#but I suppose even the nexus in demon's souls is implied to be an “other” place that's not in the physical world

[death-rebirth-senshi]

I forgot just how much dark souls 3 in general, but the ringed city dlc especially, tests my patience for timey-wimey "the flow of time is convoluted" nonsense.

Makes me wonder how Elden Ring's dlc will handle this. Soulsborne dlcs generally involve time travel of a sort, usually unearthing a mysterious past; Ringed City uniquely transports us to the future in order to go to a past locked in time (?), Artorias of the Abyss has us get snatched through a time portal to the past by Manus, Bloodborne puts us in a nightmare/dreamed recollection of the past that exists preserved in an alternate plane.

Elden Ring seems like it might be gearing for something closer to that than actual time travel thank goodness, perhaps something akin to whatever the roundtable's deal is, maybe we'll figure that out.

[lazlolullaby]

Daredevil x Rise of the TMNT fic scribbles

I mean, the TMNT were originally riffs off of Daredevil to start with, why not mix them further?

Tl:Dr: swap Master Splinter and Baron Draxum for Stick. Feat. Warrior cats mindset! Catholic Matt. Matt is still screwed up, but now he's the semi responsible adult sibling to the Turtles. Found family wins again!

Lou Jitsu was on the Battle Nexus and refused to fight. Big Mama was pissed and she loaned him to Baron Draxum for experiments.

Baron was illegally working on super serum, had to take the jar of Mutagen across the Hidden City but decided to take a shortcut and go top side into NYC.

Then there's the car crash that Matt was involved in.

Baron gets word that his Mutagen got in contact with a human. At first he's like "oh NO I made a Powerful Human he is going to Lead all Humans to destroy the Hidden City!" Then Huginn and Muninn report back. "Oh. A child."

Lou, "A CHILD?!?"

"well. I suppose he's an interesting case study. We'll check in. If it doesn't kill him in the we train him."

so. After Matt's adjustment therapy, Lou and Draxum go and scope him out. Draxum is wearing a disguise medallion. Jack Murdock is absolutely pissed that these sly guys were the ones that were transporting the chemicals and very angrily prevents them from seeing Matt and testing him.

Matt is in the other room but can hear them argue. And he can hear Draxum's hoof feet even though they are disguised. Like any Good Catholic Child, he thinks a Demon is after him.

Later Jack gets murdered and he's placed at St. Agatha's with the nuns. Matt's senses get overwhelmed. Maggie finds the contact information for Draxum and Lou.

Draxum is like "YES! FREE SPY FOR THE EVIL HUMANS."

Lou is like, "oh. Sad kid that just lost his only parent."

So now Matt is getting a little screwed up with Draxum going, "You shall be my ultimate weapon!" And Lou going, "Lol, no. I'll train you to cope with your senses but it's really up to you to figure out who you are."

Some important conversations: "I prefer to call them Yokai. Demons imply they have a purpose and intentions of being evil. Yokai are just. Weird people, but still people." Matt doesn't particularly believe him, but Lou takes him to Senor Hueso's pizza, a few trips into safe areas of the Hidden City to acclimate him.

Matt, being a dramatic Catholic teenager, kind of just takes it like he's Dante from the Divine Comedy. Touring Hell. He's trying to not lose his religion while having his world shaken, and just shoves down any revelations very deep.

Matt honestly thinks Lou is a lost soul who made a deal with the Devil and is just trying to tempt him into making one as well. It's funny but also messed up. When Lou hears of this, he laughs but also. "Made my choices, spited my grandfather, lost a bit of myself."

Now Matt thinks Lou is a Fallen Angel trying to get back up/save himself by making sure Matt doesn't Fall.

Lou is having revelations about his childhood, what he was trained for. Matt, intentionally or not, is his "first kid" and there's some mistakes. Of course they're also tempered with Matt already had a normal single parent childhood.

Draxum is like, great first trial, I will ensure that my new batch of Mutant Warriors will not go blind. And hey! Lou, you are great with training! Do you want to name the second one of our new four turtle child warriors?

Lou, in fact, did not want to name one. He didn't want any kids growing up to be soldiers. So, like in ROTTMNT, he breaks free, gets mutated, steals the baby turtles, and runs. after a few days he's able to locate Matt.

Matt, who was waiting for too long with a long string of folded gum wrappers and origami. The turtles reach up out of his sling and start chewing on the paper. "I'm sorry to keep you waiting, Matt. Draxum's lab is destroyed. There are no more soldiers. You will not have to fight. It will be a long time before he can start again. I have to go."

"The soldiers?" Matt gently picks up a turtle.

"No. My kids. Your cousins, I suppose. Another version of the mutagen that affected you-" Matt touches his hands, feeling the sharp nails and fur, "also affects us."

A few days later Splinter ninjas a blank piece of paper in his pocket that he can feel a number on.

Matt calls Splinter every week. He has slightly less abandonment issues than comic canon Matt due to this contact. Nun Maggie helps him pick over the donation boxes for different colored blankets. "Oh. I'm just trying to help. He's better at sight than me and worse than you. He's color-coding his kids." Matt also likes to pick out donations for Splinter to take down into the sewers.

Splinter's nose is also affected by the mutation, so he makes sure their sewer home isn't too bad on the nose. The mildew he can live with.

Matt ends up babysitting the Turtles as well. He explained that "Splinter" was a guy that worked with him to help manage his blindness, and eventually he adopted several "special needs" children. The kids even call him to ask for advice when they need it.

Matt makes it to college and practices Spanish over the phone with Leo. Foggy knows about the calls, and sometimes does answer the phone and talk to the Turtles when Matt says it's fine.

Some special days in winter, they wrap themselves up in big coats and have snow days. It's Matt's job to pick up the hot cocoa, and one time Raphael went with him, all wrapped up so he can experience ordering too.

Foggy eventually does get brought into the secret, when the kids break into the college campus at night because "they miss him". Foggy was at first kind of shocked, tried to justify it as "right, he's blind he doesn't know-" and Matt's like, "Yeah they're turtles. There's weirder things that go on in NYC."

and Foggy just has a sudden lightning bolt "oh" moment. A distinct, repressed childhood memory of "a monster" casually arguing with his father at the family butcher shop. That was normal. Plenty of people argue at the shop.

Foggy calls his father the next day and they argue for a hot second. "They're New Yorkers! Paying customers! I'm not turning them out just because of fangs!" "But you didn't tell me?" Unrelated, but after that Matt somehow can't look at him without smirking.

Because the Turtles are getting more and more adventurous by the day, Matt does take some time to go collecting with them, taking them to Senor Hueso's. ("OH MY GOD, MATT IS THAT WHERE THAT WORM PIZZA CAME FROM?" "The man grows his own worms. I can't pass up that kind of quality." "You are terrible.")

Matt would absolutely have beef with Baron Draxum and probably mock up a Custody Battle between Draxum and Splinter if it came down to it. He is literally physical evidence that Draxum has been disobeying Hidden City laws.

...i really don't know what else to do with the premise aside from cute family things. I mean, Matt definitely is the Elder Cousin to the Turtles, Eldest Daughter syndrome in full swing putting a little pressure off of Raphael. But the plots for ROTTMNT and Daredevil probably wouldn't change.

Matt wouldn't involve Splinter or the Turtles in his fight against Wilson Fisk/the Hand because he thinks they still need a childhood. The Turtles didn't tell Splinter about Draxum's return or the Foot at all, why would they tell Matt? So aside from collateral damage, the story-lines don't really converge.

(yes Matt gets a Hamato Mystical Power Boost. No I don't know what it is.)

[gamesception]

Sception Plays Demon’s Souls, part 2: the Nexus

After getting killed by the tutorial demon, Sception awakes in “the Nexus”, revived by this yet unnamed eyeless firekeeper type lady.  I’m already aware from various internet discussions & videos that Demon’s Souls has a separate area that you have to teleport to via bonfire/lamp/i guess archstone in this game in order to level up, Like Bloodborne’s Hunters Dream and decidedly unlike Dark Souls where you can level up, repair items, and access your storage box at any bonfire within the world itself.

In particular I’m aware that Dark Souls 2, which I haven’t played yet, gets a lot of flack for this, even though literally every other game in the series except Dark Souls did it this way.  Personally I agree that the Dark Souls system, was probably better, what with avoiding loading screens taking you out of the experience, but it does strike me as unfair that DSII specifically gets a lot of hate for not measuring up to DS1 in this regard when the other games get a pass.

Anyway, yeah, this is the Nexus.  Not sure where the lady went, but might as well have a look around.

The very first thing I notice is that my health has been cut in half.  Yikes, that’s right, Demon’s Souls cuts your health in half when you die.  I’m pretty sure it comes back when you beat a boss, not sure if there’s an item to do it or if you can get it back after a successful corpse run.  On the one hand, that’s exceptionally harsh, but on the other hand it does give you an actual reason to open yourself up to invaders even when you don’t intend to summon help yourself.  Not that that matters for me, since the servers have been shut down so I can’t get invaded to begin with.  Oh for a Demon’s Souls remaster!

The game gives you your Dark Sign / Hunter’s Mark / Nexial Binding, to abandon souls and return to the checkpoint.  I don’t think using it counts as ‘dying’, so it seems much more relevant in this game as a last ditch effort to maintain your human form with its full HP bar, where as in Dark Souls or Bloodborne there’s not much point to it since you can just die for basically the same effect.

Anyway, looking around I immediately bump into my old buddy, the Crestfallen Knight.  He gets an elaborate cinematic introduction speech that I utterly fail to get a reasonable picture of, which both does a much better job of telling you exactly what you’re supposed to do next and - hopefully - establishes him as a somewhat important character who will maybe matter a bit more to the story this time around.  As this guy is one of the particular ‘references to the previous game’ in Dark Souls that I mentioned last time as a reason I’ve been excited to play Demon’s Souls, I’ll try to keep a pretty close eye on him.

For now, he’s kinda bluey glowey, which might mean to imply that he’s in ghost form and has died fighting the demons?  But then again I’m in ghost form and I’m not bluey glowey, so maybe not.

The other NPCs here aren’t bluey glowey either.  There’s Blacksmith Baldwin - sort of a gruff blacksmith.  It’s nice to have a blacksmith right off the bat, but I don’t have any upgrade materials, and don’t have the souls to grab anything from him besides a piece of healing grass.

And there’s Stockpile Thomas, who I is mournful and guilt-ridden after abandoning his family to flee the demons.  Kinda shitty of him, but he’s apparently not much of a fighter, so I’m not sure what else he could have done besides die with them.  Definitely sets the dark tone of the game.

There’s also this currently nameless lady despairing around the corner.  She thinks the demons are a curse from god for the people not showing King Allant enough respect.  Considering the plot narrator at the start of the game already told me King Allant is personally responsible for this mess, she’s on track for a bit of a rude awakening later on, assuming she’s an actual character and more than just window dressing. 

There’s also a bunch of dev notes on the floor awkwardly info dumping whatever the tutorial failed to teach you.

“Archstone of the Small King” is I guess the warp to the first level proper.

There are four other Archstones, and one broken one, but they’re not accessible yet.  I thought you could do the Demon’s souls levels in any order?  Maybe there’s an intended intro stage and the rest open up after that.

Actually, I can’t find the... I don’t know what to call her, the firekeeper lady either.  I assume you have to talk to her to level up?  Hrm.

Heading upstairs there’s an impressive view of the giant statue that overlooks the rest of the Nexus, but no other characters or anything.  Not much else to see or do for now, so I guess it’s off to the “Archstone of the Small King.”