned until 2020, but was released on parole in late 2016, about which he was quiet, but of course word got out, and immediately speculation began to swirl about whether the fractured (if not shattered) As I Lay Dying would reunite, which essentially all parties shut down at any initial inquiry, with multiple relationships between band members already soured before the hiatus aside from their shared contempt for Lambesis since his imprisonment. Seemingly miraculously though, here we are with a seventh As I Lay Dying album that, just two years ago, was never supposed to exist.

This album was always going to be shaped by and responsible for justifying its existence within the context of everything that happened before it, and the astonishingly reunited band knew that when they released the song “My Own Grave” last year, whose lyrics read of upfront humbled acceptance of responsibility, obviously from Lambesis’ point of view.

Since that song’s release and the realizing possibility that the band might actually release an album, discussion surrounding the justification of it erupted within and around the band’s fan base, with most fans supportive of Lambesis’ efforts to make things right and forgivingly welcoming his and the band’s return, while many others remained skeptical of Lambesis’ and his bandmates’ sincerity, if not outright unforgiving of all involved. And since the album’s release, there still really isn’t any consensus or development on that front, and it makes sense.

My feelings on the whole thing are a bit of both honestly. I understand Lambesis wanting to move on from what he did as well as make up for what he did in a way he knows how, and the idealist in me wants this to play out well and redeem such a terrible act as much as it possible can be. I do agree with the sentiment that many fans have echoed that he shouldn’t be treated like someone who hasn’t served time and began to redeem his heinous actions, essentially as a prisoner still and undeserving of finding his way in society again despite being released. But I simultaneously completely understand those still skeptical of him and the band based on their pasts and those who feel like he still has a lot to do to make things fully right again. I agree, he’s far from done yet. But I don’t think that disqualifies him from making the kind of art he knows how to make about his circumstances, especially if he is going to sincerely use it to make positive redemptive effects. Essentially, I don’t think Tim Lambesis is fully redeemed by what he’s done yet, including this album. I don’t think that means he’s not allowed to have made this album (or shouldn’t have), but I’m saying that it’s still not over for him or As I Lay Dying. If he is indeed sincere about everything he has come out and said since his release from prison, I would think he would agree that he still has a lot to do before the more skeptical side of the community starts to trust him again (which he has also said he understands). If the band’s accounts are to be believed, Lambesis’ acceptance back into their lives didn’t happen overnight, and the rest of his story within the metal community is definitely the kind of thing that only more time will reveal to be redemptive or ill-fated. For now, all we can do is assess this early snapshot of the whole situation in this album.

Anyone expecting Shaped by Fire to shatter the As I Lay Dying mould lyrically or musically to fit the newly solemn context surrounding it will not find such adjustment. The band are clearly aware of the album’s context and the music shows how conscious they were to approach it in a way that materialized a project that addressed the things they needed to while still being the kind of album the band’s fans could connect to (and not just an album for the band themselves). And at this I think the band did a mostly pretty admirable job. Stylistically Shaped by Fire picks up right where As I Lay Dying left off in 2012, making some of the most muscular and moving NWOAHM metalcore during and after the movement’s peak of relevance. I mentioned the song “My Own Grave” earlier, the band’s unlikely triumphant return from all that had happened. And musically the song fits that triumphant return and serves as a fine representation of the album as a whole as well, with hard-hitting, thrashing metalcore from start to finish with no room for dropping slack, and bassist Josh Gilbert’s empowering clean vocal melody about accepting guilt and humility cutting through straight to the heart of it all.

Through nearly identical stylistic methods, the still incredibly powerful subsequent single “Redfined” captures a sentiment similar to what was expressed on “My Own Grave”, one of fierce determination to undo one’s wrongs and flaws and recreate one’s self in to become a more positive part of the world, something obviously applicable to Lambesis, but certainly not just him as no one is too perfect for self reflection and improvement.

Lambesis expresses his gratitude for his facing the consequences for his actions most candidly on the wonderfully tremolo-picking-infused “Only After We’ve Fallen”, on which he says “My deceit was displayed for all to see / The only thing that could have saved me”

Gilbert’s clean vocal melodies shine again on the track “Undertow”, whose breakdown is similarly inspiring and heartfelt, and again his pairing with Lambesis takes the band’s signature thrashy melodic metalcore to emotive heights on the appreciative and crushing “The Wreckage” on which the band express their appreciation for their rebuilding from the ruins of the past several years.

The song “Blinded” finds Lambesis trying to convey his mindset surrounding his previous actions, though I think just a little bit too romanticized lyrically, which the assurances of trying to change do thankfully counter. Gilbert’s clean melodies, especially as he reaches high in his range near the end stand out as the song’s driving force of heartfelt repentance, and the vocal performance is so powerful I’m even reminded of Spencer Sotello’s impressive performances on Periphery’s latest album.

Lambesis gets aggressive over some heavy, aerobic, Austrian Death Machine-style thrash without the assistance of Gilbert’s cleans on “Gatekeeper”, one which he (seemingly) understandably lashes out at those hard-heartedly unwilling to forgive him and actively trying to keep him out of music. He doesn’t say it’s explicitly about his situation; he’s as open-ended here as he is on all the other songs applicable to other’s situations but clearly inspired by his experiences, and again I understand the frustration at those determined to hinder what he seees as his path to making things right, but this song effectively burns those bridges between him and people who might well just need a lot of time for their hearts to be softened. Lambesis though does counterbalance this song’s raw frustration with a declaration of commitment on the closing track, “The Toll It Takes”, to doing everything possible to help heal the hurt he caused knowing full well that his true sentence extends beyond his prison time and that there are things he cannot undo.

While certainly not offensively lazy lyrically or musically, the title track is an example of the album at its most rarely formulaic, with the band embodying the good-cop-bad-cop trope of the genre in a less emotive manner that pales in creative comparison to tracks like “Redefined”, “My Own Grave”, and even “Blinded”. It’s just more familiar and rule-following metalcore than the band’s more vulnerable and powerful moments. Most of the album, to the contrary, steeped in the band’s clearly cathartic redemption arc, is brimming with the kind of crushing, open-hearted metalcore that the band crystallized on 2010’s The Powerless Rise, and to an even greater degree as the band’s gratitude for their resurrection is quite tangible from track to track.

For all the controversy and tension surrounding this album, Shaped by Fire followed beneficially the path laid out by its preliminary singles to serve as the right kind of album As I Lay Dying needed to make, given the circumstances. Tim Lambesis clearly understands his responsibility to continue serving in ways to make up for what he did, and his raw emotional vulnerability across the album as a result of his already being humiliated by his actions shows indeed a portrait of a man determined to go the long haul and right his wrongs after losing everything and grateful for what he’s been given back so far. Even his more aggravated expressions like “Gatekeeper” that might be interpreted cynically as undue complaining about justified skepticism and criticism towards him are important to the truthful and tangible picture of human imperfection (at it most humbled in his case) Lambesis is conveying through his lyrics. He clearly understands he has a lot to do still, and a big part of this album is expressing his understanding of what the traumatic past means for his present and future. He and his bandmates are clearly aware that they will face backlash, they know that they are very blessed to have received the support they have, and they know it is still a long road ahead.

Musically, the band sound as if they never stopped playing together and even knew to temper the clean melodies of Awakened to the more optimal balance of thrashy metalcore aggression and powerful soaring choruses on The Powerless Rise, and the tough context surrounding it makes Shaped by Fire one of the band’s most cathartic albums to date.

The support the band has received has indeed been tremendous and certainly helpful, and I imagine some might look at their sold-out tours and think it unjust that the band receive such a magnitude of support at this stage and worry they might interpret the forgiveness of their devoted fans as complete redemption. I certainly understand that concern and I hope that the band don’t settle for just the approval of those who are glad As I Lay Dying is back together and instead continue to strive to make a positive impact with their music and their service to their communities. If this album is truly indicative of their shared emotional state and their mission, I think they will stay on the right path.

Redefining/10

#As I Lay Dying #Shaped by Fire #metalcore #metal #heavy metal #new music #new album #album review

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badsithnocookie · 6 years ago

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Exfiltration

Date: Approximately two months after the first Battle of Odessen.

Location: Geostationary orbit over Corellia.

'Hey. Picking up some interesting chatter…'

'I don't care about 'interesting',' Eirn muttered, wishing Theron would shut the hell up, 'I care about useful.'

She kicked a skytrooper leg out of the way as she said that, sending it crashing against the wall. Subtle, she was not, but they were long past the point of stealth. They'd set the alarms off as soon as they'd disembarked - deliberately, this time - and that had been three floors ago.

Eirnhaya Illte-Quinn had a lot of terrible coping methods, and throwing herself headfirst into danger was one of them. It distracted her from her problems - forced her to focus on the moment, caused problems of its own that she could focus on instead of the ones she was there to avoid, distracted others from those same problems and their attendant consequences. For all she hated war, fighting was an art she'd excelled at in her bid to seek out immediate problems in order to avoid ongoing ones.

'Got 'useful', too. Seems they're holding a prisoner aboard the station, here. I know we don't have much time, but-'

'Let me guess,' Eirn replied, sighing. 'You want me to spring them.'

Zakuul's not-an-Empire had installations like this all over the galaxy: Star Fortresses, though Eirn had no idea if that was the Zakuulan name and frankly, didn't care. They were glorified weapons platforms, hanging ominously in the skies over some obscene number of worlds, threatening Zakuul's idea of justice at a moment's notice. The Alliance had taken credit for destroying several, in the time since they'd made themselves publicly known - which hadn't done Zakuul's opinion of Odessen many favours. That, though, was the whole idea.

They were more than just weapons, of course. They housed scientific endeavours, skytrooper deployments, even prisoners - rebels, reactionaries, or even just random civilians with the poor luck to upset an Exarch.

'We can't just leave them. It'd be a death sentence…' Theron, on the other end of the comm, was continuing to be ever the Pub. His impulses and ideals ran counter to everything that Lana would have approved of - which was why, Eirn supposed, she let him run tactical on her operations at all.

'<Teeseven opinion=((prisoner:zakuulan)=possible ally). Teeseven recommendation = rescue.>'

Of course the droid had an opinion, too. Eirn disagreed with both of their assessments; it was equally probable that this was some kind of trap, and all she'd manage was to increase her own risk of being killed or captured. (And wouldn't Zakuul love that? The hated Outlander, brought low-)

'Do you have anything useful to add,' she said, picking her way over the chassis of another skytrooper, 'or can I have my silence back?'

'The detention level seems to be the next one down. Just- be careful, Commander…'

'I'm always careful. And stop calling me that.'

Between Eirn's lightsaber and Teeseven's technical wizardry, breaking into the holding area was less of an obstacle than it might have been otherwise. What wasn't made short work of by the Sith could generally be hacked or electrocuted by the Republic astromech; her adventures in kicking over Zakuul's sandcastles had shown Eirn firsthand why Lana had relied on the droid so much during her own rescue.

The captive wasn't hard to find, either; wasn't out for experimentation or interrogation, but left to linger in their cell, collared with one of those Force-suppressant devices that Eirn remembered from her own capture, at Arcann's hands - what felt like half a lifetime ago, now. It didn't take much to work out who they were, either, though Eirn was still guilty of staring in mute surprise for a long moment as she tried to reassure herself she wasn't jumping to a faulty conclusion.

'<Prisoner = Jedi Battlemaster! (Identity: Awenyth Loren, confirmed). Teeseven = Glad to see Jedi! Sith (identity:Wrath, younger) = Ally (Teeseven). Rescue = underway!>'

Which barrelled over anything that Eirn might have wanted to announce herself with, and instantly got the Jedi's attention - for any number of reasons. Awenyth's focus immediately snapped to Teeseven - and to Eirn, who was standing slightly stupidly on the free side of the forcefield, lightsaber in one hand.

'Hello, Awenyth,' Eirn just managed - pulling together the words as she tried to process the sight in front of her.

'Sith,' Awenyth replied, eventually - looking up at Eirn, her expression a mixture of hunted and haunted and very, very wary. She wasn't just thin, but gaunt - her clothing, little more than thin prison scrubs, hung on her in a way that spoke of a long, unpleasant captivity.

'What- happened to you?' Eirn could hear herself making stupid, pointless conversation while T7 interfaced with the computers; the droid could do a better, faster job of lowering forcefields and opening doors than even her lightsaber could, but that just meant she had no reason not to stand and stare.

'Sith,' Awenyth just repeated, though - fixing Eirn with a look that was somewhere between desperate and hostile.

(Listen, Theron was saying, I know you don't have much time, but you can't just leave her there. When this thing-)

(Shut up, Eirn hissed; she knew full well what would happen)

Feigning ignorance as to the collar's removal forceps was impossible, not least because the astromech - who apparently knew Eirn far too well - made a point of announcing where they were kept, and suggesting that Eirn fetch them. The hardest part was not kicking the droid as she returned, as thanks for its less than subtle ordering her about. Still, she tried to tell herself, this wasn't unsalvageable; the Jedi Battlemaster owing her was an idea that, in that other life Eirn daydreamed about, might have been cause for celebration instead of annoyance.

Awenyth watched her suspiciously the entire time - not even attempting to stand, though, until Eirn had removed the collar that the Zakuulans had placed on her. The Jedi was weak - sustained only through her stubbornness and hatred, and without the Force to draw on, that hadn't been much at all.

'Sith,' she just muttered, once she was on her feet - crossing her arms (hugging herself) defensively, her gaze flicking between Eirn and the Republic droid.

'I don't know what they did with your weapons,' Eirn said, 'And I don't have time to look for them. Stay, or follow me, it's your decision. Get in my way and I cut you down. Fall behind and I'm not coming back for you. Understand me?'

('<Sith = joking? Teeseven probability calculation lacks (knowledge: variables). Awenyth = Follow Teeseven. Shuttle = waiting for signal! Sith = combat expert. Awenyth = in good hands?>')

Awenyth just scrunched her nose, giving Eirn no more respect than she would a bad smell. 'Sith.'

Eirn took that to mean 'yes'.

In the chaos and the adrenaline crash after they jumped to hyperspace, Eirn was happy enough just to collapse - to pull off whatever bulky segments of her armour she could get at easily, before collapsing on the shuttle's uncomfortable passenger seats. A lifetime ago she might have held herself up with only her pride and pain to draw on, but Vitiate's presence only exacerbated the sleeplessness she'd struggled with for years, and left her with a sleep debt that even the Force had trouble meeting.

(He'd kept his threats and promises of silence, made when she'd rejected the helpful advice of his shades in the Odessen woods, but Eirn knew better than to trust that his silence meant his absence. He'd been silent to the Empire, after all, and yet she of all people knew that he'd still been present, still been yanking at the puppet strings of the Sith through his Hands and- well, his Wraths. She couldn't feel him, but that did not mean he was not present; moreover, she knew from personal experience that water brought to boiling around an unaware Sith would still kill them, before they'd even realised something was amiss. That thought was what scared her the most; that she'd acclimatised to his presence, become so used to it that she could no longer imagine herself without it, an idea which promised nothing pleasant about the things he plotted for her future)

When she slept, though, it was dreamlessly; when she woke, some hours into their journey back to Odessen, it was to see that someone had put a blanket over her while she'd slept, an idea which was simultaneously appreciated and nauseating. Awenyth had similarly passed out on one of the shuttle's tiny bunks - was, similarly, underneath one of Miot's emergency blankets, with Teeseven patiently monitoring her. There was a story as to how the two knew each other; Eirn knew that the astromech was of Republic origin, but had never imagined that it might once have been Awenyth's.

'Hey there, sleepyhead. Pleasant dreams?' Theron was awake, of course - working on some report or another. At least, that was Eirn's assumption, and the truth of it was that she didn't care enough to start contemplating otherwise.

Eirn made no reply to that - not verbally, anyway, but she flicked the air in his general direction, before standing up to stretch. What she really wanted was a fresher - and a comfortable bed, and maybe a long, stiff drink, but for now, stretches and paces would have to suffice.

Her relationship with Theron had always been uneasy, and not simply because he'd once been the enemy. Eirn had always been acutely aware of the warrants and bounties that the Republic had out for her - both for acts personally attributable to her, and for the more general quality she had of being Sith. His ultimate loyalties likely still lay with the Republic, but so long as this Alliance acted only against the Republic's enemies, he seemed willing and loyal enough. That, and- well, for all that Lana had been the one to pry Eirn out of carbonite, she disagreed with the other Sith far more than not.

'That'll be a no, then,' he sighed - made a show of sighing, before going back to attending to his datapad. 'Anything you want to add to the report?

'Depends,' Eirn replied - wishing, as she moved, that she'd found somewhere more comfortable to crash. 'Can I swear?'

Odessen meant fresh air, the first since they'd left; meant the opportunity for a long, hot shower in the privacy of the Pathcarver, still docked in one of Aygo's bays; meant Lana berating her for taking unnecessary risks, itself as much a ritual as it was genuine concern that Eirn would one day bite off more than she could chew. It meant, more than anything, not having to share that tiny space with someone who'd made repeated attempts to murder her, even if the Jedi hadn't exactly been in a state to do anything that wasn't collapse under the weight of all Zakuul had inflicted on her. Hours passed into days that Eirn spent first recovering from her trip, and then preparing for the next one; training, healing, avoiding interacting with Odessen's newest Jedi resident.

Of course, it couldn't last.

'She wants what.' Eirn, sitting in the cantina with her sister, had been half inclined to ignore the call from Lana, and was strongly considering hanging up.

'Look,' Lana began, 'it's up to you. But she's in no shape to start anything, and if she does, well, we can handle it.'

Eirn looked across at Anya, who was at least aware of some of her past with the Jedi; Anya just shrugged unhelpfully, looking for all the world as though she'd rather not be in this conversation at all.

'Fine,' Eirn sighed, though - she didn't have the energy to argue, and it wasn't as though she'd be doing this in enemy territory. 'But if this goes wrong,' she added, before Lana could interrupt, 'I'm blaming you.'

'Understood,' she replied, before abruptly cutting the call. It was difficult to tell when Lana was annoyed, and when she was simply being Sith; and if, at times, there was even a difference between the two.

'You're going?' Anya started - furrowing her brow a little in concern. (Her jaw tendrils were curling inwards, too; caution, of the kind worn by an animal aware it is being stalked by a predator, and it did nothing to reassure Eirn in the slightest)

'I'll- get it over with,' Eirn replied, shrugging - if the Jedi wanted to spit venom at her, well, she could always just leave.

'You… want some moral support?' Anya added - as much wary as she was anything else. Anya could hold her own in a fight, but for all they were Sith, Eirn had little desire to throw her sister into harm's way. Another of her failings, perhaps. But hers, regardless.

Eirn thought about it, for a long moment; looked at her mug of caf, half drunk and long gone cold. It had always been more of a prop than a drink - something to pay attention to that wasn't the places in her relationship with her little sister that she needed, desperately, to mend - to fill in with something that wasn't a lifetime of being somewhere else.

'I'll- be fine,' she sighed, though - besides, Awenyth was her enemy, not Anya's. Was her rescuee, her- prisoner, would Awenyth view herself that way? Her responsibility, and that was the worst thought of the lot.

Eirn had her lightsaber, as she always did; had her nails, her teeth, herself, and waved away any suggestion of an escort. If nothing else, she reasoned, an immediate presence would be more likely to exacerbate problems than deescalate them, and for once in her life, she had no desire to fight the one-time Battlemaster whatsoever.

Awenyth was in a side ward of the medical wing - unrestrained, uncollared, but not, Eirn noted, unguarded. Then again, the Jedi Battlemaster would have made a tempting target, and not just for Zakuul. There were plenty of Sith on Odessen who still followed Korriban's rules; stayed within the ones imposed by Eirn, yes, but were far more interested in their letter than their spirit.

'Sith.' The Jedi was the first to speak, too - had apparently been expecting Eirn, a thought that unsettled her.

Awenyth was sitting, albeit in a medical cot; hooked up to a drip of some kind, bandages in places on her arms that Eirn did not remember her being injured, and not looking any less uncharacteristically frail for wearing a medical gown, or being half-curled up under white sheets. If anything, the bright lighting threw her shadows into sharp relief - something Eirn suspected that the Jedi was unpleasantly aware of.

'Hello, Awenyth,' Eirn replied - repeated, really, and she wondered what, exactly, she'd agreed to.

Awenyth just looked at her for a long, hard moment - studied her, narrowing her gaze until it focused only on the Sith in front of her. It was a feeling Eirn disliked - from anyone, not just this old enemy of hers.

'So it was you,' Awenyth just added, after a long moment - before looking away, back to the blankets wrapped around her, as though they contained the key to some hidden mystery.

'Why wouldn't it be me?' Eirn replied - lost for what else she was supposed to respond with, and almost afraid of what the answer might be.

Awenyth fixed her with that glare, again - sharp and distant and almost contemptuous. 'Because you stink,' she snarled, 'of him.'

It took Eirn a long moment - a long, puzzled, wary moment, before the fear she still nursed of her Emperor's continued presence curled around those words, absorbing them into itself in a way that promised more sleepless nights. What other him would she mean, but-?

'You can… sense him?' Eirn began, cautiously - attempting to ignore the icy dread trying to form in her stomach, as though the Jedi wasn't apparently already well aware of other things she'd rather keep hidden.

'It amazes me,' Awenyth replied, her gaze fixed on something just out of focus, just to Eirn's side, 'That you can't.' She paused, at that - before swivelling her focus back to Eirn. 'Sith,' she began to add, 'If you still serve him…'

Eirn just snorted, to that - both to the notion that Awenyth could threaten her, in this state, and the idea that she might still serve Vitiate. 'My only goal,' she replied, 'Is to find some way to destroy him. Once and for all.' For everyone who ever suffered and died for his 'irrelevant ancient dogma'.

'You were there,' Eirn added, 'On Yavin. You heard what he said.' You are special. 'If you can sense him, it's because he enjoys tormenting me. But I promise you,' she added, 'I do not serve him, or the Empire.'

Awenyth just watched her, as she spoke - didn't lose that steel in her expression, even as it flickered between Eirn and something-just-out-of-focus.

'Be wary of him, Sith,' Awenyth replied, darkly - watching Eirn as though she thought the Sith might be taken by their enemy at any moment. 'He'll rot you from the inside out and wear you as a suit, given even a sliver of a chance.'

Eirn hadn't forgotten Ziost - or Master Surro, the just-as-broken Jedi that Lana had once wanted to study like a frog in a jar. But Awenyth's broken riddles, not to mention her sensitivity to him - something even Senya had missed - spoke of a far more personal history. For a moment - just a moment - Eirn remembered those boasts that had been made of Awenyth's raid on Dromund Kaas, and wondered if there was some awful price the Jedi had paid for what hadn't even truly been a victory.

'I don't intend to give him one,' she just replied, though - her words pointed at Vitiate as much as Awenyth. 'My goal is his destruction. Nothing else.'

'Then our goal is common, Sith,' Awenyth replied - the hostility not leaving her tone or posture, not for a single moment. 'For as long as it remains such, I will not strike you down. But do not think this makes us friends.'

Eirn just laughed humourlessly, at that. 'I would never dream of it, Jedi.'

'I don't want your pity, either, Sith.' Awenyth was suddenly furious- no, it wasn't that. There was a veneer of anger, but underneath it, she was in pain - she'd been humiliated, shattered, broken down to her constituent components and left scattered on the ground. It was still uncannily like looking in a mirror - a twisted fairground mirror, perhaps, but a mirror all the same.

'Pity is the last feeling you inspire in me, Jedi,' Eirn replied, dryly. She wondered if Awenyth saw the same thing she did, or if this introspection was entirely one-sided. 'You're here because if you weren't, Shan wouldn't let me hear the end of it.'

Which was definitely an attempt to save face, and not just to the Jedi. For all that there was no love lost between the two of them, the Jedi's concern on Ziost had been entirely genuine - as had the fleeting alliance they had made. For all the good it had done them, in the end.

Eirn's remark just made Awenyth blink in surprise, though, and her expression melted into something that was almost tinged with hope. 'The Grand Master?'

'The spy,' Eirn replied flatly. The last thing she needed was the Jedi Grandmaster oozing platitudes at her. She'd rather have Baras's ghost stalking her every failure, along with Vitiate; the pair of them criticising her at every turn, perhaps with the ghosts of her self-esteem and dignity egging them on.

Awenyth had no smart reply to that, though - just fell back into her contemptuous default state, snorting and turning her attention elsewhere. Eirn took that as meaning the conversation was over - and, rather grateful for that, left.

Meditation in the wilderness wasn't an activity commonly associated with Sith, especially when said wilderness was as green and full of life as Odessen's was - and if that Sith was Eirn. If Sith were not creatures found in nature, then nobody would look in the forests around the Alliance's camps when they wanted to pester her.

'If you're trying to be stealthy, Agent Shan, you might want to work harder on your force signature.'

Almost nobody.

'I wasn't,' the spy replied, sourly - and then, 'Believe it or not, Commander, I don't enjoy the prospect of a surprise lightsaber.'

Eirn opened her eyes, slowly - and smirked at the sight of the mildly irritated spy. 'What do you want, Theron?'

'That little... tiff with the Battlemaster.' he replied - leaning against the nearest tree, crossing his arms defensively, and studying Eirn as she stood. 'There's not going to be any problems with you two?'

Word apparently travelled fast. Then again, Eirn supposed she shouldn't be surprised; both Theron and Lana would be well aware of the animosity that existed between the once-Wrath and the former Battlemaster.

'I have no idea what you're talking about,' Eirn said - dusting herself down as she did so. That was a downside of communing with nature - it had a tendency to stick to your clothing afterwards. 'By Sith standards, that was practically a declaration of love.'

A slight overstatement of things, perhaps, but Eirn had traded far worse barbs with people who'd hated her far less. There were likely hundreds of reasons that Awenyth's efforts had been as half-hearted as they had been, but Eirn wasn't in the habit of speculating on the reasoning of broken Jedi.

What she didn't expect, though, was the stab of concern that the l-word prompted from Theron - and Eirn decided this was not a road she wanted to venture down.

'Believe it or not,' he said, scrambling for a response, 'That's what concerns me. She's not Sith.'

'No,' Eirn replied, 'She's a very broken Jedi, and despite appearances,' she sighed, crossing her arms and fixing him with a glare, 'I am not completely heartless.'

'I didn't-' Shan started to protest - before sighing, in apparent defeat. 'I can never tell when you're being serious. That's not a good thing, by the way.'

Which made it Eirn's turn to sigh again. 'As long as she doesn't start fights, I won't finish them. Is that good enough?'

'That's… going to have to do,' Theron replied - conceding defeat, or at least appearing to.

'Great,' Eirn said - dusting her hands off, at that, and making a show of being at least a little energised. 'So what Star Fortress are we hitting next?'

#swtor #kotfe #sith warrior #oc: eirnhaya #outlander!eirn #oc: awenyth #long post #my writing #fic: exfiltration

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achronologyofbits · 5 years ago

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GOTY 2019

I wanted to write a personal Game of the Year list, but I realized I really didn’t play that many games that were new in 2019. So I’m ranking them, but it’s less a “top 10” and more a “10 games I played and how I felt about them.”

10. Kingdom Hearts III

Kingdom Hearts III plays like a game from 2005.

I’m not sure I can fully articulate what I mean by that. Maybe I mean its combat is largely simplistic and button-mashy. Maybe I mean its rhythms of level traversal and cutscene exposition dumps are archaic and outdated. Maybe feeling like this game is a relic from another time is unavoidable, given how many years have passed since its first series entry.

But there’s also something joyful and celebratory about it all — something kind of refreshing about a work that knows only a tiny portion of its players will understand all its references and lore and world-building, and just doesn’t care.

Despite all the mockery and memery surrounding its fiction, Kingdom Hearts’ strongest storytelling moments are actually pretty simple. They’re about the struggle to exist, to belong, and to define what those things mean for yourself. I think that’s why the series reaches the people it does.

Those moments make Kingdom Hearts III worth defending, if not worth recommending.

9. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Admittedly, I only played about 10-15 hours of this in 2019. Perhaps fittingly, that’s about the amount of time I originally spent on Dark Souls when it released in 2011. I bounced off, hard, because I didn’t understand what it was asking of me. Once I did — though, it has to be said, I needed other people to explain those expectations to me, because the game sure as hell didn’t — Dark Souls became an all-time favorite. And I’ve played every FromSoft game since then, and enjoyed them all. Until Sekiro.

Part of it is, again, down to expectation. Dark Souls trained its players on a certain style of combat: cautious movements, careful attention to spacing, committing to weighty attacks, waiting for counterattacks. In every game since then, FromSoft have iterated on those expectations in the same direction in an attempt to encourage players to be less cautious and more aggressive. The series moved from tank-heavy play in Dark Souls, to dual-wielding in DS2, to weapon arts and reworking poise in DS3, to the system of regaining health by attacking in Bloodborne.

In some ways, Sekiro is a natural continuation of this trend toward aggression, but in others, it’s a complete U-turn. Bloodborne eschewed blocking and prioritized dodging as the quickest, most effective defensive option. Sekiro does exactly the opposite. Blocking is always your first choice, parrying is essential instead of largely optional, and dodging is near useless except in special cases. FromSoft spent five games teaching me my habits, and it was just too hard for me to break them for Sekiro.

I have other issues, too — health/damage upgrades are gated behind boss fights, so grinding is pointless; the setting and story lack some of the creativity of the game’s predecessors; there’s no variety of builds or playstyles — but the FromSoft magic is still there, too. Nothing can match the feeling of beating a Souls-series boss. And the addition of a grappling hook makes the verticality of Sekiro’s level design fascinating.

I dunno. I feel like there’s more here I’d enjoy, if I ever manage to push through the barriers. Maybe — as I finally did with the first Dark Souls, over a year after its release — someday I will.

8. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

In December, my wife and I traveled to Newport Beach for a family wedding, and we stayed an extra day to visit Disneyland. As an early birthday present, Aubrey bought me the experience of building a lightsaber in Galaxy’s Edge. And the experience is definitely what you’re paying for; the lightsaber itself is cool, but it’s cool because it’s made from parts I selected, with a blade color I chose, and I got to riff and banter with in-character park employees while doing it. (“Can you actually read those?” one asked me in an awed voice, when I selected a lightsaber hilt portion adorned with ancient Jedi runes. “Not yet,” I told her. “We’ll see if the Force can teach me.”)

Maybe it’s because I just had that experience, but by far my favorite moment in Jedi: Fallen Order is when main character Cal Kestis overcomes his own fears and memories to forge his own lightsaber, using a kyber crystal that calls to him personally. It’s maybe the only part of the game that made me feel like a Jedi, in a way the hours of Souls-inspired lightsaber slashing didn’t.

I think that’s telling. And I think it’s because so much of Fallen Order is derivative of other works, both in the current canon of gaming and of Star Wars. That’s not to say it’s bad — the mélange of Uncharted/Tomb Raider traversal, combat that evokes Souls and God of War, and vaguely Metroid-y power acquisition and exploration mostly works — but it’s just a titch less than the sum of those parts.

Similarly, as a Star Wars story, it feels under-baked. There’s potential in exploring the period immediately after Order 66 and the Jedi purge, but you only see glimpses of that. And I understand the difficulty of telling a story where the characters succeed but in a way that doesn’t affect established canon, but it still seemed like there were a couple of missed opportunities at touching base with the larger Star Wars universe. (And the one big reference that does pop up at the end feels forced and unrealistic.)

When I got home from California, I took my lightsaber apart just to see how it all worked. Outside of the hushed tones and glowing lights of Savi’s Workshop, it seems a little less special. It’s still really cool…but I sort of wish I had had a wider variety of parts to choose from. And that I had bought some of the other crystal colors. Just in case.

That’s how I feel about Jedi: Fallen Order. I had fun with it. But it’s easier now to see the parts for what they are.

7. Untitled Goose Game

Aubrey and I first saw this game at PAX, at a booth which charmingly recreated the garden of the game’s first level. We were instantly smitten, and as I’ve introduced it to family and friends, they’ve all had the same reaction. When we visited my brother’s family in Florida over the holidays, my eight-year-old niece and nephew peppered me with questions about some of the more complex puzzles. Even my father, whose gaming experience basically topped out at NES Open Tournament Golf in 1991, gave it a shot.

I’m not sure I have a lot more to say here, other than a few bullet points:

1) I love that Untitled Goose Game is completely nonviolent. It would’ve been easy to add a “peck” option as another gameplay verb, another means of mischief. (And, from what I understand, it would be entirely appropriate, given the aggression of actual geese.) That the developers resisted this is refreshing.

2) I’m glad a game this size can have such a wide reach, and that it doesn’t have to be a platform exclusive.

3) Honk.

6. Tetris 99

Despite the number of hours I’ve spent playing games, and the variety of genres that time has spanned, I’m not much for competitive gaming. This is partially because the competitive aspect of my personality has waned with age, and partially because I am extremely bad at most multiplayer games.

The one exception to this is Tetris.

I am a Tetris GOD.

Of course, that’s an incredible overstatement. Now that I’ve seen real Ecstasy of Order, Grandmaster-level Tetris players, I realize how mediocre I am. But in my real, actual life, I have never found anyone near my skill level. In high school, I would bring two Game Boys, two copies of Tetris, and a link cable on long bus rides to marching band competitions, hoping to find willing challengers. The Game Boys themselves became very popular. Playing me did not.

Prior to Tetris 99, the only version of the game that gave me any shred of humility in a competitive sense was Tetris DS, where Japanese players I found online routinely handed me my ass. I held my own, too, but that was the first time in my life when I wasn’t light-years beyond any opponent.

As time passed and internet gaming and culture became more accessible, I soon realized I was nowhere near the true best Tetris players in the world. Which was okay by me. I’m happy to be a big fish in a small pond, in pretty much all aspects of my life.

Tetris 99 has given me a perfectly sized pond. I feel like I’m a favorite to win every round I play, and I usually finish in the top 10 or higher. But it’s also always a challenge, because there’s just enough metagame to navigate. Have I targeted the right enemies? Do I have enough badges to make my Tetrises hit harder? Can I stay below the radar for long enough? These aspects go beyond and combine with the fundamental piece-dropping in a way I absolutely love.

The one thing I haven’t done yet is win an Invictus match (a mode reserved only for those who have won a standard 99-player match). But it’s only a matter of time.

5. Pokemon Sword/Shield

I don’t think I’ve played a Pokemon game through to completion since the originals. I always buy them, but I always seem to lose steam halfway through. But I finished Shield over the holidays, and I had a blast doing it.

Because I’m a mostly casual Pokeplayer, the decision to not include every ‘mon in series history didn’t bother me at all. I really enjoyed learning about new Pokemon and forcing myself to try moving away from my usual standards. (Although I did still use a Gyarados in my final team.)

As a fan of English soccer, the stadium-centric, British-flavored setting also contributed to my desire to see the game through. Changing into my uniform and walking onto a huge, grassy pitch, with tens of thousands of cheering fans looking on, really did give me a different feeling than battles in past games, which always seemed to be in weird, isolated settings.

I’m not sure I’ll push too far into the postgame; I’ve never felt the need to catch ‘em all. But I had a great time with the ones I caught.

4. The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening

I have a strange relationship with the Zelda series, especially now. They are my wife’s favorite games of all time. But I don’t know if I’ve ever actually sat down and beaten one since the original Link’s Awakening. Even with Breath of the Wild, which I adore, I was content to watch Aubrey do the heavy lifting. I know the series well, I’ve played bits of all of them, but most haven’t stuck with me.

Link’s Awakening has. I wrote a piece once about its existential storytelling and how it affected me as a child. I love the way the graphics in this remake preserve that dreamlike quality. It’s pretty much a re-skin of the original game, but the cutesy, toy-set aesthetic pairs well with the heavy material. If this is all a dream, whose dream is it? And when we wake up, what happens to it?

Truthfully, some of the puzzles and design decisions haven’t held up super well. Despite the fresh coat of paint, it definitely feels like a 25-year-old game. But I’m so glad this version exists.

Oh, and that solo clarinet in the Mabe Village theme? *Chef’s kiss*

3. Control

I actually haven’t seen a lot of the influences Control wears on its sleeve. I’ve never gone completely through all the episodes of the X-Files, Fringe, and Twin Peaks; I’m only vaguely familiar with the series of “creepypasta” fiction called SCP Foundation; and I have never endeavored to sit through a broadcast of Coast to Coast AM. I’m also unfamiliar with Remedy’s best-known work in the genre, Alan Wake. But I know enough about all those works to be able to identify their inspiration on the Federal Bureau of Control, Jesse Faden, and the Oldest House.

Control is an interesting game to recommend (which I do), because I’m not sure how much I really enjoyed its combat. For most of the game, it’s a pretty standard third-person shooter. You can’t snap to cover, which indicates you’re intended to stay on the move. This becomes even more obvious when you gain the ability to air dash and fly. But you do need to use cover, because Jesse doesn’t have much health even at the end of the game. So combat encounters can get out of hand quickly, and there’s little incentive to keep fighting enemies in the late game. Yet they respawn at a frustratingly frequent rate. The game’s checkpointing system compounds this — you only respawn at “control points,” which act like Souls-style bonfires. This leads to some unfortunately tedious runbacks after boss fights.

On the other hand, Jesse’s telekinesis power always feels fantastic, and varying your attacks between gunshots, thrown objects, melee, and mind controlling enemies can be frenetic fun. That all comes to a head in the game’s combat (and perhaps aesthetic?) high point, the Ashtray Maze. To say more would be doing a disservice. It’s awesome.

The rest of the gameplay is awesome, too — and I do call it “gameplay,” though unfortunately you don’t have many options for affecting the world beyond violence. The act of exploring the Oldest House and scouring it for bureaucratic case files, audio recordings, and those unbelievably creepy “Threshold Kids” videos is pure joy. The way the case files are redacted leaves just enough to the imagination, and the idea of a federal facility being built on top of and absorbed into a sort of nexus of interdimensional weirdness is perfectly executed. And what’s up with that motel? And the alien, all-seeing, vaguely sinister Board? So cool.

With such great worldbuilding, I did wish for a little more player agency. There are no real dialogue choices — no way to imbue Jesse with any character traits beyond what’s pre-written for her — and only one ending. This kind of unchecked weird science is the perfect environment for forcing the player into difficult decisions (what do we study? How far is too far? How do we keep it all secret?), and that just isn’t part of the game at all. Which is fine — Control isn’t quite an immersive sim like Prey, and it’s not trying to be. I just see some similarities and potential, and I wish they had been explored a little.

But Control’s still a fantastic experience, and in any other year, it probably would’ve been my number one pick. That’s how good these next two games are.

2. Outer Wilds

Honestly, this is the best game of 2019. But I’m not listing it as number one because I didn’t play most of it — Aubrey did. Usually we play everything together; even if we’re not passing a controller back and forth, one of us will watch while the other one plays. And that definitely happened for a large chunk of Outer Wilds. But Aubrey did make some key discoveries while I was otherwise occupied, so while I think it’s probably the best game, it’s not the one I personally spent the most time with.

The time I did spend, though? Wow. From the moment you wake up at the campfire and set off in search of your spaceship launch codes, it’s clear that this is a game that revels in discovery. Discovery for its own sake, for the furthering of knowledge, for the protection of others, for the sheer fun of it. Some games actively discourage players from asking the question, “Hey, what’s that over there?” Outer Wilds begs you to ask it, and then rewards you not with treasure or statistical growth, but with the opportunity to ask again, about something even more wondrous and significant.

There are so many memorable moments of discovery in this game. The discovery that, hey, does that sun look redder to you than it used to? The discovery that, whoa, why did I wake up where I started after seemingly dying in space? Your first trip through a black hole. Your first trip to the quantum moon. Your first trip to the weird, bigger-on-the-inside fog-filled heart of a certain dark, brambly place. (Aubrey won’t forget that any time soon.)

They take effort, those moments. They do have to be earned, and it isn’t easy. Your spaceship flies like it looks: sketchy, taped together, powered by ingenuity and, like, marshmallows, probably. Some of the leaps you have to make — both of intuition and of jetpack — are a little too far. (We weren’t too proud to look up a couple hints when we were truly stuck.) But in the tradition of the best adventure games (which is what this is, at heart), you have everything you need right from the beginning. All you have to do is gather the knowledge to understand it and put it into action.

And beyond those moments of logical and graphical discovery, there’s real emotion and pathos, too. As you explore the remnants of the lost civilization that preceded yours, your only method of communication is reading their writing. And as you do, you start to get a picture of them not just as individuals (who fight, flirt, and work together to help each other), but as a species whose boundless thirst for discovery was their greatest asset, highest priority, undoing, and salvation, all at once.

I don’t think I can say much more without delving into spoilers, or retreading ground others have covered. (Go read Austin Walker’s beautiful and insightful review for more.) It’s an incredible game, and one everyone with even a passing interest in the medium should try.

(Last thing: Yes, I manually flew to the Sun Station and got inside. No, I don’t recommend it.)

1. Fire Emblem: Three Houses

If I hadn’t just started a replay of this game, I don’t think I’d be listing it in the number one slot. I started a replay because I showed it to my brother when we visited him in Florida last month, and immediately, all the old feelings came flooding back. I needed another hit.

No game this year has been as compelling for me. That’s an overused word in entertainment criticism, but I mean it literally: There have been nights where I absolutely HAVE to keep playing (much to Aubrey’s dismay). One more week of in-game time. One more study session to raise a skill rank. One more meal together so I can recruit another student. One more battle. Just a little longer.

I’m not sure I can put my finger on the source of that compulsion. Part of it is the excellence of craftsmanship on display; if any technical or creative aspect of Three Houses was less polished than it is, I probably wouldn’t feel so drawn to it. But the two big answers, I think, are the characters and their growth, both mechanically and narratively.

At the start of the game, you pick one of the titular three houses to oversee as professor. While this choice defines who you’ll have in your starting party, that can be mitigated later, as almost every other student from the other two houses can be recruited to join yours. What you’re really choosing is which perspective you’ll see the events of the story from, and through whose eyes: Edelgard of the Black Eagles, Dimitri of the Blue Lions, or Claude of the Golden Deer. (This is also why the game almost demands at least three playthroughs.)

These three narratives are deftly written so you simultaneously feel like you made the only possible canonical choice, while also sowing questions into your decision-making. Edelgard’s furious desire for change is just but perhaps not justifiable; Dimitri hides an obsession with revenge behind a façade of noblesse oblige; Claude is more conniving and pragmatic than he lets on. No matter who you side with, you’ll eventually have to face the others. And everyone can make a case that they, not you, are on the right side.

This is especially effective because almost every character in Three Houses is dealing with a legacy of war and violence. A big theme of the game’s story is how those experiences inform and influence the actions of the victims. What steps are justified to counteract such suffering? How do you break the cycle if you can’t break the power structures that perpetuate it? How do good people end up fighting for bad causes?

While you and your child soldiers (yeah, you do kind of have to just skip over that part; they’re in their late teens, at least? Still not good enough, but could be worse?) are grappling with these questions, they’re also growing in combat strength, at your direction. This is the part that really grabbed me and my lizard brain — watching those numbers get bigger was unbelievably gratifying. Each character class has certain skill requirement prerequisites, and as professor, you get to define how your students meet those requirements, and which they focus on. Each student has certain innate skills, but they also have hidden interests that only come to the surface with guidance. A character who seems a shoo-in to serve as a white mage might secretly make an incredibly effective knight; someone who seems destined for a life as a swordsman suddenly shows a talent for black magic. You can lean into their predilections, or go against them, with almost equal efficacy.

For me, this was the best part of Three Houses, and the part that kept me up long after my wife had gone to bed. Planning a student’s final battle role takes far-seeing planning and preparation, and each step along the way felt thrilling. How can you not forge a connection with characters you’ve taken such pains to help along the way? How can you not explode with joy when they reach their goals?

That’s the real draw of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, I think: the joy of seeing people you care about grow, while simultaneously confronting those you once cared about, but who followed another path. No wonder I wanted to start another playthrough. I think I’ll be starting them all over again for a long time.

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jackshithere · 6 years ago

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Till and Schneider in an interview with the "Stern"

source

They sing about child abuse, incest, necrophilia. In a video they show excerpts from Leni Riefenstahl's body-cult Olympia movie. And when singer Till Lindemann rolls the R, it roars out of the speakers as it once did from the Volksempfänger. The Wall Street Journal stated, "Woah, that's German!" Rammstein, a german band. A [politically] right band? Since its founding in early 1994, the six musicians from Schwerin and East Berlin are suspected of doing right-wing rock.

In fact, the lyrics with their portrayals of sex and violence are often close to censorship - but fascism is not even between the lines. Now Rammstein, with around three million albums sold, the internationally most successful German-language band since Kraftwerk end of the 70s, a new CD on the market: "Mutter" is by pre-orders even before the release on 2 April for the top 3 of the German charts written down.

The 'Stern' spoke with singer Till Lindemann and drummer Christoph Schneider about their youth in the GDR, Rammstein as a therapy - and provocation as a stylistic device.

On your new album you have underlined the title "Left 234" with the sound of marching boots. That sounds like the newsreel 60 years ago.

Schneider: The piece was the first attempt by Rammstein to deal artistically with the eternal reproach that we are a right-wing band. It's almost funny that this will cause some discussion again.

But you could have omitted the marching sound. Would not the message that your heart seems to be "leftist" be less clear then?

Till: That's the intention. One lets something march and then answers.

Schneider: We hate to express ourselves clearly. Rammstein always has room for interpretation.

That makes for misunderstandings.

Till: That was right from the start. We all grew up in the GDR, come from the punk scene. If we wanted to perform there, we had to present our repertoire before the so-called rating commission. Of course, you had to think very carefully about what you say, what you sing and sometimes how you play. Any criticism of the system was prohibited. So you had to try and make a loop. That's probably why it's still within us that we like to respond ambiguously.

Schneider: When you look at lyrics from GDR bands, you can see how good they are in part when they rewrite a subject with lyrical means. This past is closely connected with us. We can not get away from it. That was our youth. If we came from the west, Rammstein would not exist. At any rate, we would not be so violent.

Why not?

Till: What do you want to do to get you to play in front of more than ten people? You start using provocative means and being extreme. There we were certainly more courageous than East Germans. It started when we sang that kind of hard music in German. And then something has also unloaded what had accumulated in our GDR youth, because we have reacted abreacted. Finally we were allowed to say everything, do everything. Basically it was quite simple: look into your stomach, look into your soul, and start making music.

Out of your seemingly very dark soul came out lines like:

"My black blood and your white flesh / I'm getting hornier from your shrieks". [Mein schwarzes Blut und dein weißes Fleisch ich werd immer geiler von deinem Gekreisch]

Was that more than a provocation?

Schneider: The provocation is exhausted at some point. There are only a few topics that are good for it. We used them up.

Till: What's the use of writing the same kids fuck song for the third time?

Schneider: We started with the tank at that time, regardless of left or right or losses, and we broke through. We have been heard. Now we're going to deal with the pieces left over. And start to realize what we really are - a German metal band. With the new album we often asked ourselves: Is that still Rammstein? Are we starting to make only beautiful music? So far, the new record is no longer provocative. That's certainly mainstream. But good mainstream.

The provocation of Rammstein is not only based on the ambiguous texts, but also on the aesthetics of the band and their show. Military headlights [basically Batman signal thingy] shining in the sky are evoking images of Nazi Nazi party rallies; Lindemann's throaty chant reminds us of the rolled-up R Nazi sizes. Does it have to be that way?

Till: The R comes on its own. When I sing so deeply and expressively, my vocal cord flutters, and then it just rolls. By the way: Peter Maffay's vocal cord reacts similarly, but also rolls the R. And the light dome, which looks good, right? It's not about more. Just because it's associated with those twelve crappy years, should not that be allowed anymore? Then tear down the Olympic Stadium and all the other Nazi buildings in Berlin! This is twelve years that this idiot named Hitler has on his conscience, and again and again one comes back to it. It's about art. There is no relationship between one and the other.

Schneider: This discussion shows that there seems to be no coping with the past in society. You can say: Okay, there is the light dome, I think that's good, and there's the Reich Party Rally, I think that's shit. You can separate that, everyone for yourself. Only in this way can one find the way to one's own history. I can not always think, oh, it's all so loaded, I can not talk about it, and the others could think ... No, open dispute! The task of Rammstein is also the search for an independent music, a German music. Of course, we come across our story and get all these allegations. But I see that rather positively: We try to find our own identity, which many musicians or artists in Germany have given up long ago.

This also means that you show no emotion on stage and Lindemann beats his head bloody with the microphone?

Till: We're actors on stage, that's show. You do not notice the pain when you hit the same spot every night on the head. Schneider has even received a broken neon tube in the shoulder. Paul, our guitarist, burned my ear in Australia now.

Schneider: It's probably like this: Rammstein is like a self-help group for us. Like a therapy.

When did you first learn about the era of National Socialism?

Till: We grew up with Auschwitz. With us was the everyday life: group travel with the school to the camps, see Buchenwald, flowers lie down at monuments, join the concentration camp march through Mecklenburg, to Güstrow along the highway. There are such monuments on every corner.

Schneider: In the GDR civics and history lessons were strongly antifascist-colored. Everything except communism was evil: fascism, West Germany, capitalism. These were all taboos. I think that's why we now have this pronounced right-wing extremism in the East: I'm shit, and I want to draw attention to myself. So I use the worst of what I know - and become a neo-Nazi.

Why do not you participate in concerts like "Rock against right-wing violence"?

Schneider: We do not want to be tense with these carts. That would be ridiculous. Then it is said that we used it only to become even more popular. Besides, what's the use? The right ones are there. They are part of our population. We have to accept this problem and finally accept that there are these tendencies in Germany. It does not help to always exclude the right. We have to talk to those who solve their problems.

Rammstein reaches the Far right scene.

Till: We reach many, including the advertisers in Hamburg. And as far as the right is concerned, for me the state is too soft-spoken about the problem. You have a black half-dead, and there are construction hours as punishment. We used to beat ourselves with skins even before the turnaround in Schwerin - why do not you go through harder today? I grew up with a girl who is a mulatto. She still visits Mecklenburg every summer. She is afraid of people and does not dare to go to certain places. I'm just ashamed of that.

Nevertheless, you play with a Germany image that evokes certain memories.

Schneider:DRammstein is not a concept. We've come together to do this music and show, and we work like a support group. We do what we like well, nothing more. Maybe that's why our fans think we are authentic. Following the motto: Rammstein do their thing and are not like the others. This may also explain our success in the US. But with that our critics get a problem again: They fear that the American kids will not associate with Germany any more than Rammstein. The Americans are really only on our artistic skills. This is politically overrated.

Till: One does not ask Ricky Martin which political attitude he has. You listen to a song, find it good or bad. That's all.

#Rammstein #long post

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wearemagicandmusic · 6 years ago

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The Odd and Unusual

So I'm going to go a little odd this week. I know, me go odd? Anyway, this week I want to talk a bit about the unusual side of witchcraft… what one of the people I knew called "hinky" gifts. Now, even then I had problems with it being called this. One, by calling it anything other than what it was, they were being very belittling to those who used those abilities. Do I think they meant it that way? Maybe not consciously, but it still implied that she thought those abilities weren't legitimate or weren't acceptable. My second complaint is the fact that they were called gifts, and yes I know there are many people who do call them that. I feel like all abilities are just skills. Some are harder to learn or come much easier to some than others. I still feel like basically everything can be learned. Is it easy? Absolutely not! Is it possible? Yes. So let's go through the abilities I have experience with, how I learned them and why I think they are looked down upon/ pushed off as attention seeking.

God Phone/Deity Speech: This is one I see float around the internet. I want to start by saying this is not something you have to learn! Your gods will find other ways to talk to you. Trust me. 90% of the time I don't hear a peep from my gods, but there are other signs that they hear me. This one is a little less looked down upon as put on a pedestal which can be just as bad. That being said, I have come across people who have said that I'm making it up when I say I have talked to the gods. People in the witchcraft community mind you, not just some person who doesn't understand what is going on. Now, this could come down to a few things. They may have a different view of how the gods work, they may be jealous (because that makes complete sense), or they may really just not believe you.

Like I have stated before, I do believe this is just a skill. Not a necessary skill but one none the less. I haven't always been able to hear the gods and as I said, it isn't all the time. It is only in the last few years that I've started hearing them and only in certain situations. Like many, I was upset that I couldn't hear the gods, even more so because my mother discovered she could do it pretty easily. Now, that isn't to say that I didn't think the gods talked to me; they used other means such as wind or tarot or whatever was available to them. Despite all of that, I really wanted to be able to. I tried a lot of things but this is how it ended up working for me. It is less of a set of steps and more like a process. I started focusing on working with a single deity or two max. At the time it was Loki and Magnus Bane (yes I do practice Pop Culture Magic in more ways than just spells). Believe it or not, it was actually Magnus who first talked to me and that was because I was being an idiot.

It was late and I was working on sigils for something or other. Can't really remember what they were for. I was struggling with them. I was working at my art desk which doubled as my altar, so when I would complain or struggle with it, I was talking at my altar. So, I was in what equated to sacred space and forcibly or not, my body and mind were relaxed if not frustrated because I was tired. I honestly think that my being tired was the key factor in all this. Think about when you are really tired. Like it or not, your body is relaxing in an attempt to get you to sleep, and all of your defenses start going down. As someone who requires control of everything, including my witchcraft, I wasn't really leaving room for something uncontrollable. At that moment, I didn't have a choice but to give up control because I was barely staying awake. So needless to say, Magnus told me something about how magic worked (which ended up helping me with more than just my sigils) and (no joke) to go to bed.

Once that had happened, I started looking for ways to make that happen more often. I knew I could since I had already experienced it once. Every time since then, it has always been within the confines of some version of sacred space and usually because I am celebrating something and thus rather relaxed. I really think this is the key to this ability. We spend so much time anxious and concerned about hearing them that we block out the ability to hear them. Relax, be in a space that you feel safe, and just let it happen. It will take time, but it can happen.

Dead Talker: This is one that even in witchy groups I actively avoid talking about. This was something that I discovered I could do rather unexpectedly and quite frankly, I sort of let this one slide when things got really hectic in my life. I should really work on it again as I feel it was kind of important. I don't have a proper word for what it was called but I could talk to spirits that were stuck and help them get unstuck. Not like you see in movies by any stretch of the imagination and I only ever did it once for a man that had died in a motorcycle accident. I know for a fact I am not the only one, but I have repeatedly seen this skill laughed at and mocked. People who even mention it are told that it is ridiculous. I feel like this comes similarly like being a God Phone. It also doesn't help that Hollywood has basically turned us all into spooky jokes.

I have to say that one of the biggest skills that are a prerequisite for this one is being able to even mildly meditate or get into that sort of calm headspace where you are open to the world. The first few times that I was made aware of that side of the world, I was either in a graveyard or outside by myself late at night (I had been working some form of magic most the night). My mind was already kind of in that headspace. I honestly don't think the skill is all that different from God Phoning. It is just talking to a different source. I will put out the disclaimer: this isn't something I did all the time even then. I was given signs that I needed to do something and that is when I used my ability. I don't really think it is something that is always… on. So I think the way of developing it is really the same as developing a god phone. Your focus on who you are talking to is really the only difference.

I'll be the first to admit that I don't have a lot of odd abilities to talk about, but these are two that I've experienced and heard people having a bad reaction to. I know this was a little all over the place and hope that it at least made enough sense to be of interest to you.

#witchblr #abilities #odd and unusual #god phone #dead talking

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megers67 · 6 years ago

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Saisei Academy Verse: Saitou Hibiki

I’m re-making this post since it’s not showing up in the tags. I suspect it’s because I linked my fic which is bullshit, but I want others interested in this little OC grouping to find it so I de-linked it. If you want to find it, I’ve linked my AO3 to my blog or you can just ask me!

I'm finding it increasing difficult to refer to this as an AU version of Hibiki since, while I came up with it second, it's the only verse I've actually written about so far. But now that @miracide has created the wonderful school, Saisei Academy, I've decided that this version of Hibiki would end up there. My story, Ascent, is an origin story for her. So uh... I guess this will inevitably contain spoilers. Take that as you will.

For that reason and for length, I will put her bio under the Keep Reading. Also, I based the formatting after one of the bios she made for one of her own OCs, though I added my own sections.

Hibiki Saitou

Age: 16

Status: 2nd Year Student, General Studies

Basic personality: Deeply cares for others and tends to put them ahead of herself to a fault, quiet, usually only speaks when she has something to say, good listener but bad at communicating her own needs, tends to mother people, over-prepared, anxious and paranoid, only truly comfortable when doing something she knows she’s good at (her preferred school subjects, first aid, cooking) so she is most likely to speak up during these times (providing answers in the school subjects, assertive during first aid, opening up while cooking) though it’s not a guarantee

Basic appearance: On the shorter side of average, thin (due to recent months), long dusty-pink hair that she usually keeps up in a tight bun, dark eyes, covered in scars including prominent one at the corner of her mouth and a crooked nose from when an injury there failed to heal properly, she hides her scars as much as she can (basic foundation on her face, tights/stockings, and sleeves when she’s allowed to, even when it’s hot) because she doesn’t want people to ask her about them

Likes: English language media (especially music), cooking, biology, first aid

Dislikes: Being touched, passive aggression, things being put on higher shelves out of her reach

Favorite food: Hot chocolate

Best school subjects: Biology, English (nearly fluent since her father was)

Worst school subjects: PE, arts

Random fact: She tends to sing while she does chores when she thinks nobody is around (her skill is only average). She gets super embarrassed by it if someone catches her doing it. But because she keeps forgetting that she lives with other people, this happens relatively often.

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Quirk: Injury exchange

- With skin-to-skin contact, she can exchange any active physical damage between herself and the person she is touching.

- Injuries transfer between analogous body parts so a broken left arm causes a break in the same place in the same way on the other person’s left arm. If one gets an injury in a place that is otherwise uninjured, the state of non-injury is given in the exchange. So if Person A has a broken left arm and Hibiki is uninjured there, she takes the broken arm while it is healed in Person A.

- By default, it switches all injuries across the entire body, but with concentration, she can focus it to a specific area. This means she can theoretically heal others while stockpiling a dangerous amount of injuries onto herself.

- The quirk activates automatically and she has to specifically cancel it, so she is dangerous to touch while unconscious (since generally injuries are what cause one to become unconscious).

- Her most common use of her quirk is where she can sense any and all injuries of the other person, but deactivates her quirk before the exchange is made. This allows her to accurately access someone injured without advanced scanning equipment or putting herself in harm's way.

- Still-present causes of injuries are not affected, only the active damage to the body. A stabbing would need to have the knife removed first. Otherwise it will completely heal around the knife in the victim and leave a disconnected knife-shaped flesh in her own wound in the exchange as that could not be exchanged. Similarly, damage from an illness or a poison can be exchanged, but the original victim would simply acquire that damage again. The only advantage of proceeding with the exchange despite this is it gives the chance to “restart the clock” once that may buy time.

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Background:

Unlike many students at Saisei Academy, she came into the program with excellent quirk control. She mainly attends the school for psychological support and reform due to her criminal activity. Since she has an otherwise clean record and her crimes were nonviolent in nature, she avoided jail time. This, plus her good academic record and other extenuating circumstances, saw her admission to Saisei Academy. However, as she IS a criminal, she is liable to have more restrictions than the average student (I just don’t know what restrictions Miracide would have for this kind of situation).

Her home life has not been great. Hibiki's mother died shortly after her quirk manifested because a villain attack left the toddler gravely injured. When her mother naturally came to her aid, the injuries transferred to her and help didn't come until it was too late. Hibiki's father, in his grief, always blamed her for her mother's death, often taking his frustration out on her and using Hibiki's quirk to indirectly aid in his hero work.

He was a local pro-hero named Noci whose quirk allowed him to store any pain he's sustained in the past 24 hours and give it to someone else. This allowed him to incapacitate villains without causing actual damage to them. The potential for his quirk to be used for torture made him a controversial hero so he never became incredibly popular outside of his home town. For his hero work, he would often allow himself to become injured so he could store the pain, but later force Hibiki to take on the actual injuries herself so that he wasn't incapable of actual fighting. She'd attempted to go to the authorities about this, but his connections with local law enforcement prevented the case from being pursued seriously. This long-term abuse and the refusal of its acknowledgment made Hibiki incredibly skeptical and disillusioned towards the hero system and law enforcement as a whole.

Hibiki was left to her own devices for much of the day, but was not allowed to interact much with her peers outside of school. She took on many of the domestic responsibilities of her house at a young age as a result. She disliked most of them, but became very efficient in doing them, a skill she carries to this day. Hibiki does like cooking, however.

Her only true friend in school was Tanaka Rin. Rin was one of the only students who didn't treat Hibiki any differently despite her scars and frankly was the only reason Hibiki has any real social skills at all. The two girls became even closer when an accident permanently blinded Rin and Hibiki helped her devise a way for Rin to use her temperature quirk as a form of thermal imaging.

The two however were separated when Rin chose to pursue a career as a pro-hero and succeeded in getting into the hero program at the famed UA. Hibiki applied to a more normal high school on the area in order to be near her and in the process ran away from home. However, she became too embarrassed to let Rin see her as she was since she had nothing to her name after becoming a runaway. This put her in a very dark place.

A fateful encounter with a young criminal who nearly died since he didn't want to be arrested had he gone to a hospital led her to create The Bunker. The Bunker was an off-the-grid medical facility housed in an abandoned bunker that had been built when quirks first began to emerge, but had long since been forgotten. The 6-bed facility allowed her to help those who, like her, had been ignored but still needed help. With the help of a disgraced nurse who had been fired from the local hospital for taking pain killers while on the job, she ran the facility for 6 months before a raid brought it to its end.

While the raid meant Hibiki now had a criminal record (though the charges were less than you'd expect due to the care she took to remain as close to technically legal as possible), it also finally exposed her father's abuse to the world. He went on the run before he could be arrested and remains at large. As she now doesn’t technically have parents or legal guardians, she is a ward of the state until further notice.

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The main goals for Hibiki's reform are to:

- Regain trust in authority. While she doesn't necessarily act out, she does a worrying amount of hopeless/mindless compliance.

- Learn it is okay to put her own health first. She went through much of her life thinking it's her place in life to sacrifice herself for the betterment of others and that prioritizing herself was selfish.

- Figure out what she wants to do with her life. Due to the above, Hibiki has resigned herself to believing she will die young and as such has difficulty thinking in the long-term. She's never thought much about her future because she never thought she had one.

#saiseiacademy #saisei academy #miracide #megers67 oc #bnha oc

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peridee · 2 years ago

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Mae plays Your Turn to Die

Hi,

So, this one has been sitting on my computer for awhile, but I thought I'd finally get around to posting it. In fact, this was written long enough ago that the future release date has come and gone and you can now get YTTD on Steam.

Nevertheless I've decided to publish all the old posts that never made it to the blog proper. Mostly, so I stop thinking about em, and also so I break the hiatus and maybe get around to more posting.

___________________________

Hi,

Your Turn To Die(YTTD) is a visual novel/ point n click game made in Rpgmaker MV & developed by Nankidai.

YTTD is a game about people who are kidnapped and forced to play a death-game. The protagonist of the game is Sara Chidouin, a 17 yr old highschool girl. Together with her friend Joe and ten other people, she attempts to escape the game and solve the mystery of why they were all kidnapped.

Most of the gameplay consists of clicking on objects in rooms and using them to solve puzzles.. These puzzles are pretty fun and interesting but they’re not the only gameplay type. The game also includes a variety of minigame sections with unique mechanics and gameplay. Some of these are one-off events and some of them are part of the core gameplay.

One of the core gameplay mechanics is the discussion system used during the main game. Sara can click each character to hear a statement from them about the discussion subject. She can also “extract” more information from their statements. Their statements are now amended with this information. Sarah can use this information to expose contradictions or flaws in the current discussion. This is done by pairing two contradicting statements and “conflicting” them with each other. Revealing a contradiction advances the discussion.

Each incorrect attempt uses “Mind” points which function similarly to HP. If Mind drops to Zero, the game is over. Thankfully the game is pretty forgiving and I didn't find it an issue. This is also helped by the ability to save at any point during the discussion. This means that it's always possible to progress the story and not have to replay any sections, as long as you remember to save frequently. I think this system is great, and an improvement over similar systems in Ace Attorney or in Danganronpa, which this game is clearly inspired by.

Speaking of being inspired by Danganronpa, this game clearly takes a lot of its visual design inspiration from that series. But also has a clear deliberate style of its own. Visually this game looks great. The environments are lavishly rendered pixel art and the character portraits and designs are great, everyone has a unique design and flair.

The narrative of the game is pretty solid, each chapter has a chapter story and each chapter also furthers the ongoing narrative and reveals more of the mystery. The pacing isn't too bad and the revelations and character development are solid. It’s always difficult playing a game where we expect most of the characters will die. It makes it hard to make the audience care about them. Danganronpa also has this problem. Although, I think the writing here is better. Each character gets more development and depth, whereas in Danganronpa the characters are broad strokes and archetypes. Which is true here to a degree, but becomes less true as time goes on. Unlike in Danganronpa however, there is a degree of fluidity or branching narrative. Your actions throughout the game, and the results of the votes can cause different characters to survive. I’ve only played through the one variation I ended up on, but it's still neat that this can happen. Usually I’d talk about the game’s story overall and what I thought, but unfortunately, the game is currently in-complete. YTTD is released episodically and currently you can play up to Chapter 3: part one A.. Therefore I cannot discuss the story overall until the next chapter comes out. The game is slated for a steam release at some point this year, and chapter 3 will be released there first sometime after(I hope it's soon)

I’d recommend this game very strongly, if you like this genre, or any of the other games I mentioned. I think it handles the mix of gameplay styles well and the story and the characters are engaging enough that the visual novel sections are good too. The game is visually striking and I like it a lot.

Get the game on Steam here or download the original fan-translated version from vgperson here

#maeplaysgames #your turn to die #YTTD

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