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vasito-de-leche · 9 months ago

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Do you have any specific queer headcannons of r1999 characters if so which ones and why?

I wrote a bunch of stuff for this post but then tumblr fucked me up and reloaded without saving it so here we are..... rewriting it all over again ... OAUGH. usually I default to seeing everyone as Vaguely Bisexual and Not Cis until stated otherwise, but you asked for specifics so here we go!

6 is aromantic or demiromantic.

On one hand, it's because I love projecting on my faves. On the other hand, it's because he genuinely doesn't feel like the type of person to be interested in relationships. But this isn't something that's tied to any potential disgust, repulsion or even trauma related to his Revelation and struggle against fate -- to me, 6 just doesn't feel romantic attraction. At the very least, nothing strong enough to consider pursuing. It's not in his priorities. I really dislike this specific thing that fandoms do in which every single character who is introverted, or who happens to be alone/isolated (either by chance or by choice) is secretly lonely, touch starved, pining and desperate for attention and romantic love. It feels like such a huge disrespect for their equally important platonic or familial relationships. 6 already holds a lot of love for his own community and his childhood friends, a type of affection that is shown in his subtle and unique ways. I like it when his character focuses on those aspects instead!

Mesmer Jr. is aromantic and asexual.

In her case, she's the opposite of 6. Mesmer Jr.'s trauma and OCD is much too intense for her to even consider the idea of an emotional or physical bond with anyone. She's disgusted at the idea of touching others so casually, and she's afraid at the possibility of allowing a person (someone she logically cannot have any control over) into her life because what if they throw her off her schedule? What if they mess every meticulous thing she's planned for herself and her mental stability? What if she loses her grip? Yes, it's plausible that she may find a partner who works perfectly with the way she needs things to be, and yes, you can headcanon that she heals and her OCD becomes "manageable" enough to have a stable relationship, but personally? I just like it when characters don't get to have stereotypical happy endings in which everything gets better through love and friendship and support -- like, yeah everyone loves to see their faves happy and all but eh... It's a bit of projection on my part! Some people don't get to heal and do all the things their disabilities prevented them from doing, even if we're given all this support and love. Some of us just have to find ways around these things, anything that works for us that makes our lives easier.

Sweetheart is queer but has a complex relationship with love. In a somewhat similar vein, Blonney has gone through every single letter of the LGTBQ+ community.

I tried my best to explain my thoughts on Sweetheart but at this point she deserves her own post because it's honestly a LOT, this single part was just too long so I cut it out entirely. Just trust me when I say she's queer and has a very complex relationship with love. In Blonney's case, we discussed the possibility of her being written as comphet and it got me to think a little about her. I see Blonney as the type of girl who presents as a straight bimbo, following the themes of her character and all, but who has constant crisis after crisis in the privacy of her bedroom, the only place she's allowed to be more than just a blondie. This constant journey questioning her orientations and gender happens entirely in her head and in private. I like to think that she just has these long monologues in her head. Sure, she's identified as straight her whole life, but maybe bisexual works better because there was that one girl she kept meeting under the bleachers. Oh, but maybe she's a lesbian, since all her boyfriends are just huge disappointments and none of them ever make her truly happy. Oh, but maybe that's just because she has bad taste in men, there was that one guy in class who keeps making her laugh after all. Ahh, this would be so much easier if she were a guy, her femininity is mostly performative after all. Ah, but she actually really loves pink and fashion... Nonbinary then? No, she's not the type to pick something so vague, it's one or the other. Oh, how about both? Genderfluid! Etc etc. If you ask her about how she identifies, she'll simply brush you off with a "What's it to you? That's none of your business, creep!" and move on, but this is something very personal to her. So far, she knows she likes being femme presenting and that she likes Jessica!

Eagle is a trans girl.

Have you guys seen those posts going around tumblr about how important it is that trans women exist because they fight for their own womanhood and girlhood in a world that constantly looks down upon feminine things and all women as a whole? Yeah. Yeah. Eagle being a scout that fights so hard to prove herself, the feelings of not belonging into the Boy Scouts and seeing how the Girl Scouts are created eventually, a space for her. The fact that she visits her father's grave so that he can see her grow up.

Kaalaa Baunaa, Oliver Fog, Medicine Pocket and Melania are probably bisexual, but they're super busy with work so they don't have time to address that.

Self-explanatory <3 I do like to think that Kaalaa and Medpoc are more chill about it, Kaalaa because she's a grown ass woman who is very mature, and Medpoc because they genuinely give no fucking shits about dating in general, so who cares about confirming whether they're bisexual or not. Oliver Fog is a little more flustered at the idea of exploring his orientation and whatnot, but it's tolerable. BUT MELANIA? I LOVE to think that she's FULLY aware that the MOMENT she acknowledges her bisexuality, she will have a crisis and then what will she do? She has 3 papers due next week and a heist this weekend, she can't possibly sit there wondering about liking girls! She's got things to do!

And here's the extra round of HCs that don't require that much text to explain or that lean towards being more silly!

Eternity has literally outlived the concept of gender. She/They royalty.

37 has QRPs instead. It Just Works. No one but herself and her partners understand the dynamics, though. As god intended <3

APPLe is a raging bisexual and has been spotted in many gay bars. Regulus is also bisexual.

The world would've been a better place if Bette was a butch lesbian.

Balloon Party and An-An Lee play with gender like its playdough.

Baby Blue is Not Cis and she's Not Straight either because none of that shit matters to her anymore, since she's been disconnected from reality and society for so long. She also doesn't care about labelling herself.

Diggers is trans, but no one can figure out which way exactly. It doesn't help that he refuses to clarify either. The same thing happens with John Titor, except she's very vocal about being a transwoman.

Bunny Bunny is bisexual but she hasn't realized this yet. In similar fashion, Horropedia is bisexual but he just forgets about it sometimes.

Druvis III as a trans woman goes hand in hand with Forget Me Not as a gay man. This is why they're both super divorced.

Leilani is pansexual because she prefers the colors of that specific flag over the bisexual one. Spathodea is pansexual because the personal distinction between pansexuality and bisexuality matters to her.

Tennant is bisexual because she can scam and seduce more people that way.

The Fool is nonbinary. Mf should've been born in the 2020's, I just KNOW he would've loved mirrorgender.

Zima is in the closet not out of shame but out of safety. Just in case.

Sotheby assumes that every girl in the world likes girls. So far no one has been able to prove her wrong because all she does is interact with other sapphic girls.

Pavia is nonbinary out of spite. But I also love transguy Pavia HCs so so so much, give that guy boobs, he would never get top surgery <3

Vertin is nonbinary too but she doesn't care about people knowing about it. She does, however, make the effort to be a little androgynous, as a treat for herself.

Madam Z and Katz absolutely had a Situationship going on during university. Katz was bicurious and Madam Z helped her experiment. Now the Situationship is between Madam Z and Constantine, the latter using Madam Z as a rebound after fumbling her relationship with Vertin's mother <- the machinations in my brain will astonish you.

TTT is genderfluid by virtue of being a picture on a TV, so I like to think she can just shift her appearance. In similar fashion, gender means nothing to Alien T and Voyager because they're aliens.

I specifically love the idea of all of the 1.2 gang joking about how Tooth Fairy is their token straight adult figure -- she's actually bi and asexual, but likes to keep that to herself so the kids can make their little jokes and have fun.

Enigma is gay and homophobic because his self-loathing is just that strong.

Turns out that the push Click needed to explore his own sexuality was getting killed on the battlefield, so now he's free to be gay. perhaps bicurious.

#reverse 1999 #reverse: 1999 #reverse 1999 headcanons #in my mind ezra is the token straight cis guy of the suitcase #but if you leave him for a few months with the gang hes eventually gonna realize that being nonbinary is banger actually

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a-m-w-worlds · 3 months ago

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Grim Fandango: Story and Worldbuilding

Grim Fandango has one of those worlds that teases my brain in such and interesting way, all it does is invite questions.

Grim is heavily inspired by the Day of the Dead, a primarily (though not exclusively) Mexican holiday dedicated to remembering and celebrating the dead. My family has never celebrated Dia de los Muertos, so I am very much an outsider looking in, meaning it's hard for me to tell exactly what all aspects of Grim's world pull directly from real folklore and traditions, vs what was fabricated specifically for the game. I'll be touching on this several times throughout this post, but for now, let's dig in!

Grim introduces us to its world through one of the most effective opening cutscenes I've ever seen in a game. For one, it's very cinematic. It feels more like the beginning of a movie than a game and, given how much inspiration Grim draws from classic movies, sets the tone of the game very well. It also conveys all the information we need to understand the world we've been dropped into in a very organic way through the newly deceased Celso.

Manny explaining about the Land of the Dead, the DOD, and the four-year journey of the soul, could have been a such an awkward exposition dump, but the way it's handled allows it to serve so many purposes simultaneously. It explains the world, establishes our main character, his job, what his average day looks like, and that he keeps getting bad clients, which is what spurs the entire plot into motion. This cutscene is a lean, mean storytelling machine!

Also, watching Manny shuck his reaper robes to reveal he was wearing stilts was freaking hilarious!/gen

Now, the game's story is spread out over the course of four years, with gameplay taking place exclusively on the Day of the Dead for each year. This was surprising to me. I've never had a single game span multiple years, but this decision works so well! At the beginning of the game Manny explains that the dead must take a four-year journey of the soul across the Land of the Dead to reach the Land of Eternal Peace. Manny himself says that he can't begin his own journey until he's paid off his moral debts. The time skips allow us to see Manny's entire journey start to finish, watching him go from selfish enough to steal a coworker's client to standing at the gateway to Eternal Peace and making the selfless choice to not cross until he's helped all the other souls first. It's a really satisfying literal and personal journey to embark on!

I'd like to talk about the four-year journey of the soul and the Land of the Dead for a minute. Grim Fandango has definitely inspired me to dig more into Mesoamerican mythologies and folklore recently, but I'm finding it very difficult to find concrete information. The temple we visit in Year 4 is called the Mayan Train Station but from what I've found Grim's depiction of the Land of the Dead seams to lean closer to the Aztec underworld, Mictlān, than it does the Maya underworld, Xibalba.

In Aztec mythology there are four possible afterlife's, described very well in this article (Definitely worth the read, it's fascinating!), but Mictlān, the afterlife that took most of the dead, is the one we're discussing today. Mictlān consists of nine regions that supposedly take four years to traverse. (This article explains why four years!) Something I find notable is that in Grim Fandango the Land of the Dead and the Land of Eternal Peace are alternatively called the Eighth and Ninth Underworlds respectively. This seems to be inspired by Mictlān's nine regions, but I'm unsure why one-through-seven are ignored. Likewise, Grim's Land of the Dead doesn't align geographically to the Mictlān of myth, but does seem to have been inspired by it, especially the fourth and seventh levels as described below. (Descriptions from this article!)

• 4th level, called Itzehecayan. A desolate place of stone and ice where it always snowed and where the wind blew so fiercely it injured those passing through - called ‘Place of the Obsidian Wind’

This description lines up very closely to the area around the temple in year 4.

• 7th level, called Teocoyohuehualoyan. A place where jaguars ripped open the chests of the dead to eat their hearts

And this seems to have inspired the use of jaguars in the game and that one scene in the Petrified Forest. You all know the scene of which I'm referring!

I actually kind of like that Grim took the artistic liberties that it did with its afterlife. For one, the story is less restricted this way. The story and Manny's individual journey can play out more naturally than if they were limited to going through each of these specific regions and challenges. But these changes also add to the sense that this a much more modern underworld.

It's not specified when Grim takes place, but it's clearly within the last century. The Eighth Underworld has modern cities, cars, ships, computers, submarines, among others. Throughout the game we learn that many of the characters we meet have been in the Eighth Underworld for far longer than four years. Many have given up on ever reaching the Ninth Underworld or stopped believing in it altogether, instead trying to lead as comfortable an existence in the Eighth Underworld as possible. This is such a neat bit of worldbuilding and explains away the discrepancies between Grim and mythology perfectly! Over all these centuries the souls that never made it to the end have tamed the Land of the Dead and recreated what they had in life as closely as possible. It's so interesting to see how they've substituted things like concrete with the marrow from the trees in the Petrified Forest, lightbulb components with glowing coral from the Sea of Lament, and racehorses with the jaguars that are supposed to be eating their hearts! I'm geeking out over it!/gen

Something else interesting; the Day of the Dead is an amalgamation of Aztec beliefs and beliefs brought to Mexico by the Spaniards. Grim reflects this as some of the concepts and imagery used are rooted more in European folklore and Christianity. Manny wearing black robes and using a scythe is an obvious reference to the Grim Reaper, a character originating in European folklore. And at the DOD it's explained that the more virtuous the soul, the easier and faster their journey to the Ninth Underworld will be. This is more of a Christian concept. In Aztec mythology a person's deeds and character in life have no sway over how they're treated in death. So, souls working at the DOD as "community service" to pay for their sins in life, and virtuous souls receiving tickets on the Number 9 both lean more into the Christian concept of purgatory. As does Nick Virago's fate while trying to use a stolen Number 9 ticket and being sent into the fiery depths.

Again, narratively this divergence from strict Aztec mythology works in Grim's favor. For crime to exist in the Land of the Dead, and therefore a mystery, there must first be something of value to obtain, and what has greater value than a literal ticket to paradise?

The way the Land of the Dead has been modernized and adapted to work as the setting of a film noir inspired story is absolutely incredible!/gen Sproutella guns might be the most notable example of this. How do you kill someone in a place where everyone is already dead? Turn em into flowers! This concept is so weird but makes so much sense. When we're alive we're scared of dying, so the idea of the dead being afraid of "living" is interesting. It's not explained (to the best of my knowledge) exactly what sproutella does to skeletons, but we see that being shot with sproutella bullets or being exposed to sproutella in its powder form causes bone to sprout into flowers. Are these souls reincarnated into the flowers? Is their life force drained to feed the flowers? Are their souls reincarnated on Earth while just their bones feed the flowers? Not a clue! But the repercussions of this are fascinating!/gen This game teaches us to associate flowers, typically symbols of life, with gruesome and tragic deaths. The two florists we meet are thrust into the roles of a mortician and weapons developer and we see the huge negative impact this has on both of their mental health. Membrillo holds it together pretty well, just being very jaded, but Bowlsley's sanity seems to have taken a nosedive. I'm sorry for both of them, but it's so cool that the game actually touches on this!

One of the few nitpicks I have with this game is that we don't get to see Manny receive the golden ticket he has at the end. It's not necessary by any means, but it would have been a nice little pay off if after defeating Hector and returning everyone else's tickets we got to see a ticket manifest in front of Manny and either him or Meche or Glottis acknowledge that he's fully worked of his sins and is free to move on. Just ten extra seconds of cutscene and it could have tied Manny's story up in such a neat little bow. That is a very minor nitpick though and honestly I'm mentioning mostly to prove I'm not a complete simp!/lh

Link to complete review!

#grim fandango #lucasarts #point and click #pc games #old games #tim schafer #manny calavera #glottis #meche colomar #land of the dead #day of the dead #dia de los muertos #mictlan #aztec #aztec mythology #my posts

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daresplaining · 1 year ago

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An Interview with Christine Hanefalk

Christine Hanefalk created her blog, The Other Murdock Papers, in 2007 as a place to discuss and share her interest in Matt Murdock and his world. Over the years, she has become one of the most compelling and influential voices within the Daredevil fan community, even making a cameo appearance in the comic itself in Daredevil volume 3 #31. In 2022 she published Being Matt Murdock, a passion project centered around an area of particular fascination: Matt's legendary hypersenses. The book weaves real-world science into the vast Daredevil canon to explore the notion that Daredevil's powers, though superhuman, are not – and do not need to be – as divorced from reality as one might think.

Christine was kind enough to answer my questions about the book, and about her nearly twenty-year-long fascination with the Man Without Fear. Read the interview below...

Daresplaining: I know many people will be familiar with your blog and your longtime interest in Matt Murdock's sensory world, but could you say a little about how Being Matt Murdock first came about, and how you approached writing and researching it?

Christine Hanefalk: I started The Other Murdock Papers in late 2007 and gradually allowed myself to start writing more about the scientific and sensory aspects of Daredevil as time went on. I was really worried it might turn people off, but the opposite was true and people really seemed to dig my deep dives. And so as far back as around 2012 I decided that, one of these days, I was going to try to write a whole book on the subject.

Despite the fact that it took me ten years to complete it, with most of the work being concentrated to the final 12-18 months before publication, I had actually done some writing early-on. I think I had about half of chapters one (on the literary history) and seven (on the sense of smell) written several years ago, along with various snippets and notes that I had filed away and was able to work into some of the other chapters. I had also consistently been keeping an eye out for anything new and interesting in the peer reviewed academic literature, and managed to amass – and read through – quite a collection of books on sensory neuroscience over the years.

When that “now or never” moment finally arrived, it lined up well with a period of time in my life where I was able to cut back on regular work and devote most of my time and energy to the book. I went over all of the stuff I’d already looked at before but with more focus, and got myself reacquainted with subjects I hadn’t really touched since college, such as thermodynamics. I also reread nearly all of the comics, taking very detailed notes on how and when Daredevil used his senses to get a better idea of the overall pattern. It’s not an understatement to say that I’ve spent upwards of 2,000 hours on this project over the years.

D: I understand that you were introduced to Daredevil through the 2003 movie. What drew you so strongly to Matt as a character? How much of a role has your fascination with his powers played in your continuing interest over the years?

CH: I grew up reading comics and enjoying sci-fi and superhero movies as a kid. I was born in 1977, so both the original Star Wars trilogy and the Superman franchise loomed large in my life when I got old enough to watch them. And while I eventually stopped reading superhero comics, I always had a special place in my heart for the genre and had a certain fascination with the general idea of superheroes. That eventually steered me in the direction of the Daredevil movie when it was released in video stores (I don’t think it even went up in theaters in my native Sweden).

The specifics of Matt Murdock’s power set was definitely one thing that gave this character an unusual kind of appeal to me. I had always been interested in the science of the senses – and what happens when one is missing – and had even written a paper on sensory compensation for my neuroscience class while I was an exchange student at the University of Rochester around the turn of the millennium.

There were additional things that made Daredevil interesting of course, such as his career as a lawyer, his overall personality, and the general mood of the world he inhabited, but the combination of his power set and my already having a soft spot for superheroes definitely piqued my interest right away. Within a few months of learning that Daredevil even existed, I had read pretty much everything he had ever appeared in.

D: Do you have a favorite sense, both in terms of your own research and as a Daredevil fan?

CH: I think I probably enjoyed researching hearing the most since there’s so much to cover. It’s also fascinating to me how hearing can be called on to perform spatial functions despite having this deceptively simple, linear, time-dependent form in terms of how it is received by the ear. The fact that it’s possible, even for quite ordinary humans, to sort of “see-hear” silent objects is fascinating to me.

However, if we look at Daredevil, I’d say that hearing has tended to be overused compared to both smell and touch. While hearing is often called on to perform near transcendental duties, smell tends to be forgotten by a lot of writers, probably in large part due to the fact that we humans seem to be less conscious of smells than we are of other sensory input. For the entire history of the comic, Daredevil has often gone several issues without any reference to smell, and the things he’s been smelling have often tended to not be very interesting. It’s always a treat to see smell being used in creative ways.

Still, the sense I would be even more interested in seeing more of in Daredevil is probably touch, which I also think is used less than it could be. Sure, there’s plenty of reading by touch (print or braille), but I still think we might be underestimating the importance of touch in Matt’s life, due in part to the high expectations of the radar sense (whatever we make of it). I view the “radar” as absolutely vital to everything Matt does as Daredevil, but I also see a much greater potential role for touch to work synergistically with such an ability.

D: Do you have a favorite new fact that you learned over the course of researching this book?

CH: Yes. I do think my coming across Jacob Twersky’s writing helped solidify the idea I had about how the concept of the radar sense may have originated. Blinded in childhood, Twersky would go on to become a champion collegiate wrestler, and later a historian and author. I read both his 1954 novel The Face of the Deep and his 1959 autobiography The Sound of the Walls while working on my own book. The way Twersky describes his sense of the obstacles around him in The Sound of the Walls struck me as shockingly similar to early descriptions of Daredevil’s radar sense, including the use of the term “radar” itself.

While I can’t know for sure whether anyone at Marvel was familiar with Twersky’s writing, it’s worth noting that he was a New Yorker and a contemporary of Stan Lee and many of the others in the Marvel bullpen back in the day. Whatever the case may be, it’s clear that the Marvel creators were not the first to use the word “radar” to describe the “obstacle sense of the blind,” as it was often known at the time. Over the years, and especially after having studied the early issues in great detail, I’ve definitely come to favor the idea that the “radar sense” wasn’t meant to be understood as a literal (electromagnetic) radar, though I should add that the understanding of the radar seems to have been all over the place for most of Daredevil history. Reading Twersky definitely added considerable weight to my interpretation of the early radar sense.

I also had some favorite epiphanies connected to the radar sense, one in particular which I think explains why Daredevil’s very particular way of being blind is often so difficult to make sense of for writers and fans alike. I recently wrote a rather lengthy post covering much of that stuff.

D: While taking a renewed deep dive into the source material, did you find yourself changing your opinion on anything?

CH: I should preface this by saying that there are definitely things I’ve changed my mind about over the years, even before I started most of the work on the book. I mentioned above that my understanding of the radar sense has shifted gradually, away from the more literal take the name suggests. Looking at the comics very carefully gives you even more of a sense that pinning down anything concrete here is going to be really difficult.

Revisting the comics has also given me a new appreciation for certain runs, such as the pre-Miller Bronze Age issues. This process has also led me to reassess my earlier assumptions that Daredevil’s senses have gone through some kind of steady evolution from Silver Age goofy to modern and grounded. This really isn’t the case, especially when you exclude some of the early outliers. You can find plenty of examples of both nonsensical and absolutely brilliant “senses writing” throughout the history of the comic, but I wouldn’t say that the treatment of the senses, or Matt’s blindness, have necessarily become more grounded on average.

D: You go into great detail about how much of Matt's sensory world has not been explored yet on the page. Is there any particular, specific experience that you would love to see depicted in future runs or adaptations?

CH: Contrary to what people might expect of me given my priors, I don’t necessarily think that there needs to be more stories about his senses, blindness and so on. However, I think these aspects of the character should be viewed as absolutely essential to how Daredevil is written, no matter what the particular storyline happens to be. I make a point in the book about how Daredevil is an amazingly interesting thought experiment, and I really believe that. So I’d really just wish for writers to be more comfortable running their scenes and stories through whatever their own version of this thought experiment happens to be and making sure that what’s on the page makes sense in light of that.

D: While researching other superpowered blind characters from the comics world and beyond, did you discover any new favorites? Can we expect a spin-off blog about Doctor Mid-Nite?

CH: Ha ha, no. It’s enough of a challenge keeping up with The Other Murdock Papers these days. As regular readers have undoubtedly noticed, I’ve been considerably less active there in recent years, having to do with work on the book as well as other real life stuff that’s competing for my time and attention. I do expect it to live on for many more years though, and I do update every once in a while. I’m definitely looking forward to writing about Daredevil: Born Again when that comes out, and we also have Echo coming out in early 2024.

D: What is your biggest Daredevil sensory pet peeve?

CH: To be honest, what bothers me more than all of the silly things put together is the suggestion that Daredevil can “see better than all of us,” is “not really blind,” and so on. As much as this might sound like the whole point of the character, it also takes much of the complexity out of what Daredevil does and how he does it. As blanket statements go, it just doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, unless we radically redefine what sight is, and what the other senses – even when heightened – actually do.

D: I love the scene in volume 3 #26 when Matt evades Ikari by changing his heart rate, even though logic would suggest that Ikari could still track him using his other senses, or even just other sounds. Do you have any favorite DD moments where you let sensory weirdnesses slide just because the scene is so compelling?

CH: While it’s a whole issue rather than a single scene, I really enjoyed what Mark Waid and Chris Samnee were attempting to do with the story that sees Matt attempt to escape Latveria while losing all of his senses. The scene I’m choosing to let slide here is when Matt seems to develop some kind of heat vision (it’s frankly unclear what it’s supposed to be) as his body tries to compensate. Whenever you see hints of thermal imaging in Daredevil, that’s an indication that he’s doing something that’s much further removed from how his senses should work than most people realize. It’s not something that follows naturally from heightened senses and is more like an entirely different kind of superpower.

I definitely tend to give a writer much more slack when 1) I'm enjoying the writing overall, and 2) said writer compensates to some degree by doing a good job of exploring, or at the very least remembering, that Matt is in fact blind.

D: What are your hopes for this book in regards to the impact it might have on how Daredevil is written in the future? What are the key takeaways that you hope fans and/or potential future Daredevil creators pull from it?

CH: If people reading this interview haven’t read Being Matt Murdock they may get the impression that it’s all a long list of “don’ts” or “can’ts,” but that’s a far cry from what I’ve attempted to do. I remember reading another superhero science book a few years ago that seemed to have as its central premise that “superpowers are stupid,” which didn’t feel particularly gratifying. I don’t see it that way at all. Sure, there are certainly characters whose powers read more like magic than anything else, but I don’t necessarily mind that. We don’t have to hold every character to any kind of scientific standard, and there definitely comes a point when taking this too far just takes the fun out of it.

When it comes to a character like Daredevil, however, I feel very strongly that bringing science into the picture has the potential to aid in the creative process rather than hinder it. Daredevil is relatively unusual in that he can exist comfortably in a kind of ��reality next door.” His powers are not possible in our own universe, but they are not so far removed from our normal understanding of things that we can’t attempt to make sense of them and imagine what life would be like from his perspective. Because while no one has super hearing, most of us do have regular human hearing which detects the measurable and explainable phenomenon of sound.

There are naturally things about Daredevil that not even loosening the reins of biology will address – for instance, even a science-minded writer is likely going to have to break some of the laws of the physics of sound – but understanding how these phenomena unfold in the real world helps create a good structure for how Daredevil might operate. And I feel like I’ve come pretty close to presenting a coherent “view” of the world from Daredevil’s perspective in this book.

It would definitely be a dream come true to have this book inspire future Daredevil writers, but I obviously don’t have much control over that kind of stuff. I’ve been able to give out plenty of copies to past writers and artists though, ha ha. I would want incoming writers to know that science is their friend. And that understanding some of the science makes Daredevil even more fascinating.

D: If you were given the opportunity to actually experience the world the way Matt does for a day, would you take it?

CH: Absolutely! Mind you, I probably wouldn’t want to do it for longer than a day or two and I very much appreciate my standard issue eyesight, but I think it would be fascinating to explore his world. Though in this thought experiment, I would assume that I could experience things the way he does after years of getting used to it so it’s not too much of a shock to the system. Unlike what happened in the delightfully ridiculous story where Daredevil switched bodies with Doctor Doom, and Doom appeared to adjust on the spot and couldn’t even figure out that he was now blind, I would expect it to take months or even years to learn to navigate the world the way Matt does (superhero acrobatics not included). And it’s not just about being able to integrate different amounts and kinds of sensory information. It’s also a matter of acquiring the strategies that allow for combining this sensory information with real-world knowledge in order to handle the many ambiguities which remain in a world organized around people with a more standard set of human senses.

D: Do you have any book/article/etc. recommendations for someone wanting to expand their reading on the topics explored in the book?

CH: Among the books I’ve read that I would recommend for general audiences is David Eagleman’s The Brain: The Story of You as a good introduction to the brain. If people want to progress from there I also recommend Brainscapes by Rebecca Schwarzlose. I don’t make any explicit references to Brainscapes in my book, but it’s a very solid read for anyone who wants to learn more about the role of “brain maps” in guiding our experiences. For the senses themselves, there’s The Universal Sense by Seth S. Horowitz (about hearing), and What the Nose Knows by Avery Gilbert.

Another book I read years ago that is sort of “on-topic” is A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History’s Greatest Traveler by Jason Roberts. It’s not one I reference in my own book, but I guess it’s “Daredevil adjacent.” It tells the absolutely fascinating true story of James Holman (1786-1857).

D: Beyond Being Matt Murdock and your blog, is there anything else you would like to promote/mention here?

CH: Not for the time being. Maybe there’ll be a second edition of Being Matt Murdock one day, but I don’t have any such plans for the foreseeable future. What I would like to do is take the opportunity to encourage people to tackle their own passion projects. For me, finalizing this project came down to realizing that if I were to be told I only had a year to live, I would want to prioritize finishing this book. That’s how much it meant to me. And when you feel that way about something, try to do whatever you can – as much as your current circumstances will allow – to give yourself that gift. Tackling something like this can be very daunting, and I definitely had to get over my fears of making mistakes and putting myself out there in order to do this. But I’m really glad that I finally did.

For more fun facts and information on Being Matt Murdock, and to purchase your own copy, visit www.scienceofdaredevil.com

For more of Christine Hanefalk's writing, visit www.theothermurdockpapers.com

#Christine Hanefalk #Being Matt Murdock #Daredevil #Matt Murdock #Quotes #Commentary

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losergames · 1 year ago

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I think the start of the game is what makes people curious about how much we will be able to influence the player character and the amount of routes, as it shows a sort of climax before going backwards in time and introducing us to MC and the crew, where we are able to shape our character and their relationship with life and the crew.

However, because the Future MC is shown to be in teasing close friendship with the crew, that they are trusted enough not to mess up the codes, and that they appear to enjoy what they are doing, with a goal of implied "(One-Way (?)) Trip to the Bahamas" after the heist is done, and they scream for a specific person's help when injured, that seems to point to the story being "uncompromising" (for a lack of better wording than anything) and set in a single route on that aspect: one where MC will befriend the crew, they will form a close, optionally romantic, relationship with one of them, and they are in it for an ambigiously selfish goal.

A reluctant MC who just wants to be over the whole situation would go opposite what's depicted. An MC with a different goal (for example, one who wants money for their mother) would clash with the Bahamas goal. An MC who doesn't trust/get along with the crew wouldn't really scream for their help.

While it allows room for a reluctant MC to get into the heist and befriend the crew, it can fall at odds with an MC who, say, doesn't like the crew, and/or the situation and is in the definition of "teeth-clenched teamwork" with them.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with that sort of story— I don't mind stories that come with semi-set MCs and single-direction plotlines on certain aspects, but in the light of recent discussions about the still far away ending and the options available for us to take so far, I feel like the prologue/flashforward depicted is liable to fall at odds with the choices we can take up until that part of the story comes.

ooo okay, this is really good feedback! the prologue could definitely be more ambiguous in terms of the relationship with the crew and maybe the mc's personal goals?

there is no 'bahamas goal'. the bahamas line is more of a hyperbole for how MUCH money the mc is in for, not actually referencing they want to go to the bahamas - but this can be edited if people are getting the wrong idea.

as for the name that's called when the mc is injured, it's more of a set up for when the time actually comes. yes, if the mc develops a relationship with one of the crew members then it'll probably be turned into a variable and end up being the name you shout out (spoiler alert). but, there are so many other people at that party; KJ is a good alternative i've thought about. maybe even Jonno or Natasha depending on where your friendship stands with them. plus, without giving much away, there are still characters you're yet to meet that could be involved or present at that moment.

also, personally, i think if you got shot you would scream for help from anyone nearby LMAO, even if if you didn't like them. still, we're in episode 2, i don't think we've touched on too many choices that are going to affect the end game climax, there's a lot of building to do! people making assumptions about the game and making conclusions from those assumptions is unfortunately something i can't control, but it is interesting discussion and leads to really good feedback that i am very grateful for.

i love the prologue, it's cinematic and sets up the story differently than other games. even if it's working against me right now, i'm still very proud of it! i do appreciate the feedback, i'll think about tweaking the prologue and adding more ambiguity for a later update. thank you! :-)

#cs ask

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superthatguy62 · 8 months ago

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Jack & Garland 2.0: 2 Garland 2 Furious

A while ago, I made a post about how the Garland from Dissidia and Jack Garland should not be the same characer. Time has passed since then: Opera Omnia has shut down and I finally managed to play through Stranger of Paradise (2/3rds of the way through the DLC now).

While I intended to touch up the post to include fix some things and whatnot, a realization occurred to me: The original post was heavily slanted into explaining why making the Garlands both the same character would make specifically Dissidia Garland a weaker character. In hindsight that is unfair given that the decision also weakens Jack and the theme of his story. So this is an addendum that overall touches on two aspects: The theme of Garland and why Jack and Dissidia Garland being two different takes on Garland isn't as far-fetched as it looks.

As before, this essay assumes that you are aware of the overall plot elements of the Dissidia Final Fantasy series as well as Stranger of Paradise and all of its DLC. It will also touch upon Final Fantasy XIV, although the only major spoiler is maybe something in regards to the Return To Ivalice plotline.

The Man Who Walks The Wheel of Time (The themes of Jack Garland and Dissidia Garland)

One of the major themes that Garland has come to embody over the course of the series is the concept of fate, and by extension, free will. In the original Final Fantasy, this was implicit in the form of the time loop: Garland created a perfect loop in which he abducts Princess Sara, is killed by the Warriors of Light, is revived, is taken to the past, becomes Chaos, creates and sends the Fiends forward, loses his power and memories becomes a knight of Cornelia, rinse and repeat. The loop's existence implies that it is inevitable that the Warriors of Light will die by Garland's hand just as Garland will die by theirs. This is so until the end of the game, where the Warriors of Light somehow manage to defeat Chaos. This breaks the loop and causes it to cease to exist, to the point that it is implied that Garland never lost his sanity and the Warriors' tale only lives on in legend.

Dissidia Final Fantasy expanded on this with its take on Garland. Dissidia focuses on Garland's once noble form as a knight and the nature of the time loop to present us with an awkward mid-stage Garland: One regains his sanity long enough to realize that he himself is a victim of his own plan, yet is powerless to prevent the cycle from playing out. This facet of Garland's character is important to explaining why, after the pact is made and the parties involved realize that no progress is being made, Garland reacts the way he did. Not only is Chaos, whom he mentors and overall cares for, now trapped in a cycle of conflict, but Garland himself is now trapped within yet ''another'' cycle. The museum descriptions imply that Garland's fondness for battle is largely a coping mechanism due to his belief that he will always be destined to fight.

While NT doesn't explore this aspect of Garland's character much due to the nature of that game's plot, Opera Omnia takes an interesting approach. The game's main backstory is Materia and Spiritus were told by the great crystal to create a world of respite for their champions, whom they were pushing to their limits with constant battle. However, Garland was displeased and attacked the Warrior of Light, setting the events of the game into motion. In Opera Omnia, Garland is even more obsessed with battle than before. The reason for his battle lust is explained towards the end of the second act: The Warrior of Light finished the events of FF1, meaning that the Garland back home was restored to the noble knight he once was. But the Garland of the World of Respite is the one who came from the cycles; While everyone else could be sent back home to their own realms, he has no place to return to. Garland therefore decides to allow conflict to define him: It is to the point where he considers combat to be his form of respite. The Warrior of Light indulges him for the majority of Act 3 (leaving Onion Knight as the party leader), but hopes to show Garland another way.

This leads to an odd portrayal of Garland that isn't quite foe, but is far from a friend. He wishes to keep the world intact, partially to have somewhere to fight and partially out of respect towards Chaos. Garland occasionally shows traits of that knight he probably once was even if his obsession for war is rooted in his issues with his existence.

Jack also relates heavily to the themes of fate and free will, but goes in the opposite direction as Dissidia Garland. The main plot element of Stranger of Paradise is that Jack and his friends are strangers: People from other worlds who are sent to Cornelia to act as Warriors of Light. While they appear to be saving the land, their true purpose is to regulate the levels of light and darkness in the land: As they were sent by Lufenia who relies on that imbalance to ensure that the link between their pocket dimension and the rest of Cornelia remains closed. It's not as glamorous a job as one may think. The nature of Chaos means that when people's negative emotions like fear anger or sadness bond with darkness (or the energy from the crystals), they go insane or turn into monsters… which spread further darkness and negative emotions. On top of that, it is heavily implied that the "Strangers" that the side missions describe are past versions of Jack and his allies, who died in various gruesome ways or fell into despair. All because Lufenia was content to experiment and toy with the land and its people, a bitter irony considering the implication that it was once looked down upon by Cornelia but inexcusable nevertheless. Jack grew to hate the Lufenians. So much so that he engineered a plan. A plan to ensure that he would be pulled into the depths of despair. A plan that would allow him to harness the rage and hatred he felt towards his bosses. A plan to break Lufenia's hold over the realm and guide its people to create their own destiny. A plan to push him into becoming the one thing Lufenia could not control. Chaos. When Jack creates the time loop at the end of the game to summon the Warriors of Light, it is not a mistake made in a fit of anger. It is a calculated, meticulous, intentional plan to ensure that Cornelia will be free of Lufenia's grasp once and for all. Jack willingly re-entered the cycle, this time on his own terms. And while he and his allies do manipulate the Warriors of Light, they do so in a way that gives the Warriors more freedom in the matter: They don't pick four specific individuals to become the Warriors of Light. They set up circumstances that will one day result in the Warriors of Light appearing (a plan that backfired in at least one timeline, but shush). The only qualifier is that the theoretical Warriors of Light be Cornelian and even that is thrown into question based on one of the monster conversations. The end credits theme is "My Way" for crystals' sake. This leads to some interesting implications when factoring in Different Future's endings. The default ending has Jack stay true to himself and his friends' goals. Their end justifies their fate and the Moogle's schemes fail because Jack and his allies choose to forge their own future. By contrast, the Different Future sees Jack inadvertently become the God of Discord and is told that he now must site opposite the Warrior of Light, who will become the God of Harmony. The two gods will become the pillars of a new world. While Jack doesn't show much reaction and seemingly goes along with it, one can't help but wonder if Jack Garland, the man who despises gods for essentially doing as they wish, is less than thrilled by this development.

Jack Garland and Dissidia!Garland are two sides to the same coin, that coin being the concept of fate and one's control over it. Dissidia!Garland feels that he has no control over his fate, that he will always embody conflict on some level. Even in a world where he no longer has to fight, the nature of his existence drives him to fight as a means of asserting it. Jack, after many hardships that he, his friends and the people of Cornelia go through, reaches that light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, even if Jack and his friends don't live to see it. He does it his way.

Which raises a new question: What does making Garland and Jack Garland the same character ''do'' for either of them? In the case of Dissidia Garland, it weakens that aspect of self-induced tragedy. Garland has moments that remind you that he was once an upstanding knight of Cornelia, particularly in his loyalty to Chaos - He's just browbeaten by his own actions and his constant habit of entering unending cycles of battle. It makes for an interesting contrast to some of Chaos' other warriors, especially his Famicom contemporaries: The Emperor (who is pure evil) and the Cloud of Darkness (who is a cosmic phenomenon, or the herald of it at least, that merely does its job). But his dread over making the 'mistake' mentioned in the report from his point of view, that tragedy that, were it not for his loss of hope, he could be redeemed as WoL promised to do (and as the end of FF1 implies)… all of that is weakened if it turns out that the "mistake" was not a mistake at all and that Garland had very justifiable reasons for doing what he did. As for Jack? Jack's story, despite everything, is not the traditional shakespearian tragedy. Jack's story is one of hope. A flicker of hope in the midst of the largest, darkest dungeon to ever exist, but hope nonetheless. It takes dozens of resets, but Jack forces Lufenia away. It takes unorthodox methods such as the Dragonking's boons, but the Warriors of Light eventually manage to kill Garland. And while there is a future where Jack becomes the god of Discord, there is also a future where Jack and his friends accomplish their plan. Jack being Dissidia!Garland essentially takes that concept of hope and throws it in the dustbin. Jack no longer has any form of hope. He devolves into a shell of a man, a pawn of his own plan that was 'meant' to inspire hope who later becomes a battle-hungry maniac as a coping mechanism (as opposed to a battle-hungry maniac who keeps said hunger under control and shows much more restraint) and 'willingly' serves under a god (out of pity, but still, shows how far he falls). Factor in Opera Omnia and Jack becomes a parody of himself; A man who was willing to sacrifice himself to bring peace to the land is now constantly fighting and threatening the land to assert his own existence.

While tragic in its own right, it doesn't gel well with either Garland's theme regarding fate.

And then, there's the factor of Dissidia!Garland and Jack being seen as different people in-universe. The Moogle born of Cosmos' will tells Jack that there was a man named Garland on the World of Conflict, but it knows for a fact that that man was not Jack. The Emperor also states in his missives that, while similar, Jack is a different Garland from the Garland he knows. Meanwhile, in Opera Omnia, Neon sees Dissidia!Garland, mistakes him for Jack, and then says "No wait, you aren't him." The closest to an exception is Gilgamesh, who is the one to suggest that the Garland from Dissidia may be a future version of Jack... but some of his dialogue makes it clear that even he is unsure of the truth. Some argue that we aren't meant to take these at face value or play with technicalities (the Moogle is correct in saying Dissidia!Garland isn't Jack because he's from a different future/timeline branch/whatever). On top of some of general issues with those arguments, let's point out a few specific ones:

The Moogle came from the future that that alternate Garland hails from, which is the same future it's trying to push Jack towards. From its perspective, That IS Garland.

When the Moogle makes its pitch to Jack to take the crystals, it does not even so much as allude to this other Garland. In fact, that line is the only time it mentions that other Garland. Why even mention him or call him a different Garland to begin with?

On a related note, Sophia gives the Moogle an out by implying that they would run into the Emperor in the future. There is no reason to claim that the Garland from the world of conflict is a different man.

But more importantly than all of those

If Jack fundamentally changes so much that Neon thinks that she was confusing him for someone else, what is the point of making the resulting Garland Jack?

Interdimensional Echoes (Final Fantasy and the multiverse)

In interviews, the writers for Stranger of Paradise's story, Nomura and Nojima, note that the game isn't intended to directly be a prequel to FF1, but rather an 'alternate universe' that 'uses FF1 as a motif'. Were they just being technical, given the game's nature when involving time loops? Maybe. But maybe not. There are some differences after all: Astos goes from a generic dark elf who pretends to be a king and wants a crown to a handsome, darkly humorous and loyal manipulator. Cornelia and Pravoka are the only two towns to get any focus in the game. Bikke is an actual fighter rather than a coward who hands over his ship once his pirate band are defeated. And even if all of those were handwaved away, there is still the matter of Lufenia: While the assumption is that Sophia forced them out of the Flying Fortress as Tiamat did in the original, the situation is far more complicated: The Fortress is seemingly abandoned in Stranger, with the Lufenians instead residing at "Central", their pocket dimension which is sent spiraling into ruin by Nil and had their connection to Jack's dimension severed. While it's not impossible for the Lufenians that were abandoned after Central cut the link to retake the fortress, get thrown back out and build a village on the surface… I dunno, feels a bit complicated. But let's say that none of that bothers you. No stylistic differences in the depictions of everything in SoP. Let's assume that Jack reset the world to be exactly like FF1 (WoL seeming to have a Dragoon as a companon aside). Surely 'now' Jack HAS to be Dissidia's Garland, right? While the Multiverse is a trope that people have been getting sick of, Final Fantasy has utilizied it since at least FFVIII or FFT. Obviously, these were just for the sake of Gilgamesh or Cloud being where they shouldn't but the former's constant appearances gave the concept more weight, especially since it riffed off how the Warp spell was consistently portrayed (warping the target to another dimension/the rift). Another multiverse trope people get sick of is the concept of a replacable character/world: If a character dies, just replace them with a new one, or alternatively use that new one to tie up loose ends. While FF doesn't really indulge in that form of multiverse usually, the concept of characters existing in other continuities tends to hold more weight to it. The obvious answer is FFXIV. Due to its MMO nature, it shout-outs numerous other FF games through raid series or bosses or areas or what have you that are modeled after a particular FF game. There's cases like Xande, reminagined as an Emperor or the Baldesions, with Krile being a lalafell or Golbez, who had some significant changes to his background, but is still the man in the cool armor. Return to Ivalice is the most blatant example as it features the characters and general events of Final Fantasy Tactics, but makes hefty changes to the point it's not a pure adaptation - the biggest of which being the explicit demise of Ramza's party despite Matsuno's comments and certain appearances of Ramza and Agrias suggesting otherwise for the original game.

And, of course, it's time to talk about Final Fantasy III.

The Obligatory FF3 section

This was going to be a whole thing on the remake and the OG/Dissidia's continuity (the short of it is Refia -> WoFF -> Enna Kros -> Opera Omnia, give or take some stuff like FFRK that prioritizes the remake), but it suddenly hit me what this entire situation reminded me of.

It's Onion Knight-Luneth all over again.

Luneth and Onion Knight are both the main protagonists of Final Fantasy III. So they're both the same character, right?

From a personality perspective, Luneth is more brash, more laidback, and while I can't articulate it well, his attempts at bravado feel different from Onion Knight's. Appearancewise, you'd think would be a flat 'no'. Given Luneth looks like this:

And Onion Knight like this:

Which are starkly different, even with the differences that FF tends to have between artwork and in-game appearances. But still people confuse them, mostly because of this:

Which does have Luneth's face... but not his distinctive purple color scheme that he uses while using the Onion Knight job. Instead, it's what you'd get if you put Luneth's facial features on this:

Which has apparently caused some people to mistake the above for a Luneth costume.

Additionally, in some fanfics and whatnot, the author may give Luneth's name to Onion Knight. But that misses the point behind Onion Knight: Onion Knight is based on the original blank slate famicom protagonists. He is unnamed for the same reason that the Warrior of Light's name is never revealed: because, metawise, he never had one. Incidentally, I feel like the whole connection between the Warrior of Light and Onion Knight in OO didn't work as cleanly as the devs probably intended for a number of reasons, but that's a discussion for another day

(Though given this is in reference to Garland and they had the same mothers, it technically makes sense, but come on, we all know the real reason people give Onion Knight Luneth's name. Also, no useful distinguishable aspect like Jack Garland)

Much like the Garlands, Onion Knight and Luneth are technically the same character as both are based on the original Famicom Onion Knight. However, in terms of their actual characters, right down to their identities, they are wildly different. By the same token, Dissidia's Garland and Jack Garland are both takes on the Garland from Final Fantasy 1. However, they both differ heavily in certain ways, that would feel forced to try and make them the same guy.

Conclusion: The Cycle Continues

With Opera Omnia ending service and NT having done so long ago, we probably won't get an answer to DIFFERENT FUTURE's cliffhanger until the next Dissidia-related project chooses to answer that question, whether it be a full-on Dissidia game or

Whether or not Stranger of Paradise or Dissidia is canon, is largely irrelevant to FF1 itself. Square Enix has rarely ever allowed subseries or sequels to impact the original games (FFIV being a rare exception, and even then, largely the script and largely confined to the PSP version, which had the sequel bundled in). This is especially true with the Pixel Remasters, which removed even content that was in prior re-releases. Dissidia has never impacted the Final Fantasy 1 re-releases and it is incredibly unlikely that Stranger of Paradise will do so either. However, there is the question of impact in regards to Garland's appearances going forward: SE now has two potential Garlands to choose from, at least in theory. In practice, I can't imagine Dissidia Garland going away forever.

Regardless of what SE chooses to do, however, I remain convinced that Jack and the Dissidia Garland aren't literally the same guy. In terms of role, Jack seems pegged to be a God of Discord, not a right-hand as Garland tends to be. Thematically, they are opposites in regards to fate and their end results. And I feel that they would be cheapened, on top of needing some retcons, if they were to be the same person.

At the end of the day, both being Garland is enough reason to appreciate them both.

#Final Fantasy #Final Fantasy 1 #Dissidia Final Fantasy #Dissidia #Garland #Jack Garland #Onion Knight #Luneth #Stranger of Paradise #Final Fantasy Origin #FFO #SoP #spoilers

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darudedogestorm · 1 month ago

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ok after actually seriously starting my worm reread and playing enough pvz gw2 to have an opinion, i've re-evaluated which plants the undersiders would Main and Be in specifically gw2. hidden under cut because it kind of got long

RACHEL

Doesn't play the game long enough to actually Main a character (the only time she would touch this game is on mandatory Undersiders Game Night) (it goes unpleasantly). But she would choose to play as Chomper, which coincidentally is what she would Be.

It's literally if a dog was a plant

Don't need to know how to shoot, just walk up to someone and eat them

With regards to who she'd play as: she'd lean towards a spray Chomper variant (chompers that deal damage by spraying fire, electricity, etc, as opposed to purely biting). Fire Chomper calls to me in this regard

As for what she'd Be: regular Chomper which just barely beats out Fire Chomper. This is because she would 100% be a bite chomper and not a spray chomper

Honorable Mentions:

Pretty much every other bite Chomper

TAYLOR

Would Main a Peashooter variant, and would very nearly also Be a Peashooter, but after much meditation and consideration I think she would actually be a Chomp Thing

Peashooter: Straightforwardly the most versatile of the plants, since it can both charge into the frontlines and quickly pull back to snipe from far away. I think she might appreciate this quality, hence why she would Main it.

Chomp Thing: All Chompers have an innate suicidal quality about them that drives them to recklessly dive into crowds of 5 million zombies alone for reasons only understandable to themselves. The difference is I believe Taylor could survive this by virtue of being herself

Chomper is not a super versatile class but if you know what you're doing it can be. I think this would allow for a good translation of her finding new and innovative ways to use her powers.

Also Chomp Thing spits out bugs among other swamp things

(DIS)HONORABLE MENTIONS:

You'd think she'd like Boss Mode because in theory it involves giving directions to your entire team, thus maximizing potential for efficiency. She would actually hate it because of how little control it gives you over anything

ALEC

Mains Electro Pea, would Be Frost Rose

E-Pea: He would enjoy playing characters that make Number Go Up for very little effort, and E-Pea is the most broken character in the game

Also electricity theming

Frost Rose: power fits perfectly - Roses can turn zombies into goats, which translates well enough into his messing-with-your-body power. Being an ice variant helps, since they can freeze/slow down zombies, like how he can trip people up (same base idea of messing with movement)

Also I think Frost Rose's aesthetic fits him very well

Honorable Mentions:

He would not Be a Pizza Chomper, and it is not a possible plant to Main since it's only playable in a minigame, but I think he would appreciate its existence

If the Royal Hypno-flower had a playable, normal Sunflower variant, he would also Be that

AISHA

Would Main either Zen Cactus/Future Cactus, would also Be those cacti (or also probably Chomper)

Future Cactus/Zen Cactus: Ourple and bright and flashy and maybe even a bit silly (to me.) I have more experience with Future Cactus than Zen so I can't exactly pick between the two for certain but they call to me

Technically if we want a 1 to 1 for how she acts in combat specifically then probably a Chomper would be better. It would come with the additional benefit of being ourple and silly as well. However I think there are certain aspects of Cactus gameplay that could fulfill this criteria

I think she and Alec would do the thing where you can ride on top of a Cactus's garlic drone and reign terror and perhaps mild annoyance across the map

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

N/a

LISA

Would both Main and Be Shadow Flower

Support role + aesthetic match (mostly the mask, not really that ourple but we take what we can get)

Not unique to Shadow Flowers but I think she would use the Dark Flower ability instead of the Heal Flower (this renders her unable to heal herself). This is representative of how she puts all of herself into Fixing other people but cannot really heal herself due to The Horrors. Also i have the mental image of Lisa as a Dark Flower potted plant harming people with verbal insults and psychological warfare as opposed to the laser it shoots out

An experience common to all Sunflowers is chasing down their nearly dead teammates who are for some reason very determined to throw themselves in death's way across the map <--The Lisa and Taylor experience

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

RIP Boss Mode, if it still existed in GW2 then I think she could choose that. Alas

BRIAN

Would Main Peashooter and (maybe) Be an Armor Chomper/Iron Citron

I don't think he'd be super interested in any of the variants as a Main, in general I think he'd keep it pretty simple and stick with Peashooter, maybe Kernel Corn if he's feeling adventurous that day

I will be honest, what he would Be has kind of stumped me severely. I wanna say he'd be one of the armored variants (so, Armor Chomper and Iron Citron) due to how he (if i am remembering and reading correctly) kinda armors himself/hides behind a tougher/less emotional version of himself. And aside from Shadow Flower, which he would not be, there's not really any darkness-based variants of any plants

It works out because Armor Chomper also suffers worse than Jesus just like Brian. However I've not played any real amount of time as Iron Citron so I can't say if there's something disqualifying about it

If there is anyone else out there who likes both Worm and Garden Warfare and has opinions on this please let me know I'm at a bit of a loss here

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

N/a

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS:

More of these people are potential Chompers than I was expecting (I was expecting only Rachel)

List is subject to future change, i am particular about this sort of thing (evidenced by this being in my drafts for several months) and i'm sure i will find a different angle for this in the future

#wormblr #pvz #low pitched finite woofing

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scaredgirlsilly · 1 year ago

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Homestuck character who doesn't get enough love?

i have been stalking this ask, formulating my plan of attack, jumping from branch to branch of the canopy of trees, waiting for the perfect moment.

and that moment has finally come

spoilers for homestuck (merp. if you read this ill explode you with my mind im sorry im doing this but it has spoilers for all of homestuck so you arent allowed to read this JDKSKFJSH)

my answer is jade. am i biased?? absolutely!! but thats A Whole Thing so im gonna give some runner ups first before i get into all that

jake prob like idk whenever i see him in stuff its always either with dirk (and usually focuses on dirk kr their relationship) or its a family photo of john, jade, jane, and jake. but like. idk i dont think many people *get* what hes about (me included) but hes a great character and literally soooo aro coded its not even funny. i really should rotate jake in my brain more hes a very cool character

jane too theres some love for jane but i think the epilogues kinda fucked her

the dancestors too, but idk im not a huge dancestor fan cause they are all kinda assholes and the scene with cronus and mituna just makes my skin crawl

but ok BACK TO JADE

i think there are different aspects (most of them probably unrelated to what you untended for the question) that she doesnt get enough love, but lets start with what you were probably talking about, which is

how jade is treated by the fans

i think jade gets a fair amount of fan love. i mean just look at her!! who couldnt love her?? my main problem comes from how she compares to dave, specifically the fact that fans seem to apply an absolutely monstrous depth to daves character that isnt necessarily there in homestuck (like specificallyin regards to angst readings of his character. this is about fanfiction i should say that this is just my grievances when it comes to finding good jade fics). THATS NOT A BAD THING!! i fuckin love it actually and im not raggin on dave with this. its just that i think jade could do that as good if not better!! her life is fuckin dogshit if you treat it seriously, much like people do with daves life, and considering the fact that nearly every single fuckin dave fic i read touches on that topic, it sucks that jade fics like that are so hard to come by. she also doesnt have as many like prominent ships. theres some obv ones, like davepetasprite, or dave/karkat in a throuple (we will fucking get to that later), but yk some of the other characters even uf they dont have canon relationships, they have like. obvious ones yk. like john/vriska or john/terezi or june/rose or john/dave (fuckin j egbert gettin around kfhskshdh) or like jake/dirk or roxy/callie yk ships like those. whether you agree with em is one thing but they are obvious yk you dont gotta do alot of convincing to see them at least try it out.

but with jade, it feels like you gotta stretch it a little to get her with anyone. jade/rose is great (especially jade/rose/kanaya) but. i mean jade and rose barely talk in homestuck proper (we will GET TO IT) so its kinda a hard sell. and does jade like interact with any of the trolls alot?? like idk its been a while but im p sure most of her interactions with the trolls were negative. so that just leaves jade/davepeta which is a pretty good ship i will say, and of course, jade/dave ( + karkat sometimes) and it kinda sucks. like one of my fav ships, jade/vriska, literally started out as a joke!! but it grew on me when i started thinking out it, but it is already such a stretch that theres no fuckin way most people will see what i see (thats a whole seperate rant jdhsjdjsj this is already long enough and we have 3 other parts to get to)

SPEAKING OF THE OTHER PARTS!!

next part, prob the easiest,

jades treatment in the epilogues

do i even need to say anything??

this post is long enough ill try to speed through the other sections

NEXT PART!!

how she is treated in homestuck proper in the text (what literally happens to her)

literally lonliest girl alive has one day with her friends (that day is filled with horrible shit and thats the understatement of the century) before getting on a ship for 3 years, and like a week in having her brother and other friend die. she then lives in this ship in the middle of space, no contact to any of her other friends, no update on whats actually going on, just the company of the consorts and nanna sprite. she finally gets to the new session, meets god tier calliope who explains that that was all supposed to happen and john actually fixed everything, and also space players are just lonely thats just apart of the aspect :/

she then gets put to sleep so the condesce doesnt control her, where she misses all of the socialization that the other people have on the platform before the final fight.

she then has a convo with davepeta while she is dreaming where davepeta says "actually in the other timeline we dated and that stuff still happened to you cause of this thing called an Ultimate Self, a thing thats totally real and not at all bullshit. anyways bye!! *muah*"

she wakes up, chases a few god dogs around, gets puched in the face, and the end happily ever after!!!!!!!!

now obv this was an extremely bitter retelling and i actually cant seperate the 2 sections so this is also...

how jade is treated in homestuck proper, by andrew hussie

now. jade got ROYALLY fucked over. she started out as a mysterious figure that knows more than anyone, but extremely quickly she goes to the person who knows the least out of literally anyone. she barely talks to rose, seemingly one of her 4 childhood friends, throughout the whole comic (jade and rose say about 2700 words to each other over 5 conversations, one of them being a repeat from the others perspective. their longest convo is 571 words. for reference, this convo between dave karkat and john has 2100 words. almost 1500 words more than their longest convo and almost as much words as rose and jades entire convo history. heres a link to da sourse i used cause no way im counting that shit jdjsgsjshs tho they are doing it cause they dont like jade/rose or sumn?? idk i dont fucking care about that. anyways side tangent over!!)

SHE DOESNT EVEN WNTER THE GAME TILL ACT 5 ACT 2!!!!!!!! AFTER WE SEE THE ENTIRE TROLL SESSION!!!!!!!!

then, during the session idk shes cool i dont remember it much cause the beta kids session is a surprisingly short part of the comic jdkshdjshs but she has some cool moments and i love her ^u^

then the yellow yard. god. just fucking left there alone. why?? the entire point of johnfix is that the session could be changed for the better without worry of a doomed timeline. couldnt have even made john give her a heads up as to why her john and davesprite just fucking die randomly?? (before you say that john couldnt have cause he didnt know, motherfucker andrew hussie knew!!!!!!!! he could have just made some fuckin reason for john to know its not that hard)

then during the session she just gets ranted to about how actually its all apart of the plan and this was supposed to be this way and she just goes ":P okie dokie" and moves on like that wouldnt FUCKING KILL HER THAT SHE HAD TO BE ROYALLY FUCKED OVER FOR EVERYTHING TO GO RIGHT.

now obv theres an explanation why her role in the final fight is so passive. shes too op. she combined with bec and is a space player (and is shown using those powers to do some pretty bad ass stuff jfjsgsjdhd). thats fair i guess. im just salty that the way to solve that was to literally put her to sleep for most of it, then go fly around with some dogs and get punched in the face.

now. the rant is kinda over. jade i think is the most slept on character, but specifically she is slept on by one person. andrew hussie. i think that andrew hussie did not explore jades character like he did with other characters. i do not know why. im going to try to not act like i know why he did it (god its so hard HDKSKDHAGDJ). this rsnt is pure salt, pure fuckin cope, i am aware. this is not meant to be objective i just really like and relate to jade and wish she got more love in the work itself. but instead, i must dine on the scraps she gets on fuckin ao3 (did you know there are almost as many davekat fics as there are fics where jade is in it at all?? and thats not even including the fact that alot of the jade fics, shes not the main person. im not mad 🙃🙃)

anyways uhhhh sorry this probably wasnt what you were expecting 😭😭😭😭 i just have alot of incoherent thoughts when it comes to jade and homestuck in general. so uhhhh. THANKS FOR THE ASK!!!!!!!!

#sorry it took so long literally this ask has been in my brain rollin around picking up dust like a katamari ball #but i knew i was gonna get to it eventually!!!!!!!!#it was just whenever i had the energy to write. *this* JDKSLDHAFJDKSKF #anyways thanks 😁😁

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vineandmagic · 4 months ago

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It's a representation, just not for what you think.

So there is this webcomic called "Heartstopper". It was made into a Netflix TV series. And it blew up. Even though the theme, the content, the art, etc etc is not that mind blowing or creative or “I must bother everyone around me to read this”, it’s entertaining enough. Until it was not. Not exactly a beef against the comic itself, more like the author is ridiculous.

Basically, she put her own works in high pedestal (based) in comparison to other male-love-male predecessor comics (now this is not based or slay), especially Japanese male-love-male comics (yaoi), because there is no sexual scenes in her works and the other ones are sexualizing and fetishizing the gay community. And how it would be a bad representation of the gay community.

Let’s not talk about how she needs to read more and be less judgemental. The thing is, yaoi, or other MLM comics from other countries, doesn’t exist for the gay community (unfortunately, I know) or at least that’s not how it started. It was, and still is, mainly for the women.

The question is, why are women-centered entertainment pieces about gay men?

If we want to be serious and scientific here, there is a theory called “uses and gratifications”. This theory asserts that people use media to gratify specific wants and needs. There are needs that need to be satisfied, and certain pieces of media exist or go viral because of such needs.

Much of UGT research focuses on the gratifications that media does or should fulfill. This has resulted in a variety of typologies that classify gratifications into a concise set of categories. For example, in 1973, Katz, Gurevitch, and Haas created a well-known scheme of five social and psychological needs gratified by media use, including:

Cognitive needs, or the need to acquire information and knowledge or improve understanding

Affective needs, or the need to have aesthetic or emotional experiences

Personal identity needs, or the need to strengthen confidence, status, or credibility. These needs have both cognitive and affective components

Social integrative needs, or the need to strengthen relationships with friends and family

Tension-release needs, or the need to relax and escape by lessening one's awareness of the self

MLM media touch on personal identity and tension-release (escapism) needs. The difference between MLM media and other straight romance media is that the “feminine” lead is a male. More often than not, they are also the emotional anchor of the story, which may be the better term. Usually, it is also through the emotional anchor that women view the story. It is through their lens that women pine and swoon over and swoon for. In a sense, women take on the role of the emotional anchor.

Typically, straight romances are the same where the female lead also holds the emotional viewpoint. However, it is not the same as the fantasy is usually skewed by the male gaze, which is a power fantasy. By which I mean, the feminine lead usually gives up a part of their character to advance the love story. It is a trope that is told countless times. Sure it can be sweet but it can also be somewhat demoralizing if told numerous times.

Yaoi, or MLM media in general, is a queer storyline told through a feminine gaze with the understanding of gaining equally shared power in the relationship. No one outright gives up a part of their character in the story. Instead, the leads must learn to communicate and share the power dynamic between them.

MLM is catered to a female audience, not only because most of its writers are female but, because it taps to a sensibility that is often neglected in straight fiction. By which I mean, the characters evolve to a mutual relationship that is often equal in all parts. There is no ‘perceived’ weakness or lack in either party.

The escapism aspect is MLM allows straight (usually young) women to safely explore their sexuality, without being involved. And I think the "detachment" in itself is an appeal. A straight woman can enjoy the story without feeling like the sexual object, or comparing herself to the female character, etc.

Overall, I just think we should look deeper into each piece of media we consume or is regulated on the internet. Finding out the purposes and messages behind the media is a part of media literacy. Please be literate. At least know who a certain piece of media is targeted to before calling everything a representation (it’s embarrassing).

References

Abelove, Henry, Barale, Michèle Aina, and Halperin, David M., eds. The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader. New York: Routledge, 1993.

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990.

Katz, E., Blumler, J. G., & Gurevitch, M. (1973-1974). Uses and gratifications research. Public Opinion Quarterly, 37(4), 509–523.

#internet #media #women #media literacy #yaoi #mlm

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happyandticklish · 2 years ago

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For the character dynamic thing, could you do Reagan & Brett?🥺

I absolutely can my man, these two have a chokehold on me. We're gonna pretend this was answered anywhere near the time this was sent~

Who has the cutest tickle laugh?

Brett has the more conventionally cute laugh. It's all giggly wheezes and squeals that come out in this bright, carefree manner. Reagan's is more of a witch's cackle type thing that occasionally will turn into a snort if you hit the right spot. If you ask Brett, Reagan's is cuter, but he has a slight bias.

What are their tickle spots?

Brett's are fucking everywhere tbh but his underarms would be the worst of the worst. Reagan's sides/hips and thighs are really, really bad, and no one is allowed to touch them.

Who is ticklish in unusual places and where would that be?

Reagan's elbows (specifically inner elbows), and Brett's calves.

Who gets cheer-up tickles?

Brett gets cheer-up tickles, Reagan gets "stop being a grumpy shut-in" tickles. They're similar, but there's a distinct difference.

Do either of them try to hide their ticklishness?

Brett is one of those weirdos who can openly admit they're ticklish with no shame. He's not one to shy away from hiding any aspect of himself, regardless of how embarrassing it might be regarded as. I don't think Reagan knows she's ticklish, or if she does it's repressed memories from Bear-O that she does not need brought back up. So she wouldn't hide it so much as there'd be no reason for her to volunteer that she is.

Who takes advantage of the other one getting their arms stuck while trying to take off their shirt?

Oh Reagan, for sure. Brett is far too polite to take advantage of someone in a helpless situation (not to mention Reagan would saw off his hands if he tried).

Brett is fucking desperate and will purposefully get his arms stuck just to get tickled.

How did they discover each other's ticklishness?

Reagan found out about Brett through the other's messing with him. Brett found out about Reagan after she admitted it during an uncharacteristic moment of honesty one night after they'd just *suggestive eyebrow wiggle*.

Who can't take tickle bites/raspberries?

Neither of them omfg. Brett like, genuinely can't, he has to push the ler away if he's able because everything's too wet and sharp and ticklish and vulnerable and even if he does like it, it's impossible to convince his mind of this fact. Reagan can't for more psychological reasons. Generally, kissing/making out/other shenanigans are pretty intimate events for her, so she doesn't like to include tickling in them as she already feels exposed enough. She can handle neck kisses and biting and things like that, but if it so much as starts to tickle she shuts it down pretty quick.

Who has to be tickle-forced out of bed in the morning?

Reagan has to be tickle-forced into bed, but other than that, they both kind of have to be early risers. Also, I cannot see Brett as a sleeping-in kind of guy, you know he's already been up for a run, showered, made breakfast, and had a coffee all by 5 am.

Who initiates tickle fights?

Tickle fights are always initiated by Brett, and he kind of waits to see what kind of mood Reagan's in before trying anything further. Reagan will tickle him sporadically throughout the day to keep him on his toes, but it's pretty well understood that that is not an invitation to tickle her back.

Who gives up in tickle fights?

Reagan, usually. Brett has no chill when it comes to tickling, he will never ask for it to stop even if he's physically squirming away. Reagan's goodwill taps out before her stamina does, so she usually puts an end to it towards her pretty fast.

Who's in danger of getting hurt when attacking the other?

Fucking Brett, Reagan will take out an eye. Brett doesn't flail so much as he curls up, so it's usually safe.

Who always provokes the other into tickling them and how?

Brett Brett Brett. Whether it's teasing Reagan, "messing up" a simple task that she asked him to do, wearing revealing clothing, acting way more physical than usual or stretching around her. If he's getting really desperate he might ask, but Reagan usually picks up on it before then.

#tickle headcannon #ask game #inside job #brett hand #reagan ridley #asks #answered ask #headcannons #breagan #tickling

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mystxmomo · 2 years ago

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So not to start this off by coming across as my typical pretentious self but when considering aspects of a ship that are cute I personally like to allow it to be informed by the context of the characters within the ship. Like yeah you can make a first date be cute on any person, but the real treasure is found in things that are cute situationally to the character

I'll start with Edgar pairings because you know I'm not lying about him being my main little guy.

Edjose is the ship that, for me, I find the most straight forward "Oh. Little signs of affection are adorable on these two."

Like, I think of all the game five ships I write for, these two are the ones where the Cute Charm of the ship is the gradual acceptance of intimacy. José has grown up in an environment where the love he received was conditional to his work, and Edgar's love was supposedly unconditional but often inauthentic at best and explorative at worst. And (in the best case "these two come to understand eachother and have a healthier relationship" path) it's just inherently very cute for the two of them to have small moments of physical intimacy, understanding, and vulnerability.

Hmm. A specific scenario that has played out in my head that I've been looking for an excuse to include in my head being something like the two of them at a party together and Edgar, overwhelmed but masquerading it as anger, goes to place himself next to José. José takes notice and asks if he's had enough, touching the small of his back as he does it. Edgar glares at him, but it's clearly not with malice. José excuses the two of them from the room, and when they're alone Edgar spends like ten minutes resting his forehead against his shoulder.

Private, quiet intimacy. I think it's adorable on them.

Kevgar is cute like just conceptually to me. I know it's the entire premise of my main fic for them but I love the role reversal of "man introduced to gay culture by a man a decade younger and far more knowledgeable then him" I think it's nice especially give their character flaws and vulnerabilities. I think that Kevin has never actually gotten a chance to explore his own personhood before he doesn't have the vibe of a man that does a lot of introspection outside of self-flagellation and I think Edgar is good for him.

I think Edgar would for better or for worse know that Kevin is someone safe. Even before they like eachother or before they're getting along it's really hard not to look at this man and decide yeah he's wearing his heart on his sleeve he couldn't manipulate me if he tried, let alone that he wouldn't want to. Specific situation wise though I think?? It's something I've tried to write before and more specifically incorporate and have failed so if it pops up in a fic in the future don't look at me, but I think it would be kind of sweet if, pre-relationship, Edgar just Comes To Kevin when he gets in moods where he's getting really paranoid about the people he does trust taking advantage of it, or Kevin coming to Edgar when he's forced to be alone because being with someone he hates is better than being left to his own thoughts and guilt. And it's about the intimacy in the inherent trust that even if I hate you you won't hurt me. I think that's nice. That makes me feel warm and happy.

Edgar and Vera is really sweet because I think it's the only ship here where Vera would willingly eventually tell him about the full extent of her situation with her sister, the fact that she murdered her and took her identity, the fact she did it out of jealousy, ect. Like I think other ships here she might tell them bits and pieces, but with Edgar specifically I think there's a moment where she'd break and just dump everything on him, and he just like. Takes it? He accepts her for who she is, for better or for worse, because he does love (be it as a friend or romantic partner) Vera and wants the world for her! In return, I do think Edgar would tell her about killing his mentor, but I don't know if that holds the same amount of emotional weight for him as Vera's sisters death holds for her.

I included this scene in my uhh biography fic, but I do turn over scenes like. Melancholic dancing together. Sitting together and Vera leans in and whispers in his ear while blocking her mouth and they both turn and look at a character while she does it. I think Vera is a very physically clingy person, and I think she is the only person Edgar will let do that to him explicitly and publically. I think they like the idea that they're comfortable with casual touch and affection, and I think it's charming because in my head their end game relationship IS platonic.

I like? Edgar and Patricia? Like, clearly, given I wrote something involving them for his birthday. But I don't know if I have anything off the top of my head that would be "cute" for them, because I see so many of their interactions on the basis of mutual respect and the horrifying ordeal of being know. Like, I feel that so much of their relationship involves the inherent respect and seeing eye to eye and knowing eachother in ways others absolutely don't want to come to know you. So I don't know if I'd say it's?? Cute? But if I had to pick a scenario for them that would feel meaningful in some way, the idea of like. I would have to come up with an au to justify it, because canonically both Edgar and Patricia want Edgar dead. But protecting eachother or standing over eachothers bleeding out body.... In either direction. That would be nice to see for the two of them.

Vera/José is like...

I think so much about the appeal of this ship to me is the grief and the tragedy. They're both dealing so heavily with their own grief and trauma, and I don't think either of them are emotionally mature enough to help eachother deal with that grief when they're both handling their own. The aus I have for them are like. Madam Coral pulling Hook!José into the sea not by a song of seduction, but from the agonizing sobs that are echoing from the sea. The vibe of canon José/Vera for me is Vera acknowledging that this man tried to manipulate her but willing to disregard that in her own loneliness and exhaustion. They're standing there covered in dirt and grime looking at the damage the game has done

The only au I have that's kinda cute and fun for them is the. Basil au, because I think it's hilarious that Dill-Vera wants to fuck him like, canonically. She thinks he's hot. I lost the point of this question I know I'm supposed to be coming up with something cute for them but I think the point was that they are tragic. Uhh. So while my normal interpretation is that they would normally drag eachother down in their own misery... Hm. There is an au where they maybe mellow eachother out, and through eachother come to understandings about themselves. José maybe able to come to hear the way Vera's parents treated her (her "sister") and realize his own father never quite actually loved him (and he knew that, of course. He knows that love is conditional, he knows that care is secondary) and to that point, Vera (who sees the world through her perfumes craft, and how people only saw worth in it after it made money) is able to come to value herself beyond her worth as a perfumer. And there's connection there. And I don't think they'd ever truely be able to help eachother climb out of the realm of addiction, and I don't think they'd ever truely have the level of connection to eachother they could have with other partners (Vera is never telling him about killing her sister, José is never telling her the extent of the horrors he's seen at sea) but theres love and symapthy and empthy

And that's not cute. But it is heart warming

Anyway. Both of these characters are addicts with no emotional intelligence and no self-awareness. I hope this helps.

Vera/Patricia is ALSO a ship that's hard to come up with cute moments under the condition of romance because I ship it mainly under a toxic pretence, but like. At worst Patricia is actively trying to murder Vera, and using effection and comfort to calm her and help guide her to her death, and at best Patricia doesn't kill her, and Vera grows attached and their relationship becomes a little co-dependent bubble. And you can shape that in a way that's not DESTRUCTIVE, right? That co-dependence in itself isn't going to rip them apart. But the both of them have lived a very long, exhausting life. Vera never got acceptance from her community as herself, and Patricia ruined the acceptance of her community through her actions (it's more complicated then that, but as Patricia see's it, from her perspective.)

And so both woman don't have acceptance in their communities, and they can find that in eachother, and when you find that you want to keep it. And I think in doing so, they struggle to know Each other? If that makes sense. Something something the idea of eachother, seeing themselves in their partner rather than their partners actual issue, but knowing that vulnerability is there and knowing they connect with that vulnerability.

Something cute for them, actual situationship wise... It's not a specific situation because again. All of my situations with them are like. Patricia coaxing Vera to smoke to relax her, or Vera melting down in Vera's room. But I have this scene in my head for a scene from their main game where Patricia and Vera, both in their worn clothing and covered in blood, meet on the boat. The wind catches in Vera's hair, and she turns to give Patricia the smallest, most yielding of smiles.

For a moment, all is well.

Vera/Kevin

I think Vera Scares this man

I will keep it honest with you. I'm still working out their dynamic, so I don't know if I can come up with anything immediately cute off the top of my head for them. But I think Vera confuses this man, because she both confirms and contradicts his world view at the same time. On one hand she's dainty and elegant and kinda small and would be easy to... Hurt? Not to sound deranged. She's kind of pathetic in a way that would pull at Kevin's heart strings. But shes also very clearly manic depressed in a way that she has violently lashed out before, and gives me the impression of someone who goes through a lot of emotional swings. I think that contradiction would throw Kevin off.

And I think that's where the meat is. Like the meat is her challenging his view. But I don't know if that's cute that's just a straight forward dynamic. I think the idea of Kevin just scooping Vera up and over his shoulder is very cute. I don't even think she'd fight it like Edgar would, I think she's so touch starved that he scoops her up and she freezes up like a cat she's so thrown off.

I'm surprised I didn't hit José/Kevin sooner, but like. Gestures at the fandom. To be fair, they mostly got that covered.

I do think that the fandom does get the baseline of their dynamic wrong? This is a ship that, at the very least, starts as a hate fuck and has to grow from there. I think these two are verbally fighting in the streets and fucking in the sheets. But it's easier for me to come up with things that are cute and charming for them as a result, because the aspect of the enemies. It's about the little aspects of care while they deny it's aspects of care. Kevin gathering José up after catching him drunk because the instinct of being a hero overpowers the aspect of hating men? That's cute as hell to me.

I don't think. José is self aware enough to understand what he appreciates about Kevin is that Kevin disrespects him for who he is and what he does. I think José DOES like the fact Kevin is willing to challenge him so avertly. It would amuse him as much as it frustrates him, but would especially frustrate him when Kevin starts making points that are right. I think Kevin is, more then anyone here, someone that might make José actually question and crumble against what his idea of honor (because José's idea of honor IS bad. He thinks he is a good person because of his service to the queen, because of his role in the navy) is through direct confrontation and conversation. I can imagine Kevin and José arguing and José just stopping mid sentence and trailing off as he realizes, unfortunately, that Kevin might be RIGHT about something he's saying. He needs to sit down over it, and he expects Kevin to mock him for it, but I think by the point that this would happen Kevin is also sitting there looking at José essentially melt into himself and hold his head over his own world view and just

Quietly sit down and join him. Sitting back with him, rest an arm around his shoulders and sit with him.

And they have that moment where both of them understand. Yeah?

José/Patricia and Patricia/Kevin .... Give me a day or two to think on that one. I haven't put much thought into either of those dynamics. The most I've thought about José/Patricia's dynamic is in the post game au that came out before Edgar's letter where she was constantly exasperated and judging him for like. Still being alive, literally for that reason. Patrica doesn't respect José OR Kevin, I think she thinks they're both big miserable babies in drastically different ways. But she also thinks that of Vera, and I'm willing to ship those two. So I'll think of something unique and interesting for you in the future.

#idv analysis

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simplegenius042 · 2 years ago

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Soulmate AU Protagonists and Antagonists Story Idea

Admittedly, I've never been the biggest fan of soulmate AUs. I suppose it's never been something that fits the whole schtick I'm going with in the fanfics I'm writing (the whole theme of "screw destiny" and the subversions or alternate perspectives of things such as fate, destiny, the chosen one, etc).

That doesn't mean I hate the AU, or the stories I've read (no matter if they were either incredible or cliched, dark or wholesome). But besides the worldbuilding and the dynamics and the slowburns, there really wasn't much to offer for me. Not that there wasn't any unoriginality, but it was lacking some kind of specific conflict (whether it be in the story itself or between characters).

I have read plenty of ways the AU is handled. And the general consensus I've found is mostly along the lines of "slowburn of Character A & Character B, dislike/enemies-to-fated-lovers" (whether the enemy part is justified or not depends on the themes) and rarely found any subversions like "Character A rejects Character B for, let's face it, justifiable reasons and ends up with Character C outside the universe's laws and society expectations" and even rarer "Character A doesn't like Character B very much and the universe acknowledges this so allows A to fate themselves to the better suitor, Character C". And these stories ARE enduring to read, but it just wasn't enough for the itch I was trying to scratch (It's really hard to explain, and a strange feeling overall).

Like, mostly it's heavily focused on the romance aspect (understandable, soulmate is in the name) instead of the implications that come with the fact people have soulmates and have initials/marks/symbols/names/countdowns/etc, etc to prove it. Most of the time, those implications are brushed over briefly (again, understandable), and rarely touched upon. Not only that, but the AU itself doesn't leave much argument on the pros and cons of being fated (besides the obvious "mutually disliked persons/enemies are fated" to each other) or the morality and potential existential conflicts that are there in the AU, if that's easy to understand (which I've rarely seen anyone touch upon, which is again, understandable, as that's not the whole point of the AU, and it is nobodies responsibility to write those specific premise out).

Don't get me wrong, overall the AU is an incredibly interesting premise to write out in beloved fandoms, especially with your favourite characters involved, but it just wasn't something for me...

...until today.

Given the implications of the soulmate AU (specifically, that you have a soul that is bound to another person, therefore implying a level of spiritual mythos (destiny, magic, red string of fate, etc), and even more religious ones (like God, angels, heaven and hell) exists in the AU), I think I can write a fulfilling fanfic with it. Both with original (well, I say original for some of these characters, but also somewhat alternate take on) characters and even an intriguing conflict.

The conflict and arguments of the story centres around two pairs of character. First pair are the protagonists; the (re: God's) Angel of Life, Archangel Metatron, and one of Death's aspiring newest recruits, an Angel of Death by the name of Azriel (and no, this is not Azrael, the (re: God's) Angel of Death, Azriel is the growing human soul of a girl at 11-years-old now who literal-Death-itself took in because she died an infant and couldn't be taken in to either Heaven nor Hell due to not being able to live for long). The second pair are antagonists; a hellborne-demon from the Sloth Ring by the name of Xiang Ba'al, and his adopted daughter, the wrongfully damned soul of a young girl (around 10-years-old) by the name of Jezebel Ba'al (Jazzy for short). Now despite being protagonists and antagonists, these two pairs of characters fall in a (light and dark, respectively) grey morality with mixes of blue/orange morality (which is a given; these are beings with a limited and/or flawed understanding of human beings and who live in two very flawed and different systems (both Heaven and Hell have issues)). This light/dark grey morality eventually evens out and gets greyer and greyer as the story goes on.

Essentially, both pairs fight for and against the soulmate system... both understand that the system is both a great idea but severely flawed and go about to preserve yet change it... however, how they both go about it is the difference. The angels' method, while manipulative on emotional levels, is less likely to cause physical harm, but is also slow and time consuming which may not even work sometimes leading to unexpected confrontations between humans. Meanwhile, the demons' method, while physically forceful to horrific degrees, gets effective results fast, but is a violation on the humans' right of choice.

Additional Notes: Metatron and Azriel have a flawed yet growing mentor/student and brother/sister dynamic while Xiang and Jazzy have a pretty caring yet horrifyingly psychotic father/daughter and master/underling dynamic. They both travel and pop up in any universe with a Soulmate AU.

Anyway that's just me talking about things on my mind and my ideas of a fic series I'm going to write.

Chow!

#soulmate au #new fanfiction idea #oc: metatron #archangel metatron #oc: azriel #baby girl seed #oc: xiang ba'al #oc: jezebel “jazzy” ba'al

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staycalmandhugaclone · 2 years ago

Text

If you're new, this all starts with Touch Starved - Echo! You can read this little chunk as a standalone, or head back to the beginning for the full experience!

One of my besties on here mentioned they had some specific aversions severe gore, so I made a toned down version so they could still enjoy the story. Please don't hesitate to reach out with requests like this! If you're invested in my writings but aren't comfortable with a certain trigger warning, just let me know and I'll do my best to offer a version that is better for you!

Febuwhump Day 6 (Censored)

Secrets Revealed – OC Medic & TBB - An unexpected EMP forces Doc to reveal aspects of their past that could well turn the batch against them. Click here for the uncensored version.

Warnings: Mild descriptions of gore/injury, language, panic attacks, angst, PTSD flashbacks, self-depreciation, offhand reference to minor character death. This one hits a lot of potentially triggering topics pretty intensely and is fueled from a very dark place I was in with my own injury. Be kind to yourself. Healing is a nonlinear process.

WC: 6,291

Shoulder rolling to shift the strap of my medbag out of the crevice between my shoulder bell and chest plate, I glanced behind me to where Tech stood before a large blast door, fingers flying across the screen of his datapad. He’d been fighting to splice the security program for several minutes already, and each minute lost brought his brows furrowing closer together, lips bunching in annoyance. Turning my attention back to the hall behind us, I tried to listen for any signs of approaching enemies, but Echo and Crosshair’s distraction elsewhere on the Separatist flagship seemed to be a grand success. Hunter and Wrecker were on the level directly below us, acting as a secondary contingency plan should we run into trouble.

“It’s no use.” Eyes wide, I turned in shock to find Tech disconnecting his handheld from the panel near the door. “It would likely take me several more minutes to breach their firewalls. I am not comfortable with such a delay.”

“Guess Echo and I should have swapped places.” I said apologetically, earning a skeptical look from the tall clone.

“Echo is a highly skilled arc trooper. His chances of survival behind enemy lines far outweigh your own whereas your knowledge of the sciences will be useful in skimming through their records for relevant data.” I shot him a blank look - I’d been there when Hunter explained our roles, just the same as him.

“Doubling down on how quickly we can sift through their records is only worthwhile if we can get in there.” He didn’t wait for me to finish my retort before shutting down his datapad and hooking it to his waist.

“That won’t be a problem.” He dismissed. Without allowing me a chance to respond, he brought his comm to his lips. “Wrecker, go ahead and deploy-”

“I get to use it?!” Wrecker shouted. Tech frowned at the interruption, but his voice remained calm as he answered.

“Yes; it seems they’ve increased se-”

“Yeah, yeah; enough talkin’!” Tech let out a small sigh before beginning to shut down the communicator.

“Very well. Cutting comms.” I frowned, unsure why whatever Wrecker was doing would warrant actually turning off his gear.

“Is he blowing up some power unit for the door?” I asked doubtfully. His eyebrow cocked at my question.

“In a sense. I would advice turning off your communicator.” I stood still a moment longer, trying to understand. “Once the EMP detonates, we will be able to force open the door enough to” I didn’t hear the rest of his sentence, heart plummeting.

“E… EMP?” My voice nearly caught in my throat, body already taking a half step back. Hearing the sudden fear in my voice, Tech turned his full attention to me, as though he might find answers with a mere glance.

“Yes. That’s why he and Hunter are positioned directly below us.” Panic turned my blood to ice, heart bursting into a frantic pace.

“N… the-the radius – what’s the radius?!” Stammered words quickly turned into a shout, legs stumbling to remember how to move.

“Approximately thirty meters – enough to allow”

“No-no-no-no.” Thirty meters. Run. Run. Don’t think. The futility of the mad dash didn’t matter; the certainty that there simply wasn’t time to cross such a distance. The concern and confusion in Tech’s voice as he called my name didn’t matter. Just run.

I barely felt the ripple of static as the world went dark. Mid-sprint, my ankle went dead, foot falling limp and catching on the hard ground. And then I was falling, body crashing with enough force to tear the air from my lungs. For a single, blissful second, my mind was too taken by that threat of suffocation, lungs burning as my diaphragm balked beneath the sudden assault, but then that dread returned.

I remembered knowing we on the Separatist ship. I remembered knowing that Tech was with me, that Hunter and Wrecker were barely ten meters below us, and the Havoc Marauder was carefully hidden against an emergency escape on the outer hull. I remembered that the ship crash that first brought me officially into the Republic army was nearly two years ago and those wounds had long since healed, but, the instant the lights went out, those memories slipped away amidst the terror of nerves screaming beneath a memory far more consuming: pain.

Deaf to the wheezing of my faltered breathes, logic abandoned me. There was only fear; limbs flailing to push me upright, as though maybe I was mistaken; maybe I’d merely tripped, but, when I pulled my leg under me, when the sweeping beam of a flashlight showed how my foot hung listless to any demand to move, I was right back on that crippled transport unable to unsee the ruin of that joint.

“No-no-no.” The senseless plea stammered over numb limps and I felt myself crash back to the ground, strength abandoning me. Good leg dragging atop the smooth tiles, I just managing to push myself back against the wall, hands clawing into my shin as I stared dumbly at the useless joint. I knew there was no blood soaking beneath my hands, knew there was no pain shooting from ruined flesh, but the very memory of that long ago agony locked my every muscle, terrified that one wrong move might reawaken shrieking nerves – remind them that I should hurt, that it would never stop hurting.

I couldn’t hear the way my rapid gasps deteriorated into broken whimpers, nor the growingly frantic calls from Tech as he dropped to his knees beside me. It wasn’t until his hand slipped beneath mine, just beginning to cradle the wretched limb, that I even realized I wasn’t alone, and that horror struck me anew.

“Don’t touch me!” The screech tore from my throat, body violently lashing out to kick him away, still unable to tear my gaze from the way my foot simply… dangled, rocking listlessly with the momentum of my frantic movements. The thud of plastoid hitting metal was enough to pull my gaze away for just a moment, but it was enough. The fierce concern gleaming through the rich umber of his eyes… my friend… he was…

Bringing one hand back to bury my forehead against my palm, I strained to drag myself back to some level of control, cursing the fluttered racing of my heart, the way my entire torso convulsed in gulping, too-shallow gasps, lips twisted into a feral snarl as my teeth ground painfully together. The trill of a comm booting up drew my attention back to him, gaze wavering between him the that cursed joint.

“Very good. Now, can you tell me what happened?” I saw his mouth move long before hearing some distorted semblance of his voice. Had he been speaking earlier? What… what did he say? The familiar rhythm of my name fell from his lips in a tone far gentler than I’d ever heard from the man, dragging my focus back just a bit more.

“I will avoid contact as best I can, but I need you to help me understand what’s wrong.” He held his hands out before him, fingers splayed as though to further prove he wasn’t a threat. I found myself only able to stare at him for several seconds, mind lilting between the madness of fear and that fleeting grasp of logic. Tech. It was Tech kneeling before me. We were on a mission… My ankle…

“M… I-I…” I watched my fingers curl tighter around my leg, eyes sharpening into a glare as I looked back to my ankle in a sickening flurry of disgust and rage.

“Hunter, do you read me?” Scowling anew at the violent tremble I couldn’t begin to hide, my attention swept back to the man before me, the carefully leveled crispness of his voice a painful contrast to the unrelenting panic continuing to flood my veins with adrenaline. “I am unsure what happened, but the EMP seems to have compromised Doc.” Compromised. The consequences of his words broke through the fog of distortion.

“N… no-no! I’m not…” My lips moved before I could fully grasp the entirety of the thought, hand shaking as it darted out to snatch at his wrist. Still, I couldn’t quite grasp the sharp bark of Hunter’s reply.

“Just a moment – standby.” Tech said absently before disconnected the line. “Are you lucid enough to explain what happened?” Frowning, I had to repeat his words silently before finding some vague meaning. What happened…

“The… the EMP,” I stammered, gaze dropping to where my hand continued to cling to his wrist. He didn’t pull away, and the subtle warmth seeping through that slim space between his vambrace and glove suddenly felt overwhelming, attention tuning into it with a focus wildly disproportionate to the simplicity of it. “It killed the… the MPS.” He was silent for barely a second before understanding dawned on him.

“A micel power supply? You have a mechanical leg?” He asked, looking at my ankle with new interest. I’d just begun forming a reply when his hand moved toward the limb once more, and that terror tore through me with the same ferocity, body shying from him as though his very touch might rend my flesh to ruin.

“Don’t!” Even I could hear the madness in my voice, wide eyes staring blindly at my ankle as the color drained from my face. Instantly, he pulled back once more, expression falling back into that studious attentiveness, mind churning over some illogical equation.

“If this is from before you joined us, it should be long passed any ill effects from merely being touched.” He pressed, the simple rationality of his words reawakening the stomach-churning shame and wrenching a choked sob from me, knuckles cracking from where they still clenched his wrist.

“The battery should be easily replaceable. This is merely a temporary inconvenience.” He continued, confusion pulling his expression into a subtle frown. “For ease of mobility, a splint will keep the joint stationary until we can requisition a replacement.” The mere thought of seeing that limb in a splint again churned my stomach so sharply, I had to snatch my lip between my teeth to still the gag.

“What’s going on up there, Tech?” Hunter’s voice chimed impatiently from his comm, earning a flash of irritation from the pilot.

“Mechanical limb I wasn’t aware of – the EMP drained the power supply, but…” The words muttered absently from his lips, gaze quickly drifting back to mine.

“Doc has a robot arm?” The mic only just picked up Wrecker’s comment.

“Leg, unfortunately.” Tech automatically corrected.

“Can you get the both of you back to the Marauder?” Hunter asked.

“No!” The word burst from me with a whole new dread. “N-no, no, I’m… I’m fine-I’m…” I had to take a long moment to breathe, jaw shifting in some desperate drive to explain – to prevent them from calling off the mission because of me. “We don’t need to fall back!” It sounded like I was begging him… maybe I was.

“I believe there is time to retrieve at least some of the data before we need to leave.” Tech stated, eyes burring into mine as I looked up at him in shocked gratitude.

“Fine.” Hunter nearly growled after a long pause, “Wrecker and I will double-time it to you, but if there’s any sign of danger, get out of there.”

“Understood.” With that, he disconnected the call once more before watching me in a heavy silence, waiting. I tried to speak, lips twitching with words I couldn’t quite force into existence.

“If I may voice a theory,” He started, voice dropping into something almost gentle, “It seems whatever injury led to your augmentation left a greater impact than the augmentation itself.” Blinking against the burn of tears I refused to let fall, I felt the air fill my lungs; felt the still painfully quick racing of my heart; felt the heat of his wrist that he still made no effort to free from my grasp, and some wretched cocktail of defeat and fear and anger stole through me.

“It was… it was bad, okay?!” I finally snapped, already losing what little control I’d just begun to regain over my too-quick breathes. “I was… I was alone, and it… hm… It was c-crushed… It…” Just thinking of that night… my stomach seized, body going taut with the effort to force it back under control. I didn’t want to look at him – didn’t want to see that impatience or frustration in the face of my weakness, but my gaze seemed drawn to him. And I felt myself go still. There was no hint of annoyance in those eyes. With a deep quiet, he merely listened, focus tuned so fully onto me, I wondered just how much he learned from everything left unspoken.

“What you are describing is a type of post traumatic stress disorder.” He explained with a calm I found myself captivated by. “Just because it is considered a mental disorder, does not make it any less severe or debilitating that a physical injury.” A glimmer of sympathy and regret touched those eyes before he continued, “But, at present, I am afraid there is very little leeway to allow for appropriate consideration. If we are to finish the mission, we need to move quickly. That means securing your joint to prevent it from becoming a greater liability.” My throat constricted against the truth in his words. “If you are unable to apply a splint yourself, I can”

“No.” It left on a sharp breath, but he didn’t press as I gathered my thoughts, finally forcing myself to release him if only to begin slipping the pack from my shoulders, movements jolted and unsteady. “I can… I can do it.” He drew a slow, deep breath before reaching out to help me free my arms from the unyielding straps.

“Go.” I instructed quietly, trying not to think as I began digging through the main pouch to retrieve the brace. “I can do this.” Despite the weakness of my voice, he hesitated only a moment longer before nodding and pushing himself to his feet. Without another word, he darted back down the hall toward the powerless door.

I focused on the sounds booming through the darkness as I flicked on my own flashlight, forgotten in the depth of that momentary insanity. I focused on the quiet grunts as he strained against the weight of the door that I was supposed to help him with; listened to the metal finally begin to grind open. Eyes blindly following the movements of hands I tried vainly not to remember were mine, I listened to the quiet flutter of his footsteps darting through the neighboring room, certain he was using a mobile power source to boot up individual servers.

I was supposed to be helping him – pouring through that endless data right beside him; shouldering some of the weight of the endless responsibilities constantly thrown at these men I so desperately wanted to protect, but instead I sat curled against the wall, hands seizing inches from my unresponsive foot, grip burring into the split until my fingers ached. Move. Move, dammit! Just tie the damn thing up so you don’t slow them down any more than you already have!

Chest shaking beneath gasps too shallow to even feign relief from the suffocation burning my lungs, I felt the muscles of my arms tense, straining to push the limbs forward, to function, to just touch that useless limb before Hunter and Wrecker could see me in such a pathetic state. The very tip of my finger just managed to brush against my heal, and my body shook as though even that fleeting sensation might burn me. But there was nothing. Of course, there was nothing.

With that mental block finally broken, I wrenched the splint around my ankle, movements rushed by my own frustration and contempt. If I had just done this when the EMP first went off, maybe I still could have been of some use to Tech, but I couldn’t begin to guess how much time had been wasted in that pointless panic.

When I finally managed to push myself up against the wall, mind still rebelling at even the thought of resting that foot atop the floor, the sound of quickly approaching footsteps echoed distantly through the darkness. Bag tucked into the corner, I leveled my blaster toward the sound, eyes straining in search of those familiar silhouettes, finger ready to dance atop the trigger if I saw anything but.

“Can’t get you out of here if you shoot us.” Hunter’s weary voice carried down the hall seconds before he and Wrecker came into sight, and I couldn’t bring myself to offer more than a huff of relief. They said nothing more as they trotted quickly up to me.

“How come you didn’t tell us about the leg? ‘bet Echo’s gonna be jealous we found us first!” Wrecker asked. Beneath that boisterous personality, there was a subtle gentleness in his words that robbed me of any façade of stability.

“It’s a long story.” I could only risk whispering the words on a slow sigh.

“Wrecker: stay with Tech. When Echo checks in, I don’t care how close to finishing he is – get him out of there.” Hunter ordered. Wrecker glanced between us a moment but gave a reluctant mockery of a salute and continued quickly toward the server room. Only after the grinding of metal signaled he’d reached the door did Hunter turn to me, modulator further emphasizing a long exhale. I tried to force out some explanation; some excuse that might grant me reprieve from the disappointment I could feel even through the darkness of his visor.

“I’m guessing there’s a very good reason you didn’t mention having a cybernetic?” Defeat stole through me. There was no escaping this.

“It’s my ankle.” I finally whispered. “Just the joint – I was able to save everything else.” He didn’t move for a moment. Watching me in a heavy silence, he leaned down and absently picked up my helmet. I stared blindly at it for several seconds before managing to convince my body to move, to take the object that had become such a vital part of my identity and slip it seamlessly over my head once more.

“Come on.” He grumbled, stepping up against my right side and wrapping an arm tightly around me. The initial surprise of his touch left me tense, but he merely tilted his visor toward me; waiting. Hand still trembling, I tentatively slid my arm over his shoulders, gaze dropping both from guilt and shame as well as from the lingering afterimage of fear demanding I guard that ruined limb. He took a single step forward and stopped, shifting expectantly toward me. My thigh moved forward, muscles tensing to finish the stride as best as the immobilized joint would allow.

I didn’t notice how my fingers began to grip at the thick muscle sloping down to his shoulder, back going rigid as I strained to convince my body to walk; to move; that there was no pain; no traumatic injury still in need of coddling. Twice, I managed to just brush the tile floors with my heel, but both times the limb jerked back, an icy sweat quickly seeping through my blacks and soaking into my hair as that tremble stole through me like an infection.

“Set your toes down first.” His voice dropped into a murmur, wrenching my attention back to him. “Don’t add any weight; just let your toes touch the floor.” He continued, unrushed and free of the irritation so prominent in my own impatience. It was only because of that quiet understanding that I was able to obey him, knee bending to just let my toes rest against that cold tile. I felt my shoulders tense, anticipating how the limb would balk, and I hated the distant thought that I knew this – that I’d walked countless others through these very steps so many times before, but was powerless to recall any of those fleeting memories in the face of my own need.

“Good.” He spoke like we were at the range; like he was teaching me how to better my aim rather than how to walk, and I wanted to sob for the gratitude of his gentleness in that moment. “Now, just let your foot roll down until it’s flat.” Fingers tightening around him once more, I shift to follow those soft words, body shaking so violently, it was only his grip around my back, hand flared over my ribs to hold me close against him that kept me from tumbling. Still, it took several seconds to ease my leg straight.

“You’re doing fine, Doc; just lean on me.” Eyes closing tightly, I felt my focus shift to the rhythm of his breath; how his chest swelled and sank in an unbothered dance. Calm. Steady. Strong. “Good.” I didn’t realize I’d managed to lay my foot flat atop the floor until that whispered praise rumbled from him. “Now, hold onto me as much as you need. One step at a time.” Before committing to that first hobbled jump, I felt my gaze pull back briefly.

“My pack.” I barely managed to breathe the apologetic words. He didn’t bother looking at it before answering.

“Wrecker will grab it on his way back.” He assured me with a certainty I couldn’t doubt. Still, I hesitated just a moment longer before finally hopping forward, freehand darting up to lock around the top lip of his chest plate to steady myself, body once more going rigid beneath the expectation of pain. He didn’t move; didn’t rush me to continue forward, and I knew I’d never find the words to thank him as that tremor grew so intense in those first few seconds of waiting for that delayed hurt to cripple me that I could barely breathe.

I remembered the depth of my terror back when the red emergency lighting distorted the crimson stains to black, when the scent of fuel saturated the air so profusely, each gasp left me sputtering and gagging. I remembered the jolt of a pain so consuming, it robbed the sight from my eyes and the sound from my ears. I remembered the fear of realizing I was alone – that my partner was dead, and I’d die at their side if I didn’t escape that deathtrap of twisted metal and flashing warning lights. I remembered how my stomach seized at the first touch of that split beneath my heel at the way my vision narrowed and darkened as I forced my hands to maneuver the ruined joint into some semblance of stability, bound beneath gauze and cloth and straps of anything I could find; and I remembered the endless nightmare of dragging myself through mounds of sharp rumble and burning debris. I remembered the very moment I finally realized there was grass beneath my gnarled hands; when I turned back to discover an inferno now danced through the ship in a horrid display of hellish shapes made all the more vivid in the pale light of that planet’s slivered moon.

“Still with me?” I didn’t look at him; unsure when my gaze had fallen to the pale floors. Eyes blinking harshly against the afterimage of those flames, I felt my chest seize with a sharp gasp and wondered vaguely how long I’d only managed those fluttered, shallow gasps.

“Damn it.” Defeated… the way that curse fell from numb lips and clenched teeth, it couldn’t sound like anything other than that self-deprecating hatred that flooded my eyes with tears and sent my heart twisting with shame.

“You can hold on to me, and I’ll carry you to the Marauder, or you can take a breath and try again.” There wasn’t a hint of judgement in those levelled words, and I felt myself still beneath them. If I told him that I couldn’t, that I simply wasn’t strong enough to fight free of the unrelenting horror of something that I’d only barely lived through… I knew he wouldn’t question it. He’d haul me across the length of the Separatist ship without quip or comment, and wouldn’t speak a word of it until I could breathe without suffocating beneath the ghosts of engine oil and iron and sick that only I could taste… But I revolted at the very thought of yielding to that fear. I pulled myself from that dying ship… I could get through this.

Jaw setting in an enraged determination, I forced myself to breathe, forced myself to recognize the scent of recycled air and dust and the subtle oil Hunter used to clean his gear. There was no smoke. No emergency lights flashing in the darkness. There was no pain. Gaze shifting toward the hallway stretching out before us, I moved my leg forward, focusing on the sensation of the very tip of my boot brushing atop the flooring to guide the limb safely down. Hunter moved smoothly beside me, hold just supportive enough to steady me as I found my own rhythm, weight tentatively shifting onto my heel as though to prove the joint would hold.

The next step was only slightly faster, stomach still churning against every gentle movement, but even that slowly quelled. Gradually, I found the quickness of my breath shifting from panic to simple exertion; found my mind able to hold onto thoughts deeper than constantly screaming at myself that I was fine; that I shouldn’t be feeling this terror anymore. And a new dread and shame began to creep over me. I had to tell him. I had to tell him everything, even if he turned away from me because of it.

“My ship was shot down.” I heard the words escape on some simile of my own voice, felt Hunter’s attention shift ever so slightly as he listened. “My partner died in the crash, and my ankle… It was held together by more bandages than anything. I could smell fuel – couldn’t breathe, the air was so thick with it. By the time I pulled myself out of it, the whole thing was on fire. Must have been a couple hours before the ones who shot me down finally found me.” I stopped walking. He didn’t press, watching in silence as I struggled to force out the words.

“It was Commander Wolffe.” I finally whispered, and I felt the confusion seep through him. Knowing the coming questions, I merely continued quietly instead of forcing him to ask. “We were on Agamar. As soon as a battle ended, my partner and I swept the fields for survivors – had a few contacts to sneak them back to Republic airspace.” He didn’t say anything for a long time, and that anxiety and dread solidified closer toward panic with each passing second.

“Why?” He asked, and I could hear the simple confusion in that single word. Air fleeing me in a rush before my chest jerked against a broken inhale, I barely wasted a moment’s thought before answering.

“Because I had to try. I knew I could save some of them, and the ones I couldn’t… I didn’t want them to die alone.” He was still a moment longer before starting forward once more, arm still firm around my back to push me with him, and I quickly fell back into that unsteady gait.

“So, a Separatist doctor of rehabilitation medicine decided to forsake their home world to help the Republic?” He clarified as we reached the edge of the area effected by the EMP, gleaming lights blessedly dimmed by my visor. I cringed at the label but didn’t try to argue. “How’d you wind up serving in the GAR? Why didn’t Commander Wolffe finish you off when he found you?” My memories of that night were distorted with pain and shock, only vaguely remembering the figures approaching me from the tree line; my fleeting attempts to explain myself.

“There was a Jedi with him,” I replied, “General Plo Koon. I don’t really know what I said to them, but he believed me. They got me off Agamar, and General Koon… I guess he had friends in high places – he made me a new identity as a citizen of Dantooine and brought me into the 104th as a medic once I was well enough to fight. I was with them for almost a year when Captain Rex had me transferred.” The escape pod hatch connected to the Marauder came into sight before he spoke again.

“I just need to know one more thing.” He said, pausing a single stride from that door. I turned to face him, loathing the impenetrable visor hiding those grey and gold streaked eyes from me. “Where do your loyalties lie? Really?” I felt myself stand just that much taller, blossoming under the relief that this was a question I could answer without a shadow of hesitation.

“I’m loyal to this squad… The Republic isn’t perfect, but I believe in what it’s trying to be.” I said, willing the words into existence with my every cell and breath. “I swear, Hunter, I’m loyal to Echo and Wrecker and Tech. I’m loyal to Crosshair… I’m loyal to you.” I felt the trill of panic sending static down my fingertips as I waited for whatever judgement he settled on, body nearly collapsing when he finally nodded.

“You’ll have to tell the others.” It was nearly an order as he reached forward to open the latch. “They deserve the truth.” My mouth went dry, but I couldn’t dismiss the relief I felt at those words. Whatever happened, at least I wouldn’t need to maintain this cover anymore – I wouldn’t need to keep this distance between us.

We’d just come out of that first stint of lightspeed travel, floating in the darkness of space as Tech prepared to enter the next hyperlane. I had to do it now, before I could talk myself into further delays until Hunter felt compelled to step in.

“I… I need to tell you all something – I…” I caught myself on the verge of hiding, chin falling toward my chest, eyes staring blindly at the metallic flooring, and forced myself to draw a sharp breath before meeting their eyes, forced myself not to shy away from the tension stealing through them as those gorgeous eyes I’d come to know and love turned to mine.

The perfect silence that surrounded my every word was both blessing and curse – if they’d interrupted even once, I don’t know if I would have had to strength to continue, but it also allowed nowhere for me to hide, voice trailing almost thoughtlessly from listless lips lest I lose myself in the panic of what telling them this could mean. That quiet lingered for too long after I finally finished.

Hunter stood passively beside me, granting his brothers what time they needed to gather their thoughts. Crosshair’s disinterest had gradually dissolved into a seething rage, arms dropping from where they’d been crossed over his chest to tense at his sides, fists tightly clenched. Echo’s gaze remained locked blindly on a monitor beside him, brows just drawn together in a haunting dance between hurt and anger. Wrecker – sweet Wrecker – listened with a careful focus, but what sadness touched those eyes seemed born only from worry, while Tech hadn’t been still for a full minute before letting his fingers dance atop his datapad as I spoke.

“There is something I don’t understand.” Hearing those words in Tech’s eloquent voice nearly ruined me, but I waited in silence for whatever distain or betrayal might proceed them, unable to hide the weariness from my eyes as I forced myself to meet his gaze – I owed them that much. “There’s no reference to any samaritan involvement during that mission, and your records don’t have any mention of an ankle injury.” I drew a slow breath before explaining.

“A Separatist squad was sent to check for survivors – for anyone they could take prisoner. If the 104th took them out, it would have revealed their position, but they couldn’t risk moving some of their men, so I went… I told the droids that I’d been shot down by a lone clone, but that he’d already died from injuries sustained during the battle – even showed them a body. I was able to convince them that there was no one else still alive and got them to transport me back for medical treatment. I was barely out of surgery when then 104th snuck me out – their general didn’t feel right leaving me there after what happened.” The careful emptiness of my voice was a testimony to my certainty that my fate was already sealed; that I continued speaking purely to grant them every shred of closure I could while still allowed the freedom to speak.

“The cybernetic is Separatist technology. It was General Koon’s idea to keep it out of official records – he figured it would be best to keep my origins secret if I wanted to keep helping the GAR.”

“So much for all that bantha osik about trust.” I’d been waiting for that distain; that anger so vainly layered overtop a hurt I felt just as viciously as he did, but, when Crosshair’s sneered words lingered in the silence between us, it still sent my heart writhing within my chest as tears clawed up my throat. When my gaze moved reluctantly to find him, he looked at me with such hatred, I couldn’t keep those tears from spilling down my cheeks, and he turned sharply away to vanish into the hall of the Marauder. Jaw ground against the way my breaths began to waver, I sat perfectly still, waiting for the others to take their turn.

“Where you ever going to tell us?” Echo… That sliver of control crumbled beneath the quiet betrayal in his softly spoken question, chin dropping to my chest, face contorting with a grief too consuming to fight back. Jaw wrenching open in a gasped sob, it felt like an eternity passed in those fleeting seconds I took to gather enough strength to answer him.

“I wanted to – Maker, everyday I wanted to… but I was so scared.” Knuckles gleaming from how tightly my figured burr into my knees, I just managed to glance up at him. “By the time I trusted you enough to feel like I could tell you… I… just the thought of-of losing…” My lips shifted around words I just couldn’t force into existence, eyes sliding shut as though I could hide from what might come next.

“But we trust Echo.” My shoulders sank at Wrecker’s innocent confusion. “We got him from the seppies. If you say you’re on our side, I don’t see why it matters which planet you were born on.” When I turned to see the honest confusion in those mismatched eyes; the concern pulling his brows into the beginnings of a frown, I hurt all the more for it – for the distance this might wedge between them if he couldn’t understand.

“I have already received a response from Commander Wolffe.” Tech chimed, and even his voice was heavy with the severity of the conversation. “He has confirmed what you’ve said.” I felt no relief from his words. It wasn’t a matter of if they believed me – all I cared about was if they could forgive me. He said nothing more for a long moment, but I could see his mind racing over everything I’d said. “I regret that you felt the need to hide this from us… but I understand your reasoning to do so.” He stated slowly, eyes carefully trained on mine. “I hope in the future, you won’t feel the need to keep such information secret.”

Like a string had been cut, the tension swept from my body in a sudden rush of shock, jaw going slack, eyes open wide as my shoulders slumped. I could feel my heart racing; felt the air staling in my lungs for fear that even the movement of releasing it might cause him to change his mind.

“Assuming you are comfortable remaining a part of this squad despite our now knowing this… secret.” He added, a sliver of doubt causing him to hesitate in the face of my response. My eyes darted first to Echo, then to Hunter and Wrecker. None of them offered any objection to his words. And I broke.

With a violent sob, I launched myself forward, arms darting around Tech’s neck as I finally let the epitome of my fear and guilt and desperate gratitude overwhelm me. He tensed, hands flaring open for the handful of seconds it took for him to understand what had happened, but I only hugged him harder and, touch hesitant at first, he let his hands just settle between my shoulder blades.

I didn’t need to look to know it was Hunter who moved next, reaching out to grasp my shoulder, then Echo’s hand swept gently up my neck. Emboldened slightly, Tech’s arms wrapped more firmly around me seconds before Wrecker lock us both in an embrace so tight, I felt the air rush from the pilot’s chest in a sharp huff and couldn’t help but find myself laughing silently amidst sobs of relief.

“Just give him some time – he’ll come back around.” I didn’t realize my gaze had wandered back toward the hall until Hunter’s gentle words murmured through the silence. Glancing briefly at him, I tried to let him see the breadth of my gratitude and love before turning back to hide myself against the reassurance of my squad’s embrace.

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stardustlives · 1 month ago

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GOTY 2023

Much like last year another list of games I played during the year that I thought might be worth mentioning in a goty discussion. This list is still omitting games I've replayed and games I didn't think were good or interesting enough to get a mention.

Games of the Year

1)Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon From Software keeps doin' it. 50 years ago resource exploitation bathed the Rubicon solar system in a crimson screeching inferno. Now, the patchwork half-person you've been made into is dragged to Rubicon 3 by a seemingly amoral shadow's ulterior motives to get some mercenary work done. You tinker with your personal armored core in-between missions molding it to the moment's purpose and take it out on these intense expeditions for and against a rotating cast of dubious, compelling entities. Everything about this game has me ecstatic: the mood, the looks, the sound design, the speed. Everything feels amazing.

This became not just my favorite game of the year but one of my favorite games period. Recency bias is a hell of a drug so I won't be giving a specific all time ranking but as far as this year is concerned it's my number 1 by an enormous margin.

Look at my robots.

2)Gravity Circuit Plainly a Mega Man fangame much like another pick lower on this list. The game wears its inspirations on its sleeve but manages a spot this high thanks not just to its solid design but also unique mechanical identity. It has this combat system that allows you to toss enemies about and grab them out of the air to fling at other hapless goons in flashy combos you'll wanna get up to just for the fun of it.

3)Resident Evil 4 Was filled with apprehension when they initially (and inevitably) announced this. RE4 being supremely available and holding up so well it continues to be the model for modern RE games to this day made this seem like the most unnecessary remake ever conceived. RE4 (remake) however is willing to be more than different enough to justify its own existence. Introducing a parrying mechanic and on the fly weapon switching, it leans into the action aspect of its source to produce a much more frantic experience. Despite the length I couldn't help but make multiple runs on multiple difficulties, just playing it was so compelling. I hesitate to call it better than the original as it does have rocky areas (the cutscene direction for example is just flat worse) but I'd rather not have a world where either version of RE4 is missing.

4)Super Mario Bros. Wonder Such glee over here. Every level a new silly mechanic and every level an explosion of that mechanic when your character touches a Wonder Flower which launch you into a Fantasia-esque trip. A reminder of the ways Nintendo resembles Disney (complimentary) rather than the ways Nintendo resembles Disney (derogatory).

5)Marvel's Spider-Man 2 Like it says on the tin: There's two in this one. Extremely polished spectacle and the most fun I've had with an interpretation of Marvel characters in a long while. It's got some pacing issues and doesn't really feel like it gets started until the symbiote stuff starts happening for real but once it does I only liked it more over time.

6)The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Ok so this is a weird one. Many hours into my playthrough I felt intensely that this experience was so good it'd be very difficult to defeat but as I went on and played too much of it everything started feeling exhausting. Breath of the Wild has this intelligent piece of design in the Korok seeds which are a collectible your aren't supposed to fully collect. Rather the world is peppered with so many you are guaranteed to get 'enough' for your adventure and ensure there's always something for you to find no matter where you look. I much prefer this over map clearing open world games that become an exercise in following waypoints which can make an otherwise mechanically sound game tedious. I think TotK might have a lot of Korok seed design in it: sidequests, world activities and the depths. However those activities call out for your attention much more than the Korok seeds and over-interacting with them is what exhausted me. I land somewhere where I'm unsure whose fault that is, sure there's fun armor pieces in the depths but no one was telling me to fully light them up and that's what made me stop having fun with them.

Older open world games like GTA 3 had worthless collectibles you could fully ignore but more modern games are better at incorporating these in the design and progression systems which is meant to make them impossible to ignore. TotK isn't fully committed to this design, it still gives you ample room to not do any of this shit but I did! Whose fault is that!? Anyway my honeymoon with this game was intense enough that it still ranks this high on my list but it left me with an odd dilemma.

7)Hi-Fi Rush Another one I was somewhat apprehensive about. I can be kind of a grump and the humor here when it was initially announced rubbed me the wrong way but the cascade of effusive praise made me want to give it a shot. I'm very glad I did! I was pleasantly surprised by how infectious its energy was and how funny I frequently found it. Gorgeous animation all throughout, I love the way everything on the screen dances to the beat. I was somewhat personally held back by the fact that I am very bad at keeping rhythm. As fun and chill as the mood is in game I had to maintain iron focus to be able to play even a little competently. Still, I got better as I went and loved the experience.

8)Bomb Rush Cyberfunk One of the pillars of indie game design: "Fine, I'll make my own then!" Jet Set Radio 3. really not much else that needs to be said here right? These people made another Jet Set Radio Future and it's pretty sick. Do not play it on switch like I did it does not run well.

9)Star Wars Jedi: Survivor It's too long. It suffers from being a map clearing open world game and is also held back by technical problems. Actually problematic glitches are rare but will happen. The worst though might be what you would think of as expected open world hiccups. Open world games are too large and complicated not to have some issues but here they are relentless; you are never not looking at something fucking up. At least 75% of the time I hopped on one of these horse things their animations were broken.

All that said, what is good here is so good and only gets better with time. Platforming really became fun once the game gave me an air dash and an obstacle that refreshes my aerial options. Each lightsaber style is beautiful and fun but oh I really wish you could equip at least three at a time. With two I was always feeling like I was missing one. This version of Cal is more compelling as a character and the story's meditation on duty vs obsession was pretty interesting. Very much made me long for Respawn to make a more linear single player experience again.

10)Pseudoregalia Echoes of Lunistice from last year. A short, cheap, extremely competent low poly platformer featuring an anthropomorphic character. Unlike Lunistice this one takes more inspiration from your Metroid and Soulsy style games even lifting the healing system from Hollow Knight. You explore a large derelict castle looking for traversal abilities that will open up new paths and generally make the game more fun to play.

Runners-up

11)Humanity You awaken as a dog made of light and are tasked to guide a flowing river of people to their destination. Beautiful and clever puzzle game. A Mizuguchi joint with the vibes to match.

12)24 Killers Taking a huge amount of inspiration from games such as Moon and Chulip, an adventure game where you play as an interdimentional being shoved inside the corpse of a soldier left on a island. You've been cursed by the void's solitude but you're assured helping the inhabitants of the island trapped in a bunker will heal you. Charming little thing much like its inspirations all about familiarising yourself with a strange place and its quirky people.

13)Blasphemous 2 The Penitent One is back once again in contemporary Sevilla, Spain to blaspheme and self-flagellate about it. This guy LOVES to penitate. Mechanically an improvement over the first, it kinda didn't hit the same way and I think it's mostly a result of being a sequel. The original's style was so striking and it was a sort of a revelation and while I think this second one does lack images quite as intense as the first, it just couldn't hit the same way again. Still excellent in its category and very much calling to you if you enjoyed the first.

14)Chants Of Sennaar Beautiful puzzle game about decoding languages via context clues. You observe how symbols are used and jot down in a notebook what you think they might mean. Only gripes I have with it are that it's a little too sympathetic to brute forcing solutions and the last area isn't that good. It's kind of filled with puzzles meant to be brute forced even. Everything that comes before is much more satisfying to solve.

15)Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2 Like the song says: Petals, much too young caught in a black wind... 2! Almost mechanically identical to the first one this is mostly a balancing iteration. I found it harder in a compelling way where I was having to think much more seriously about how turns would play out, even expending items and therefore having to consider resource management in a way that wasn't as necessary previously. Overall a positive change alongside its story ever promising to keep wildly escalating.

16)Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider I have a disease that makes me incapable of getting sick of that late 80's early 90's OVA cyber ninja shit. You put any of that in front of me and I'm at least having a baseline of a good time. Despite appearances calling back to Shinobi, Ninja Gaiden, and Hagane (please play Hagane) this is a Mega Man X fangame more than anything. To the point of featuring a lot of specific Zero moves from the later ones. It's a good 'one of these'.

17)We Love Katamari REROLL+ Royal Reverie Maybe I shouldn't have ranked this one. This is just We Love Katamari. Like the graphics are redone and it's got 5 new levels but it's just the Ps2 game. That's an excellent game you should play it if you haven't but for the purposes of this list this a little close to just being a port.

18)Shinobi Non Grata Fast arcadey side scrolling score attack hack'n'slash. Short but meant to be replayed until you can beat it in a single credit.

19)Like a Dragon: Ishin! I got pretty disappointed in this one! A full remake of one of the four Like a Dragon games to never be localized and specifically the one I was the most desperate to play. Kiryu takes on the role of historical figure Saito Hajime (and Sakamoto Ryoma) and joins the Shinsengumi, a dissident hunting death squad for the Tokugawa shogunate, to try and root out the man who murdered his father. It has an excess of side activities I mostly didn't care for and the RPG elements got in the way of the enjoyment I could have had with the combat. The Shinsengumi drama was mostly fun and worked to make this my favorite TV show I'm able to put on a list of video games.

20)Backpack Hero Slay the Spire inspired roguelite with RE4 style inventory Tetris as a central mechanic. It's fine but it's also too easy. Runs get solved very early on, I never felt like I had to think too much about what I was doing or had an interest in changing my build mid-run. As if responding to a wish I made last year also features a simple city builder for progression purposes but the economy that runs it is dubious. You need to provide for the town to unlock new items that'll allow the game to be interesting but that progress just doesn't come quite fast enough.

21)Mortal Kombat 1 My opinion of MK1 is basically identical to my opinion of MK11: the Mortal Kombat half is maybe the best MK has ever been, the live service game half of it is pretty bad. Great fighting, wild fatalities but lots of dark pattern stuff like daily quests and a rotating store to give you fomo.

Edit from the year 2024: My opinion here tanked over time. The live service aspects are a miserable grind. The single player invasions having stats and the story mode characters missing moves for story reasons means you'll never be playing the characters "right" so whatever you learn from those doesn't translate to real matches. Kameos suck especially as a casual player. It really cannot be thought these issues are entirely to blame on publisher interference. I have a relationship to Mortal Kombat that keeps me caring so I really hope they can straighten stuff out for the next one.

Catch Up

The Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces (2010) Solatorobo: Red the Hunter (2011)

Disgaea 4 Complete+ (2019) Finally got around to finishing a Disgaea game. Made me discover that there are two games in every Disgaea: First a cute tactics game until credits and after that Cookie Clicker. Loved the characters and had the ideal tactics game experience of turning bad situations around with clever maneuvering but lost interest completely in the post-game that's all about finding clever ways of grinding.

Mighty Goose (2021)

Death's Door (2021) The Titan Souls people made a Zelda-ish/Soulsy little thing and it's real neat! Coulda used a map though.

Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana (Ps5) (2022) Initially released in 2016 for the Vita, later got a re-localization. This is an Ys game people were unusually high on and it got me interested. It's deserved! This is a really cool adventure. Goes a lot of directions especially at the end and has a banging soundtrack the whole time. Adol Christin and a gaggle of other individuals end up stranded on a deserted island and must come together in a little community to survive all the while uncovering the secrets of the island and its fantasy dinosaurs.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge (2022)

The Case of the Golden Idol (2022) Had no idea this thing was out there. A deduction game like Return of the Obra Dinn, you are given vignettes (usually of murder) and must deduce who did what to whom and in what order. Great at imparting that eureka sensation of figuring something out. I'm quite excited for the sequel that was announced at the TGAs.

Evil West (2022) Hell yes video games are fucking stupid and it rules. You have to punch vampires in the wild west with your electric gauntlet you fucking need to. You gotta juggle the children of the night with sick combos!

Signalis (2022) The most legit Silent Hill game since 3 and my favorite since 1. Pulsating with atmosphere and style, something has gone very wrong on a colony run but a spacefaring East Germany. Not everyone is going to be in love with the deliberate limits they put on inventory space but I liked the decision-making it inspired.

Retro Games

Rocket Knight Adventures (1993) Had vague blending memories of playing one or two of these as a kid and decided to blast through all of them with the first being my favorite. Sharing staff with Contra Hard Corps, has that same quality of feeling like a Treasure game before Treasure was actually around. Tons of goofy sprite effects, bosses and wild uses of the Yamaha chip. Great fun.

Sparkster: Rocket Knight Adventures 2 (1994) Sparkster (SNES) (1994)

Wonder Project J2 (1996) Fantranslation of a raising simulator and a direct sequel to the original Wonder Project. You (yes, you the player) inherit the responsibility to raise Josette, Geppetto's final creation. Outside of minigames you do not interact directly with the game but rather give instructions to Josette and provide positive or negative feedback depending on her reactions. Has plenty of limitations especially later on as it becomes an exercise in clicking on every location hoping a story event triggers. Still really interesting and worth having a look.

Parasite Eve (1998)

Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere (fantranslation) (1999) This did get an English localization but it excised most of its ambitious story this fantranslation restored it. Pretty damn stiff not my favorite Ace Combat to play but it's got killer music and really cool ideas both for levels and storytelling. I'd give a lot for Project Aces to hit these notes again with modern controls.

Pikmin (2001) As a kid I was terrified of time limits and that kept me from games that would later be favorites like Majora's Mask. Now being older and understanding that games are designed to be beaten I get a lot of enjoyment out of the tension that comes from time limits. I loved this first Pikmin and even found the fussiness in the controls to have made the experience more intimate. That's very proper to the original though, it was the correct decision for the sequels to develop quality of life improvements.

Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil (2001) Klonoa is very important to me as it's the first game I ever beat without any help at a time where I barely understood they could be beaten. this sequel is adorable but also clumsier. It has beautiful aspirations but struggles with the then new hardware of the Ps2 to realize them. Still I was charmed by what it wanted especially the Kingdom of Sorrow towards the end.

Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies (2001) Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny (2002) Shinobi (2002) Maken Shao: Demon Sword (2003) Pikmin 2 (2004) Shadow Hearts: Covenant (2004) Onimusha 3: Demon Siege (2004) Shinobido: Way of the Ninja (2005) Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams (shoulda played the Japanese version) (2006) Tales of Destiny: Director's Cut (2008)

Missed games I'm eager to get around to but wow 2023 was packed you just don't run out:

Lies of P Heard this thing was brutal on release but apparently they've been patching it to be easier like every other day. By the time I get to it it'll be like a Kirby game or something.

Bayonetta Origins I initially loved PlatinumGames for how diverse their first four games were. I'm excited to look into them doing something that appears different from the rest of their more recent offerings.

Pikmin 4 This is a little odd: I'm not actually that interested in 4. I didn't much like the cave spelunking in 2 and it seems like this one is all about it. Instead I'm way more interested in replaying Pikmin 3 a game I KNOW I played and I KNOW I loved but somehow fell entirely out of my head in a way that kinda terrifies me? Seriously I have stronger memories of nondescript dirt from the 360 era than of this game I have a strong emotional memory of loving. At some point I had forgotten the Pikmin types in it. I don't know how this is possible.

Baldur's Gate 3 Almost caved and bought this last year for the character creation alone but AC6 came to satisfy my customization urges. Good thing too because as impressions began rolling in it became clear that much like act 1 benefited from an early access period so too would act 2 and 3. I'm eager to get this game on its 1 year anniversary.

WarioWare: Move It! Smooth Moves 2! For some reason! I'm down I wanna wiggle to nose hair humor again.

Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name This guy cannot catch a break and even though I want him to have that break I also want to hear Kuroda Takaya go "Ah..." and watch my man get way into pocket racing.

Lunacid King's Field fangame that looks pretty neat. Almost played this one last year but convinced myself the only way to play it would be at night while snowed in. The snow's oddly late but it's probably the next thing I'll get around to.

Turbo Overkill boomer shooter chainsaw legs and laser beams huge guns stupid shit

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