#but hes a model and he can act decently/actually pretty well due to good directing

[xamaxenta]

Marco being an absolute joy to work with that most directors are very happy to accommodate the few requests he does have

Always euewuwhe over Marco requesting his first and last romantic lead costar to be male

Ace is presented to him and Marco realises just how seriously his manager and the casting team took his request, but also how did they know he was a fan of Ace Portgas

But also what alternative timeline are they diverging on because Ace is apparently a fan of his too oh no this is so embarrassing (in a good way)

First romantic role because he meets Ace, and its also his last because he meets Ace, he doesn’t think he could have this chemistry with anyone else and he couldnt anyway

Tldr they get married at the end when filming wraps up (it was a movie series so Ace shows up more than expected by popular demand, Marco was the popular demands)

Actor Marco supermodel Ace

[caffeinatedseri]

The Strength of Selfishness

Each character in BSD has a degree of selfishness or selflessness in themselves, but the way this concept is executed opens discussion on the nuance of “selfishness,” or specifically the flaws in believing selfishness is an inherently bad trait.

Atsushi

Atsushi fits the description of selflessness, but I’d argue that he’s actually more selfish than he thinks he is (keeping in mind that being selfish isn’t necessarily a bad thing).

Akutagawa points out how Atsushi will needlessly risk his life in order to protect others, which sounds like a pretty heroic act, but it comes with a cost. Atsushi isn’t invincible, especially at this point in the story when he hasn’t fully mastered his ability, but his insistence on protecting others puts him in constant danger.

At the end of the day, Atsushi would have a greater chance of surviving many of the dangerous situations he puts himself into if he was more selfish by protecting himself before others.

However, Atsushi is also somewhat selfish in his motivations for acting so virtuously. 

Once again, Akutagawa points out how Atsushi only acts this way because of his deeply rooted belief that he has to risk his life for someone else in order to give his life value. You could argue that Atsushi only saves others as an attempt to prove to himself that he’s worthy, an inherently selfish motive. If Atsushi actually died, he would be endangering the people he could save in the future.

Selfishness also includes self-centeredness. Particularly with Akutagawa, Atsushi’s tendency to focus solely on himself becomes especially noticeable. Atsushi constantly doubts himself and his strengths; he also ignores his privileges and the struggles of others, particularly when he can’t completely understand them — hence why he views Akutagawa so harshly but sees Kyouka and Lucy as people who need to be saved. 

Despite all of this, Atsushi still creates a positive impact in other people’s lives. His innately selfish motivation is what drives him to protect others, and he ultimately succeeds in doing that (case in point Kyouka and Lucy again). 

Akutagawa

Akutagawa is pretty similar to Atsushi in how his past led to his inevitably selfish motives, but his manifests in a different way. 

Akutagawa has to be selfish to protect himself, due to a mix of his past prior to joining the mafia and Dazai’s teachings that collectively reinforced the belief that if he’s weak, he can’t survive.

This results in Akutagawa taking other people’s lives, a direct contrast to how Atsushi saves others, in order to prove his worth as a strong individual that deserves to live. However, this sentiment narrowly crosses the line of hypocrisy when Akutagawa does the very same thing that he criticized Atsushi for: looking for value in his life through other people.

Akutagawa also unnecessarily risks his life in order to prove his strength, which is arguably more dangerous and selfish than what Atsushi does. 

When Akutagawa fights Hawthorne, he practically eggs on Hawthorne to kill him, or at the very least fight with the intent to kill. Akutagawa was also injured before entering this fight, so running away would’ve been all the more reasonable than continuing to fight.

Drawing another parallel to Atsushi, Akutagawa has that very same resolve of risking his life unnecessarily to prove his worth. 

It’s undeniable that Akutagawa has killed many people — which is arguably extremely selfish — and loss of life really isn’t something that I want to push as morally correct. However, I would like to push the idea of redemption: finding a way to escape this messy lifestyle. I sincerely doubt that the incessant cycle of killing is any good for Akutagawa, or that it’s the life that he wants to have. 

With Atsushi and Akutagawa, both of their character arcs will develop accordingly to this balance of selfishness and selflessness.

Ranpo

Ranpo is characterized in a slightly selfish way, but this mindset comes with good reason (relating to Ranpo’s past). 

When Atsushi was kidnapped, Ranpo places priority on protecting the agency. If he were to meddle with Atsushi’s problem, which was technically a personal issue, then the agency as an organization would be put at risk. This isn’t necessarily a “wrong” mindset, but it is self-centered.

Of course, this is one of many examples to showcase Ranpo’s arrogance, but his arrogance is actually a form of self-protection. 

“So his father knew, after all. He understood that Ranpo possessed an extraordinary gift. He knew his son had the special ability to observe, remember, and uncover the truth in the blink of an eye. That was why he sealed it away. He didn’t want Ranpo to go astray, to ever hurt others and make the world his enemy.  His father wanted Ranpo to learn virtue and what’s right just like any ordinary person until he had grown up with good judgment and knowledge.” —  LN 3, “The Untold Origins of the Detective Agency”

Before Ranpo met Fukuzawa, he was just a young, lost boy who didn’t recognize his extraordinary talents. His parents taught him to be modest to allow him to develop as a normal person, but he never truly understood who he was in comparison to other people because he was orphaned at a young age.

Thus, Ranpo had to embrace his superiority, in an albeit dramatic way, in order to accept the world and himself. If he believed that people weren’t as intelligent as him, then he wouldn’t have to hate himself for feeling like an outsider to a world he doesn’t understand. 

Similarly to Akutagawa, Ranpo’s selfishness isn’t born out of hatred or negligence for others, it’s simply a survivalist instinct. 

Dazai

Dazai’s case is a little trickier to define, but I feel that he’s changed a decent amount throughout the series. I’ve seen some people argue that Dazai only helps others because of Oda’s dying wish, which would make his motivations for doing so inherently selfish. This rings true for Dazai before becoming a part of the agency, but I’d say he’s changed a lot just from interacting with the other agency members.

Dazai’s shown to be capable of the selflessness that involves risking your life for others, but because he’s Dazai, he’s most likely never going to actually die (he has taken necessary precautions to make sure he doesn’t die like in Dead Apple). In this case, Dazai was willing to risk his life for intel from Fyodor, similar to how he got captured by the PM intentionally for intel on Atsushi.

What he says here is especially important: “Certainly, people are sinfully stupid. But what’s so wrong about that?” The Dazai that was once isolated from others, that lacked a sense of direction and purpose in life, has grown one step closer to finding that purpose.

It’s no secret that character to character relationships have a big impact on everyone in BSD, but it’s especially relevant for Dazai who’s growth comes from learning about human nature. He and Fyodor both share a level of super intelligence that ostracizes them from the rest of society, which consequently makes them incapable of understanding other people.

Dazai’s statement here just shows how he’s willing to look past people’s mistakes — yes, they may be sinful and/or stupid, but that’s just a part of human nature.

And in this case, he acts in a stupid way by risking his life for someone else. Yes, it may be stupid, but this selflessness is also a part of being human.

I’d also like to add that Dazai was somewhat selfish in leaving the PM so suddenly after Oda’s death. As an executive, he undoubtedly had some responsibilities to handle, and not to mention Chuuya who was dragged into the mafia because of him in the first place. However, leaving the mafia was ultimately better for his development, and you could argue that the PM is doing just fine with Mori remaining as the leader. Thus, Dazai is another example of how selfishness isn’t harmful in nature.

Mori

On the topic of Mori, he’s a character who outright acknowledges his selflessness as a necessity for the mafia’s advancement.

As I mentioned before, selflessness is a stereotypically heroic trait, but it’s flipped around in BSD. You see protagonists with greater selfish convictions than the antagonists, who live their life based on this idea of selflessness. 

Of course, just because Mori is an antagonist, this doesn’t mean that selflessness is an innately “evil” trait. In fact, this selflessness is how he grows his organization and gains respect from his subordinates. Mori’s selflessness is used for the benefit of everyone else in the PM (ignoring the obvious crimes that the mafia commits of course).

Oda

Oda is often seen as the role model example for a “good man,” in the world of BSD — which is true to a certain extent. We certainly know how he was selfless in a multitude of scenarios, from saving the orphans at the Dragon’s Head Conflict, to his resolve to not kill anyone, and his push for Dazai to leave the mafia. 

However, I’d like to discuss Oda’s selfishness. Oda was well-aware of Dazai’s issues during Dark Era, and he seemed like the only person who would understand Dazai at that level. Despite this, he still chose to die. 

“(Dazai) is just a child who’s too smart. Just a crying child who’s been left alone in the darkness, a world of nothingness far emptier than the world we can see.”

— LN 2, “Osamu Dazai and the Dark Era”

Oda is an idealist first and foremost; when reality fails to match his ideals, it becomes unbearable for him to continue living on. 

Oda was selfish in his conviction to die, because he knew he could’ve done more for Dazai, but he chose to leave him with a dying wish rather than staying with him to potentially fill that void of loneliness.

(I’d like to mention that Oda wasn’t wrong for his choice, because Dazai ended up on the right path in the end. It was simply an act of selfishness that ended for the better).

Kunikida

Kunikida is an idealist, much like Oda, but he also draws close to being a realist at certain moments.

Kunikida shares the same selfless resolve as Atsushi: to save everyone. His ideals seem unbreakable to the point where he would risk his life and succeed in the end no matter what, purely because he’s just that committed towards his goals.

This treads closely to Atsushi’s selfishness. In this case, for Kunikida, it’s somewhat a part of his self-fulfilling prophecy to make his ideals come true, but he acts selflessly because of these ideals that he believes in. 

An important thing to note here is Fyodor’s grin, because Fyodor — as an idealist — is well aware of the fact that the greater the ideals, the loftier these ideals become in reality. 

“By that very logic, then Miss Sasaki was not responsible for any of these recent events! She didn’t even want a world in which all criminals are rightly judged! She only— Tell me, Dazai! Was it right for her to die? Is this the ideal world I’ve sought for…”

— LN 1, “Osamu Dazai’s Entrance Exam”

At the end of the Azure Messenger Arc, Kunikida realizes the flaws in his ideals when he fails to uphold them. By trying to save both Rokuzou and Sasaki, he ended up losing the both of them. No matter how hard he tried to save them, there was no possible way for him to achieve the level of “justice” that he desired.

This teaches an incredibly valuable lesson to Kunikida that shifts his mindset towards a more selfish direction.

Kunikida’s experience leads him to teach Atsushi, another person strongly motivated by ideals, to not follow the same path as him. You could interpret this as a sign of Kunikida’s declining resolve, but I prefer to view it as another form of self-preservation.

Kunikida very well understands the pain that comes from not meeting his ideals, which could easily affect to Atsushi considering how difficult it would be to save Kyouka.

The scene in which Kunikida goes to save Atsushi parallels what Kunikida told him previously: “Your boat can only carry one person. If you let someone beyond salvation come aboard, you will only drown together.”

Notice how Kunikida is in a boat with plenty of space, but out of fear that his ideals won’t be upheld, he’ll lower them to an lesser standard. Instead of trying to save two people, he settles for one, despite the fact that he has the capacity for two. 

This instance is a moment of selfishness from Kunikida, an act of self-preservation to prevent the inevitable pain that comes with unmet ideals. 

However, Atsushi subverts his expectations by pushing himself to save Kyouka regardless of his sinking boat, because Atsushi’s own ideals motivate him to do so. Kunikida teaches Atsushi to be careful with the balance of selfishness and selflessness; Atsushi teaches Kunikida the beauty in being selfless.

[crystalkleure]

I have a Concept.

BeyBurst beyblades are supposed to burst. As in, it’s actually a necessity. In spite of the Exploding Beyblade mechanic potentially causing sharp little bits of spintop to go flying everywhere and hit people, what if it’s actually a safety feature?

If I recall correctly, all the way back in s1 territory [specifically in the manga though, can’t remember if we saw it in the anime or not], Valt and Shu just straight-up got their original beys from a store. And there are also all of those Unimportant Characters running around with different-coloured versions of preexisting beys. This indicates that beyblades are, in fact, mass-produced and sold in stores, and those are all built to be able to burst. In fact, I still haven’t seen the newest two seasons of the Burst anime yet, but I’m pretty sure super special fancy custom beys, that some important character explicitly made themself, that have some really creative [and strong] anti-burst features built into them, don’t ever show up as NPC recolour beys? In spite of the trend of “random background characters in new season use recoloured versions of Prominent Character beys from LAST season” to me seeming to indicate that those new recolour beys are either bootleg copycats, or those actual official shelf models have just suddenly started selling really well, due to someone having just recently done something cool with one in a tournament/on TV lol. [Anyway, correct me if I’m wrong on which beys get NPC recolours, I don’t exactly actually, uh, pay attention to all the random background scrubs. That point’s not particularly important anyway because I’m sure unofficial bootlegs are a thing that exists, mmmm delicious plagiarism. The point is the stores seem to sell beys with the normal level of burstability. And so I’m only caring about the everyday random NPCs with no names or anything, if another important character specifically goes and painstakingly recreates a bey similar or identical to another important character’s bey just because they idolize that other character, that doesn’t count. That’s not important here, implication-wise.] So...

What if it’s actually a really bad thing that people keep making their own custom beys now that are increasingly more and more ludicrously difficult -- or even near-impossible -- to burst?

What if the self-destruct mechanic is intended to be an emergency shutdown switch, and actually really needs to not be subverted? We’ve seen what an adept beyblader can do while running at full-throttle -- they’re dangerous, to themselves and their surroundings. Beys have the power to be obscenely destructive...while they’re spinning and battling, primarily. They are by far the most potent while actively in use. But if they hit things too hard like 3-4 times or so...they burst. Their locks disengage, they fall apart, and thus they are forced to abruptly stop. That makes them theoretically incapable of just rampaging indefinitely.

Picture this: One day, in the probably-decently-distant history of the BeyBurst world, a kid has a spintop. Probably made that spintop themself. This kid, it turns out, happens to be one of the Super Special Powerful Kids, who’s not only REALLY GOOD at using that spintop, they also possess that funny little supernatural ability to accidentally create an incredibly powerful incorporeal monster ghost creature thing with their brain. And because they love playing with their little spintop so much, that spintop becomes the vessel for this Terrifying Monster-Shaped Culmination Of Spiritual Elemental Energy or whatever that they’ve manifested. That’s...good, probably, because at least that means the Scary Monster Thing isn’t 1. just stuck in the kid’s brain with nowhere else to go, which would lead to possession that would decidedly be incredibly difficult to deal with without harming the kid, or 2. funneled into something more dangerous to control, like a car or a nuclear warhead or some shit. But then it turns out that the kid is ABSOLUTELY still able to wreak impressive havoc and cause Large Amounts Of Destruction, even accidentally...until the spintop stops spinning. The Power Level drops dramatically as soon as the demon top is still, and it takes a little while for it to build back up once it’s launched again. But what if a feature is implemented into the spintop that allows it to keep spinning for much, much longer? Or just The Supernatural Monster Power itself becomes capable of sustaining it, through wind manipulation or something?

Now, imagine you’re idk, the government or something, someone with Power and Influence over the masses, and you see THAT happen. Shit, that was just a random kid that did that! Looked like any other kid, acted like any other kid! There is no feasible way to tell a kid with Brain Monster potential apart from other kids who are NOT That Powerful, until a brain monster happens. So, if you can’t predict it, and thus can’t do anything to mitigate the potential destruction on a case-by-case basis...well, how about you convince ALL the little kiddies that spintops are just the greatest thing ever, everyone should play with spintops, AND you ensure those spintops are mass-manufactured specifically to not be able to Hold A Charge for too long because...they burst! You’ve designed them so that violence itself causes them to fall apart and stop to cool down! It’s perfect! That way, anytime an odd mutant child with Brain Monster powers comes along, the chance of them funneling their Brain Monster into their spintop is now Very High, meaning that all the Brain Monsters will hopefully end up inhabiting these little plastic toys that actively inhibit them instead of possessing children or nukes. It’s brilliant!

This does raise some questions, though:

1. What happens when someone’s spintop breaks, and they DON’T get it repaired, after they’ve already manifested a Brain Monster to live in it? Where would the Brain Monster go in that case? Uh oh, demon on the loose? Exactly what we were trying to avoid? Shu’s change between Legend Spriggan and Spriggan Requiem in God does seem to indicate that the Brain Monster probably 1. by default, does just camp out in its blader’s brain until a new Spintop Vessel is created for it, and 2. the Brain Monster itself is probably not actually completely strictly sealed into any bey, because it doesn’t disappear as soon as the bey is destroyed, and it doesn’t stay with an old/broken bey that’s been discarded when a new bey has been made for it. Legend Spriggan was discarded and left on the riverbed, and Spriggan Requiem was then made from scratch, seemingly using no recycled physical parts from Legend Spriggan, but Spriggan Requiem’s bitbeast looks only very slightly different from Legend Spriggan’s. All of Shu’s Spriggans are honestly probably still the same creature, just progressively evolved. I don’t think we’ve ever seen somebody make an entirely NEW Brain Monster that does not resemble their original one, it seems the original simply gets developed more and more. One person apparently only possesses the ability to make a single individual Brain Monster. You Get One (1), but you can upgrade it. But what about Hearts? His Dead Hades, which very much had a Brain Ghost in it, was not only destroyed, but assimilated into Phi’s Revive Phoenix, to make Dead Phoenix. What happened to that situation, over time? We haven’t gotten to see. Is Hearts’ Hades truly actually fused with Phi’s Phoenix, ceasing to be its own entity anymore, or does Phoenix simply very slightly resemble Hades now due to its bey being upgraded with physical bits of Hades’ bey? What if it’s not even POSSIBLE to truly fuse Brain Ghosts, especially without consent? In which case...is Hades itself just lingering around back in Hearts’ brain, waiting for a new bey to inhabit, and Hearts isn’t making one because he doesn’t realize Hades isn’t just Part Of Phoenix now? That sounds potentially dangerous, there’s no more outlet for your Brain Ghost, buddy. I want to see Phi and Hearts again, to know what eventually happened there.

2. Why do the tournaments not actually enforce a rule that says “Your bey HAS to be able to be reasonably burstable”? Chouzetsu Wings and the Mugen Lock System did not equal disqualifications. Has it maybe, over time, been forgotten exactly WHY we Need Beys To Burst? Well, that’s a ticking time bomb, then. How difficult a bey is to burst does seem to directly cause its Potential Destructiveness Levels to scale accordingly. [With somewhat of an exception of Pot and his Pegasus, but it should be noted that Pot was not exactly terribly serious about beyblade initially and yet was STILL considered one of the strongest ‘bladers in the world, GT3 iirc, AND he’s very into the whole “Love and light, chillax, be in-tune with yourself and all the energy in and around you, etc.” peaceful thing.] This HAS To Be A Problem. Why is nobody concerned.

3. ...What is causing the general public not to panic about this? Why are people okay with Brain Ghost and Mass Spintop Destruction happening, instead of terrified? This shit is broadcast on TV. The stands during tournaments are packed with spectators. It may be that perhaps not everybody can SEE the Brain Ghosts themselves [and I’m skeptical about that, because there have absolutely been MANY indications that other people know what someone’s bitbeast looks like], but the Big Bada Booms they cause are DAMN sure Highly Visible. Aiga’s father seems to be the only one truly properly concerned about the incredible mass-destructive potential of the spintops. Realistically, The Salem With Trials 2: Electric Boogaloo should be happening due to the Scary Spintop Kids being Fucking Scary, and sometimes quite clearly even out-of-control of themselves.

Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure this is not a direction canon will ever go in, or I think it would have already done it. I don’t think they’re going to explore this route. It’s a shame I don’t have the chops for writing long-haul fanfiction, because if I did I would absolutely be hardcore capitalizing on this idea. This has incredible Worldbuilding Lore Potential.

[crusherthedoctor]

Can we have some unpopular Sonic opinions?

I tried to cram in a lot, so I hope this satisfies you. :P I tried to stick to the ones that I haven't brought up quite as often, since by this point, we all know that I think IDW's storytelling is dire, SA2's story is overrated, X Eggman is an embarrassing portrayal (at least from season 2 onwards), Blaze shouldn't be handcuffed to Silver, Shadow's backstory had issues with or without the Black Arms, Neo Metal Sonic looks silly, etc. But anyway, here we go:

- Knuckles may be tricky to incorporate into plots that don't relate to Angel Island, but making him obsessed with his duties is no better than having him forget about Angel Island entirely.

- I like Marine, and never found her annoying. Oh, I understood what they were trying to do with her, but I honestly wasn't put off by her, and found her Aussie lingo more endearing if anything. Since her debut was during the period in my life where where I couldn't stand Sonic himself, I instead thought he was irritating (and hypocritical) for getting annoyed with her for doing shit he would often be guilty of.

- Silver is just as guilty of being shoehorned into games and plots as the Deadly Six are. Having more fans than the latter is irrelevant, since we're still talking about a character who constantly has to time travel in order to be present.

- Speaking of Silver, if he has to stick around, please do something different with him. They've pulled the doomed future routine multiple times now, and it's been boring every single time. I wasn't interested when it involved Iblis. I wasn't interested when it involved Knuckles drinking the edgy Kool Aid. I wasn't interested when it involved a council of dumbasses... give it a rest already.

- The Tails Doll can work as a mildly creepy thing, with maybe more to it than meets the eye when it's time for a boss fight or what have you. But the memes about him stealing your soul are just dumb, and I thought it was dumb even back in my teenage youth.

- “Eggman is supposed to be clownish!” Yeah, well he's also meant to be a genuine villain with a 300 IQ. These qualities don't have to be mutually exclusive.

- “Sonic is supposed to have attitude!” Yeah, well that's not the same thing as being an absolute cunt. Sonic was only ever meant to come off as having an edge compared to Mario. He was never meant to be a GTA-tier protagonist.

- Rouge is not a villain, and never was a villain. Literally the whole point of her role in SA2 was to reveal that she was working against Eggman and Shadow the whole time, albeit using sneakier tactics to do so. You'd think all those people who exult SA2's story would remember this, but apparently not. She barely even qualifies as an anti-hero, since aside from stealing the Master Emerald, she rarely does anything morally questionable otherwise. She's got a lot more good in her than people give her credit for.

- Captain Whisker is a better Eggman Nega than the actual Eggman Nega. And as far as robot characters in this franchise go, Johnny's design is pretty underrated.

- I don't like Iblis or Mephiles, but I DO like Solaris, and it annoys me that it was out of focus for most of the story due to all the time spent on its less interesting halves. Had they kept the backstory with the Duke and his experiments, and worked from there, I think they could have provided an interesting contrast with Chaos (since Solaris can also qualify as a monster with a sympathetic backstory) instead of recycling the surface level schtick.

- Black Doom may technically be just as bad as Mephiles, Nega, Scourge, Mimic, etc, since he's yet another villain with one-note characterization and fucked over Eggman. But because he never gained a disproportionate fandom, he doesn't annoy me to the same extent. It's easier to ignore him by comparison, and his Dr. Claw voice and face shaped like a lady's delicate part make him enjoyable to mock.

- Likewise, while Lyric is also on the same level as these other villains, it's easier to dismiss him because I was never invested in the Boom games anyway, and being an obvious alternate universe (compared to Sonic X or IDW, which retain the Modern designs and plot elements), it never had an effect on the main series. I also unironically like his design, and if nothing else, at least this snake didn't start a hypnotism fetish across the internet.

- Sally - and the rest of the Freedom Fighters for that matter - have had their importance in the franchise severely inflated. They may have been lucky to be the face of popular media (SatAM and Archie), but they're not these magnificent entities that the game characters are but a speck of dust in comparison to. Having a “legacy” doesn't make them more entitled to shit than any other character, old or new.

- Conceptually, the treasure hunting gameplay is one of the better alternate gameplay styles IMO. But it was let down in SA2 by its one track minded radar (the levels may have been big, but I don't think that would have been an issue on its own if the radar was better). If they brought it back and made it more like SA1's treasure hunting, I'd be all for it, although it would probably be better suited for a spinoff title.

- This goes for a lot of games, but when it comes to 2D, I prefer sprites over models. Not that the Rush models are bad (though the ones in Chronicles sure as fuck are), but the sprites in Mania and the Advance trilogy are just so charming and full of character.

- I actually like Marble Zone. Yeah, the level design is a bit blocky, but I love the concept of an underground temple prison, mixed with lava elements in a zone that otherwise isn't a traditional volcano level.

- I also like Sandopolis Zone. Again, completely understand why it's not the most popular zone around, but I've been a sucker for the Ancient Egyptian aesthetic since childhood (you can thank Crash 3 for that), and Act 1 is visually stunning.

- I prefer the JP soundtrack for Sonic CD over the US version overall... but I also prefer Sonic Boom over You Can Do Anything.

- SA2's soundtrack isn't bad by any means - I love Rouge's tracks, and The Last Scene is one of my favourite pieces of music - but as far as variety goes, it's a step down from SA1's soundtrack.

- If Sonic X-Treme had been released, it probably would have been unenjoyable and confusing. Whatever your thoughts on SA1, it was probably the better option between the two as far as Sonic's first legitimate translation into 3D goes.

- I have no qualms with Modern Sonic and the other Modern designs and characters, but I also fully acknowledge that changing gears from Adventure onwards - and doing it with a great amount of fanfare - was always going to create one of the biggest divides in the fandom, and fans shouldn't act surprised that this happened. The fact that they felt the need to hype up a new design and direction in the first place (compared to Mario, who has mostly been the same since the beginning, with only the occasional minor change with little fanfare) also indicates that they weren't confident enough in Sonic and his universe being the way it was, which often gets ignored by all the “SEGA have no confidence!!!” complaints you see with their recent games.

- Unleashed did not deserve the incredibly harsh reviews it received back in the day... but it doesn't deserve its current sacred cow status either. It had more effort put into it than '06 to be sure, and I can respect that, but much of it was misguided effort, and even if you like the Werehog, you have to admit that the idea came at the absolute worst time. The intro cutscene may be awesome, as is the Egg Dragoon fight, but 2% doesn't make up the entire game. Chip was also quite annoying, and I wasn't particularly sad when he pressed F in the chat at the end.

- On the other hand, while Colours definitely has its shortcomings, and people have every right to criticse those shortcomings, a lot of its most vocal detractors tend to have a stick up their arse about the game because people actually enjoyed it, and it had a gimmick that people actually liked. Yes, it may have been the first game to have those writers everyone hates, but then SA1 was the first game to give the characters alternate gameplay styles and have other villains upstage Eggman, so...

- Forces is absolutely not on the level of '06. It's nowhere close. A game being flawed does not make it the next '06, clickbait YouTubers. Or should I say, the game they want to retroactively apply '06's reception to, since they've been trying hard to magically retcon '06's own quality...

- To echo @beevean, ALL of the 3D stories have their issues. SA1 is probably the most well-rounded of them on the whole, but even that one isn't perfect.

- To echo another opinion, although I do love SA1, I'm not crazy over the idea of a remake, and would prefer them to just take Sonic's gameplay from SA1 and work from there. Because with a remake, you're stuck in a hard spot: Do you keep it the way it is bar the expected graphical upgrades, and risk accusations of not doing anything to actually improve the experience? Or do you try to address past criticisms, and risk the wrath of the fans who will inevitably go on a #NotMyAdventure crusade about it? What people fail to consider is that the Crash and Spyro remakes were accepted gracefully because their original iterations were still unanimously beloved for the most part, whereas SA1 - and especially SA2 - have always been divisive, and have only gotten moreso over the years.

- People take their preferences for the character's voice actors too seriously. I have my own favourites like anyone else, but I don't make a big deal out of it.

- And with fandom voice actors, they usually focus too much on doing a basic impression of their preferred official voice actor, and not enough on the acting. So you end up getting a lot of fan voices who sound like decent impressions of Ryan Drummond or Jason Griffith on the surface, but they sound utterly empty beyond that impression, because there's no oomph or depth to the actual emotions. They think about the actor rather than the character, when it should really be the other way around.

- The thing with Ian Flynn is that he is capable of telling a decent story, and he can portray some characters well. But he's proven time and time again that everything will go off the rails if he's given too much freedom (ironic, given how quick he is to point the finger at mandates when something goes wrong).

- Ian Flynn and Shiro Maekawa are not the only people in the world who are allowed to write for Sonic. I understand that one should be cautious when seeking out new writing talent, but for all the fandom's accusations of playing it safe, they sure aren't in a rush to experiment outside of their own comfort zone.

- And of course, the big one: You don't fix the franchise's current problems by crawling back to its previous problems. It's much more helpful and constructive to discuss the good and bad alike with each of the games. Less “THIS GOOD, MODERN BAD”, and more “This could work, but maybe without that part...”

[going-dead]

A Bit of Space

@phantomsnfae Happy Christmas truce! I wanted to post this either on Christmas or new years but it wasn’t finished by Christmas so happy new decade! You asked for astronaut Danny so here it is! I threw in a dash of Grey Ghost for you as well!

____________________________________

“Danny you need to calm down.” Valerie chided trying to calm her boyfriend down over the phone.

Danny tapped his fingers on his leg. “I can’t calm down Val! What if I mess something up? It’s already a miracle that I got a job at NASA, but to pass the training and be selected to be part of the astronaut program? I can’t mess this up.”

Danny could hear Valerie roll her eyes. “How could you mess this up? You’ve already died once anything else should pale in comparison.”

“First off ouch. Secondly what if I can’t handle small spaces? Or freak out in zero gravity? What if I don’t know enough and I don’t get admitted, or I’m not fit enough?” He worried.

Valerie gave a small sigh. “You really are dumb aren’t you? How many times have you been trapped in your own thermos, and you can fly. You’ve been studying for ages and after six years of fighting ghosts on an almost weekly basis I don’t think you have to worry about being fit enough, maybe too fit though. You will be fine” 

Danny had to agree with that logic, but it didn’t do much to calm him down. He gave a quick goodbye and hung up the phone. He was on a lunch break at the moment and the pause between the testing and training was allowing him to start worrying again. He took a deep breath and headed back into the fray. Now that the break was over it was time for the practical portion. 

The person observing him for testing, Anne, waved him over. Standing next to her was a man Danny didn’t recognize. “Johnathan this is Daniel, Daniel this is Johnathan you two will be partnering for this next portion.”

Johnathan reached his hand out and Danny took it. “You can just call me John, I’m assuming you go by Dan?” 

Danny flinched at the name but quickly replaced it with a smile. It may have been years ago, but the memories of his alternate future self still haunted him at times. “Actually Danny is fine. Nice to meet you John.” 

Anne lead the two over to what looked like a small medical station. “Now before we begin we’re going to give you a small physical. Nothing big don’t worry just to get baselines and make sure nothing is wrong before we start.” She motioned for Danny first. 

Danny sat down in the chair provided, suddenly wondering when he last had a physical that wasn’t from a doctor who he could explain his abnormalities off  as simply the long term effect of living with ghost biologists. Because he was pretty sure, despite being a government agency, NASA wasn’t in the know about the paranormal. So thinking back it was never, he had never been to a doctor outside of Amity Park. Looked like it was time to panic again.

The doctor who Danny didn’t get the name of and wasn’t wearing a name tag, or maybe she was but Danny was too busy panicking to notice, put an automatic blood pressure cuff on his arm. She looked at the screen brows furrowed and tried again. “Hmm weird, must be acting up. No worries we’ll just do it manually.” Danny at this point was now really panicking. She took his vitals again and looked more satisfied. “Blood pressure and pulse are a bit on the lower end but that’s probably partially due to you being smaller.” 

Danny sighed internally, of course his pulse when he is on the verge of a panic attack would be a below average rate for a normal person. When she took his temperature he focused all his power on dampening his core as much as possible. Thankfully the rest of his physical, and all of John’s went smoothly. Finally it was time to start. Anne lead them to a medium sized chamber. Danny recognized it instantly, it was an invention his parents made a few years back trying to recreate a ghosts flight ability. They never were able to control the direction the floated in or stop at will effectively just making a zero gravity chamber, so they scrapped it. Apparently the word got out and NASA picked it up. 

Danny and John entered the chamber ropes wrapped around both their waists. Anne’s voice came over the intercom and let them know she was turning on the machine. Soon enough the two were floating. It was definitely different from flying, but easy enough to adapt around. It did take a decent amount of willpower to not use flight to move around, his mind convinced that he was floating willingly. Danny pushed off the walls laughing, it was fun not being in control of exactly where he would float. He looked over to John who wasn’t fairing as well as Danny. He was currently upside down flailing around trying to get to a wall. Danny braced himself against a wall and pushed off to go help the other man. 

It was over all too soon for Danny. When he left the chamber Anne looked at him impressed. “You handled that quite well, most candidates have a similar experience as John did.” She laughed. Danny smiled and rubbed the back of his neck. He didn’t say anything, he wouldn’t be able to reasonably explain how he was calm with complete weightlessness. 

When Anne started leading them to the next task John walked up to Danny. “I was fine I did not need your help.” He growled.

Danny was a bit taken aback. “Woah dude calm down, I was just trying to help. You looked like you were struggling a bit. Plus you heard Anne, most people react like you did.” John just scoffed and sped past him, bumping his shoulder as he did. Danny rolled his eyes, and here he thought he’d be done with bullies after high school. 

They arrived at a model of a rocket cabin. Anne explained that they’ll be sitting in it for a few hours to see how well they respond to both the small space and the fake simulations she’ll be running. 

“Wait how long will be in in there exactly though?” John asked looking the cabin up and down.

“Depends on how well you do.” She answered ushering them in. They strapped themselves into the seats and braced themselves for what was to come. Looking around it was definitely a bit cramped, but he could shift around so it was a million times better than being in the thermos. They ran through a few scenarios, like what take off would be like. Both men fared well. 

Anne let them out after a while with an approving hum. “Good job you two. That's all for today, I’ll see you both again tomorrow for the rest of your evaluation.” She bid them farewell. She looked down at her phone and furrowed her brow. “Actually Danny do you mind staying for a bit longer?” 

Danny nodded his head hanging back. Anne lead him back to where the doctor from earlier was. She looked up from her clipboard and smiled. “Welcome back Mr. Fenton. I was just looking at your chart and was wondering if we could double check some things?”

Danny tensed up but nodded. “Uh yeah sure, everything alright?” He asked as another doctor walked in with a cart. 

“Yes of course we just noticed a few odd things with your results. I’d feel better with a second opinion on.” She gave a smile as the new doctor came over and shone a light in his eyes. 

“Ah hey!” Danny yelled blinking his eyes rapidly. 

The new doctor at least looked a bit sorry. He gave a warning before shining the light into Danny’s eyes again. He placed a stethoscope over Danny’s chest, and also tested his reflexes. “Mr. Fenton do you happen to have any medical history we should know about? Or perhaps anything that runs in your family by chance?”

“Uh no?” Danny looked over at Anne who was now looking at his chart with wide eyes. 

The doctor looked almost disappointed in him, before the three of them sent him off. Leaving Danny feel anxious and paranoid. 

The incident was never brought up again. A while after all this started, Danny was finally in space. He had just arrived in the space station a few days earlier along with John. He had gotten acquainted with the rest of the crew and was currently eating lunch. Suddenly the space station shuddered and alarms started to blare. Danny and the other five crew members looked at each other before another shudder. 

A loud voice blared through the speakers. “HAHAHA! I TECHNUS HAVE TAKEN OVER THE SPACE STATION! FROM HERE I WILL BE ABLE TO RULE THE COSMOS!” Danny was going to scream. It had been months since he’d had to deal with a ghost at all, and now he had to deal with one not only in space but one who could take control of the life support? Not to mention in a space where he would not be able go ghost in privet. 

The lights flickered, he sighed. He at least hoped he’d get out of this without being captured and experimented on, he knew he’d be out of a job at least. He gave one last look at his cremates. “In advance, sorry. Please don’t try to kill me.” He took a calming breath and reminded himself to not re-kill Technus. “I’m going ghost!” He yelled out as two white rings bisected him, replacing clothes with a black and white hazmat suit, blue eyes with toxic green, and black hair with glowing white. 

He flew through the wall of the station out into open space. “Hey Technus! Mind giving me a bit of space for once?” Technus materialized next to him. “AH PHANTOM!” If ghosts could sweat Danny was pretty sure Technus would be. “I DID NOT EXPECT YOU TO BE HERE, UHH.” He looked at the watch on his wrist. “LOOK AT THE TIME, I HAVE TO GO… UH MAKE DINNER!” He vanished. Danny was grateful he was now powerful enough that most ghosts knew to just leave if he showed up.

Danny reluctantly flew back into the station and reverted back to a human. Giving his crew mates an uncomfortable grin.   

“Holy shit that was awesome!” 

“Woah what was that dude?” “Are you an alien?” “Of course he’s not an alien, he flew through the wall. He’s a ghost!”

They all clambered about asking him questions. Danny smiled as he answered the questions. He had a feeling his secret, job, and organs were safe with them.

[supergenial]

Cindered Shadows was pretty decent

I recently finished the Cindered Shadows DLC and decided to once again write about my impressions, don't worry though, this one isn't as long as the previous ones. Spoilers: I think this is as good as fire emblem is gonna get for a while.

1) No Agarthans, thank GOD

A story as old as fire emblem: There's an interesting human villain with down to earth motivations or obsessions, but in the large scale of the story they're overshadowed by a supernatural being who wants to destroy the world for no reason other than "they're just evil". This is Edelgard and the Agarthans, Arvis and Manfroy/Loptous, Rudolph and Duma, Ashnard and Ashera, Walhart and Grima... you get it. This shit sucks to put it bluntly. Having these stereotypically evil bad guys who are clearly evil is one of the main things that brings down the plot of any fire emblem game. I'm of the belief that they should kick out these supernatural villains and just leave us against the human villains, the one's with actual ideals and beliefs other than "hurr durr, destroy the world".

And then there’s our villain for this DLC. Now yes, it feels like they recycled a certain professor from the Harry Potter series, but I like that he is "The" bad guy for the DLC, he's not being controlled by anyone. He's obsessed with Byleth's mom and in-game this makes a lot of sense. If Byleth, who is incapable of communication, can drive people crazy for them just by existing then just imagine a Byleth who can actually talk. Her "waifu" charms must be off the charts, so I can't blame this guy for being obsessed. More importantly he's not being controlled by the Agarthans, he's not being played by anyone. He's a man who's lived a righteous life, he took care of a lot of people who all love him but ultimately decided to use them for his own gain and his own obsessions. As far as FE villains go... He's good, honestly, great job Intelligent Systems, I expected a lot less.

2) Reduced avatar wanking

Shots fucking fired

Sure, Byleth's mom is a main focus of the plot, and Byleth is the one who sets the plot in motion, but rarely does it feel like the game is going "gee Player, you're so great, you're our god, we all love you and want to marry you". Byleth still plays a large role sure (unfortunately) but it still feels like this is the story of Yuri and his gang with Byleth being their strategist which is, idk, way better than the idea behind the main game? The one where Byleth turns into a literal god, gets every achievement of the army attributed to them only, has every other conversation remind us how glorious Byleth is, etc.

In fact the dlc goes as far as having Hapi constantly belittle Byleth and even make fun of their communication skills by calling him Chatterbox (good job to the localizers, she doesn’t say this in the japanese audio). Get that teacher’s ass girl, destroy them. (Obviously I would hate this behavior if it was directed to someone else, but in this case I'm willing to make a concession).

3) Yuri's backstory

Ashe: I admire and love this man who is my only parental figure but Rhea said he's kind of bad so I killed him Yuri: Church ordered me to kill a bunch of thieves and delinquents and I refused

You have no idea who much I love the fact that Yuri is someone who protested his orders and got kicked out of the church for refusing to kill civillians. This instantly sends him very high in my rankings. Playing through the first half of the game all I wanted was to stop and say "No, Lady Rhea, fuck you. I don't think it's very cash money for the most powerful military force in the continent to eradicate a lightly armed militia of farmers (with popular support in their locality!)" this is what true imperialism is all about! But there is sadly no option for that.

Just by telling us that Yuri is someone who was punished for saying "No, these orders are inhumane, I refuse to carry them out" that is enough for me, the game is saying "yes, we know, have your compensation price". In the end Yuri is extremely loyal to Rhea which is unfortunate but hey, at least they lampshaded one of the most glaring issues I have with the main game, so that's at least something.

4) "You've obtained all information. Proceed with the story, NOW"

Rather than wasting time forever thinking up which activity I should carry out, abyss is simply a place where you talk to the abyssal denizens to get some plot information or speculation, and boom, you're done. No running around forever, no quests, no doors that take ages to load. You can perfectly skip the abyss parts and at most you'll miss out on Edelgard's conversation with Dimiri (which is fucking hilarious) and a few rusted weapons that can be forged but that's it. Upon talking to every resident of the abyss the game will actually say you’ve acquired all information and will prompt you to go into combat rather than assume you want to dilly dally for a while.

I actually rather like this and would not be opposed to it being the philosophy behind future in-between segments between chapters. I can understand IntSys wanting to load in a ton of features like a sauna and fishing to rack up excitement for the game, I know I was excited for fishing, but when these activities have rewards tied to them, replaying becomes kind of a chore, "aw geez, I have to fish 69 fish to reach professor rank A+ AGAIN" (I actually had to when trying to get the piss screen from clearing maddening). Getting only some conversations and a bit of context for the story, that's... pretty good honestly, I liked this better than the monastery and better than My Castle. Throw in some skits with multiple characters at once and I’m gold

(seriously how come there’s no scenes with the three of the bros, Dimitri, Sylvain and Felix all hanging out together, the fact that a third character never shows up in support conversations is fucking bad)

5) Sometimes less is more

I've extensively complained about three houses already but bear with me. Yet another thing that infuriates me about the game is the extensive amount of work it required. I truly do think that if they had released only the blue lions route and left everything else in the plot as mysterious and unexplained loose ends left entirely up to speculation, that'd be a great game on it's own. Instead I have to see all the hard work that went into making the other routes only so that, in the end, they just had me going "well it was ok I guess". Every scene in the game requires work, many hours of coding, writing, voice acting, sound editing, making sure the models don't look too messed up, bug testing, etc. The amount of work that went into three houses was brutal regardless of what you think of the final product, yet a lot of people didn't even bother playing through all of that. So yes, I honestly wanted less, give me a more concise game rather than spreading too wide and ending up thin.

Cindered Shadows on the other hand is concise to a fault to make up for that. The story is pretty straightforward and leaves no loose ends to itself, there's no anime cutscenes, no supports (within abyss, you can support them all in the main game). There's even that very awkward sacrifice scene where some characters are having their life and blood drained from them yet the visual representation we see is just them standing around like normal, with Yuri even doing that hand pose he does all the time instead of squirming in pain or something. It's very awkward looking, objectively not good, but it gets the point across and doesn't make me go "wow you put in all this effort for nothing" because the whole thing is also fairly short (5 to 10 hours in hard mode).

I know, it sounds like I'm shitting on the dlc, but the point is I'd much rather get something short that leaves me satisfied than something like the main game that makes me go "this could've been so hecking gooood if they changed X" for the rest of my life.

6) The gameplay

Chapter 4 is my favorite mission in the whole game

They made Hard Mode good. I previously said maddening was the one difficulty where this game made sense, but this one achieves perfection with just hard mode. This is because the team actually knows what you have. In the main game there's all sorts of variables to account for due to the large amount of player expression that is possible, you can reclass anyone into anything and throughout many lucky or unlucky level ups, maps can be entirely different based on that rng and choices. Here though, your characters already have solid bases starting at lvl 20, and you can't reclass too much so the devs know exactly what you're working with and can plan accordingly. Beating the maps feels incredibly satisfying not just because the objectives have more variety now, but also because you feel like you found the right way to use the tools you were given. This is why the first few chapters of any fire emblem game often feel so good, because the devs know exactly what you have.

Not that I think player expression is bad! It's very satisfying to warp skip chapters and to use broken units like battalion vantage+wrath Dimitri as these things make you feel like you've truly subjugated the game, but it takes some time for those things to really take off. There's a time to reap and a time to sow, and the sowing time can get pretty dull sometimes but that's what makes the payoff feel worth it. Still, for a short experience like cindered shadows is, this style just fits perfectly, plus chapter 4 has quickly become one of my favorite chapters in the whole game, along with chapter 6.

7) In The End

Idk folks, I just like it. If you just want more adventures with the three lords, this is it.

If you’re looking for any excuses to avoid this I'd say the better ones are: maps are reused from the main game (they work much better here though), it's 10 hours at most so it's price-to-cash ratio isn't very good with the expansion pass being $30, and also the Abysskeeper feels a bit TOO winkwink nudgenudge to me, especially since Gatekeeper was popular enough to make it into Super Smash Brothers. Like yeah bro, we get it, we all love Gatekeeper, you didn't have to do this.

I also like that they finally gave Dimitri a semi-problematic quote where he says he kinda likes the idea of poor people living underground out of sight, I think it’s a very rich-white-boy flaw to have and not entirely awful given his life experience up to that point. And yes I do think he has no flaws and is entirely unproblematic in the main game, “feral” as he may look it doesn’t seem like he goes around killing civilians or doing anything other than busting up imperial troops which is kind of justified since they started the invasion, on top that he’s the strongest unit in the game and the most chill and honest ruler once he calms down, so little dent in his record that’s irrelevant in the large picture is indeed welcome.

Overall though, after being so massively disappointed by the Fates DLC, so much I didn't even bother with the ones for Echoes, I certainly like what I'm seeing here and that's a good sign, bravo Intsys.

[ssnakey-b]

Square-Enix announces FFVIII remaster. I wish I could be excited about it.

Me desperately trying to convince myself that I'm happy we got some acknowledgement of the 20th anniversary.

So Square-Enix just announced that Final Fantasy VIII is getting a remaster and first things first, in case you haven’t seen it yet, here it is:

Many of us FF8 fans are of course very excited about this announcement and even though I made sure not to set my expectations too high when I first heard the rumours, I too was happy to learn that Square-Enix was acknowledging the 20th anniversary of our favourite game, and that it was finally getting some recognition outside of crossovers and the occasional cameo or reference.

But then, I watched the trailer again and as the euphoria of the original announcement faded, I started noticing some things I was less than impressed by, and within an hour, I came to the realization that... I just plain don’t like the direction where this thing is going.

Let’s look at the characters one by one and let’s immediately address the elephant in the room:

Squall’s stupid Dissidia face. This was an immediate disappointment. At least they stuck to his original outfit, I suppose, but man, I cannot comprehend this decision. Why? Why can’t they leave the original design alone? Everyone loves that design, even the people who hate Squall. And why mess with the character’s design in a product that’s made solely as fanservice for long time fans?! Why must Dissidia replace every. Goddamn. Thing whether the fans like it or not?!

That’s actually a joke I made to myself. “Man, can you imagine if at E3 they announced that they’d just replace Squall’s model with the Dissidia one! HA HA HA!” and I actually didn’t even bring it up in the Discord because I didn’t want to be obnoxious with yet more bashing of Squall’s Dissidia redesign. And yet, here we are, they actually fucking did it. They actually just took the original FF8 and fucked it up by putting Dissidia Squall in it. Guess I am justified in my bashing (and I do like the Dissidia games a lot, make no mistake, I just can’t stand that stupid and pointless redesign of Squall).

And it’s not just that it’s different, and it’s not just because it’s blatantly a recycled asset that’s been retooled slightly, it really does look terrible to me. I really don’t like his overly thin face, his overly soft features, and the fact that he generally looks like he’s 14. Yes, I know he’s a teenager, but he’ still not THIS young, and his original design really gave you the impression that it was someone who trained to be a professional fighter, as opposed to a shoujo manga character.

The hair also looks off. It looks less like hair and more like a plastic helmet or something.

And I know people made jokes about how spiky it was in the original game due to the technical limitations of the time, but it still looked good in my opinion, and it was designed in such a way that it actually looked like his biggest bangs rested naturally on his ears. Here his hair just makes weird solid spikes because... I don’t know, he’s related to Phoenix Wright, now? I used to joke that Squall must be the type of guy who spends hours making it look like he spends no time on his looks, but here it really looks like the dude is just slathering his hair in gel to create these spikes and make them fashionable.

And speaking of the bangs, I have no idea why they thought making the ones on the sides of his head all curvy was a good idea. To me, it just looks like armpit hair, or really unkempt sideburns. I’m just amazed by how not a single strand of hair on that model wants to obey the laws of physics.

These changes are especially jarring to me considering they apparently haven’t touched the CGI cutscenes, making it blatant that it’s not what he’s supposed to look like. So at least it’s creating inconsistencies that didn’t exist in the original game, so that’s a bonus.

Also, looking at the folds on his jacket, they... really don’t look good. Looking back at the original model, they really knew how to work with the limitations of the time, so the folds are more understated, yet at the same time, there was more of a contrast with the rest of the jacket, making it again look more real in spite of the lower resolution.

Oh and it looks like they gave him skinny legs like in Dissidia because Heaven forbid that a professional mercenary looks like received para-military training.

Next on the list is Quistis and she does look a lot better than Squall. I especially like how serious she looks. All business all the time. But again, the hair is where it falters. It looks weirdly... poofy, for lack of a better word, compared to her original self and much like Squall’s jacket, the texture of it feels far less sharp than originally, especially when you look at where the bangs meet the pulled back part of her hair. It really feels like there should be a bigger contrast in the shading to highlight the shape of it and give it more volume.

Again, compare with the original, which had a much sharper contrast between the shadows and the highlights, and so made it look a lot more voluminous and lively. Also notice that there was more shading on the original model, giving it a more defined shape. And much like with Squall, the hair gives me that weird impression of just being clipped on and not actually connected to the head, which wasn’t a problem with the older models. This will continue to be a trend, but more on that later.

The same goes for the clothes. Again, in spite of being lower resolution, you can see folds and you can easily imagine the texture of it, but in this trailer, everything is completely smooth and flat. It really takes away from the personality this outfit shows.

Then, there’s Linoa, and she too I’m pretty sure is based off her Dissidia design, though there’s a bigger chance they actually made a new model seeing how Dissidia NT models have a much higher polycount than the PSP games. Now, I actually liked her Dissidia redesign. It wasn’t quite the same as in the original game, but I liked how they made her look more mature and even a bit curvier, which makes sense since it’s set after the events of each character’s game.

So even though the rounder face seems a bit odd in the original game, I can could have been happy with it and besides, there seemed to be quite a few differences between her CGI model and her battle model in FF8 anyway, so I’m not gonna complain about it looking a bit different. But then, once again, there’s the hair...

So... what happened to her caramel strands? You know, the signature part of her looks? If you look veeeeery closely during the video, there’s what might be a couple very faded strands, but the fact that I’m not sure should tell you everything you need to know, as they’re pretty much gone. And overall, the modeling just isn’t very good and much like with Squall, her bangs just look weird, overly stiff and spiky. Unlike with the original model, it feels like it was cut out that way like cardboard or something rather than naturally following the shape of her head.

One positive I’ll give it is that we can clearly see the two rings on her necklace, and I’ll give them bonus points if there’s only one before Squall hands her his ring.

On to Selphie.

...

She actually looks fine and is definitely the one who comes out the best from this whole thing. No complaints there, even though we don’t get to see much of her. Even her wristband/bracelet thing is more detailed, which will come in very handy for fan art.

Next is Zell. Now, I’ve seen people mention/complain that they gave him a babyface, but I actually don’t mind that. Zell’s whole deal is that he’s trying to act tough and dangerous even though he’s clearly a loving mama’s boy, so it fits in that he’d look more youthful and innocent. Hell, one could even argue it explains why he wanted to get a face tattoo. No, I have far more of an issue with everyone else having baby faces as well.

And last but not least, we have Irvine. Now face-ise, I don’t have much of a problem with it, looks pretty good. The bangs are a little weird and again give me that cardboard/wood cutout feel, but still, doesn’t look bad.

What does look bad is Irvine’s shotgun:

The barrels look weird, right? Well that’s because as you may have noticed, the texture for the holes isn’t aligned with the 3D model. That’s also why you can see a bit of wood texture on one of the cannons. And you can’t see it very well on this screenshot, but the chamber also has mismatching textures.

That’s right, in the trailer announcing a remaster that's supposed to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the game, a product whose only purpose is to make the game look better, they felt comfortable showing us graphical issues that weren’t present in the original game.

Now sure, this will probably be fixed by the time the remaster gets released (at least I hope it will) but I cannot stress this enough, the one thing this remaster is supposed to do is make the game look better and the big announcement trailer cannot even promise us decent texturing.

It also says a lot about the different treatment of fandoms that on the same day, FF7 fans get more insight on an awesome remake of a game that’s already been ported to pretty much every current system in existence, has had multiple sequels, spin-offs and adaptations and constantly gets referenced in other games, with all the love and care that one should expect from a major AAA project but for FF8 fans, proper texture mapping is too much to ask.

It just boggles my mind that a major publisher would create a trailer blatantly showing broken graphics, but to do so for a remaster is just incomprehensible to me.

And speaking of the textures, this leads me to my main issue with these models, which is that they just plain don’t look good. Final Fantasy VIII had a really strong visual identity and compared to the rest of the games, it looked extremely realistic, to the point that even the more recent games that do go for a more realistic feel, like XIII or XV, still have a more overtly fantasy feel. And FFVIII pulled off that realistic style amazingly well. Even though it was made using technology that wasn’t anywhere near as advanced as what we have to day, they still felt like flesh and bone people, and that made them that much more relatable.

But here, that strong identity has been completely neutered. Everything looks way too soft and clean. The textures have no definition to them and are overly smooth; they look airbrushed. And look, I’m not gonna pretend that the characters in the original looked gritty or anything, they were still pretty boys and girls, but they were believable pretty boys and girls. There was still something about them that made it feels like they could be people you’d meet in the streets. Here, their uncannily smooth and featureless skin looks like plastic. They look like action figures.

These models not only look bland and boring IMO, but they just do not fit with the style of FF8, which is going to be especially jarring considering they apparently don’t intend to upgrade the backgrounds. Hell, these models don’t even fit with one-another, as Squall and Linoa really don’t look like they belong with the rest of the team, IMO.

To really ram home how badly this remaster fails to understand FFVIII’s aesthetic, just look at this comparison, which just made me go “Urgh!” when I saw it. Just look Squall and Quistis don’t fit in with this environment. See how especially out of place Squall looks. Behold how stiff and awkward his hair is. Marvel at his collar made of crumbled up tissue paper! Admire how his once intense expression now looks bland and boring! Behold how what few folds left on Quistis’ overly smooth outfits no longer follow the shape of her body! Gaze in wonder at how lifeless these soulless mannequins look.

It’s just so sad and what makes it worse is that just a few months ago, we had the FF8 Mobius event which gave us an HD version of Squall and Ultimecia and that looked amazing! Now obviously a full game with that look wasn’t gonna happen, but I really would have hoped that they’d at least use it as a guideline for the direction to take the art in. Instead, all we get for the 20th anniversary is a remaster that can’t even promise to look as good as the original.

It’s just so sad, and some people are already defending it by saying that we should be happy we got anything at all, or that we shouldn’t be “ungrateful” about it. No! We shouldn’t be content with mediocrity just because it’s better than nothing, especially when I’m not convinced it is. It’s a terribly apathetic to have, and I’m pretty sure it’s the exact sort of attitude AAA companies want to cultivate: be happy with what you get because you ain’t getting anything else.

As for being ungrateful, that’s just laughable. They’re not giving us a present, people, it’s a re-release of a 20 year-old game and as far as I can tell, all they’re doing is change the 3D models, and we’re still gonna have to pay for it. It’s a glorified mod and yet it barely competes with fan-made ones.

Add to this how quickly slapped together the trailer blatantly was, using what is hopefully an early build of the remaster and being half made of CGI footage despite the fact that they don’t appear to have done anything new to it, and it really doesn’t give me the vibe of something made with love.

Honestly, I used to think I was gonna buy it either way, partly because I still wanted to see how it was, partly because I wanted to support Square-Enix but honestly, seeing how this is shaping up, I don’t want to support this any more. I already bought the game on PS1 and PC, why should I buy it a third time in a worse-looking version?

Look, I really wanted to get excited for this. I really wanted to celebrate some new official FF8 content with everyone, but I can only judge it from what I’m seeing, and what I’m seeing is an unfitting art direction, recycled assets and mismatched textures. I just cannot bring myself to cheer on something that really doesn’t seem

So unless they really show us stuff that blows me away before release, I think I’ll stick with the PC version (or maybe the PS1 version on emulators if I’m feeling REALLY nostalgic), even if there is no good reason why it should still be doing such a better job of improving the game’s graphics than an official remaster. Oh and by the way, let us not forget that this is something that console players don’t get the luxury to do since FF8 was infamously not ported to modern consoles, unlike all the other ones. So if you play on consoles and want to play the original without the remastered graphics, fuck you, I guess.

Yep, still the best looking guy here.

[istheresomebodywhocanimagine]

Hey! If it’s not too much, may you ship me please ( Queen and Bo Rhap)? I’ve always had a dream of owning a motorcycle but keep postponing it. I don’t even have a license but am not giving up. Usually I’m the quiet one who tries to avoid attention at all costs. I’ve been bullied at school so I don’t think I’m loveable at all. I act as the Ice Queen who mocks all feelings and love but am actually a really emotional person, I guess I’m a good actress because I never show the darkness in me 💋

hello hi

motorcycles are so badass but also terrify me hehe

ships below the cut!!!!

For Queen, I ship you with Roger Taylor!

You and Roger are so mutually symbiotic when it comes to relationships - you direct all of the attention to him, and he gratefully accepts the spotlight, partially because he knows you prefer the background, and partially because he’s a Leo and Leos are such attention whores (in the best of ways).

In regards to emotion, you and Roger are very similar, but with different causes. While Roger pretends to mock emotion/sappiness for prideful reasons, you tend to mock them as a defense mechanism. Roger is the only person able to dismantle this defense mechanism, and he’s secretly the sappiest little shit there is, but you know not to tell the boys or he’d have a cow.

First meeting? You first met Roger at a motorcycle/car show, where he’d wandered off to the cycles for a moment and found you admiring one of the models.

Seeing a pretty lady there intrigued him, and since Leos are no strangers to confrontation, he approached you almost immediately. Although women weren’t sparse at the shows, he rarely saw one by themselves, especially around the cycles.

“Is this yours?” he asked, assuming you were the owner due to your proximity to it.

“Who, me?” you asked, looking around before smiling bashfully and shaking your head. Attention was not something you regularly seeked, or ever got used to. “Er, no. I wish, though.”

“Oh, d’you have one already?” he asked, stepping over and running his eyes along the bike before meeting yours, his eye contact unwavering and confident.

“No, just really want one, honestly.” You ran your fingers along the handlebars, then raised your eyes back to his and smiled. “Do you own one?”

“No, no,” he laughed, tugging at the end of his hair as he gave you a charming smile. “I’m a car man myself.”

You raised an eyebrow, questioning him as you moved your hand off the cycle. “Then what brings you over here? If you haven’t noticed, these aren’t exactly cars.”

“Really?” he asked jokingly, making a mock face of surprise. “I had no idea.” It only lasted a moment longer before both of you started laughing, and he shook his head before crossing his arms, sighing with a smile. “No, I just came over here to look, but then I got distracted. I saw a pretty lady looking at a motorcycle and kind of lost focus, had to come and talk to you.”

The unabashed compliment brought a red tinge to your cheeks as you smiled bashfully once again, looking down out of shyness. “You use that line on all the pretty ladies you see at auto shows?” you asked, using up a remarkable amount of your courage to tease him.

“Only the prettiest,” he quipped back immediately, not even missing a beat as he smiled pleasantly, watching for your reaction. The wider smile he got out of his comment satisfied him, and before you could even process what was happening, you’d given him your number and promised a date later on in the week. That date led to more dates, including auto show dates, and eventually to you becoming his girlfriend.

As I said before, you and Roger are both only your true selves emotionally around each other. One day, when you’d both had particularly bad weeks, you remembered talking to Brian on the phone - he’d called to see if Roger had shown up at your shared flat, as he’d stormed out of the studio.

“He was being such a prick, making fun of John’s song for being cheesy, and then I make fun of how ridiculous he’s being and he goes bonkers.” You had to laugh at that, shaking your head and moving to hold the receiver between your shoulder and ear as you pulled the kettle off the heat, moving it to another part of the stovetop.

“I’m sure he’ll be here soon,” you replied simply, putting some tea in to steep as Brian sighed, letting out a grunt in agreement.

“Well, best of luck to you if he does show up. He’s a nightmare right now.” 

“I’ll let you know,” you laughed softly, hanging up the phone before going to get down two mugs. Sure enough, Roger came storming through the front door in a huff, grumbling incoherently as he threw his coat down in the hallway and kicked his shoes off. As he did, you pulled out the cream and sugar, trying to compartmentalize your bad day as you were sure to get an earful of Roger’s bad day first. Later, you told yourself. I’ll listen to him right now.

“Fucking righteous cocks, all of them,” Roger muttered as he came into the main part of the flat, searching for you before finding you in the kitchen. When he saw that you had tea ready, his demeanor softened a tick or two and he sighed, coming into the kitchen and wrapping his arms around your waist from behind, hugging you tightly as he buried his head in your neck. “Hi.”

“Hello, Rog,” you replied fondly. You couldn’t help it - even if you weren’t having the best day, his presence was enough to calm you down and make you forget all of the horrid problems you were facing day to day. “Do you want some tea?”

“Of course,” he murmured, kissing your shoulder in thanks before helping himself to some tea, the both of you ending up curled up on the couch together as you drank it, Roger venting in between sips.

“I just thought John’s song was a bit sappy, that’s all I said, and then Brian’s riding my arse, saying I’m being ridiculous, and then they all started ganging up on me.” There was a permanent pout on his lips as he spoke, and he was visibly upset by what had gone down. This side of Roger, the sensitive side, was rare for the boys to see, but it had become a regular in your life, so you knew how to tread lightly as you spoke.

“It’s alright, Roggie. You can all sleep it off tonight and maybe you can go back in tomorrow with a few ideas of lyric changes for his song? Yeah?” Roger nodded, letting out a long exhale before he wrapped his arms tighter around you, sitting down his tea.

“What about you, love? I haven’t asked you how your day was, sorry I’m an awful boy toy.”

“Not my boy toy, boyfriend,” you laughed, shaking your head as you snuggled into him. Then you let out a sigh, letting the smile slowly fade. “It wasn’t great. Boss was on my case all day, telling me I was a ‘detriment to the company’ for asking for a deadline extension. The usual, but I just turned in my extension request and let it be.”

“You need to get a new job, that place isn’t good for you.” He frowned as he spoke, rubbing your arm, and you shrugged as you pouted your lips, looking eerily similar to your boyfriend just moments before.

“Don’t want to go anywhere else, need to save up.” 

“For what?” he asked, a small grin suddenly lighting up his face, and you knew he was about to say something adorably stupid or just plain stupid. “Oh, for your motorcycle?”

“Shut up, Rog, you know I want one still! You can’t hate a girl for dreaming.”

And for BoRhap, I ship you with Ben Hardy! Wow you got the Rog Duo sorry it worked so well

Ben would for sure be the most into your whole motorcycle thing - Ben’s a decently rugged guy, so the fact that his girlfriend is into something so badass would be uber exciting for him.

But as rugged as he may be, the machismo doesn’t go much farther in past his exterior. Sure, he has some virile qualities, but Ben is literally a freaking sweetheart, and he makes sure that you know that he treasures you so much.

I think you two would meet at a bar. Hear me out:

You’re out with a couple of friends who wanted to cheer you up - you’d had a bad week at work, and compartmentalizing it all had led you into a sour mood that they decided needed a remedy in the form of a night out.

Ben is out with the BoRhap boys, and acting a general fool because they’d all decided to get piss drunk since tomorrow was their day off from interviews. 

But Ben acting a fool while you were leaving a barstool led to him knocking your drink out of your hand and directly onto your white shirt. 

You would have shamed yourself for wearing a white shirt, because the liquid was starting to seep in and quickly become somewhat transparent, but you didn’t have time to get upset with yourself, because in a moment a horribly embarrassed blonde man was apologizing and practically fawning over you. Meanwhile, your friends stared on in shock while his friends jeered at him, giving him hell for being clumsy. Neither of you paid much attention to them, though.

“Oh, Christ, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to, here, let me buy you another drink,” he rambled, laughing pitifully at himself as he grabbed a few napkins for you, briefly meeting your eyes with an embarrassed look and a red face.

“No, that’s okay, I should have been watching where I was going,” you replied, your voice a bit quiet while you tried not to drool over the man, who could have easily doubled for a Greek God, as he handed you napkins to wipe your shirt off. But it was a fruitless endeavor, and you blushed as your green bralette started to show through, shaking your head and crossing your arms over your chest.

Right now, you were getting an inordinate amount of attention from him, his friends, and your friends. You could have died on the spot, but he came to the rescue.

“I am seriously so sorry, here!” He chuckled at himself, pulling off his jacket and handing it over to you so you could cover up before calling for the bartender. “What were you drinking?”

“Bourbon and coke,” you replied, pulling his jacket on with a grateful smile and zipping it up as you turned back to the bar. “I’ll pay for it, don’t worry about-”

“Nonsense. I spilled it, I pay for it,” he interrupted, flashing you a toothy smile before ordering your drink for you. 

After that, you’d spent the night talking to him, mostly forgetting about your friends, and he’d sent you home with the jacket, using it as an excuse to get your number and pick it up from you some other day. Which, he used as an excuse to meet you on a date. And he conveniently kept forgetting the jacket with you, continuing to use it as an excuse the whole while.

But you didn’t mind - a sweet, sexy guy finding dorky excuses to hang around you? Yes please.

And he used the jacket to ask you out, actually. He met you down by the river one night, and you two had decided to take a walk, arms around each other while you wore the jacket. Somewhere in there, he snuck a note into the pocket, then asked if you could give him a receipt from the pocket, claiming he needed it to balance his checkbook, and when you pulled it out, it was a note asking you to be his girlfriend, which got a very bashful, yet very sure affirmative.

It did take him a while to break down your walls, even after that. As you said, you’re quite a guarded person, and Ben really wasn’t. He was more of an open book with his thoughts, words, and emotions, always finding an eloquent way to express them. So, he took it upon himself to start helping you find ways to channel that emotion.

Kissing your head as he entered the flat, he gave you an affectionate smile before hanging up his coat and going to pull off his shoes. “Hello, love. How was your day?”

“It was fine, yours?” you replied, wrapping your arms around his waist once he’d put his shoes up. He took your face in his hands, slowly scanning over your expression before playfully scowling.

“Fine?” he asked, prying a bit, and you rolled your eyes, leaning into his touch a bit as you scoffed.

“Can’t I just have a fine day? Why does everything have to be so deep?”

“Because your words say fine, but your cute little frown says you’re pissed at your boss for the fiftieth time in a week.”

“Damn it, you know me too well,” you groaned, hiding your face in his chest as he chuckled lightly.

“How about we do this?” he started, wrapping an arm around you and leading you to the couch before pulling you onto his lap, curling up with you. “I say one thing that happened in my day, and you say one thing that happened in yours... sound good?”

“Yeah, yeah,” you agreed reluctantly, a light pout playing on your lips as you curled into his chest. “Go ahead.”

“Well, I dropped my coffee on my way into the interview today.” He then raised an eyebrow, urging you to reply, so you did.

“I brushed my teeth today.”

“Okay, smart ass, two things,” he laughed, tickling your side gently and making you laugh with him before he wrapped his arm around you again. “1. I meant something irritating, like someone you can talk through. And 2. you do that every day... at least I think. God, I hope so.”

“Ben, you shit, of course I do!”

[aion-rsa]

15 Best James Bond 007 Games Ever

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After multiple delays, No Time to Die is finally hitting theaters in the UK and U.S., marking Daniel Craig’s final appearance as super spy James Bond, the end of an era for one of the more beloved 007s. It’s still too early to say in which direction the storied franchise will go next, but now is the perfect time to look back at the history of 007 in video games, especially as Hitman studio IO Interactive prepares to bring James Bond back to gaming!

Just like the films, some Bond video games are much better than others. There are a couple of stinkers out there, but also some all-time classics. If you’re looking to get an extra fix of 007 ahead of No Time to Die, these are the secret agent’s very best adventures on consoles and PC:

15. 007 Legends

2012 | Eurocom | PC, PS3, X360, Wii U

While 007 Legends is the most recently released Bond game, it also has some serious issues that keep it from placing higher on this list. You play as the Daniel Craig version of Bond re-living his past adventures. That sounds fun in theory, but seeing the current Bond and modern gadgets in missions based on Goldfinger and Moonraker never quite feels right.

Worse, the entire campaign feels more like a generic Call of Duty clone than a true 007 experience. While stealth is an option in most scenarios, it doesn’t even work that well. In a spy game! There are worse ways to kill a few hours, but there are also much better Bond games out there. All that said, this installment does provide a great tour of Bond’s greatest cinematic hits for newcomers and longtime fans alike.

14. 007 Racing

2000 | Eutechnyx | PS1

There have been so many amazing chase sequences in the James Bond films that a 007 game focused solely on driving seems like the perfect fit. The results, however, were pretty mixed. There’s a good selection of cars from the movies here (including the iconic Ashton Martin DB5), and when missions focus on just driving as quickly as possible, it’s a pretty fun game. More problems arise if you find yourself in any sort of combat situation.

The biggest problem with 007 Racing is just that it tried to do too much in a PS1 game. The technology wasn’t there yet. Make a new 007 Racing with a decent budget and it could top a list like this in a few years. But if you love Bond’s cars, this is the best way to get in the driver’s seat.

13. GoldenEye: Rogue Agent

2004 | Electronic Arts | GCN, PS2, Xbox

The reason Rogue Agent is on this list is because it tried to do something new with the Bond franchise, even if it ultimately missed the mark. First, you don’t even play as 007. Instead, you’re an ex-MI6 agent with a cybernetic eye. That’s also why the game is called GoldenEye. It has nothing else to do with the movie, or the much better 1997 video game.

Putting aside the tenuous James Bond connections, Rogue Agent is a pretty typical first-person shooter from the era with a couple neat tricks up its sleeve. You can see through walls and deflect bullets with your magic “golden eye.” There was also a really solid multiplayer mode that was sadly taken offline years ago. If EA had just called it something else or not included the Bond connections, it would probably be much more fondly remembered today. 

12. Tomorrow Never Dies

1999 | Black Ops Entertainment | PS1

The best thing that can be said about Tomorrow Never Dies is that it has a really great soundtrack. Of course it includes the classic Bond theme, and the movie theme by Sheryl Crow, but just minute-to-minute, the game has a lot of pumping tracks that would feel right at home in any film in the franchise.

As for the gameplay…it’s fine. Tomorrow Never Dies is heavily inspired by the shooting and stealth gameplay of Syphon Filter, but not quite as good. And Syphon Filter hasn’t exactly aged gracefully. At least the skiing and driving levels are pretty fun though. 

11. GoldenEye 007: Reloaded 

2011 | Eurocom | PS3, X360, Wii

Never say never again, but due to the complicated rights issues, GoldenEye 007 will probably never see an official re-release, even if it would certainly be welcomed by millions of gamers who grew up in the ’90s. Instead of dealing with legalities, Activision decided to just make its own version of GoldenEye with a modified story and Daniel Crag in the Bond role instead of Pierce Brosnan.

And Goldeneye Reloaded is pretty good, with lots of varied objectives and high production value. It actually feels like an authentic James Bond experience. There’s even a respectable multiplayer mode that channels a lot of what made the original game great. Still, the level design never quite reaches the heights of the N64 classic, and the AI is pretty bad in the single player campaign, which keeps this from being an all-time great Bond game.

10. James Bond 007: The Duel

1992 | The Kremlin | Sega Genesis

The Duel is a really ridiculous game, but also way more enjoyable than it has any right to be. Timothy Dalton lends his “likeness” to Bond for the last time as the secret agent infiltrates enemy bases with only his trusty pistol so that he can plant bombs and rescue identical damsels in distress. There are plenty of generic henchmen to shoot, but Oddjob and Jaws (apparently borrowing one of Dr. Eggman’s leftover boss machines) also make appearances. 

Even though it feels a little by the numbers at times, the controls are tight and the 16-bit soundtrack is surprisingly strong. You could do much worse with a licensed platformer from the early ‘90s.

9. James Bond 007 

1998 | Saffire | Game Boy

While everyone remembers Rare’s N64 Bond offering from the year before, gamers overlooked this gem for the original Game Boy. James Bond 007 is played from a top-down perspective and it was never even released in color, but Saffire still managed to pack a truer Bond experience into this tiny cartridge than many more technically advanced games have.

There’s an original story with plenty of humor and innuendo, the option to sneak around or use karate moves, and the studio even managed to include baccarat and the classic James Bond theme. This one is still well worth tracking down. 

8. Blood Stone

2010 | Bizarre Creations | PC, PS3, X360

Blood Stone received a lot of hate from critics upon its release, but looking back now, it’s hard to understand why. The combination of cover-based shooting, melee combat, and focus kills that let you quickly dispatch enemies hold up really well. And Bizarre Creations, best known for the excellent Project Gotham Racing series, even threw in a few very fun (though short) driving sections.

Daniel Craig and Judi Dench are back to lend their voices to the game as James Bond and M respectively. With its excellent original plot, nonstop action, and high production values, Blood Stone is the closest thing you’ll get to an interactive Craig Bond movie.

7. From Russia with Love

2005 | Electronic Arts | GCN, PS2, Xbox

From Russia with Love is probably best known as the Bond game that brought Sean Connery back to the role for the final time. EA even got him to record some new dialogue, though Bond is still modeled off his classic ‘60s look. Between the presence of (arguably) the best Bond, a plot based on one of his most beloved films, and the use of the iconic jetpack from Thunderball (just because it’s awesome), From Russia with Love is pure fan service from start to finish.

The game isn’t completely true to the movie, though. Legal issues have plagued the Bond franchise for years and that meant some odd changes to the game’s story, with the villainous organization OCTOPUS replacing the movie’s SPECTRE. If the rights could be worked out now, From Russia with Love is begging for a modern remaster.

6. The World Is Not Enough

2000 | Eurocom | N64

Even N64 aficionados forget about the second Bond FPS released for the console. The World Is Not Enough takes a lot of obvious cues from GoldenEye, with similar missions and level layouts, plus a respectable multiplayer mode. But it also carves out its own identity with several new weapons and gadgets. The game also added voice acting — something that’s sorely missed when going back to GoldenEye now.

Does everything work here? Not quite. The AI is particularly weak, and it’s not the easiest game to go back to now, but at least it’s aged better than the movie it’s based on.

5. Agent Under Fire

2001 | Electronic Arts | GCN, PS2, Xbox

Agent Under Fire went through a really tortured development. It was first intended to be an improved port of The World Is Not Enough. Then, it was going to be more of a direct sequel to GoldenEye. Finally, it ended up as its own original project, and it still holds up pretty well, with some solid shooting mechanics and driving missions inspired by Need for Speed. It’s just unfortunate EA couldn’t secure the likeness of any past James Bond actors, so 007 ended up looking like Sterling Archer. 

And while the multiplayer may not be the best a Bond game has ever seen, there are some great maps here, and thanks to the inclusion of bots, you can still fire it up today. There’s not much to dislike about Agent Under Fire, and EA only improved on the formula, the following year…

4. Nightfire

2002 | Eurocom | GCN, PS2, Xbox

Think of Nightfire as a much more refined version of Agent Under Fire. After taking a break from the last game, Pierce Brosnan provided his likeness for Nightfire (although someone else voices the superspy). The FPS levels are much more fun to navigate than its predecessor’s and require the use of tons of gadgets to complete. The AI puts up a real fight, too. The driving levels maybe aren’t quite as enjoyable as the ones in Agent Under Fire, but that can be forgiven when the shooting is this good.

The campaign is really short, but multiplayer has surprising legs, with eight excellently designed maps, a dozen different modes, customizable bots, and a handful of playable Bond villains from past movies. It could have been a huge hit if console gaming had online multiplayer at the time.

3. Quantum of Solace

2008 | Treyarch | PC, PS3, X360

Largely ignored at release, Quantum of Solace is probably the most underrated Bond game. It’s built on the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare engine, which had just been released the previous year, so the shooting is silky smooth. But it also tried to innovate with melee attacks and a cover system that switches to a third-person perspective. The moment-to-moment gameplay is filled with the explosions and big set pieces that Call of Duty is known for. You don’t do much sneaking either, but that fits the grittier tone of the Daniel Craig movies.

It’s unfortunate that Activision went in a different direction with the Bond license after Quantum of Solace. This was easily the best of their offerings, and a Treyarch-developed sequel could have been something really special.

2. Everything or Nothing 

2004 | Electronic Arts | GCN, PS2, Xbox

Everything or Nothing is notable for being the first big budget Bond game that actually tried to move the series out of the shadow of GoldenEye. The switch to a third-person perspective wasn’t revolutionary, but it did allow for much better stealth gameplay, plus the addition of rappelling and a neat spider robot. Everything or Nothing actually makes you feel like a superspy with an arsenal of cool gadgets at your disposal.

Even the obligatory driving sections are firing on all cylinders here, with one Road Rash-inspired chase sequence featuring Bond on a motorcycle that’s quite possibly being the best level in any Bond game ever. Everything or Nothing would be a fantastic template to follow for any developer looking to resurrect the Bond franchise in video games. (Talking to you, IO!)

1. GoldenEye 007

1997 | Rare | N64

Of course GoldenEye is still the best Bond game of all time. A half dozen developers have tried to outdo it over the last two decades and still GoldenEye reigns supreme. The funny thing is that nothing about GoldenEye should have worked. Licensed games were notorious for their poor quality in the ‘90s. Movie tie-ins released two years after a film has hit theaters are almost always shovelware. Plus, the legendary multiplayer mode was only added to the game just a few months before release. On paper, GoldenEye sounds like it should have been a massive disaster on par with E.T. for the Atari 2600. 

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

And yet, the final product still stands out as one of the greatest first-person shooters of all time. Yes, it’s a little rough around the edges now, and the frame rate really chugs along at times, but it’s still incredibly fun to complete objectives in classic levels like Facility or Train. Or just watch watch a mission completely go to hell, as you try to survive against a horde of guards who’ve cornered you. The replay value, with tons of unlockables for completing missions quickly, still outshines many modern shooters.

Then there’s the multiplayer with its near-perfect maps and endless options. GoldenEye 007 was the peak of multiplayer shooters on consoles in the ’90s, with its fast-paced shooting and excellent maps. Sure, it would be easy to make a much better looking and sounding Bond game now, but it’s hard to imagine any team could create something more innovative or more fun. GoldenEye 007 remains the undisputed king of Bond games.

The post 15 Best James Bond 007 Games Ever appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[quasip]

Mitsunari and Motochika for the "Send me a ship and I'll tell you" one please!

Who would be the big spoon/little spoon? Motochika would be the big spoon, but Mitsunari would be more like a knife than a little spoon. Motochika will try and curve his body around Mitsunaris’ but Mitsunari is all sharp edges and refuses to sleep on his side. In the end, Motochika is content to just wrap his arm around Mitsunari’s middle and snuggle into his side. Hey, if he’s not going to snuggle back Motochika is just going to make due. 

Who would wake up first? They actually both get up pretty early. Motochika has to prepare his ship and his men for the day’s sailing and pillaging and Mitsunari is just a natural early bird. They scoot around each other trying to get ready in the crowded space of Motochika’s room, Motochika pressing tired kisses on Mitsunari’s head everytime they pass by each other until Mitsunari gives one to Motochika’s cheek before he leaves the room to face the rest of the world. 

Do they have nicknames for each other? No. Motochika might occasionally call Mitsunari a grump or some other name he mostly sticks with his name. Mitsunari thinks nicknames are simply silly and doesn’t think much of giving one to Motochika. 

How do they apologize after an argument? They are both good enough about their mistakes to own up to them. The problem is which one of these stubborn fools decides to apologize first. Mitsunari and Motochika are both stubborn, almost to a fault, and when they decide they were in the right it is very hard to get them to apologize. They will both need time away from each other to clear their heads and to think about the argument. It may take outside perspectives, but once either Motchika or Mitsunari believe that they are wrong or at least partially at fault they will apologize to the other’s face with no hesitation. Mitsunrari’s will be more formal and accepting of reprimand, and Motochika is more willing to let the other off then Mitsunari would be, but either way, there will always be a face to face apology and, as long as it’s sincere, an eventual clearing of the air. 

What would they be like as parents? Night and Day. Motochika is definitely the fun parent. He lets his kids throw parties, plays with them, is the one they come to when it comes to lovers and parties and emotional issues. Mitsunari is the parent that reminds them to do their homework, eat healthily, and excel. Their kids mostly come to Mitsunari with help academically or practically. It’s not that he can’t give social advice, it’s just that his advice is very practical and lacking in social nuance. 

When they first start out parenting it’s too much more arguing then say, Masamune and Yukimura or Sasuke and Kojuro. Their parenting styles are just very different and that leads to arguments over things like punishment, activities, and even what their school life should be like. As they grow older they start to blend their styles, with Motochika weaving in life lessons into their fishing trips while Mitsunari tries to get the kids to open up during a study session. They both try and push their children into giving their all for something, always pushing them towards their passions. They would certainly be a more clear case of fun parent, strict parent then almost any other pairing, but it works because they build off of each other and allow themselves to compromise. 

Who is more romantic? Motochika. Listen, Mitsunari barely knows the definition of the word romantic. His love comes through in the practicalities of life. For example, Motochika always finds his maps organized, his sheets clean, and his favorite alcohol always in stock. These gestures, practical and small but just as important, are Mitsunari’s sweet nothings and I love yous. However, if you want flowers and chocolate and sugary sentiments then Motochika has that covered. He loves spoiling his significant other and will often get him gifts both big and small just because he was thinking of them and thought they would like them. Mitsunari doesn’t like too many frivolous things though so Motochika often goes for quality. A collection of fine pens, beautiful paper, soft pillow and jars upon jars of ink. Mitsunari always has a small smile when he sees the new object Motochika brought him, stupid smile on his face, and while he doesn’t emote more than that Motochika always sees his gifts used until they are completely finished. 

What sort of gifts do they get for each other? As stated above, Motochika usually gets pretty practical gifts because that’s what he knows Mitsunari likes, especially if it a practical item that Mitsunari has deemed too extravagant or luxurious to purchase. Fine paper, advanced mathematical tools, books, kits to clean his sword, he finds the best and brings it to him. That’s not to say he doesn’t sometimes indulge in getting Mitsunari other things like jewelry, just that he focuses on what he likes. Mitsunari also focuses on the practical, like sturdy boots, but he also gets him small puzzles he can go in his spare time, as well as models. For times when more extravagant gifts are needed he’ll buy expensive books on engineering and robotics as well as amazing trinkets from foreign countries. Or expensive alcohol, that would work too. 

Who gets jealous easiest? Mitsunari, but Motochika likes to play up the times when he gets jealous. Mitsunari’s jealousy stews inside him, being revealed in threatening looks, a dark aura, and sometimes just actual threats to the offending party. Motochiak finds it cute most of the time but does try to stop it before it goes too far. Motochika doesn’t actually get jealous too often. Partly because Mitsunari just doesn’t have many people flirting with him (it’s the death aura) and that he’s possessive but he trusts Mitsunari almost implicitly. When he does get jealous he likes to play it up a little, bringing out a little more of a stereotypical pirate attitude. Mitsunari likes being valued but doesn’t like the implication that he can’t be trusted. Motochika has to assure him that he does trust him, it’s just natural sometimes to be jealous. Usually, Mitsunari’s frown is soothed by a few kisses. 

Who gets more excited for events e.g.. Birthdays, Christmas? Motochika. Just like his buddy Masamune, he is always down to party like it’s his last day because it very well could be. And they are always wild: drinking, shouting, bad singing, it’s all there. The only thing that isn’t there is Mitsunari because he hates parties. Wastes of time and quiet. He mostly holes up in his room or, if he’s forced to attend, in some corner where he can wait it out. Motochika tries to engage him, but Mitsunari is just not one for parties. To try and compromise on days like Mitsunari’s birthday and Christmas Motochika tries to give Mitsunari a quieter party, only them and maybe a handful of very close friends. It still isn’t his most favorite thing, but having his boyfriend, Sakon, and Yukimura all close-by, playing some games, drinking his favorite tea and eating his favorite foods, Mitsunari deems it acceptable. 

Who is the most adventurous? Motochika. He is a pirate after all. The second even a rumor of treasure or some new blowhard Lord, a carnival, new interesting food or hell…even a supposedly haunted place hits his ears he’s climbing up to the ship’s wheel and telling his crew to get ready, what are they sitting around for they’ve got an adventure to go on. Mitsunari doesn’t have a problem with the adventures, but more on their execution. At the beginning of their relationship, he might be more passive, needing prompting from Motochika to voice any suggestions besides shouting threats at those who seem less than enthused. However, later on, he will actively voice his suggestions, most of them harsh but all logical such as maybe getting information or sending a scout or maybe not just rushing the front gates into a possible ambush. It’s almost 50/50 on whether Motochika takes these suggestions (gathering information tends to work better than not barging in because, come on, where’s the fun in skulking about?), but Motochika always appreciated Mitsunari’s honest forward-thinking advice. 

Who is the most protective? Mitsunari. One of his greatest traits is his loyalty and that loyalty makes him absurdly protective of those that manage to earn his trust and love, whether that person is his Lord, his friend, or his lover. His protectiveness is more physical than mental as he is an honest person. He won’t soften his views even if a lie might be softer; however, he is much, MUCH more willing to take a bullet or sword or whatever in defense of Motochika. It’s so bad of an instinct that Motochika has to keep a special eye on him when they are in combat. It’s annoying and scary. Motochika is a grown ass man who can take a few hits. He doesn’t need anyone dying to protect him. Yelling that fact at Mitsunari has done pretty much nothing so he’s just learned to tone it down to exasperated scolding and trying to keep this damn brat alive. 

What would they have been like as childhood sweethearts? It starts when they are young, around kindergarten age. Motochika is a small, shy child, always playing with his blocks and drawing in the corner when the rest of the children were playing together. Mitsunari would end up being the first person to play with him (mostly because Motochika had most of the blocks and he wanted to play with them too). They continued to sort of be friends/ playmates at school, but when they hit grade school their friendship was cemented. Kids started to make fun of Motochika’s soft face and long hair and quiet demeanor and Mitsunari can’t abide by cowards who would mock someone for being who they are. So he beat them up. Their relationship was almost like a knight and his lady until Mitsunari’s parents decided to move. Before he left Mitsunari told Motochika to be strong as there was nothing wrong with him, he was a great person and that he could be as strong as him. It would be years before they saw each other again.

At high school age Mitsunari would make his way back with his caretakers to his old home and, sure enough, he runs into Motochika. However, his Motochika is no longer the shy flower he had played with and protected as children, but a brash, curse dropping, hooligan who had no trouble speaking his mind. It seemed their situations had reversed, Mitsunari had become the loner that had very few friends and Motochika the one who wanted to hang out and protect him. It is a long, slow path of relearning each other and nurturing the seeds of affection that had been planted in their childhood. Mitsunari sees the gentle side that Motochika had dulled, but never gotten rid of and accepts it just as much as this new side. He lets Motochika be himself, gentle and brash, and never judges. Motochika learns the bitterness his old friend is carrying and helps to bring joy into his life. He accepts and encourages Mitsunari’s self as much as Mitsunari does Motochika. They are childhood friends who reconnect as adults and learn to accept each other, the nostalgic child version of themselves as well as the new, grown adult ones. 

Who uses all the hot water? Mitsunari. While he is mostly quick and practical in most things, one of the few luxuries he has is cleanliness, especially of himself. He loves long, hot showers and baths. Motochika loves them too, adding salts and oils and other spa-like accessories to make it even more awesome. Motochika sometimes takes baths with Mitsunari, but if Mitsunari is taking a shower it’s for him and him alone. 

Who would accidentally set the kitchen on fire whilst cooking? Motochika. It’s not that he’s a bad cook, per se, just that he likes to experiment which can sometimes cause fires. Also, he has tinkered with every appliance they have to make them more efficient and sometimes those wires just aren’t that good. The fire department pretty much knows them by name now. Mitsunari is efficient and follows the directions which means it’s rare that his food is either inedible or the kitchen is covered in soot. 

Who initiates sexy times the most? Both of them actually! They are both honest, straightforward people who, when they want something, go for it. Motochika is more likely to instigate because he likes sex and wants to have a lot of it. He doesn’t really care where they are, he’ll either imply he wants it later or downright just ask for it if they are in a more secluded place. Mitsunari is not impolite enough to do it in front of other people, but if he wants sex and they are decently private he will ask for it. He doesn’t believe in hiding intentions or being dishonest. He wants something and as long as his lover is obliging he sees no reason to hide it from him, especially if he asks. 

Who is more dominant? Motochika. While Mitsunari is honest about his wants, he won’t often put it forward, instead of waiting on Motochika to act so he can react. His pleasure comes from pleasing others and he might only instigate if it looks like Motochika needs it or he really, really wants it. Motochika does not have any such decorum. Desires are good and should be expressed whether that’s desire for another person or desire to steal something from someone unworthy. He also just likes being the cause of Mitsunari’s breaking down into a pleasured mess. 

What would they do if the other one was hurt? If someone hurt Motochika Mitsunari’s response is a simple one…kill them. Seriously, it’s that simple. No one hurts with the man he has pledged himself to. In the modern era or any other one where killing them isn’t really an option (unless he doesn’t mind jail) he would still confront the person, yelling and perfectly willing to bash their face in. His rage is never self-soothed, it always has to be calmed from an outside force. There is almost nothing Motochika could do in his eyes that would warrant real pain, no matter what other people think. In-between his obsessive violence towards this person or thing Mitsunari is tending to Motochika dutifully, making sure that he is well taken care of and that he knows he will handle everything and that he will do better to prevent this in the future. 

Motochika, on the other hand, actually is less intense then Mitsunari in his revenge. He too will go and beat the ever-living shit out of the responsible person, but then he’d be back to baby Mitsunari and try and cheer him up. If it was an accident or something not super serious he’d be mostly OK after retribution was done. If it was serious preparation for a lifetime grudge and an epic beatdown. If it was something more mechanical he’d spend hours complaining to Mitsunari about the cut corners other people do and show him all the improvements he’s going to make so that this never happens again. Because he protects his boys, especially this boy. 

Who gives nose/forehead kisses? Motochika all the way. He loves contact and seeing Mitsunari’s face scrunch up is hilarious and adorable. It’s peaceful and cute and he just loves to show affection for his boy. Mitsunari doesn’t come out and say it, but he does like the kisses and feeling of adoration they inspire in him. Motochika’s love is in every kiss and Mitsunari is honored to receive them. 

What their biggest fight was/will be about: I mentioned it above, but Mitsunari’s tendencies to try and kill himself for Motochika’s sake is going to be their biggest argument. They don’t have many horrible arguments but this one is a full out shouting-fest. It would be after a fight when Mitsunari took a knife straight through his side defending Motochika. It was a serious wound and Motochika went beyond worried to scared when he and his boys finished the fight and took Mitsunari to the doctor. He sat by this bedside for hours, refusing everything and just keeping watch, until Mitsunari woke up. 

When he did, Motochika took no time in berating him for that idiotic, stupid decision. What were you thinking you dumbass?! Mitsunari, injured, angry, and just so tired, immediately went on the defensive. It’s his duty to protect Motochika, his honor, and to have his decision thrown back in his face like he was stupid to decide it was infuriating. Motochika doesn’t want someone to sacrifice for him and Mitsunari only wants to sacrifice. The initial argument wasn’t even the worst part. Motochika began to leave Mitsunari behind on certain missions, explicitly telling him he can’t trust him to keep himself alive. This sudden lack of trust is soul-crushing and Mitsunari’s mood immediately became dark. He scowled at everyone, every minor infraction called for a threat and punishment. Motochika also became stubborn and temperamental. Ieyasu and Magoichi eventually end up talking to Motochika about it and finally get them to actually sit down and have a talk. Motochika explains that the way to honor him is to try his best to live, not throw it away and Mitsunari says that his greatest wish is to be of service, to win together. They eventually reach some sort of deal, but it takes a while for them to fully regain their comfort around each other. 

BONUS #1: Song to sum them up? Change of Seasons- Sweet ThingBONUS #2: A head canon? One of their favorite activities to do is to build stuff. Motochika is the muscle and the imaginative force, but Mitsunari is a whizz with numbers and can always calibrate and measure things accurately. It fits both of their interests and at the end of the day they celebrate their achievement (which is always bound to be flippin’ cool and run like a dream) with tea and a snuggle session. 

BOTTOM LINE: Do I ship it? I do, but I tend to be more for platonic Motochika x Mitsunari, because I like Motochika being the big brother, protective one for Mitsunari. I like him teaching Mitsunari how to live life just because and to have fun even if it doesn’t serve a practical purpose. 

[brokensmilefanfiction]

Chapter One

The sixty-eighth Emmy Awards.

I was back stage at the Emmy’s and not only was I nominated for an award but I was about to go out and do a skit. I never thought in my wildest dreams when I had first picked up ventriloquism and decided I wanted to be a comedian that I would achieve any mainstream level of fame.

At twenty-two I had been just another run of the mill comedian that also did a ventriloquism act with a puppet. I performed in pubs and comedy festivals. But then I had done a film with Emma Thompson that was due to come out in the next couple of months and after that I had done a guest starring episode of the Big Bang Theory playing Penny’s younger sister.

And now, a year later, at age twenty-three, I was at the Emmy’s! I had seen the comedic geniuses of Amy Pohler and Tina Fey, two women I had idolised growing up. I’d also seen Jimmy Kimmel, another famous comedic act, who was hosting the show tonight.

Yes, I’d seen Kevin Spacey and Maggie Smith as well, but it was the comedians that I really got a little star struck around. Probably because I idolised their careers. I knew I would never have an acting career like Emilia Clarke, I wasn’t beautiful enough to be a proper actress.

My sister Carey was though. A fact that she always seemed to want to remind me of and that was even more prevalent when the two of us came to the Emmy’s. She had looked absolutely stunning in her dress and was already being hailed as the best dressed celebrity of the night.

I had thought I looked at least decent in my orange mermaid style dress. I wasn’t crazy about the style as it meant my thighs were permanently pressed together, but the close cutting of the dress gave me a gorgeous curvy figure. But one look at my gorgeous sister made me feel as if I was wearing a burlap sack. But I reminded myself, not for the first time, that I may not be pretty, but at least I was funny and that was the main thing.

I told myself that again and again as I stood getting fitted with my microphone pack, something I really didn’t understand the necessity of given that I was going to be speaking into a microphone, but I guessed an event like the Emmy’s, they liked to double up.

I was so lost in going over my lines for my upcoming act that I didn’t notice when the duo presenting the award after my skit came back stage until one of them approached me.

“Excuse me?” asked a voice.

I turned to see none other than Kit Harington himself approaching me, ducking his head slightly with a bashful expression on his face as he gazed at me, “Bridgette Mendez?” he asked me, seeming unsure.

“Yes?” I asked, slightly confused as to why a big star like Kit Harington was talking to a nobody like me.

He smiled a wide, toothy smile as he stared at me for a moment, “Hi, I’m Kit.” He said offering me his hand.

Looking down at his hand, a little confused, I shook it, waiting for an explanation as to why he was talking to me.

“I’m a really big fan.” He said, sounding slightly breathless as he shook my hand excitedly.

“Really?” I asked in disbelief.

How on earth was someone like Kit Harington familiar with my work? He was on the most popular television show in the world. I performed in bars and had been in one episode of a comedy show.

“Yeah. I saw the trailer for that movie you’re in with Emma Thompson. Ninety Days.” He told me.

I nodded in understanding, why was he telling me the name of my movie? Did he think I didn’t know it?

“I looked up some of your comedy stuff on YouTube, your brilliant.” He told me, still smiling widely.

“Thank you.” I smiled.

“I watch the comedy festival every year and I loved your ventriloquism act. How you had the squeaky toy to bleep out the curse words.” He smiled happily.

“Yeah well, when it’s on television you have to keep it clean.” I explained, though I felt that he should know that, he worked on television. Then again, he was on HBO so they weren’t exactly the same rules.

There was an awkward pause where he simply stood staring at me, smiling widely. He did look quite attractive in his suit, I wasn’t blind. But when a guy was in a suit, he needed to be cool and confident. Kit was anything but. He seemed awkward and showed an excitement that was borderline ‘fangirling.’ I was just beginning to feel uncomfortable when a familiar presence joined us.

“Bridgette!” called Andy Samberg as he approached us.

“Andy.” I smiled as I pulled him into a brief side hug.

Andy and I were old friends. We had performed at a few variety shows together back when we were both starting out in the business.

“I saw your name on the billing. You’re doing your ventriloquism?” he asked as he released me, Kit was looking between the two of us as if he couldn’t quite believe his eyes. Was he a fan of Andy’s as well?

“Yes. Still doing the old ventriloquism. You still a sell out? Making movies?” I teased.

“I am. I actually did one with this guy here.” He said, nudging Kit but he was preoccupied looking at the handbag on the ground next to me.  

“Is that your puppet in that hand bag there?” he asked, his eyes alight with excitement.

“Yes.” I replied, I always kept my puppet in handbags to carry them around so I didn’t look like a weirdo half the time walking around with a monkey on my hand.

“Oh can I have a look?” he asked excitedly as he leaned down to grab the back in question.

“I’d rather you didn’t.” I said flatly. I hardly ever let people see monkey as just a puppet, it spoiled the illusion of him being real.

“Oh,” said Kit, a little taken aback.

An awkward silence followed in which Kit shifted his weight from side to side uncomfortably. He glanced at Andy several times in what I could see what a pleading look.

“We’re presenting after you.” Announced Andy suddenly, breaking the silence.

“Oh yeah? What are you doing?” I asked conversationally.

“Just doing a comedy piece. Kit is a little nervous.” He said, nudging the man in question again.

Kit smiled awkwardly, “I’m not very good at comedy.” He revealed.

“Why don’t you give him some pointers?” encouraged Andy.

“Ah,” I began as the crew backstage began to signal me to go into the wings to get ready to do my bit, I got a little flustered. The crew was pulling me in one direction and Andy was pulling me in another, I searched desperately for some advice to give, “If the dialogue is funny, do it as seriously as you can.” I invented quickly as I snatched my handbag off the floor and a woman in headphones practically pulled me away from them.

“Thank you!” called Kit as I was dragged away.

I sent him an awkward wave before I hurried after the girl with the headphones.

That was undoubtedly one of the weirdest experiences of my life. I was familiar with Game of Thrones and the character of Jon Snow seemed to be so confident, Kit on the other hand seemed to be very socially awkward and it was a little unsettling.

I knew people were not the characters they played, but it still felt weird to see someone so confident on the television but be so awkward in real life.

I had about five seconds of standing in the wings where I could see the stage, enough for the adrenalin of performing for an audience to kick in as I put my shoulders back and strode out onto the stage.

The audience clapped and I smiled as I came to stand in front of the microphone that was near a stool and pedestal for me to use in my act later on.

My heart was racing in my chest as the stage lights practically blinded me. This was the first time I could actually see out into an audience when I had performed. Normally the audience was shrouded in darkness and I could only see the first few rows, but this was an audience full of celebrities, so they needed to have their own lighting.

“Hello everyone.” I said, smiling happily as the applause died down, “I’m very happy to be here tonight at the Emmy Awards and to be nominated for an award.” I began as the teleprompter rolled in front of me.

I didn’t have writers. I firmly believed in performing my own work and it was the words I had written that were being scrolled on the television in front of me, but I didn’t need the prompt, I knew my act off by heart.

“Now I would just like to point out that my beautiful sister, Carey Mendez, is here tonight.” I said gesturing to my beautiful sister to the right of the stage. I watched as the cameraman zoomed in on her and she smiled beautifully, “She’s been acting on television for three years now. That’s three seasons. Twenty-two episodes a piece. So that means she has had sixty-six opportunities to be nominated for an Emmy. I was in one episode of the Big Bang Theory and I have been nominated.” I said pointedly before I grinned smugly at the audience.

They laughed hysterically.

“Just saying sis, you might want to focus more on modelling as acting doesn’t seem to be where your future is.” I said pointedly.

My sister, as well as the rest of the audience howled with laughter.

I had of coursed cleared what I was going to be saying about my sister before I had submitted the script to the Emmy producers. She was a model turned actress and actually thought the whole joke was pretty funny so she agreed to let me use it.

It was funny that neither of us had started out as actresses, she was a model and I was a comedian, but somehow both our careers had lead there. She was of course a more popular actress than I was and often snidely remarked that she was a better actress.

“Ok, so I’m gonna cut straight to the chase and show you my monkey.” I announced as I shoved my hand in my handbag and quickly located the hole in my puppet, “Come on out Monkey, say hello.” I said as I looked down into my handbag.

“Freedom!” cried Monkey as he popped up out of the bag.

The audience cheered.

“So you’re still doing the old ventriloquism hey Bridgette?” asked Monkey.

“Yes.” I smiled.

“Look at you, standing there trying not to move your lips.” He said flatly.

The audience laughed and I shook my head.

“Come on Bridgette, we’re a ventriloquist act. You’re in denial.” He stated.

“I am not.” I defended.

“I want to sing a song and have fun.” Said Monkey.

“I can’t sing.” I told him.

“It’s not all about you.” He replied.

The audience laughed loudly.

Once they quieted down a little, I continued.

“Sit down on the stool there.” Said Monkey.

“What are you going to do?” I asked as I sat down.

“I’m going to hypnotize you.” He declared.

“Oh really? How are you going to do that?” I asked as I placed Monkey atop the pedestal they had provided.

“It’s easy. I saw it on YouTube.” He replied as he got settled, “Ok, so I’m going to hypnotize you. Focus on something you find relaxing and listen to the sound of my voice.”

“Ok.” I said as I turned to the side of the stage.

“Not the exit sign.” He replied.

The audience laughed.

“Ok,” I said as I focused on the teleprompter in front of me. Which was scrolling through my lines, as if I didn’t know them by heart.

“Close your eyes.” He said.

I closed my eyes and tried to look calm.

“Ok, three, your feeling quite tired… two, your slipping into unconsciousness… one, your now in a deep level of trance.” Said Monkey.

I focused on trying to be still, which was a part of the act. What was not a part of the act however was the sudden itch on my arm that was begging to be scratched at the very moment I had to be still.

“Ok Bridgette, if you can hear me, I want you to raise your finger.” Said Monkey, there was a moment of silence, “No not on this hand you idiot!”

The audience roared with laughter.

“On your other hand so the audience can see.” Said Monkey.

I raised my finger on my other hand.

“Very good. Now earlier you said you couldn’t sing. Well that doesn’t mean I can’t. So I’m going to take this opportunity to sing an aria.” Announced Monkey.

They audience howled with laughter as the music sounded up and the song began.

“Yes, it’s quite ambitious. But if you don’t get to sing very often you have to go for a biggy.” He told the audience and they laughed, “Right, here we go.” He said clearing his throat as his musical cue started.

“Dilegua, o notte!” he sung in a deep voice, “Tramontate, stelle!” he sung and the audience laughed, “Wow that’s low for a girl.” He commented.

The audience laughed.

“Tramontate, stelle!” he sung, “Breathe Bridgette.” He commanded and the audience laughed, “All'alba vinceró!” he sung loudly, “Vinceró, vinceró!”

The music built to its high and the audience laughed.

“Thank you very much.” Announced Monkey as the music finished and the audience clapped quite loudly.

“Bridgette?” he asked as the song finished, “Bridgette!” he demanded as he smacked his head into mine.

I opened my eyes with a start to see that everyone in the audience had actually gotten to their feet to cheer me. I was supposed to look surprised then but as I saw that I was getting a standing ovation, my shock was genuine.

I couldn’t help but smile as I got to my feet, more than a little shocked by the reception I was receiving. It was one thing to get a standing ovation from a paying audience at a stand up night, but to get a standing ovation at an awards ceremony, a place filled with people in show business far more talented than me was a little over whelming. I stood there for a moment just smiling, basking in the moment before I realized my time was up and I needed to leave.

Giving a small curtsey I continued to smile as I made my way back stage.

                                                     …

Making my way back to my seat, my sister was waiting for me with outstretched arms, hugging me as I sat down, “You were great.” She said as she rubbed my back.

“Thank you.” I smiled as I pulled back to look at her.

I sat down and looked up to the stage as the nominations for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama series were announced. When Kit Harington’s name was mentioned it reminded me of my weird encounter with him back stage and I turned to my sister, “I saw him backstage.” I told her quietly.

“Really? Jon Snow?”

“Yeah.”

“I’d date him. What was he like?” she asked quietly.

“A little awkward.” I revealed.

“Does that really matter? With a face like that he could be anything he liked.” She giggled.

I rolled my eyes. My sister was beautiful, so of course she focused on the physicality of any potential love interest. Because I was not beautiful, I tended to focus very little on how a person looked when I was looking for potential romantic partners.

Kit was good looking but the boy was a little on the awkward side and I generally liked guys I could talk to. Plus there was also the fact that he was a was a respected actor while I was still just starting out. He was way out of my league anyway.

As it turned out, Kit didn’t win his category. They gave it to some guy who wasn’t even here.

All too soon it was my category being announced.

“And the nominees are,” began Ed O’Neil, “Christine Baranski, The Big Bang Theory for Dr. Beverly Hofstadter. Melora Hardin, Transparent for Tammy Cashman.  Melissa McCarthy, Saturday Night Live for Various Characters. Laurie Metcalf, The Big Bang Theory for Mary Cooper. Amy Schumer, Saturday Night Live for Various Characters. And Bridgette Mendez, The Big Bang Theory for Allie.”

As the camera panned onto me I was supposed to smile and look happy, instead I crossed my eyes and stuck out my tongue. The audience laughed.

“And the Emmy goes to…” he trailed off.

I held my breath, finally serious. I didn’t think I would win, in fact I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to win. But I wanted to. I wanted to win. I wanted recognition for my talents and work, it was stupid of me to say but I wanted that validation. But most of all I wanted a successful career. Not just as a comedian but as a performer and getting an Emmy was a step in making that happen…

“Bridgette Mendez.”

I blinked in absolute shock I had won. I had actually won.

It turned to Carey to make sure I had not imagined the whole thing, but she was smiling and clapping along with everyone else. It was real! I had won.

Standing up I made my way to the stage, grabbing the skirt of my dress I climbed up the steps and made my way over to Ed, who smiled, kissed my cheek and handed me the award.

Before I knew it I was behind the podium, the microphone in front of me and an audience of televisions best and brightest in front of me. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t have a speech prepared, so I said the first thing on my mind.

“Holy crap I won!”

The audience laughed.

“I don’t even win door prizes so this is amazing.” I said.

They laughed again.

“Um, god, who do I thank?” I asked, I was rambling I knew that, but people were still laughing so that was a good sign, “I would like to thank my parents. My agent. Everyone involved in making The Big Bang Theory.” I said as I quickly tried to think of something funny to say, “And I’d just like to take this opportunity to do this to my sister,” I said as I grabbed the award, surprised momentarily by its weight, “In your face!” I cried as I waved it around.

I could see she was smiling and laughing, as were most people in the room. I then did a quick curtsey and made my way off stage.

I was still smiling, clutching my award when I ran into a familiar face for the second time that evening.

“Congratulations Bridge!” said Andy as he pulled me in for a hug.

“Thank you.” I said as I gripped my award tightly, it was strangely slippery and I felt that if I dropped it, someone would realize what a big mistake it was giving it to me and they would somehow take it off me.

“Wow! Let me get a look at that thing.” He said as he cupped the bottom of my award.

I held it up for him to see, still grinning as the pride began to set in.

“This is great. You should be really proud of yourself. This is a big deal!” he said as he turned to me with a smile.

I smiled back and for a strange reason I was suddenly reminded of Kit and how he didn’t win and I felt a pang of guilt, “Sorry about your friend not winning.” I said.

“Yeah, he’s putting on a brave face but I can see he’s pretty broken up about it.” He sighed.

I winced in regret, “That’s too bad.”

“Which is why I’m going to ask a favour.” He said seriously.

“Uh oh.” I commented.

“Kit is super embarrassed about before. He’s not normally like that and he feels like an idiot.” He said, “So just do me a solid and go speak to him at the after party?” he asked.

“He was pretty awkward. You sure he wants to speak to me?” I asked.

“Are you kidding me? He loves your work. It will make his night.” He assured me.

“Ok, sure.” I shrugged.

Talking to Kit again required little effort from me and Andy had asked me to do it, so why not? I’d talk to him, make him smile and do a good deed, then the two of us would go our separate ways.

[ladala99]

Pokemon Sword/Shield Review - From a Dexit Critic

And no, I’m not here to trash the game.

So yeah, I noticed Sword and Shield went down in price a bit, considered how much that would make the Game+DLC, and decided it was worth a try. I was always intending on eventually getting the game for the purpose of having a primary source for Galar Pokemon for my collection, and the price drop was enough of an incentive to make it be now. Or, actually more like a month ago. I’ve let this sit before reviewing it.

Spoilers ahead!

What I Had Heard Before Going In

I had a very negative perception of the games due to pre-release info and the fanbase’s hate dump. These are the things I knew:

- Dexit - N64 Tree - Pokemon models and animations are the same as previous games, despite GameFreak saying they needed to be redone from scratch - Wild Area empty and uninteresting - No plot - Somehow there’s handholding despite the lack of plot - Game is too easy - Except Leon, maybe - Exp Share cannot be turned off - No one in the region will shut up about Leon - Hop will not shut up about type advantages - No exploration - There are two battle backgrounds - one for overworld that’s grassy and decent, and one for indoors that’s a white void.

The last one turned out to be objectively false - while certain indoor areas that have very few battles (like, 1 or 2 story ones) have the white void background, every route and major battling location has its own background, much like in Let’s Go, Pikachu and Eevee. And they look really good.

How I Decided to Play

Since I had heard that the Exp Share was stuck on and I had had really bad experience with that previously, I decided on a special ruleset. I would still use only 6 Pokemon on my team, but I would only ever have 3 Pokemon in my party at a time so they would level more individually.

I found that this ended up being just about the right difficulty. Lots of strategy, especially with the gimped team, lots of item usage, and lots of Pokemon Center visits. I did, however, end up having all 6 on me during Gym and Rival fights and the Champion Cup later in the game, though, as I noticed the difficulty ramping up.

I also decided not to get the DLC for my first playthrough. Part of what made me feel that the Game+DLC price was acceptable was the idea that I’d play the game once with just the base game, and then download the DLC and play it again as if it were a third version (on a second profile). And I decided that, after I finished the game the first time, I would set my calendar for three months afterwards to play again with the DLC. That time hasn’t come yet, so I still have only played the base game.

The Story

Now onto the actual review!

I seem to be in a minority, but I adore the plot of every Pokemon game Ohmori has directed, and Sword and Shield is no exception.

The story here revolves around the Champion Cup, which is pretty refreshing - the last game I’d say had the League as its primary plot (barring remakes) is Generation II.

And the story isn’t just about you - it’s about your rivals Hop, Bede, and Marnie. Each of the characters has a different reason to be pursuing the Champion Cup: Hop because he wants to be just like his big brother Leon, who is Champion; Bede because he’s an orphan adopted by President Rose, and he wants to live up to Rose’s expectations of him; Marnie because she comes from a small town barely holding onto Gym Town status since it doesn’t have a Power Spot, and she wants to make her town proud. As always, though, you don’t really have a story. You’re more of a force of nature that ruins everyone’s dreams.

Each of these characters has their own arc as well:

Hop goes from enthusiastic to realizing that he isn’t as strong as he wants to be when Bede (and you) beat him in battle. Bede, channeling Silver, taunts him for being weak and he takes it to heart, changing up his team completely for a while. Eventually, he realizes that using Pokemon he’s not close to isn’t working, and he returns to his original team. He gets really far in the Champion Cup, all the way until the challenger finals, but ultimately loses to you.

Bede desperately wants to be strong and make Rose proud. He collects Wishing Stones for Rose’s purposes while also crushing (most) battles in the Champion Cup. He has a drive to be the best, whatever it takes, and ends up destroying a mural for Wishing Stones. Rose finds out about the vandalism and disqualifies him from the Champion Cup, crushing his dreams. Opal, the Fairy-type Gym Leader, ends up deciding that he would be her successor, even though he didn’t want that role. Even though he couldn’t compete in the Champion Cup, he still challenges you to a rematch, disrupting the competition. Leon doesn’t mind and allows it.

Marnie doesn’t appear in your path too often, and her presence is mostly felt by the presence of Team Yell. Marnie just wants to compete fair and square, but Team Yell disrupt all of the other challengers for Marnie’s benefit, preventing them from moving on before Marnie finishes each Gym, and ultimately blocking the route to Spikemuth completely so no one else can compete. She tolerates her hometown fans up until they block everyone else, at which point she helps you out and scolds them. You face her first in the Champion Cup and I never felt more sorry for crushing her dreams because I felt for her trying to advance her town’s reputation.

The Legendary plot and the Villain plot do exist as well, and they feel pretty separate this time.

The Legendary plot primarily involves Sonia as she travels around the region learning about the Legendary Hero who turns out to be two heroes and two Pokemon. You accompany her to various statues, murals, and tapestries as she tries to piece the Legend together. Eventually, you realize the Pokemon depicted is the same one you and Hop saw at the very beginning of the game, traveling too far into the Slumbering Weald. You go back, find the Rusty Sword and Rusty Shield that the heroes wielded, and summon the Legendaries in the villain plot. In the post-game, as you and Hop return the relics, a couple of guys who claim to be royals and celebrities steal Hop’s relic and try to make that Legendary go wild. When they succeed, you battle that Legendary to calm it down, and your Legendary will appear to challenge you, at which point you can catch it. Hop then goes after his Legendary and befriends it offscreen.

The Villain plot is hinted at through Bede’s collection of the Wishing Stones, and there is a point where Dynamax Energy spikes where it shouldn’t be, but what’s going on isn’t apparent until the very end of the Champion Cup. Chairman Rose interrupts you right before the Champion match to awaken Eternatus in some vague hope to solve an energy crisis that wouldn’t happen for 1000 years.

How appropriate that this happens in a game where some Pokemon aren’t programmed in because “eventually there will be too many to fit" so they decided to stop well before there were too many to fit in the game. Because honestly: there’s room.

Eternatus goes crazy and causes “the Darkest Day” which happened in the past and was what caused the Legendary Heroes to be heroes when they stopped it. You and Hop awaken the Legendaries and do a Raid Battle against Eternatus, ending with you capturing it. Also there are some shenanigans with evil League Staff known as Macro Cosmos and a long elevator ride on the way.

A lot of the Villain plot Leon handles, much like Sonia handles the Legendary plot, both up until you and Hop need to awaken the Legendaries. So most of it feels out-of-nowhere even if some of it was foreshadowed.

The energy crisis, though. There’s no indication of that at all in the game. No one ever says anything like “the rate we’re using energy, we’ll eventually run out. But it’ll be long after we’re dead so whatever.” If enough people had that attitude, I could see where Rose is coming from!

But instead Rose just brings it up at the very climax, and he doesn’t have a good reason why he couldn’t wait even one more day for the Championship Cup to finish. It’s 1000 years in the future - you have time! To find a less-destructive method, even! Like, I don’t think the problem was solved in the end because you captured Eternatus so it couldn’t provide energy.

And no one afterward mentioned the distant energy crisis. No “we’ll need to think of ways to conserve energy so no maniac tries something like that again,” nothing.

In conclusion: Villain plot sucked, Legendary plot was okay, and Championship Cup plot was really good.

Gyms, Battles and Difficulty

Due to how I played, I can’t fairly score this versus other games in the series. I will say that if you’re underleveled, the game is really fun. Every battle on every route is a challenge, and the Gym Battles test your strategies and resources. Especially Raihan.

The fact that the Exp. Share is always on is annoying and caused me to play oddly. I think next time I’ll do a team of 12 instead of a split team of 6, though. Not having the right type matchups ended up making me reset a couple of times as the battle was unwinnable at my level with what I had in the party. I just worry that I won’t feel as attached to the team if I have 12 of them.

Especially since there really aren’t that many overworld battles. It’s especially apparent since the previous games were Kanto remakes, which meant games that had those maze-like routes with a gauntlet of trainers. Now there’s about  3-5 trainers per route, and there aren’t that many routes in the game. At the end of each route you will find one of your rivals that sort-of acts as a boss, but even then that’s still a very low number of battles.

All Gyms have 3 Gym Trainers and the Gym Leader, but what’s interesting in the puzzles. Especially since they’re the only puzzles in the game. Each one is different, and they’re all pretty neat. Also interesting is that Gyms don’t let you leave and heal after every fight. At least, I don’t think they do. I never needed to.

Overworld Exploration

I mentioned it in the previous section, but it really lacks. Routes are mostly-straight lines with some side paths for items, usually really short ones. Even Gym puzzles are really linear.

I’d say there’s two places you can get lost at all - Glimwood Tangle and the water route between Circhester and Spikemuth.

Overworld puzzles are limited to “go on this optional path” and “realize you can go between these bushes/behind this building for an item.” You can feel the lack of field moves.

The Wild Area

Okay, the exception to the linear routes is the Wild Area. The base game essentially has two, but they’re connected and you can access both parts right away.

It’s big, things respawn, the weather and thus spawns change every day, and the Raid Battles scale to your level. It’s really fun, but it feels like a side mode. It feels like something you would access by going to a different option on the main menu rather than something that’s a part of the rest of the game world, especially since it has its own currency.

It reminds me of the Sinnoh Underground except without the Secret Base option. As in, it’s something fun to come back to often, but, again, it’s not really part of the main game.

Yes, it has N64 trees, yes the pop-in is noticeable, and yes the terrain feels unfinished. It has problems, but I find it pretty fun.

My only real issue with it is that you have to beat all of the existing Raid Battles before more will appear, and they stay the same rarity when the date changes. I’m in the postgame, and I’m having trouble soloing 5-star Raids and I’m also having a hard time finding people interested in my base-game 5-star Raids. So I’m basically throwing myself against the same raid over and over again because I have no other options (I’m saving my Wishing Pieces for when I need a specific Pokemon).

Dexit?

Still a thing, and still an issue. I am attempting to obtain every ribbon my Shiny Minun can get on, and Galar still won’t let her in. It also means that if I use RNG on the full Pokedex to choose a team, I’ll have to double-check that that Pokemon can actually be used in Galar. It sucks.

The game tries to make up for it with a huge Pokedex, but that just makes finishing the Regional Dex harder. I used to feel that catching 386 Pokemon to complete the Gen III National Dex was impossible, and Galar has a Regional Dex of 400 species! (As did Alola in the Ultra titles, but it was split into three sub-dexes)

I’ve been tackling the Pokedex using the suggested catches, and I’m about halfway through and bored. I’m determined to keep going until it stops suggesting things, but it feels like an endless climb at this point, since every time I finish collecting a group, another group shows up, and since I’m not going in order, I can’t look at the scroll bar and see “wow, look at how much I’ve done!” I started with this method, though, and I’m going to finish with it.

The National Dex was never my issue, and making the Regional Dex humongous doesn’t help its absence. Because I don’t miss the checklist - I miss being able to use any Pokemon of my choosing without double-checking that I actually can. I’m actually glad the National Dex is gone since it means getting the Shiny Charm is easier. But with the Regional Dexes bloating in size, it’s not helping.

Pokemon Camp

Just going to mention that it’s really cute, but really shallow. And there’s not a reliable enough way to get berries for me to feel comfortable using the rarer berries in making better Curry.

It also gives Exp just from interacting with your Pokemon, so I avoided using it when I played so I didn’t have a chance of getting overleveled. Which sucks because I tend to really like features like this.

I don’t know if I’m going to try to complete my Curry Dex. With version exclusive ingredients that can’t be traded over HOME’s GTS, and the fact that I’m pretty shy about asking the community for things, I don’t know if it’s possible for me. It’s a cute feature, though. I just wish it didn’t require trading.

So Those Flaws?

Let’s look at them again, shall we?

- Dexit Still an issue - N64 Tree Yep. Wild Area is unpolished. - Pokemon models and animations are the same as previous games, despite GameFreak saying they needed to be redone from scratch Yep. - Wild Area empty and uninteresting It’s unpolished, but not empty nor uninteresting imo. - No plot Yeah there is, it’s just focused on the Champion Cup - Somehow there’s handholding despite the lack of plot You know, I never saw Sun and Moon as handholdy. This game is even less-so. - Game is too easy If you use a 6-Pokemon team that you keep in your Party, it probably is. - Except Leon, maybe I did not find Leon any harder than other fights. He is higher level, though. - Exp Share cannot be turned off Indeed. You really need to work around this to have fun. At least, I assume. - No one in the region will shut up about Leon It happened a bit at the beginning, but it didn’t seem gratuitous. - Hop will not shut up about type advantages He mentions it once a battle. Or twice if he hits you with one. I missed mid-fight dialogue, so I didn’t mind. - No exploration Very little exploration, yes.

So many are valid, but some of them aren’t as bad as people made them out to be.

Conclusion

Sword and Shield are very flawed Pokemon games, but they’re still Pokemon games and still fun.

They certainly aren’t all bad, and even do a few things right, like how well-characterized the rivals are and the Wild Area concept in general. This isn’t even going into Competitive since I haven’t dipped my toes in there yet.

I had a good time with the base game, better than I thought I would. But I can safely say Diamond and Pearl are no longer my least-favorite Pokemon games. That title now belongs to Sword and Shield.

[jakehglover]

What Are the Benefits of Fisetin?

Research on a flavonoid called fisetin, which contributes to the pigment of fruits and vegetables like apples, cucumbers, grapes, onions, persimmons and strawberries, has been called out for its potential antiaging properties. In experiments performed on lab mice, fisetin was shown to eliminate senescent cells, which accumulate as you age and can be harmful to your body.

While fisetin was discovered years ago, it is one of many diet-derived antioxidants being increasingly investigated for its health-promoting effects. As a plant-based flavonoid, fisetin can be consumed for long periods of time without any known adverse effects. Let’s take a closer look at this promising plant pigment.

What Is Fisetin?

If you’ve not yet heard of fisetin, you are not alone. After all, there are about 6,000 flavonoids from which to choose and each of them contributes to the colorful pigments of fruits, vegetables, herbs and medicinal plants.1 Beyond their role in producing pigments, flavonoids are also antioxidants.

With the continued focus on the value of antioxidants, individual flavonoids are increasingly being recognized for the positive effects they can have on human health. Now, a study published in EBioMedicine2 suggests consuming fisetin at high levels may help you live a longer, healthier life.

In fact, the research, which involved lab mice, suggests the consumption of fisetin may extend your life by as much as 10 percent. Researchers from Scripps Research Institute, Mayo Clinic and University of Minnesota evaluated 10 flavonoids to determine their senolytic activity, calling out fisetin as the most potent.

Fisetin Is Prized for Its Role in Killing Senescent Cells

Though you may not have heard of them, senescent cells are cells that through oxidative damage and aging have lost their ability to reproduce. The study authors defined senescence as a “tumor-suppressor mechanism activated in stressed cells to prevent replication of damaged DNA.”3  

They note past studies involving genetic and pharmacologic approaches have shown senescent cells to play a causal role in accelerating aging and age-related diseases. In fact, before putting fisetin to the test, the scientists published research in Aging Cell in 2015 highlighting the flavonoid quercetin for its senolytic activity.4,5

When administered with the chemotherapy drug dasatinib, quercetin was shown to improve age-related conditions such as cardiovascular disease, frailty and osteoporosis. About those results, the study authors said, “The combination of dasatinib and quercetin was effective in eliminating senescent MEFs (mouse embryonic fibroblasts).

In vivo, this combination reduced senescent cell burden in chronologically aged, radiation‐exposed and progeroid [syndrome-affected] mice.”6 The researchers also noted “the efficacy of senolytics for alleviating symptoms of frailty and extending healthspan.”7

In terms of underscoring the value of senolytics like fisetin, another study, published in July 2018, affirmed that “senescent cells can cause physical dysfunction and decreased survival even in young mice, while senolytics can enhance remaining health[span] and life span in old mice.”8

Fisetin Shown to Promote Longer Healthspans in Lab Mice

Scientists are interested in fisetin mainly for its usefulness in eliminating senescent cells, an action that could encourage antiaging and promote longer, healthier lives. Senior study author Laura Niedernhofer, director of the Institute on the Biology of Aging and Metabolism at the University of Minnesota (UM), told Newsweek:9

“We’re looking for drugs that can kill these damaged senescent cells that are very toxic to our bodies and accumulate as we get older. It turns out that fisetin is a natural product that actually we were able to show very selectively and effectively kills these senescent cells, or at least dials back their bad secretions or inflammatory proteins.”

According to Newsweek, as senescent cells accumulate in your body, they can cause both inflammation and tissue degradation.10 Acting as a senolytic agent, fisetin may be able to kill senescent cells in humans just as it has been shown to do in aging mice.

Paul Robbins, Ph.D., UM professor of biochemistry, molecular biology and biophysics and associate director of the Institute, commented:11

“The mice reached an extension of life span and healthspan of over 10 percent, that’s pretty remarkable. At the dose we used, the question is if we could give them a lower dose or more infrequently. That’s a theoretical advantage of using these types of drugs that can clear the damaged cells — you can use them intermittently.”

Fruits and Vegetables Containing Fisetin

Even though fisetin is naturally occurring in a number of fruits and vegetables, you will likely not be able to obtain therapeutic amounts of this flavonoid from food alone. While scientists continue working out the proper dosing for fisetin, there is, however, little harm in — and possibly much benefit to — adding some of these fisetin-containing foods to your diet:12,13

Food Fisetin in micrograms/gram (g)

Strawberry

160

Apple

26.9

Persimmon

10.6

Lotus root

5.8

Onion

4.8

Grape

3.9

Kiwi

2.0

Peach

0.6

Cucumber (with skin)

0.1

As you can see, strawberries are by far the best food source of fisetin, but you’d need to eat about 37 whole berries to get a decent amount of benefits. (One supplement brand, which I cannot endorse, even uses the wording “37 strawberries” in their product name.) Obtaining an optimal amount of this, or other flavonoids, from food sources is, unfortunately, not always realistic.

While a small 1998 Japanese study14 estimated the average daily intake of fisetin to be just 0.4 milligrams (mg) in that country, figures are not yet available to track fisetin consumption by Americans. Additionally, recommended dietary intakes for fisetin do not exist.

For now, as noted by Robbins, knowing that fisetin can have a positive impact on damaged cells is good news even as more work, including a series of human medical trials, is needed.

He stated, “These results suggest that we can extend the period of health — termed ‘healthspan’ — even toward the end of life. But there are still many questions to address, including the right dosage, for example.”15

Some of the Health Benefits of Fisetin

As noted in the Journal of Nutritional Science, the interest in the health-boosting effects of flavonoids, including fisetin, continues to grow. The study authors asserted:16

“Flavonoids are now considered as an indispensable component in a variety of nutraceutical, pharmaceutical, medicinal and cosmetic applications. This is attributed to their antioxidative, anti-inflammatory, antimutagenic and anticarcinogenic properties, coupled with their capacity to modulate key cellular enzyme function.”

Already, a number of fisetin supplement brands exist, touting some of the health benefits noted below.17 To date, fisetin has been shown to:

Encourage anti-inflammatory action — Fisetin has been shown to suppress the production of inflammatory cytokines. While noting a flavonol-rich compound containing fisetin could be a potential therapeutic agent in the treatment of inflammatory conditions, one group of study authors noted:18

“In experimental inflammation-related models, flavonol-rich RVHxR (Rhus verniciflua Stokes) and fisetin have shown significant anti-inflammatory activities on vascular permeability, leukocyte migration and cellular immunity.

Also, flavonol-rich RVHxR and fisetin treatments significantly reduced the incidence and severity of [the] collagen-induced arthritis model.

These results suggest RVHxR and its major compound fisetin have shown potent suppressive effects on some inflammatory cytokines/chemokines and angiogenic factor in [Interleukin 1 beta]-stimulated rheumatoid arthritis FLS (fibroblast-like synoviocytes) and inflammatory in vivo models.”

Help prevent cancer — Given its well-known anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and antiproliferative properties, fisetin can play a role in helping to prevent cancer. To date, among other effects, fisetin has been shown to:

Activate particular signaling pathways to induce cell death (apoptosis) in cervical cancer cells19

Exhibit antigrowth potential against lung cancer cells20 and prostate cancer cells21

Inhibit melanoma cell growth22

Induce apoptosis in colon cancer cells by inhibiting certain signaling pathways23

Inhibit bone-damaging glycation — Glycation, a process in which sugar molecules bond to certain proteins and lipids in your body, results in bone-damaging Advanced Glycation End (AGE) products.

According to natural health expert Vivian Goldschmidt, founder of the Save Institute, a branch of which focuses on osteoporosis prevention, these molecules destroy collagen, the cartilage-like material that gives your bones tensile strength.24 Due to its beneficial interaction with proteins found in your body, one study indicates fisetin arrests the glycation process.25

Maintain your glutathione levels — According to a 2009 study published in the journal Genes & Nutrition, fisetin has been shown to help maintain your glutathione levels, particularly during times of increased oxidative stress.26

The study authors stated, “Fisetin not only has direct antioxidant activity but it can also increase the intracellular levels of glutathione, the major intracellular antioxidant.”27 Goldschmidt asserts glutathione “has the most electrons of any antioxidant, so it can ‘donate’ more of these electrons to free radicals in order to neutralize them.”28

Protect your brain function — A 2014 study published in Aging Cell29 suggests fisetin may have the ability to stave off age-related memory associated with Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia. The researchers suggested fisetin can act on many of the target pathways implicated in Alzheimer’s disease.

They also found oral administration in mice aged 3 to 12 months prevented the development of learning and memory deficits. The study authors suggested “our results demonstrate fisetin, a compound that activates multiple, well-defined neuroprotective pathways, may provide a new approach to the treatment of [Alzheimer’s disease].”30

As noted in the featured video, fisetin is one of the few substances capable of crossing your blood-brain barrier. (Curcumin, a polyphenol with neuroprotective qualities, is another.)

Slow the progression of Huntington’s disease — In animal studies, fisetin has been found to slow the progression of Huntington's disease, an ultimately fatal neurodegenerative disorder characterized by cognitive, motor and psychiatric symptoms.

Pathways implicated in the disease include those involving mitogen-activated protein kinase signaling and, particularly, the Ras-extracellular signal-regulated kinase (Ras-ERK) cascade. Based on 2011 experiments involving three disease models, fisetin was shown to reduce the impact of the mutant huntingtin gene.31

The study authors noted both fisetin and resveratrol activated the ERK pathway, “thus suggesting that polyphenols and/or their derivatives might be useful for the treatment of [Huntington’s disease].”32

Stabilize resveratrol — Similar to other flavonoids, fisetin has been shown to inhibit the hepatic and duodenal sulphation of resveratrol,33 thus improving the bioavailability of this powerful anti-inflammatory polyphenol found in red wine and the skins of certain fruits.

Says Goldschmidt, “Fisetin acts as a shield for resveratrol, slowing its breaking down and being metabolized in the liver. Thus, fisetin actually increases the amount of resveratrol in the blood.”34

What’s Next for Fisetin?

Fisetin is currently undergoing clinical trials at Mayo Clinic, which means some more conclusive information about recommended dosing could become available at some point in the future. One of the current trials35 seeks to evaluate markers of frailty and inflammation, as well as bone resorption and insulin resistance in older postmenopausal women.

The study involves 40 women, ages 70 to 90, who are affected by gait disturbance. Half of the women are receiving an oral dose of 20 mg of fisetin per kilogram of body weight per day for two consecutive days, for two consecutive months, while the other half is receiving a placebo according to the same time schedule.

The trial began in February 2018 and will conclude in June 2020. According to the researchers, “Positive results of this study would lead to the development of a larger clinical trial examining the effects of this intervention on age-related dysfunction.”36

Given the many health benefits of fisetin, I highly recommend you regularly add a serving of organic strawberries (or another fisetin-containing food) to your diet. Given the fact a 1-cup serving (152 g) of strawberry halves contains just 3.8 g of fructose, you can easily incorporate this delicious, nutritious fruit into your eating plan and still moderate your fructose levels.

As you may recall, I advise you limit fructose from all sources, including whole fruit, to 25 mg a day if you are healthy and less than 15 mg if you are dealing with a chronic illness like cancer or diabetes.

Also, when buying strawberries from the store, keep in mind conventional varieties are sprayed with a number of toxic pesticides, including chemicals known to cause cancer and reproductive damage, so be sure to purchase organic and wash them well before eating.

from HealthyLife via Jake Glover on Inoreader http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2018/10/15/fisetin-health-benefits.aspx

[vitalmindandbody]

Two American Reveries: how a dumbed-down society lost spate of a great impression

As Clinton and Trump prepare to debate next week , princely models are overwhelmed in a culture where most Americans do not know what is real anymore and the dream of equal opportunity is just a fantasy

Every child had a pretty good shot

To get at least as far as their old boy got

But something happened on the way to that place

They hurled an American flag in our face.

Billy Joel, Allentown

Its one of the greatest fabrications of all time, and just like it says on the dollar bill novus ordo seclorum it established an entirely new tell in human affairs. After millennia of pharaohs, lords, lords, kings, sultans, caesars and czars, with all their attendant gentries and locked-down social structure, a country was founded where birth and lineage didnt topic so much, where by application of your genius, force, labor and willingness to play by the rules, you could improve your information spate in life and achieve a measure of financial insurance for yourself and your family. Peasants and proles could aspire to more than mere survival. Progressive!

We know it today as the American Dream. The now-obscure historian James Truslow Adams coined the expression in his book The Epic of America, characterizing the American reverie as TAGEND

a dream of a social order in which each man and each girl shall be able to attain to the fullest prominence of which they are innately capable, and be recognised by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of delivery or position.

Adams was writing in 1931, but the dreaming was there from the beginning, in Jeffersons pursuit of happiness formulation in the Declaration of Independence, joy residing in its 18 th-century appreciation of succes, thrive, wellbeing.

Nobody ever came to America with a starry-eyed dream of working for famine compensations. Spate of that offered in the old country, and thats precise why we left, escaping serfdom, peonage, tenancy, indenture all different iterations of what was essentially a rigged organisation, to set it in current political verbiage that channeled the profits of our proletariat upstream to the Man. We came to America to do better, to secure for ourselves the liberation that financial defence accompanieds, and for millions largely lily-white males at first, and then slowly, sputteringly, women and people of color thats the direction it used to work , nothing less than a revolution in the human condition.

Upward mobility is indispensable to the American Dream, the notion that people can rise from working to middle class, and middle to upper and even higher on the prototype of a( imaginary) Horatio Alger or an( actual) Andrew Carnegie. Upward mobility across classes peaked in the US in the late 19 th century. Most of the benefits of the 20 th century were achieved en masse; it wasnt so much a phenomenon of great numbers of people emerge from one class to the next as it was standards of living rising sharply for all world-class. You didnt “ve got to be” exceptional to rise. Opportunity was sufficiently broad that hard work and steadiness would do, along with implicit buy-in to the social contract, allegiance to the system proceeding on the assumption that the system was mostly fair.

The biggest additions occurred in the post-second world war epoch of the GI Bill, cheap higher education, strong labor unions, and a progressive taxation code. Between the late 1940 s and early 1970 s, median household income in the US redoubled. Income inequality contacted historic lows. The median CEO salary was approximately 30 durations that of the lowest-paid hire, compared against todays gold-plated multiple of 370. The top tax bracket strayed in the neighborhood of 70% to 90%. Conceded, there used to be far less billionaires in those daylights. Somehow the society survived.

America is a dream of greater justice and the possibilities for the average “mens and”, if we are not able acquire it, all our other accomplishments amount to nothing. So wrote Eleanor Roosevelt in her syndicated pillar of 6 January 1941, an apt lead-in to her husbands State of the Union address eventually that day in which he enumerated the four exemptions necessary to American republic, among other issues freedom from want. In his Government of the Union address 3 years later, FDR expanded on this concept of freedom from want with his proposal for a Second Bill of Privilege, an economic statute of rights to antagonize what he viewed as the growing tyranny of the modern economic tell TAGEND

This Republic had at its beginning, and originated to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political claims among other issues the right of free speech, free press, free hero-worship As our person has grown in length and stature, however as our industrial economy has expanded these political claims have proved inadequate to assure us equality. We have come to a clear understanding of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic its safety and independence.

Political claims notwithstanding, liberty doughnuts excessively hollow when youre going nickel-and-dimed to extinction in your everyday life. The Roosevelts recognized that compensation peonage, or any organization that inclines toward subsistence level, is plainly incompatible with self-determination. Survival is, by definition, a constrained, desperate position; ones horizon is necessarily limited to the present daylight, to getting enough of what the body needs to make it to the next. These daylights a minimum wage laborer in New York City clocking 40 hours a week( at$ 9 per hour) earns $18,720 a year, well for the purposes of the Federal Poverty Line of $21,775. Thats a scrambling, anxious world, narrowly bounded. Close to impossible to decently feed, robe, and shelter yourself on a compensation like that, much less a family; much less buy health insurance, or save for your kids college, or are represented in any of those other good American concepts. Down at peon stage, the pursuit of prosperity sounds like a bad gag. Its “ve called the” American nightmare, George Carlin cracked, because you have to be asleep to believe it.

Necessitous mortals are not free males, said FDR in that 1944 State of the Union speech. Beings who are ravenous and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are stimulate. A dreadful proclamation, demonstrably genuine, and especially unsettling in 2016, a point in time when the American Dream seems more viable as nostalgia than a lived phenomenon. Income inequality, asset distribution, mortality rates: by every measure, the average individual that Eleanor Roosevelt celebrated is sinking. Exceptional people continue to rise, but overall mobility is stagnant at best. If youre born poverty-stricken in Ferguson or Appalachia, chances are youre stay around that road. Ditto if your early retentions include the wading pool at the Houston Country Club or ski exercises at Deer Valley, youre likely going to keep your perch at the top of the heap.

Income inequality, gross disparities in opulence: were to say daily, perpetually, that these are the necessary the effects of a free market, as if the market was a force-out of quality on the order of weather or tides, and not the altogether manmade construct that it is. In flare of recent biography, blind credence of this sort of financials would seem to require a firm commitment to folly, but makes accept for the moment that its genuine, that the free market exists as a universe unto itself, as immutable in its workings as the regulations of physics. Does that universe include some ironclad convention who are in need of inequality of opportunity? Ive yet to sounds the suit for that, though doubtless some resourceful thinktanker could produce one out of this same free-market economics, together with stenches of genetic determinism as it relates to calibers of self-discipline and reputation. And it would be bogus, that case. And more than that, vile. That we should allow for wildly disparate possibilities due to accidents of birth ought to impres us as a crime equal in violence to child abuse or molestation.

Franklin Roosevelt:[ F] reedom is no half-and-half affair. If the average citizen is ensure equal opportunity in the polling place, he must have equal opportunity in the market place. The proposition leads deeper than sentimentality, deeper than programme, deeper even than adherence to equality and the pursuit of gaiety that are set out in the Declaration. It cuts all the way to the nature of democracy, and to the prospects for its very existence in America. We may have democracy in its own country, wrote state supreme court right Louis Brandeis, or we may have great capital concentrated in the sides of a few, but we cant have both. Those few, in Brandeiss judgment, would inevitably use their capability to subvert the free will of the majority; the super-rich as a class simply couldnt be trusted to do otherwise, a thesis thats being starkly acted out in the present period of Citizens United, Super Pacs, and truckloads of dark money.

But the occasion for economic equality goes beyond even equations of influence politics. Democracys premise rests on the idea that the collective wisdom of the majority will demonstrate right more frequently than its incorrect. That have enough opening in the pursuit of happy, your population will develop its genius, its ability, its better judgment; that over time the national capacity for discernment and self-correction will be magnified. Life will improve. The way of your uniting will be more perfect, to borrow a phrase. But if a critical mass of your population maintained in peonage? All its vigor spent in the cuts of day-to-day existence, with insufficient opportunity to develop the full range of its faculties? Then how much poorer the prospects for your democracy will be.

Economic equality can no more be divorced from the smooth functioning of republic than the ballot. Jefferson, Brandeis, the Roosevelts all realise this home truth. The American Dream has to be the lived world of the two countries, not just a moderately tale we tell ourselves.

I have always go much more advertisement than anybody else.

Donald Trump

Then theres that other American dreaming, the numbed-out, dumbed-down, make-believe macrocosm where much of the national consciousness resides, the sum concoction of our mighty Fantasy Industrial Complex: movies, Tv, internet, texts, tweets, ad saturation, celebrity infatuation, athletics infatuation, Amazonian sewers of porn and political bullshit, the entire foray of media and messaging that is endeavouring to separate us from our brains. September 11, 2001 detonation us out of that daydream for about two minutes, but the dream is so elastic, so all-encompassing, that 9/11 was soon absorbed into the the matrix of FIC. This exceedingly complex incident horribly direct in the result, but a swamp when it is necessary to reasons was stripped down and binaried into a reliable fantasy narration of us against them, good versus sin, Christian against Muslim. The week after 9/11, Susan Sontag was virtually executed for pointing out that a few smidgens of historical awareness might help us understand how we came to this part. For this modest overture , no small number of her fellow Americans bid her dead. But if wed followed her induce if united done the hard work of digging down to the roots of the whole nasty thought perhaps we wouldnt still be fighting al-Qaida and its offspring 15 years later.

An 11 -year-old girl wears Trump socks at awareness-raising campaigns event for the Republican nominee at the Trump International Hotel in Washington DC. Image: Mike Segar/ Reuters

Heres a hypothesis, ugly, uncharitable, but opened our recent biography it begs probe: the majority of cases most Americans dont know whats real any more. How else to justify Trump, a billionaire on an ego trip capturing a major partys nomination for chairman? Another blunt-speaking billionaire tried twice for the presidency in the 1990 s and used to go in flames, but he made the error of operating as himself, a recognizably flesh-and-blood human being, whereas Trump comes to us as the ultimate individual, and indisputable maestro, of the Fantasy Industrial Complex. For much of his profession until 2004, to be exact he braced status in our lives as a more or less ordinary personality. Large than life, rest assured, cartoonishly extravagant, shamelessly self-promoting, and reliably hateful, but Trump didnt become Trump until The Apprentice debuted in January 2004. The first episode depicted 20.7 million viewers. By analogy, Ross Perot received 19,742, 000 polls in the 1992 general elections yes, Im equating referendum totals with Nielsen ratings but Trump stopped gleaning that robust 20 million week after week. The season climax that year reached 28 million viewers, and over the coming decade, for 13 more seasons, this was how America came to know him, in that weirdly intimate mode Tv has of giving luminary into the exceedingly middle of our lives.

It was this same Trump that 24 million viewers a record, of course tuned in to watch at the first Republican debate last year, the glowering, blustering, swaggering boardroom act representation who devoted every hope of shredding the pols. One amazes if Trump would have ever been Trump if there hadnt been a JR Ewing to pave the way, to show just how dear and real a dealmaking TV swindler could be to our middles. Trumps performance on that night did not dishearten , nor through all the debates in the long progress that followed, and if his consider for the truth has proved more erratic even than that of professional legislators, we should expect just as much. In the realm of the Fantasy Industrial Complex, actuality happens on a slipping proportion. The fact is just another possibility.

I speak the password primeval.

I would give the signaling of democracy ;P TAGEND

By God! I will accept good-for-nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms.

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

In nine epoches Trump and Hillary will take the stage for their first face-to-face conversation. There will be blood. The bayonets are going to be out, and the ratings are bound to be, need it be said, yuge. The American Dream will no doubt be invoked from both pulpits, for what true-blue patriot was ever against the American Dream? And yet for the past 30 times the Democratic nominee has worked comfortably within “states parties ” establishment thats battered the working and middle classes down to the bone. The brand-new Democrat of the Clinton era are always strong for political privileges, as long as they dont disturbed corporate Americas bottom line. Strong for racial and gender equality, strong for LGBT privileges( though that took occasion ). Meanwhile this same Democratic establishment met with the GOP to push a market- and finance-driven economic prescribe that ameliorates the already rich and leaves the rest of us sucking wind.

Thats the very real feeling Trump to talk to , no fiction there. Bernie as well; small-minded think their constituencies overlapped, though Trumps admitted devotion to the common man stumbles over even the simplest proof. On whether to raise the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, Trumps moral compass has spun from an connoted no( wages are already too high ), to connote yes( wages are too low ), to weasel words( left open up to the states ), to yes and no in the same sigh( I would leave it and grow it rather ), and, ultimately, when pressed by Bill OReilly in July, to yes-but( raise it to $10, but its still good left to the states ). All this from the candidate whos securely in favor of abolishing the estate tax, to the great benefit of heirs of multimillionaires and none at all to the vast majority of us.

Meanwhile, the Fantasy Industrial Complex is doing just fine this election season, thank you. Communicating at a Morgan Stanley investors meeting in March, one of the commanders of the FIC, Leslie Moonves, the chief executive of CBS and a husband whose 2015 compensation totaled $56.8 m, had this to say about the Trump campaign. It may not be good for America, but its damn good for CBS. The fund rolling in and this is fun this[ is] about to become a very good time for us. Sorry. Its a terrible thought to say. But bring it on, Donald. Keep going.

Read more: www.theguardian.com

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Spider-Man: 15 Things His Clone Can Do (That He Can’t)

The “Clone Saga” of the mid-1990s has a bad reputation. Originally, it was only planned to last less than a year, but strong sales led to Marvel’s editorial staff extending the saga far longer than the plot could support. The confusing, convoluted story arc came to represent, in the minds of fans, everything wrong with comics storytelling in the ‘90s.

RELATED: Clone Zone: The 15 Craziest Comic Book Clones

It’s easy to forget that the saga wasn’t always bad. In fact, the early stories in the clone saga were great, which is why it sold so many books in the first place. Most of that was due to Ben Reilly. Peter Parker’s clone took on the role of The Scarlet Spider, reinvigorating the series with his fresh attitude and a few unique abilities. With his recent return to “The Amazing Spider-Man” as the quasi-villainous Jackal, it’s time to take a look at the things Ben Reilly can do that Peter Parker just can’t.

SENSE VENOM

Longtime “Spider-Man” readers will remember that Peter Parker donned the Venom suit during the first “Secret Wars” crossover in issue #8 (written by Jim Shooter with art by Mike Zeck, and inks by John Beaty, Jack Abel and Mike Esposito). While the symbiote never fully bonded with Parker, it was enough to affect his Spider-Sense, such that now, he can’t sense when Venom is nearby. That makes Venom one of Spider-Man’s more dangerous villains, as he can easily sneak up on the wall-crawler.

Ben Reilly doesn’t have that problem. He has all of Parker’s memories of Venom, but he never actually put on the suit, so his Spider Sense is still fully functional. When Reilly, as The Scarlet Spider, confronts Venom in “Spider-Man” #52 (written by Howard Mackie with art by Tom Lyle and Scott Hanna), Venom thinks it will be an easy battle. Reilly’s Spider-Sense proves invaluable in allowing Reilly to survive the encounter (and the next one, and the next, and so on).

CLONE THE DEAD

This is something we only recently learned about Reilly. In “Dead No More: The Clone Conspiracy” #3 (written by Dan Slott with art by Jim Cheung), the returned Jackal reveals himself to be Ben Reilly, having been resurrected, or more accurately, re-cloned. During his time as The Jackal, Reilly cloned Gwen Stacy and convinced her to become his business partner by cloning her father, George Stacy. Like Miles Warren before him, Ben Reilly has made a habit out of using clones to bring loved ones back from the dead.

This turned out to be another thing that Peter Parker just can’t do. While it’s true that Parker is intellectually capable of making a clone, he has a moral inability to do so. When he reveals his identity to Parker, he offers to clone Uncle Ben, whose body is in a box nearby. Though initially tempted, Parker refuses. He reminds Reilly that Uncle Ben would disapprove. (Uncle) Ben would see such an action as using great power without responsibility.

PLAN AHEAD

During Ben Reilly’s five-year exile from New York, his fighting skills atrophied. He got rusty. Meanwhile, Peter Parker has been fighting off supervillains nonstop, and he’s gotten very good at it. As a result, he’s begun to take a more direct approach, leading with his fists and confronting enemies head-on.

Reilly, on the other hand, has to take a more strategic approach. When he returns to New York, he finds that direct confrontation doesn’t work out well for him. He’s forced to hang back, even occasionally retreating to gain an advantage at a later time. In “Spider-Man Unlimited” #7, written by Tom Lyle with art by Al Milgrom, he tries to defend a homeless man from a gang of drug dealers. When it becomes clear they will overpower him, he briefly retreats to grab his suit and web canisters. With his identity protected and all the tools at his disposal, he’s able to get the drop on the gang and make short work of them.

IMPACT WEBBING

Ben Reilly’s most notable improvements over Peter Parker’s Spider-Man were his web modifications. Parker seemed to take an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach to his webbing. Occasionally, a new villain would force him to create a stronger formula, but for the most part, his webs did what they always did.

Reilly was a tinkerer. Though he avoided acting as Spider-Man during his exile, he didn’t stop working on his web canisters. Impact webbing was one of the more useful additions to his arsenal. Rather than firing a simple string of webbing, Reilly is able to fire a small ball that explodes on impact. Once the ball hits its target, web tendrils explode outward, trapping the enemy in a cocoon. The more Reilly fires, the stronger the cocoon becomes, giving The Scarlet Spider a way to quickly deal with stronger enemies. The added gadgets did make his web shooters too large to be worn under his costume, but that’s a small price to pay for added utility.

WEB-SEPARATE VENOM

This is another advantage of impact webbing. When Reilly returns to New York, he’s shocked to find that Peter Parker has struck a deal with Venom. With all the memories of the terrible things the Lethal Protector has done, he can’t believe Parker would allow him to roam free. He immediately picks a fight with Venom, which doesn’t go so well, and he’s forced to seek treatment for a serious gut wound.

When he returns to finish the fight in “Spider-Man” #53 (written by Howard Mackie with art by Tom Lyle and Scott Hanna), he’s prepared. He’s able to protect Scream from Venom’s wrath by entangling him in a web cocoon long enough for her to get away. Then, when Venom grabs Reilly and brings him close, Reilly fires a few impact web balls into Venom’s mouth. The cocoons form around Eddie Brock, successfully separating him from the symbiote. Unlike Parker, the Scarlet Spider can defeat Venom without having to seek out loud noises.

PARALYZE

As we’ve already seen, Ben Reilly did more with his web shooters than Peter Parker ever dreamed possible. It appears when you spend a few years without having to defend New York from crime, you have time to get creative with your gadgets. This handy invention makes an appearance after Reilly has been defending New York as The Scarlet Spider for a short while. By this point, he’s ended up at odds with two formidable enemies: The Grim Hunter (Kraven’s son) and the rapidly degenerating clone, Kaine. And wouldn’t you know it, they both catch up with him at the same time.

In “Spider-Man” #53 (written by Howard Mackie with art by Mike Manley, Joe Rubenstein and Kevin Tinsley), Reilly has taken several beatings from Kaine. This time, Ben is able to gain the upper hand by introducing Kaine to his stingers. Apparently invented with Kaine in mind, the stingers are small darts that inject a muscle-paralyzing serum into their target. Reilly may not be as strong as Parker, but he sure seems a lot smarter.

TRACK ENEMIES BETTER

Peter Parker’s Spider Tracers are pretty remarkable. In a world before GPS was as widespread as it is today, Parker was able to create a small, easy-to-use tracker that he could stick on enemies (or their vehicles) and use his Spider-Sense to follow them. That is, until the enemy in question found the spider-shaped tracker and disposed of it or lured him into a trap. As impressive as the technology was, it could definitely be improved upon.

That’s where Ben Reilly comes in. Realizing that not everything needs to be spider-shaped, Reilly designed his tracers to be smaller and less obvious. His microdot tracers are smaller and circular. Like Parker’s, they can be launched from Reilly’s web shooters, but their circular shape makes them spin as they fly. That means they fly faster and further, and they can stick to their targets without being quite as obvious as Parker’s red spider-shaped models.

GO BLONDE

Most of Ben’s appearances in “Spider-Man” comics took place in the 1990s. For those who don’t remember, the ‘90s were an embarrassing time for hair. Even our most beloved, long-running superheroes didn’t escape without a few missteps. (Remember Superman’s flowing shoulder-length locks? Oof.) Possibly the most embarrassing trend was bleaching your hair blonde. Too many ’90s kids have a cringe-inducing photo of themselves rocking bright yellow hair (dark roots showing through, of course).

For some reason, when Ben Reilly bleached his hair, it didn’t look stupid. It looked perfectly acceptable at the time, and still doesn’t look that bad today. Maybe it’s because he kept his roots from showing. Maybe it was because he wasn’t Peter Parker. Though Parker never tried dying his hair blonde, he absolutely couldn’t have pulled it off so well. His general appearance has been established for so long, a change that drastic would be immediately rejected. Ben Reilly is his own character, though. He may have Parker’s face, but being a blonde just suits him better.

MAKE A DECENT CUP OF COFFEE

Peter Parker was never one for domestic tasks. When Mary Jane comes home from visiting family in “Amazing Spider-Man” #397 (written by J. M. DeMatteis, art by Mark Bagley, Larry Mahlstedt and Bob Sharen), she finds the apartment a complete mess. It’s safe to assume that Mary Jane made the coffee in the Parker household. Also, in all the jobs he’s held (freelance photographer, teacher, tech CEO), none of them required him to learn how to make a good cup of coffee.

Ben Reilly, on the other hand, held down a steady job at The Daily Grind, a classic New York diner and coffee shop. Not only was he able to remain an employee there, he was well-liked and earned enough to live in Manhattan. You can’t do that at a diner without knowing how to make a customer’s coffee just right. Reilly also had to learn to make every kind of latte and cappuccino out there without an automated espresso machine. No matter how useful Parker’s spider-sense is, it’s not going to help him pour a drinkable shot of espresso.

HAVE A (RELATIVELY) NORMAL LOVE LIFE

Peter Parker has had the worst luck when it comes to love. Aside from his early flirtations with Betty Brandt, it’d be hard to call any of Parker’s relationships normal. The first woman he really loved, Gwen Stacy, was killed by the Green Goblin. When he found love again, and got married, it was all eventually undone by Mephisto, who reset the world so his marriage never happened.

By comparison, Ben Reilly’s relationships were fairly normal. During his years of exile in “Spider-Man: The Lost Years” (Written by J.M. DeMatteis, art by John Romita Jr. and Klaus Janson) he formed a serious relationship with Janine Godbe. Although she carried her own scars and traumas, none of it was supervillain-related. During Ben’s time in New York, he dated Jessica Carradine. That relationship had its own problems, but they all stemmed from the fact that her father was the burglar who killed Uncle Ben. Ben Reilly may not have the best luck with love either, but at least his relationship troubles were fairly normal… comparatively speaking, anyway.

TURN TO DUST

To be fair, this isn’t something Ben Reilly can do whenever he wants. He only turns to dust when he dies. It is, however, something that Peter Parker can’t do. We’ve seen what happens when Peter Parker dies. In “Ultimate Spider-Man” #160 (written by Brian Michael Bendis, art by Mark Bagley, Andy Lanning, Andrew Hennnessy and Justin Ponsor), Parker is killed in a fight with the Green Goblin. He lies there in Mary Jane’s arms as he dies.

When Reilly is killed by The Green Goblin in “Spider-Man” #75 (written by Howard Mackie, art by John Romita Jr., Scott Hanna and Kevin Tinsley), his body starts degenerating quickly. He turns to dust as he dies. That serves as the final proof that Peter Parker is truly the original and Ben Reilly is the clone. It seems to, anyway. Turning to dust isn’t consistent with clone degeneration. That, of course, raises the question: Is Reilly truly a clone… or something else entirely?

DESIGN A COSTUME WORTHY OF A TEENAGE GIRL

Peter Parker’s Spider-Man costume is iconic, to be sure. The sharp angles, the black web pattern over the red, the web-wings underneath his arms. When you hear the name “Spider-Man,” you imagine that costume. Not bad for a 16-year-old science geek. It just wasn’t good enough for his alternate-universe teenage daughter or her best friend.

In the MC2 universe, Parker and Mary Jane’s child survived, developed spider powers and protected New York City as Spider-Girl. But did she choose to wear dear old dad’s costume? Nope, her costume was the same one Reilly wore after he gave up the Scarlet Spider mantle and became New York’s only Spider-Man. When her friend Felicity Hardy (Felicia’s daughter) joined up, she took on the Scarlet Spider identity completely, costume and all. So not only can Ben make a costume that a teenage girl would wear in public, he can make two.

STAY POSITIVE THROUGHOUT THE GRIM 1990s

The 1990s were a tough time to be a comics fan. Storylines got darker and darker, characters became more brooding and self-serious. The ‘90s were an era where everything had to be gritty and extreme. In following the fad, a lot of comics lost what made them fun in the first place. Spider-Man had an especially noticeable change in attitude; so much so that Doctor Octopus called him out on it in “Amazing Spider-Man” #397, asking where his wit had gone.

That’s what made Ben Reilly such a welcome addition. Though he had Parker’s memories up to a point, he hadn’t gone through some of the heavier stuff that happened in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Reilly still had the wit, the sense of humor and the easygoing attitude that fans loved about Spider-Man. He brought some much-needed levity back to the series, when all Parker could do was drag it down. It’s no wonder some people at Marvel wanted to make him Parker’s permanent replacement.

SELL MORE COMICS

Ben Reilly reinvigorated Spider-Man comics like Parker, at that point, could not. No matter what writers did with him, Parker was carrying too much baggage by the mid-’90s. For some reason, he couldn’t excite fans anymore. Ben Reilly, as the Scarlet Spider, was exactly what fans were looking for, to the point where three Spider-Man series were briefly rebooted to be Scarlet Spider Series. For a few months, comics shelves displayed “The Amazing Scarlet Spider,” “The Spectacular Scarlet Spider” and “Web of Scarlet Spider” where Spider-Man used to be.

Those issues sold far better than their Spider-Man counterparts had in a long time. The original plan was to have Reilly take over as Spider-Man permanently, but plans changed after Scarlet Spider comics sold so well. Reilly repeatedly refused to take on the Spider-Man name, just so Marvel could continue selling Scarlet Spider comics. Eventually, Marvel was forced to make Ben the new Spider-Man, but they dragged out his Scarlet Spider run for as long as possible.

LET PEOPLE IN

Ben Reilly realized the importance of letting people into his life much quicker than Peter Parker did. It took him forever to admit to Mary Jane that he was Spider-Man. In fact, she figured it out long before he even considered letting her in on his double life. Parker insisted on keeping his secret even to the point of endangering those closest to him. Perhaps it was because he wasn’t around as long as Parker was, but Reilly never took nearly as long to be honest with the important people in his life.

When he dated Janine Godby (real name Elizabeth Tyne), he wised up quickly that keeping his powers a secret from her was impossible. He accepted her as she was and told her all about his abilities and the fact that he was a clone. The world didn’t end. They became a stronger couple for it. Their relationship didn’t work out in the fullness of time, but Ben realized early on that he was happier letting people in.

Do you think Ben was the better Spider? Was he also the better man? Let us know in the comments!

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