#bc again i want people to get invested so i take the opposite route

[fatcowboys]

ok im copying what i said in another post abt my personal answer below:

my first answer is it depends and it depends on many, many things, including - is this person familiar with actual play ttrpg shows? are they familiar with ttrpgs in general? what sort of shows and genres do they often enjoy? what kind of time commitment are they prepared to set aside/engage in?

when im introducing someone to a show i take it a little too seriously if i am being honest. i really want them to enjoy it. so if someone is interested in dimension 20 and has watched a lot of dungeons and dragons actual plays or podcasts before, i am going to approach it VERY differently than someone who has never engaged with the media. similarly, if i have two friends who are interested, one who is a fan of lord of the rings esque high fantasy types of genres and media, and one who really has never been a big fan but has LOVED a modern fantasy kind of story, i will likely recommend different seasons.

i know a lot of people who started at the beginning with fantasy high and i definitely see the appeal of starting chronologically, but to me its one of my favorite things about dimension 20 is that it shows the variety and range of ttrpgs as a story telling medium. im definitely biased because i started with unsleeping city myself, but its SO nice having such a range of genres and vibes and casts to hand select something to share with a friend and feel like they will really appreciate it. one friend watched unsleeping city with me when i first got into d20 and didnt get into the rest like i did. but still loved tuc. another friend i got into d20 bc they read those a court of something books (and spent a lot of time bewildered by how wild they were) so of course i HAD to show them a court of fey and flowers and now theyve finished almost four? seasons now?

d20 lets me be a weird media sommelier where i can ask them about the vibe they are into and the shows they watch and then hand select an improvised ttrpg actual play season to suggest based on that. sure i dont always get it right 100% of the time but i LOVE trying to pick something out that they might connect with and really enjoy, whether they end up getting hooked on the show/actual play ttrpgs or not

my second answer is, if nothing in particular seems to call to them or catch their attention. i recommend either unsleeping city or a court of fey and flowers.

poll for my dimension 20 fans okay. obviously i cant include every season as an option so pls use tags for other answers and details BUT....

[sewerpigeonart]

literally no one asked but that’s never stopped me before; my inhibitions are low bc i’ve been awake since 4am and idk if any of this is even going to make sense when anyone reads it but i want to talk about my 𝑓 𝑒𝑒 𝑙 𝑖 𝑛 𝑔 𝑠

having to choose between hawke and alistair in the fade is literally like the most stressful video game decision i have had to make—and actually, considering i’ve done alternate playthroughs where i choose each of them, i still technically haven’t “chosen” because it’s. so. hard.

if Loghain or Stroud are the warden, they’re obviously the expendable option because loghain has no rights and stroud simply isn’t a character the player was given the opportunity to emotionally invest in.  unless you make a specific party decision in da2, you never even meet him. but when it’s between alistair and hawke, now the emotional stakes are astronomical, because not only is it hard for me to pick on an emotional level, even when thinking in terms of narrative for each of these characters it’s hard to decide which is the better option.

we’re invested in both these characters; we traveled with alistair through origins and either romanced him or became his best friend through our wardens, our wardens with whom i think most players have also developed an emotional attachment to because they’re our own characters.  and hawke was our character in da2, and you could sort of “mold” him into one of three general personalities, he’s still a pretty strong character on his own, regardless of if he’s snarky or angry or benevolent.  and sort of opposite the case with alistair, we know that hawke’s friends are attached to him.

so now it’s down to the wire and you gotta pick one. there’s no other way out. it sucks. and i think on one hand i can actually appreciate that because it means the games did a good job of making me care about not only both of these characters themselves, but their impact on the characters around him.  when i think of sacrificing hawke, my mind at once goes to varric, the living hawke sibling, and the love interest.  with alistair, my mind goes to my warden, who in terms of the game itself isn’t a strongly defined character because like most custom protagonists a lot of the emotional investment comes from our own imaginations and projections. but in that regard it’s like the relationship to alistair is more personal to the player themselves, in my opinion.  when choosing who to sacrifice, i think about who is going to hurt.  i literally burst into tears when i played the hawke route and varric comes up to you in adamant and says, “where’s hawke?” like i fuckin lost it man lmao, and when you talk to him later and he tells you the story and they play hawke’s theme sadly in the background?????? im like im going to pass away now but ANYWAY

so not only do i think about the emotional consequences on hawke and alistair’s companions (and myself), i struggle to choose which option is better narratively. because i feel that both of them have a very strong reason to stay behind. for hawke it’s obvious: with corypheus, it’s personal—way more personal than it even is with the inquisitor who is meant to defeat him. it’s literally in hawke’s bloodline. not only did his father cage the magister, but hawke is assuming the responsibility of “releasing” corypheus upon the world. of course he would give up everything remain in the fade and deal this huge blow to corypheus. it’s more than playing hero, it’s about vengeance for him, and you could even say it’s about protecting his family, if his sibling is a warden and if you romanced anders, protecting him too.

alternatively with alistair: all through origins alistair is characterized as believing himself expendable. “i wish i had died instead of duncan, i’ll kill the archdemon so you don’t have to,” etc. and yes he is young and insecure in origins, and it’s clear when we see him again in inquisition or even the cameo in da2, we can see him more confident, more assured, capable of making his own decisions. but—and i acknowledge this is largely headcanon, but this whole post is explaining why it’s hard for me to choose—i think especially with the romanced hero of fereldan still alive, in that pivotal moment in the fade i would assume alistair would be thinking of her, sorry to leave her and knowing she’ll be hurt but confident she could be the capable hands the wardens would need to recover, even if she is sort of in the shadows by that time, i project that the HoF would assume a sense of duty in helping them recover, even from the background somehow if she insists on kind of staying in “hiding.”

i think characterwise, alistair is always going to have some degree of innate self-sacrifice, that when it comes down to it, he’ll be the one to take the blow. so it would make sense that in the fade, he’d say “no, hawke, you go,” maybe no longer from a place of lower self-esteem like in origins, but i think in his mind, especially since he’s literally been a fugitive from the wardens, he makes the decision in a fairly rational state of mind. he acknowledges the wardens have messed up, and maybe this sacrifice can even be the start to redeeming their honor because he cares such a great deal about them. even hawke changes his tone in the final moments, saying yeah the wardens fucked up but they’re not beyond saving. so even then i think alistair would take comfort in knowing whether it be hawke or the HoF or the Inquisitor or whoever, the wardens will be left in good hands.

i know a lot of the alistair stuff is more headcanon than anything, but going off my own world history with the games and my own role play ideas and stuff, these are the associations in my head and how i interpret the cost of his sacrifice alongside hawke’s.  and i’ve even tried jotting some fic ideas exploring so many different post-fade concepts depending on which was left behind to see if i could construct some mental narrative to help me “commit” to sacrificing one of them, and in honesty, i think in the end i would go with hawke, because even though it’s more of an immediately impactful death (VARRIC IM SO FUCKGIN SORRY), it is personal, and i think that motivation is beyond alistair’s more “honorable” motivation. i think alistair could be convinced to help the wardens before hawke could be convinced to step back and let someone else take care of corypheus “for him,” for lack of a better term.

HOWEVER. it may be wishful thinking in order to cope, but i would be willing to bet that in da4, we find out whoever was left in the fade is not dead after all, because if it is hawke you leave behind, or even with alistair, these are both two protagonists that would have rather unceremonious deaths. narratively, that’s kind of lame writing if we were to forgo the closure of their actual deaths. even in the choice tree it says the person will “most likely” die; in the cut scene as the inquisitor and the non-sacrificed character run toward the rift, you see in the background the other character fight the monster and hit the ground under an attack, but we don’t see an explicit “death.”  they are then, understandably, assumed dead.  but there’s no actual confirmation. and i don’t know the writing team personally, who am i to say they’re indisputably above this, but i would like to have enough faith in them to expect they would not commit to such an unsatisfying ending for that character’s story. even with a more “expendable” character like stroud, i think there’s too many questions left behind. 

the introduction of walking physically in the fade and surviving is a huge revelation in-game. it’s reiterated that that literally hasn’t happened since the first magisters entered the black city.  that’s ENORMOUS. and if they’re only going to explore that twice—or more like one and a half times because we get the vague opening cut scene of escaping the fade, then the adamant sequence—it again feels very inconsistent and sloppy. dorian even says that essentially once people realize it is possible to survive the fade physically, they are going to try it, however unwise and irresponsible.  i think the da4 teasers alone (i haven’t followed da4 updates very closely tbh bc i haven’t been able to play trespasser yet bc i only have a ps3 and i’m trying so hard not to get too spoiled beyond the main inquisition ending asjkfd) imply our experiences with the “real” fade are so far from over.  and thus, i feel “comfortable” leaving hawke in the fade because i would like to believe he’s going to come back. i mean, he’s hawke right? and if hawke’s character can come back, that would then further suggest if you left the warden in the fade, they would have to come back too for whatever the da4 narrative might be.

ok sorry this is rly long and disorganized im bad at communicating ideas effectively but i have been thinking about this lately way more than i care to admit lmao

[jhaernyl]

So my ninja taxes are predicated on a handful of concepts, one of which is a big straying away from canon bc I cannot rationalize why Konoha works the way it was if we don't change Hashirama and Madara's motivation for founding the village.

If they really had started their village So That Children Would Not Have To Fight And Die then there is no fucking way that Konoha would have ended up the way it did, not even from the beginning. 

Children would not have been allowed in the field, full stop.

My reasoning, instead, went that Hashirama and Madara looked at how hard life was for their older relatives, the ones that got injured too much to fight again but didn't die, the ones that went blind or deaf and had to be cared about from the rest of the Clan and possibly thought themselves a burden on the other members of their nomadic society, respected "Elders" who weren't necessarily old but who couldn't fight anymore and who dealt with a slew of PTSD complications that might have barred them from even interacting with children and teaching them, further making them feel inadequate or who possibly left the Clan to go into civilian careers where they could settle down in one place, get more or less regular medical care as needed and thus sort of 'left' the Clan behind.

(As a side rant I would like to add that the reason why Madara and Hashirama wouldn't focus on the 'children shouldn't be soldiers' is because that while child soldiers definitely do happen in the real world, in the contest of the Naruto framework it didn't make sense for the time Madara and Hashirama were in to send children as young as the manga told us they were to fight against full-grown adults the way the manga depicted them doing.

I can buy the occasional genius being put into battle way too young (cough Tobirama cough) as long as it came with other factions being anything in the range from impressed-but-somewhat-disapproving to downright appalled at the age the kid was thrown into the field but not it being a systematic thing, because the infant mortality rate would be too high and unsustainable so I think it would make more sense, especially given their ages when they meet, if Madara and Hashirama older brothers died rather than their younger ones.

Hashirama and Madara are supposed to be SEVEN YEARS OLD when they meet and yet somehow both of them are the eldest of their siblings, with Tobirama being the second eldest to Hashirama and Izuna being somewhere around Tobirama's age supposedly, and both have already lost three younger brothers to battle against the opposite faction? Huh huh, sure Kishi, whatever you tell yourself to feel edgy.

No, it makes more sense to me that they were middle children who both became Heir because their older siblings either died or were crippled too bad to continue fighting and that was followed by frustration/rage/depression/sense of being rejected / feeling of uselessness in relation to their war-like Clan whose tradition and Leader Are In The Field kind of leadership demanded an able-bodied shinobi to lead them and that shaped them and informed their ideas for and dreams of an ideal village where that wouldn't be the case and where their younger feelings shouldn't have to feel that was going to be the end they were going to one day meet unless they died in battle.)

So Hashirama and Madara looked at that and they went "That's not what I want for my brother/cousins/uncles/aunts/relatives / etc." and so their dream was to create a place where a shinobi would be supported (the way many self-made shinobi at the time weren't, unless they joined the Clan and, as said above, even joining a Clan didn't necessarily protect them in the long run, depending on their specific situation) beyond his or her or their utility in the field, where they wouldn't have to leave the Clan and their support network to settle somewhere safer, (Tobirama, in the background: where their health and minds could be looked after so that they would not snap and go insane and have to be mercy killed.)

Which allows for the focus of the village to be on a very Japanese-appropriate taking care of your Elders who have already contributed to your society and can still have more to contribute in the way of teaching young ones without having to die in the battlefield or feel themselves become 'burdens' (which they aren't but they might still feel like) and reducing the weight of care on the families by having a support system to person and families be something organically built into the Village’s structure, in more ways than taxing but also through the taxes levied.

It also allows for a spiralling effect being present towards having more people and time to devote to training the young and thus, especially once the Ninja Wars happen and create that sort of constraint on society, leading to younger graduation classes because that can happen as a slippery slope kind of situation where no one means to send young kids into battle before they are ready but if you are sending the older teens and adults into battle, then the younger kids can take over in-village missions that would otherwise be given to adults, right? And if they are doing in-village missions, why not missions right around the village, not too far from it, with their jonin sensei coming along to ensure their safety? They are not being put at risk, they are just being helpful to the system while still being safe.

And that slides into 'well they can do missive runs to safe places on safe routes, we are not putting them in danger, they are just covering for the kind of thing that the adults are too busy with the war front to do' and then slowly and slowly inch down until it becomes 'bring cargo to the back of the lines, far away from the front line, so that we are sure it gets there safely and then they can help the adults escort the wounded back, reduce the number of people we have to discharge from duties where they are needed and there are still enough adults around that it’s safe enough.'

As I said, a slippery slope. 

Starts small and over time it gets normalized and slides down inch by inch.

Back to topic, the focus is on looking after those who get injured and/or need to retire means that two of the main taxes being levied are the Injury Insurance Tax (IIT) and the Invalidity, Old Age & Survivors Tax (IOS) which works like the national funds do in Italy.

It's something that you invest in, just in case you will need it later. Almost all ninja end up needing the IIT funds, at some point during their career, while recovering from injuries and being unable to run missions (thus reducing the stress on ninja on the monetary side and sometimes making life easier for the medics, because patients who know that they will get paid while they work to get back to 100% are patients who might be less likely to book it out of a window at the first instance) and all ninja who are not on a suicidal bend and actually looks forward to managing to make it out and retire can look at the IOS as a support system that will one day help take care of them, should they be too damaged / too old / not able to be around children to make out a living by having a profession/teaching children, etc.

The IOS being something that they have put money in during their service to the village, this also avoids the mental trap of being seen as a charity because it's not you accepting charity from someone else. It's you reaping the reward of that money you sacrificed for so long and set aside exactly for this specific occurrence.

It's not a handout but rather one of your rights that you are expecting/requesting/demanding to be granted to you as promised, so it skips quite a few mental traps that might otherwise prevent them from accepting the help they are being offered.

There are fixed percentages for how much you get taxed depending on rank because the higher you get, the more money you make and the more danger you are exposed to so you both can afford to be taxed higher and you are undergoing higher risks, so you are more motivated to invest into taxes that will give a return when something happens.

Clan ninjas are especially invested in the system and joined under the clear assurance that the village would look out for them if they look out for the village and have a higher investment in wanting their retirees to be supported and looked after properly since that was one of the reasons Konoha got founded to begin with and they were attracted to the security it was supposed to offer.

They get taxed an extra on the IIT and an extra on the IOS in all categories because living in a Clan gives you all sort of advantages that people outside of a Clan don't have and thus you are expected to have the funds to be able to afford that extra and being part of a Clan you have plenty of people around you that are benefiting from the system which goes to show you that it's worth investing in it.

Everyone pays a not indifferent amount of their paycheck to the village in general, upfront, and that amount of money is part and parcel of being part of the Village.

The Village provides for you in many ways, including allowing you to be part of the village and take their missions at all along with things like the free healthcare, but for the village to be able to afford to provide for you, the Village needs the funds and so your missions get taxed and what you get taxed on is fed back into the natural circle of the village's economy.

That is especially important during wartime when funds are going to be depleted way faster than they would normally be and a lot of missions you would see during peacetime fall to the wayside / cannot be taken on by you so you wouldn't see an income from them so you have to be offered a different kind of Wartime Paycheck if you are deploying in the field on the frontline in one long stretch rather than on a mission-back-to-Village-have-time-off-to-train-and-relax-and-get-some-TLC-get-another-mission-back-to-Village-again-etc. basis.

So every ninja pays a specific tax amount to the Village and then Clan ninja give another cut to their Clan because of societal obligations to your Clan and because the Clan provides for you and all Clans pay a general tithe to the village in the form of being taxed based on the number of members they have, the space they occupy and what percentage of whatever it is they produce (poisons and antidotes for the Yamanaka, medicines for the Nara, preserved food for the Akimichi, insect-related products for the Aburame, etc.) gets handed over to the Village to be used for everyone (the rest they keep to store or sell as they prefer).

Being part of the Clan is a privilege and a duty and part of it is contributing to the Clan, which is both a remnant of before the Villages were formed and how the Clan maintains their specific level of independence from the Village. Some Clans will ask more of you, some Clans will ask less and leave more in your pocket, it depends from Clan to Clan.

It's not all detractions, tho, though there are a few more that go to hit non-Clan, non-Clan-affiliated ninja. The Village provides you with basic kits and as they get depleted you can just go to the quartermaster and get refills issued without paying. If you go out to shop, you get discounts (calculated monthly based on medium earnings, the family of origin, living situation, taxes paid, quality material, economical support you have or don't have, etc.) on goods that you might need to use as a ninja and, if you are from a Clan, you get discounts within your own Clan or allied clans.

Orphans, especially ones without Patrons to look after them who are still underage or who are of age but do not yet have a trade to fall back on / are unable to be at least chunin ranked, are given a base monthly stipend and then they receive extra money on top of that basic stipend depending on their needs. Food needs, training material needs, age, family situation, your rank, how long have you been your rank, clothing needs as identified by the wear and tear of your gear as witnessed by your rank's quartermaster, if you need feminine hygiene products, etc.

On top of a basic food allowance, there are also extra food categories are organized based on whether you are pre-pubescent, pubescent or adult (the amount of food a growing kid vs a growing teenager vs an adult needs varies), what kind of diet do you need for your, for civilians, apprenticeship or, for ninja, training and development.

Are you focusing on your physical skills rather than your chakra skills? Non-chakra intensive diet. Are you working with a lot of Jutsu / genjutsu / training to expand your pool of chakra? Chakra-intensive diet. Are you doing both? Okay, file for both. Your sensei needs to confirm and vouch for your request.

Depending on what you are doing, who your sensei is and what he has you doing and what brand of skills you are focusing on (which influences which kind of foods you will need), the 'very chakra-intensive' / 'very non-chakra intensive' and the 'extreme chakra-intensive' / 'extreme non-chakra-intensive' diets are something you might need to apply for.

Someone like orphaned teenager Maito Gai would definitely hit the 'extreme non-chakra intensive training diet' category because he is doing extreme taijutsu training but given that he also needs to develop and train the amount of chakra necessary for summoning, he'd also be able to apply for 'very chakra-intensive training diet' whereas someone like Kurenai, who is a genjutsu mistress and relies less on her physical abilities, would go for the 'extreme chakra-intensive training diet' box possibly with a side of 'chakra-intensive training diet' if she's keeping up with something more than the barest levels of physical conditioning.

Plus depending on what kind of things you are doing, you might qualify for more than one category of the same type. Let's say you are Minato and you are working on fuck off giant Jutsu (extreme chakra-intensive) but you are also working on finicky, control-based sealing work that requires a different use of your chakra but is also exhausting in its own way (chakra-intensive) but you also need to work your ass off on your speed and reflexes (extreme non-chakra intensive) to keep up with your in-development Jutsu technique without getting disoriented / splatter yourself against trees along with the general physical training you do (non-chakra intensive).

Depending on what your schedule is and what you are doing, you will eat different quantities of food and you will need different types of food as well so if you can convince your sensei to sign off on it, you just apply for whatever you think you need the most or you go big or bust and try to apply for all categories if you think you can get away with it.

And then there's the housing tax if you live in Village housing for ninjas (with the expected wear and tear for being somewhere ninja lives and thus often needing repairs that are given to you free of charge because you are already being taxed for occupying a ninja-specific living space with all that comes with it).

There’s also whatever you (if you are an orphan) owe to the orphanage and/or academy (calculated based upon the resources spent to house and feed and clothe and wash and train you accordingly to your potential). 

A lot of the housing thing and owed-to-orphanage/owed-to-Academy debts are predicated upon whether or not you have or not a Patron or a Clan sponsoring you or relatives who might not have been able to take you in (due to age of the relative or other issues) but could help pay for your upkeep and studies and if you do have someone which kind of person they are, what kind of agreement is in place and what kind of economical support they have been able to give you.

Aaand I'm going to stop there for right now because I've been typing about taxes for an hour and a half and I need a break XD

[icharchivist]

I was re reading dgm chapters and got to the part where Chaoji said he was going to fight Allen. That got me thinking, could Innocence refuse to hurt Allen? There's a lot of gray and unknown areas right now in what we know. But what we do know is Apocryphos and the Heart are very invested in Allen's survival no matter what. They consider him more connected to the Innocence then anyone else. The times Allen was hurt by Innocence was when he impaled himself and later when Kanda stabbed him. -

2 both times happened before the Apocryphos approached Allen. CC will act on It's own, even against Allen's wishes, to protect him no matter what. You could even say CC alerting Apocryphos to where Allen is is it's way of saving Allen from erosion of the 14th. Even Kanda stated CC's attachment for Allen seems unnatural. We also know even regular Innocence is at least somewhat sentient. Considering the Heart and Apocryphos can control/influence any Innocence. I bet if they wanted to they could-

3 stop any Innocence from activating. Who knows they might even have the Innocence turn on it's user and make them into a fallen one for 'betraying' the Heart's wishes by trying to kill Allen. Kanda dropped Mugen when he left w/Alma. But when he re bonded w/Mugen he started showing signs of falling (granted it's probably other reasons. But it's still something Kanda is falling while promising to kill Allen if it comes to it. While Allen isn't falling at all despite being a fugitive/Noah and-4 denying the Apocryphos, CC and the Heart's way of saving him from Nea). Over all it looks like a interesting route to consider. Allen is possibly the only human Innocence truly loves/desires to keep alive for unknown purposes (side note: also don't think we're ever getting a Allen vs Chaoji fight. If anything I see a lot of foreshadowing for a Krory vs Chaoji fight. Both keep getting more unhappy/angry w/the other). I'll be curious if there's repercussions for Excorcists attacking Allen.

That’s... a very good question actually. 

Like you say, I think every innocence is kinda sentient. And they all follow their own rules and own stuff. For exemple when I see how Lenalee’s innocence acts I can totally see a very bitter innocence being all “I chose you, I do all those things to protect you and you hate me? wow okay screw you try to survive without me for a few days, we’ll see how much you hate me when you need me huh.”In opposition to Miranda’s innocence that was so gentle with her and just went “shhhh no need to keep fighting i’m with you, i’ll make it easy for you and give you your wish” for exemple. 

Like there’s a lot to be said about each and every single’s innocence’s “sentientness”. Lenalee and Miranda are the best exemple because they’re complete opposite extreme, but if you look at the others too: Suman became a fallen because he told a Noah where to find others Exorcists while he was under threat of death. also if i remember there were talks about how he wasn’t 100% compatible with his innocence. So the innocence took the betrayal very badly. Meanwhile we have Kanda’s “fallen” statue slowly settling in, of the innocence more.... sending warning signals of “you’re playing too close with fire.”

(In fact Kanda’s innocence sentientness is interesting in the Alma arc: we see the science division tried to force the connection between the innocence and Kanda which the innocence hated enough to hurt Kanda. When Kanda was in tears, remembering his past, the innocence willingly approched him quietly. Perhaps like an old dog seeing his master back again after having been left on the side of the road, unable to trust anyone else, not being aware it wasn’t his master’s choice. If you feel my analogy there.)

I think those are the major ones where the innocence seems to be sentient on its own, without even mentioning the Heart or passive sentient-ness we might not know about.

And then we have CC, definitly the most sentient one of them all. An innocence which remained alive after being destroyed, which changed shape as Allen’s evolved, and, who despite Allen turning into a Noah, is somewhat still supporting Allen, even if it wavers sometimes. There’s something with this innocence that seems so.... Kind to me? As in, it’s understanding of Allen’s circumstances and is trying to help him, to adjust with him. It seems to have Allen’s wellbeing to heart.

Now like you say (bc i’m only just rambling and expending on what you say there kdjhfd) we have Apocryphos and the Heart. We KNOW the Heart can act on the innocences around it and changes them - the Earl says that the Heart had been retrived by the end of the Ark’s arc and that it “is creating dummies to hide itself among the others”. So the Heart is sentient enough to affect the innocences around it (and at this point Lenalee’s and Allen’s were the one who majorly evolved, and Krory’s was.. quite unusual too).

Apocryphos is made of pure Innocence. He works for the Heart. But it depends also how much he is actually connected to the Heart. 

You’re right tho that CC seems to warn Apocryphos, but it also doesn’t make a lot of efforts for Apocryphos to catch Allen either. it seems CC is really walking this line of “doing this for Allen’s sake” rather than against the Noah inside him or for Apocryphos’s sake. 

As for why.. how.... Who knows. But it is interesting to consider that the innocence mirrored the Earl. The huge cape around Allen echos the Earl’s suit, especially with how it warps around them, and the sword is an ultimate give away. We know Nea used the same sword before though and that’s where it becomes blurry - is the innocence doing that because of the Nea’s memories, because of the deep connection between Allen and Mana, or for another reason? 

So.. ye CC is definitly being weird, and we don’t know enough to truly nail down why it’s happening. But also I think that if CC knows about Allen’s connection to the Noah but also knows that Allen’s heart is pure of intention and that he wants to save people more than anyone else (a lot of people just want to stop the war, some had been wrapped into it against their will. Allen wants to save people, and want to save Akuma’s souls as well.). Therefore CC might trust Allen to be worth of all the kind of protection.

And that’s not to mention we don’t really know when this innocence appeared do we? Did Past!Allen have it or did the innocence find Allen after he grew younger? If the later: Why? Did it see Allen’s potential? If the former: How did Past!Allen get an innocence willing to go through all of this with him? What was Past!Allen’s deal?

So it’s. tricky. and i guess we wo’nt know more unless we gt more expended stuff on the innocence orz

(and you have a good point. Tbh I do think Chaoji and Allen are buidling up to something, not because of Chaoji’s recent development but because the turning point for Chaoji was when he was ready to let Allen to die when Allen tried to save Tyki during the Ark’s collapse. This is to me the moment that means they might face each other at some point because that beef was here for a while. But you’re right in term of recent events: Chaoji being on Allen’s track doesn’t seem to me lie it will have them face each other. It does seem to build up more toward Krory (and perhaps even the rest of the exorcists) to face Chaoji and refuse to give up on Allen. This would be one of the ultimate test of loyauty toward Allen. And lately with both Krory and Chaoji on Allen’s track, Krory who loves Allen so much and Chaoji who have resentment against him even before it was known he was part Noah - seems to make for a perfect foild for the time to come. But gods know what will happen then...)

Take care!

[treeplays]

spoilery Batman: The Telltale Series thoughts below….

With the Wayne family plot twist I like that they’re doing their own thing and not just rehashing for the billionth time. But at the same time they kindof… are… just rehashing for the billionth time. The only scene we have with young Bruce interacting with his family is this same scene we’ve seen every other Batman incarnation ever that everyone is sick of by now. So why not show other scenes in Bruce’s life with his parents or even give the player control over Bruce in these scenes? They drop the twist on you and then that’s just kindof it.. you see a tape w Thomas Wayne being evil and you hear from other people how he’s evil but that’s it. I actually WANT to feel invested here guys! It’s like with the other characters, I feel like I’m expected to automatically care about them just bc of who they are and not bc of actual interaction with them. Batman is hot for Catwoman bc she’s Catwoman, Bruce cares about Alfred bc he’s Alfred, Bruce broods about his family bc he’s Batman, etc etc etc. Like yeah ok I get it, but I want to care about THIS Alfred, I want to be conflicted about THIS Wayne family. And there wasn’t as much set-up as I’d have liked for the big moments to really matter as much as they should have.

I liked the thematic element of the Batman vs Bruce choices, also makes lots of room for divergence in the plot but then again they ran the risk of being repetitive by constantly repeating the same choice of Go as Bruce or Batman, and ofc we have the old problem of branches that don’t actually make a difference in the story. I’m probably repeating myself here but imo it’s fine and understandable for these types of games to be somewhat railroaded but the problem is when your “tailored” story is only actually “tailored” in one branch and super clunky and awkward in the other, it’s painfully obvious which route is the one the creators were expecting to you to take so the opposite route just feels purposely wrong. And I feel like this wouldn’t be a difficult problem to fix if closer attention was given to the flow of dialogue in relation to all previous choices and not just the one that the writers try prodding you into doing. (Which btw is a separate issue from bugs like Alfred chewing you out for supposedly beating up a guy you barely touched lmao. ughhhggggg)

And I’m a bit iffy on this repeat of The Wolf Among Us-style “good cop or bad cop” thing, I mean, it totally fits but it just feels so been there done that. And again irritating that just like in TWAU the game treats you like you’re being a ‘monster’ even when you’re not, regardless of whether it’s a case of bugged dialogue or just the feel of the plot in general. So by first episode’s end when I realized this was the road they were going down again where people are going to treat u like a baddie no matter what then I mean fuck it I’m going to brutalize the mobster anyway since that’s apparently the only valid choice, I just didn’t care anymore so it was just like screw this. And that sucks bc it just ruins the whole thing, the illusion of choice just gone and my investment goes completely down the drain.

I get that it makes for more drama or whatever and normally I would gladly comply, but not when the only difference is characters being pissy with you for a bit and then continuing on with no noticeable difference in the plot. In TWAU it worked better for me because there were situations where they make you genuinely WANT to give in and go the “bad/violent” route, but here it’s different. I don’t want to go around beating the shit out of mentally ill people lmao! Especially when it feels like TTG is actually putting more time and effort into villains’ tragic backstories than the terrible things that they’re doing right now. Idk maybe I just wasn’t paying enough attention I just wasn’t convinced that these people I’m supposed to want to beat up are actually that bad, I guess I just didn’t see the evil things they did because the entire time I was po’d that there was no “Hey Oz has a point!” option. It’s like Telltale is expecting you to be so invested in the “I’m Batman” role that they expect you to step right into the grimdark beat-em-up version without giving you a reason to.

I guess I have to give credit where it’s due here tho bc I did appreciate that we can also be compassionate like telling Harvey to talk to his therapist and chances to empathize like in the scene with the Vale kid, the Episode 5 Harvey confrontation, and in the end battle. I guess it’s really Oz here that I’m mostly thinking of, they just didn’t give me enough to reason to resent him as much as it seems you’re supposed to and there are barely any options to be nice to him. He’s introduced as an old friend and the conversation goes fine but suddenly in the next episode I’m supposed to believe that he’s a terrible person and I hate him? It just feels odd especially since the Wayne family plot twist comes so early that you know he’s right the whole time and yet you’re supposed to be all offended that he’s badmouthing your family when he’s actually 100% correct????

I actually really like the idea of interacting with the Joker before the whole arch-enemies thing, him and Bruce meeting each other before they interact as hero and villain is an interesting dynamic and gives a lot of meaning to their potential future encounters. I didn’t especially mind the plot convenience there bc i Mean, he’s the Joker lol. Although I have to admit I kindof facepalmed at the fact that he’s still just hanging out in Arkham even though no one knows who he is or where he’s from lol. That’s Arkham for you I guess.

I found it weird how in episode 5 Catwoman’s “betrayal” is treated like some big reveal but then shrugged off immediately and she just hands back the device to you no problem. No fight or quick time event and it was just a repetition of their previous interaction I felt like it was more anticlimactic than anything tbh.

Also kindof odd how Harvey becomes Two Face even when you choose to save him. I’d assumed he would just get the scarring another way but instead he gets the behavioral issue without the actual look which is a little weird when at one point the tv reporter refers to him as Two Face even tho his face is fine lol. 

And there again, the issue with the “tailored” story being only tailored for one branch, all the foreshadowing indicates TWOFACE INCOMING or BATMANxCATWOMAN HERE so it just feels anticlimactic when that doesn’t happen, and the plot line continues on very similarly anyway so it’s just like ok what’s the point then? That imo is what Telltale needs to work on most here, making their multiple storylines more cohesive and not so obvious which works best and is intended as the ‘default’ or 'right' choice.

[sometimesrosy]

Love can be scary but it shouldn't be in Bellamy&Clarke case when they could die any day at any time. What can be worse than losing your beloved one? I blame the writers for developing a "1 step forward 2 steps backwards" kind of relationship since they're using every trick to stretch out a love story that should already be happening and where CL should have never occured since, by loving L, Clarke betrayed Bellamy, her people and herself. The Clarke Griffin I learnt to love... 1/2

2/2 … would have never acted like this. Yes, I’m still mad at the writers and despite your confidence in BC becoming romantic this season, I still don’t trust them. They have messed up this story too much to earn my confidence.

Aww man, I’m going to have to take issue with multiple points you make.

First of all, falling in love with someone is always scary. You might feel the rush more than the fear, but it’s called “falling” for a reason. And it doesn’t have to be in the apocalypse. Normal love is just as scary.

And then, the fact that they can die any time does in fact make it more rather than less scary. Like you say, what could be worse than losing your beloved? Nothing! That’s why they would hold back from admitting or exploring it, because it’s terrifying and they both already have experience with losing the people they’ve been with… almost like they are cursed and whoever they are with dies. Nothing scary about that. 

You “blame” the writers for their one step forward two step back thing, but that’s a pretty standard romantic storyline. They didn’t develop it. It’s part of the conventions of the genre of a romance (which begs us to question their claims of it not being romantic.) A romance story without romantic obstacles is what we call “boring.”

You are also acting as if stretching out the love story is a problem, but there’s lots of us here who are enjoying the slow burn. Finding it more realistic and deeper than the quick relationships with less development. I might be impatient for kisses, but if they want to pull a Pride and Prejudice in the apocalypse, I’m not going to complain, because that’s one of the best love stories of all time. Plus, my desire to see them get together is put up in direct opposition to my desire to see them develop slowly and fight through the obstacles to get to each other, so it builds my own tension and investment in the story. 

Also I dispute your claim that CL should never have happened. Why not? It was an important story line, for political reasons, for literary reasons, for symbolic reasons, for character development reasons, and for romantic tension reasons. Just because you didn’t like it doesn’t mean it didn’t belong. It just means you didn’t like it. I didn’t like it either, but I can see the story being told and it’s part of Clarke’s story. And important. 

And Clarke didn’t betray Bellamy by loving L. Bellamy rejected her. They had no romantic relationship. She didn’t owe him her faithfulness. They were not together. She betrayed him by leaving and by choosing L as her political ally over Bellamy. That’s the betrayal. She didn’t come home and she aligned herself with L’s suspect motives. Not falling in love. 

And if you learned to love a Clarke Griffin who doesn’t come to understand, care for and love her enemies, you didn’t learn to love THIS Clarke Griffin, because the exact same thing happened in season 1 when Clarke allied with her enemy Bellamy Blake, came to trust and care for him and developed strong feeling for HIM. So where’s this Clarke Griffin you love so much who didn’t cross political lines to fraternize with enemy? Because she wasn’t on The 100. Ask Finn how he felt when she switched over to Bellamy’s side. I might actually add that she was trying to replicate her relationship with Bellamy with L, because that paid off so well, she thought that trusting L would turn out like trusting Bellamy did. It didn’t.

Messed up this story. No. They may have made some mistakes, but frankly, their biggest mistakes in season 3 were not with story. The story all fits together and develops very well. It’s crafted and all makes sense on multiple levels. And if you pay attention to the story as it’s shown onscreen, you can see all the things that people say weren’t shown, like WHY Bellamy did what he did (it was absolutely shown) and Clarke’s struggle in Polis, and what was going to happen with L. They spent too much time with some stories and it messed up the pacing and had us wallowing in a darkness that seemed like it had no end. But the light was STILL planned, and they still pulled it out. 

I’m sorry. I just disagree with everything you’ve just said. 

And the reason why I have confidence in Bellarke is because I’m looking at it in regards to the WHOLE story, s1.ep01 all the way up to this interminable hiatus. 

You’re looking at the Bellarke romance and expecting something from the story that is NOT this story. You keep saying it “should” be happening the way you want it to happen, and I don’t get this.  If you want a romcom or even a dramatic romance, you  must be VERY frustrated with this show, because it is neither of those things. It is what it is, and the more you accept it for that, the easier it is to see how the Bellarke romance is tightly intertwined with the non romantic storyline and leading to eventual canon Bellarke. 

Including all the the things that keep them from being romantic. If you follow the story, without your ship goggles, you can see that it is following a very clear, although stretched out, path to romantic Bellarke. Call it the scenic route. All the stories that happen along the way contribute to Bellarke development. If you take out all the things you say shouldn’t be there, Bellarke would not be as deep or rich or realistic.  So, here I am disagreeing with you again. 

Besides, if you want to ship Bellarke, you don’t need it to become canon. You can ship it anyway. I see it in the text. I ship it because I see it as an essential part of the story. You don’t agree with my interpretation, it doesn’t bother me. You don’t trust the writers or like the story? I don’t know why you’re still watching. You can always stop watching and then catch up after you find out that it does become canon, instead of putting yourself through the horror and anguish of “will they/won’t they”.

My confidence in the story doesn’t have anything to do with your own lack of confidence. But I wouldn’t be watching it if I didn’t like the story they were telling. That’s what it comes down to. I LIKE this show, and I LIKE Bellarke. I like the story THEY are telling and I’m not trying to make it into the story I want to hear, I’m trying to understand the story THEY are telling. They don’t owe me the story I think I deserve.