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paingoes · 25 days ago

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(long Paris apologia paragraph ahead sorry)

I love both Delta and Paris, and while Delta is infinitely more likable and I have more in common with Delta re: autism and child abuse, I honestly find Paris to be a more compelling character? (Part of this is because I'm also an alcoholic with complex trauma and I so very rarely see the worst parts of my trauma being represented in a sympathetic light.) I definitely get why people don't like him. he's a violent shithead, a menace to society and himself, not to mention he has the emotional intelligence of a rock.

You mentioned this in a previous post but I think you did a really good job with showing that a lot of Paris' worst qualities (his violent mood swings, his sense of entitlement, his power tripping abusive behavior etc) comes from a place of his own patheticness and refusal to change (especially the times when he breaks down after getting too drunk) and I think that's what allows me to sympathize with and like him more then anything. His childishness in his most monstrous and vulnerable moments really drives home that he's not really suited to the role of all powerful monarch he was raised to be, and who's abuse and status in the empire caused him both to grow up way too fast, while at the same time never allowing him to develop into a healthy adult and that he's in many ways, a kid in a grown person's body who sees himself as doomed to repeat the cycles of his childhood trauma that created him unless he chooses otherwise. (A horrifying and daunting task for someone like him)

Like the scene where he breaks Delta's arm and almost drowns him? It's scary as hell but what stands out to me it despite the horrible violence and long term consequences of his actions, is just how petty and childish his motivations for doing so is (which does not make them any less harmful). he's acting this way because he feels slighted and abandoned by Lorelai. You hurt me I hurt you. This gives me a lot of leeway into both sympathizing with him as someone with similar struggles while also reminding me that he's not the way he is because he's powerful, like he wants you to believe, but a very weak and jaded person who wants to feel powerful and is given the systemic means to. Which doesn't make him less dangerous.

Sorry for the long ask, I'm just very much enjoying your story, especially Paris's "being humbled by life" arc and I'm super excited about what will be in store for both him and Delta next ❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹

oh my godddddd this was such an amazing thing to wake up to. i kind dont even wanna post it i just want to hold onto it forever. this is so sweet.

i dont know if i can respond to all of this right now and i might talk more about the different points you brought up later. but generally i am so pleased with this analysis and im pleased you have gotten this much out of it? im gonna say more under the cut

pretty heavy warnings for child abuse. nothing explicit just discussion of institutional child abuse/complex trauma and how it affects people psychologically.

like i said i could talk about them basically forever but re: childishness and being pathetic. YEAH i mean i think it is very obvious that paris’s growth has been stunted as a result of abuse + neglect. in fact i think that growing up in empire alone is inherently stunting because it is a system very much designed to kill empathy and to breed hunger and greed in people. its a problem with the whole society, cruelty and selfishness are incentivized over developing more complex moral structures and even over developing your own identity.

[ people like lorelai are very much an outlier within Empire, but i think its clear that she is….also pretty immature? she has a lot of love and a desire to do good, which kind of makes up for it, but she is childish in the sense that her parents sheltered her and her own ideas about revolution and utopia are very very idealized. i think this delusional optimism is a good thing for paris tbh and it kinda balances out his own cynicism. but lorelai will need to grow up at some point too. its just her reckoning is allowed to be softer. ]

but paris’s case was particularly bad for a few reasons.

the most obvious is that he was prince and naturally the expectations placed on him were a lot greater and the consequences for not meeting them were a lot harsher.

paris was born with pretty severe ADHD and mood regulation issues and his symptoms only worsened the more that he was punished for them

paris at his core is a genuinely sensitive and intelligent person that understands right from wrong

and i think this alone provides a lot of context for how he is now but it also makes it easier to understand why his childhood was basically torture for him. like yeah exposure to complex trauma will kind of naturally stunt your growth at certain points but you also get the sense that paris’s growth was like. deliberately stunted or that the handicap was self-inflicted. paris acts dumber than he is. its how he makes peace with it. its cool to be a callous idiot because if you have to be a self aware and moral person in this environment you will immediately get one-shotted by guilt.

and for what it’s worth i think delta’s growth was also — obviously — stunted. but in a different way shaped by their respective roles.

it’s legitimately really gross for me to describe it this way but it does feel like one of the goals with delta’s conditioning was to make a forever-child. someone who will do what you say and remain perfectly ignorant and docile and obedient. he can be used but is basically incapable of putting up a fight. martino and simon both speak to delta like he’s a child and that infantilization is to keep him pliant and similarly trapped in that same sense of helplessness he felt when he was little :(

i think delta is very low empathy naturally and actually doesnt have an innate moral compass which is what made him such a perfect candidate for the job. but it also means he is super susceptible to getting someone else’s morals imposed onto him as long as he finds them logical and coherent. his ability to morally reason and his way of interacting with people is obviously very underdeveloped but its more immediately obvious why.

ive said before that i think delta is more emotionally mature than paris but i think maybe this paints an incorrect view of things? i mean. delta is not holding his tongue and regulating his own emotions because he thinks its a mature thing to do. hes doing it because he knows not to speak without permission and that if he ever had an outburst the way paris did, he would be beaten within an inch of his life. so i feel like maybe its wrong to attribute this as one of his virtues. (without totally discounting the fact that delta is very sweet and doing his best.) delta would very much struggle with like. setting boundaries, standing up for himself in any way, communicating his feelings. you can describe paris as childish but i think delta is childlike. in that he’s also suffering the consequences of abuse but his specific conditioning has made him more fawny in a way that reads as sympathetic and virtuous.

basically yeah my point was. they were both stunted at some critical point in their development and are both dealing with the consequences of that. paris was a victim but he was simultaneously groomed to be a perpetrator, versus delta who is mostly victim.

anyway thanks so much wow im gonna print this whole ask out ❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹

#destroyer asks #child abuse tw

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sweatertheman · 1 year ago

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okay look i know its in bad taste to spend this long dogging on other people's ships but i've just been having a lot of thoughts about this today.

the idea that suselle is a foregone conclusion is stupid! and that's not because toby fox is just trolling, he's not that dense to pull a pointless bait and switch. its stupid because part of deltarune's narrative is about narrative, and about predestiny! beads on rails, puppets on strings, dark worlds as fiction, all this!

like, let me use my ralsology degree to paint a picture for you here. ralsei, as a symbol, represents traditional RPG stuff. he's been suckered into a worldview where darkners are NPCs, less than people, and ultimately exist to serve both the player characters and the broader narrative. his perception of right and wrong is childish, and he offers simple-minded platitudes as explanations. ralsei believes that everything they do is predestined to some degree, that while they can change how they act and how others feel about them, their relationships, their arcs, their battles, these are all laid out in advance.

and he's wrong about all of it.

darkners are very much people with intricate personal lives, hopes and dreams, complex motivations behind their actions. right and wrong is more complex than, well, right and wrong, and their quest is very much not predetermined, as we can see on snowgrave.

what's more, deltarune's narrative seems to be about how ralsei is wrong. with the secret bosses, and the beads on rails and all that stuff. kris is an unwilling protagonist being forced down a path they don't want to go down. darkners are shown to be people, and yet it seems like the DELTA WARRIORS will be forced to treat them like they aren't. susie herself rejects every narrative and gameplay convention ralsei lays out for her, from the concept of being nice to enemies on principle to the player's sense of choice in the game they're playing.

...and you mean to tell me you trust Ralsei here?!

yes, that's right! ralsei, guy whose worldview is making everything worse for everyone, himself included, is a suselle shipper!

if you go back to the ferris wheel billboard after the susie intermission, ralsei will think to himself that susie must still be thinking about her ride with noelle.

and guess what HE'S FUCKING WRONG. all susie cares about is what the hell a ferris is!

(this isn't to say susie didn't enjoy the ride or doesn't sometimes think about noelle, just to be clear.)

i think there might even be another scene with the same premise but i can't remember.

point is, ralsei expects after a scene he knew was gonna happen that susie would be thinking about noelle, and he's wrong. its likely ralsei believes that suselle is gonna happen, because its part of susie's arc or something.

and considering his worldview hurts everyone, and susie rejects it wherever she can, and generally the story is about how the characters in the story reject the paths forced upon them by the narrative, are we really saying that ralsei is right about this one thing?

saying "susie likes noelle but doesn't know it yet" just feels so gross sometimes! like, come on! you're basically doing exactly what ralsei is doing, saying that its a foregone conclusion that they'll end up together, and that if susie doesn't show signs of having feelings for noelle (even in a goddamn non-canon valentines email!!) its because she just hasn't realized that that's what she wants yet. its almost like saying you know what she wants better than she does, that she'll be happy doing what you want her to do, because that's just how it is.

and i know susie deltarune isn't real but come on! there's a clear parallel here between the narrative imposing arcs and labels upon characters against their will which they then fight against, and imposing romantic feelings onto a character they don't seem to have because that's what's best for you!

i'm not going to say suselle isn't going to happen, but i am going to say there is NARRATIVE REASON for it NOT to happen, because the in-universe narrative, the legend of delta rune, fate, predestiny, WHATEVER, seems to be the bad guy here!

#deltarune #suselle #to sum up: suselle happening stands in direct opposition with the themes of deltarune

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dentpx · 7 months ago

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maybe i'll make a cleaner post about this later but it seems so obviously dissonant with the themes of 999 and VLR that Zero's motivation would be so batshit insane and selfish. because obviously "let's save the world!" was not his primary motivation and no matter how many times a character says "my motives are complex" it doesn't make it true. especially because the characters in this game include Akane, Sigma, Phi, and Junpei.....who are all legacy characters with a really strong moral code, 3 of whom are ALREADY taking actions to save the world and would definitely take further action if they KNEW there was more shit to be working on.

what's REALLY strong about 999 and VLR is that the characters go through a bunch of crazy suffering, some of which is by Zero's design and some of which is caused by the randomness of 9 separate characters having 9 separate belief systems and motivations. but then, when you get to the end of the game, it makes sense that things HAD to progress in the way they did to get to the end result, which is generally pretty selfless and did not intend harm on the participants. and most of the really nefarious stuff that happened was the result of the players themselves jumping to conclusions and taking drastic actions.

at the end of ZTD, you DEFINITELY do not feel like "wow, that was crazy, but also this was the only solution to a batshit insane problem". you feel like "who is this guy and why did he do all that". i did honestly enjoy the over the top violence and edginess of ZTD but it did not make sense in the story and honestly all it really does is make you distrust Delta.

also part of this is an issue with ZTD having three protagonists too who are split up into three groups...there's less space to play around with how people are motivated because there's less "bad actors". pretty much everyone in the game is acting selflessly and rationally besides Eric and Mina. to me at least it seemed like it was implied every time a protagonist character made an immoral choice, that was possibly the result of Delta's mind control. so if pretty much everyone has the same goal and no one wants to make selfish choices, the character driven conflict from previous games just isn't there.

i did have a good time playing it but i'm REALLY glad i came back to it many months after playing VLR and also that i had no spoilers. the story stuff that worked, worked! and i enjoyed that stuff! and the story stuff that was stupid was stupid and i'm just going to laugh about it for a little bit.

#ztd #0e #also delta is so profoundly unlikable because there is no reason for him to be doing any of that #in 999...ace does some BAD shit. and he is a NASTY person #but his motivation is so simple and human that you're able to feel for him a little bit #dio is.....a bit less grounded but still is pretty complex overall #delta is none of thisssss lol

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privateolives · 1 year ago

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I saw people talk about their Zero Time Dilemma fixes around the tag so I thought I'd dump in my convo on the topic too (With shout-out to @oriko-magicas's galaxy brain read on Akane and Junpei)

Absolute wall of text below.

Me: I'm having trouble finding it, but there was a post talking about Akane and Junpei in Zero Time Dilemma that I really liked the interpretation of It's essentially talking about how Akane don't want anything but the perfect future with Junpei. She went through so much and spend so long aiming for fhe one needle hole solution to live that she can't settle for anything but her ideal fantasy ending anymore. Meanwhile Junpei still experiences time the way it normally goes and he was burned by 999. He knows things will never be the same cause THEY'RE not the same, but he's willing to work with that to stay with her And I think it's a super thematic read, especially when you consider their VLR attitudes

Friend: Yeah, you know, that actually makes a lot of sense to me

Me: https://www.tumblr.com/privateolives/730880206913552384?source=share

Okay I’m thinking of ztd again, and it’s how Akane only accepts a future with Junpei if it can be fairytale perfect. She wants so desperately to be that kid who died in the incinerator again, the one… There it is

Friend: That would certainly explain the way she frequently reacts to this new cynical, jaded Junpei

Me: I don't think that's her exact motivation for that ending but the sentiment is perf Yeah

Friend: It makes much more sense to me. Every time she shakes her head and says "what happened to you" it's because she's hopeful to see that same boy she used to know

Me: I think Junpei's attitude would make a lot more sense if the assholery was played up when Akane acts like he should still be the same like he was before 999. Or like the world could be how they saw it before then. It'd underline the dynamic better of "I need you to be the person I cried out to back then" and he's like "I love you but you literally made that impossible" … paired up with Carlos like "I am begging you to just talk" Carlos: you are both cute and valid but I NEED you to communicate

Friend: I think maybe part of it is that Junpei's jaded asshole net is thrown a bit wide. 'cause on one hand it is like he's upset at Akane for 999 and part of it is like he's upset that she acts like he should be the same after that, but then there's also all the shit that he went through since then and it feels like he blames her for that as well He's been through a lot in what has somehow just been one year and it feels like, perhaps fitting for someone who has also become an alcoholic, he's looking to put the blame for it all on someone

Me: Yeah Also I've been thinking, and I think there's an easy fix to the stupid "complex motives" crap. And a lot of Delta honestly

Friend: hell yeah let me hear it

Me: The whole frame he jeeps setting up with the snail. It's all about a series of small butterfly effects that cause an extremely specific outcome. That's what he wants to do too, same as the other zeroes, but he has one particular handicap: he can't shift or read timelines. He won't just know how to make the bricks fall to get the exact outcome he wants. But if he could gather enough shifters, he could read their hopping around through their minds. Because resonance would make the memories clearer. So he sets up the game that can only be completed by getting the exact result he wants and then introduces the piranha - Mira - to the equation to ensure it won't be a dead end stalemate Then in the end he can explain that yes, his motives are complex. Because the solution to save 8 billion without killing 6 billion is a hairline precise set of circumstances that he wouldn't be able to figure out what is naturally. So he had to make them create it. He had to make them all resonate to read them and make them all resonate to give them all awakened shifter powers for the future and to read at all. Furthermore I would play up his ego. The smugness of his own intelligence being double edged to believing he has to cause this himself because he's the only one who can. A staunch belief that he HAS to be what causes the bricks to fall as they should. And it'd make his point of "but I didn't do anything in this timeline. Everyone is prepped and noone is dead" more valid. Because he doesn't shift. He doesn't emotionally register all the timelines he massacred to get this one. He only know the actions that caused his personal outcome as a list of checked boxes checked off through their memories

Me: Furthermore, there could be another reason why he has to be the one triggering these events. I was super annoyed that it was like "Oh so now free the soul isn't enough. We need another terrorist group with a world ending leader. And what was the left thing about?" Well what if its not a separate terrorist group. What if the religious fanatic he's talking about is himself, transported forward in time. A younger version of himself is ending the world to create the ideal existence Dio was talking about. But the Delta who arrived in the original way back when doesn't shift. He has to live all those years. He meets interesting being like Sean that makes him realize that the differences between people makes for various choices that makes life beautiful. So now he has to find a way to out-checkmate himself to stop himself. How? Prep a group of people capable of doing what he can't to try and outsmart him. And set up a winning condition entirely set on being able to do that.

Friend: that's actually so brilliant because yeah I think definitely the weakest part of this outcome is that it doesn't really solve the problem that he set out to solve "You're all really motivated now!" oh so… what they wouldn't have tried to stop a terrorist attack if he hadn't made them all kill each other? the heck is that also, yeah I was going to ask you about that at some point. like, he doesn't mention Left at all in ZTD and I was confused if Sean was supposed to be related

Me: I don't think so. Because he was an old man when he met Sean in the hospital. But I think he was fascinated by Sean's approach to life And maybe made him consider that something could be beautiful outside of Left

Friend: this man just goin around creating marvels of science to preserve dead little boys

Me: I'm thinking part of it is also like Solving the conundrum of giving him whatever he wanted. He has his dreams of the future. He can give him that. But he's not in despair of having to die before that reality. So he gives ukm the option of death too By just giving him the option at all, he's ensured both will happen somewhere Thus the ideal outcome of how he can have both comes true Lastly, Mira's ending. I think they should have empathized more that she became a killer to understand experiencing emotions instead of just pretending them. She chases Eric because she thinks she wants to feel that rush again, but her connection with Sean could show her something different. That either through resonance she could experience emotions through others OR that you can still essentially be human even if you're only able to "simulate" having those emotions, like a robot (:Sean) does.

Me: Meanwhile Sean both wants better for and cannot forgive Mira for her crimes. But thanks to the choice with the bad and happy ends, he has an answer for how to both make Mira live with her crimes and ensure a future where it doesn't happen. By creating a split timeline where she goes back and stops her crimes from being committed. In this case, the original Mira would still know and have to live with what she did. But in the other timeline a young Mira never becomes the heart ripper and the crimes are undone. The sins are therefore both being punished and remembered for happening and erased to begin with at the same time.

Friend: you know what I like that one. that's a good way of interpreting it, especially with the way the transporter works also, doubly digging this idea. Mira being shown this robot child who either somehow experiences emotion or at the very least simulates it in such a way what it fools everyone (and also is capable of calling her out on her own emotional mistakes) should have so much more of an impact on her

Me: Yeah Like I genuinely think you could fix this game either a few tweaks

Friend: yeah absolutely also I'm not sure what the amnesia element really did for it? I guess it was to confuse the SHIFTers so they wouldn't know they had already SHIFTed but to what end?

Me: It might be to confuse the computer. Keep it from figuring out its not the real Sean too fast If it remembers being Sean it'd be easy to compare and contrast all the things that Sean definitely couldn't do or know and reach the conclusion If it doesn't remember being Sean, there's nothing to compare any contradictions to. It can only just assume that the reasons are things it can't remember Also, if the computer ONLY has Eric and Mira, it makes it more incentives to latch onto them and care about their situations, despite them both being monsters in their own right Oh Also The Carlos thing Rather than just "I couldn't have met you guys" you could do: 1) in order to fix this we need phi and Sigma here. That means we need a timeline where Akane and Junpei escape but don't stop Zero or the radical-6 outbreak. So he breaks in to bust them out. 2) they need the timeline where Delta gives them answers. Meaning they need a timeline where Zero "wins". So he can't interfere. 3) split worlds principle. By just introducing the choice to stop zero's plans or not, he's creates both options. This is the world where he doesn't stop Zero. But because he comes pre-packadged with the knowledge of what's gonna happen, he can still tail actions to secure the timeline that'll allow for them all to stop zero So there is a timeline where he stops Delta before DCOM, but because of the anthropic principle (there must be a perciever for the option to be percieved) Akane and Junpei never see it because they never had to go through the game. They only percieve the option where Carlos didn't stop Delta in time

Friend: that makes perfect sense to me gosh imagine that timeline, though. Akane and Junpei never go to DCOM so they never meet there poor Junpei is probably still chasing the ghost of this woman who …wait what was her reason for going to DCOM again?

Me: So her and Sigma could stol the outbreak Stop Of radical-6 ALSO also

Friend: yeah that's what I assume but I swear the game acts like she doesn't even know about Sigma or Phi or the outbreak

Me: (I've thought about how to fix this game a lot idk if you can tell) The thematic relevance of "but then I couldn't have met you guys" can actually be valid if you flip it around.

Friend: hahaha understandable how so?

Me: Because of Carlos, Akane can come to terms with the changes in Junpei and see the validity in the "broken" futures by showing there's things worth remembering even in the imperfect ones. Like the argument Junpei makes at the end of VLR, the relationships after the disasters still mean something to the survivors. And Carlos helps Junpei realize there's still fundamentally good people in the world and come to terms with Akane and what she did and who she is now. By inserting Carlos they're able to help mend their relationship. And if Carlos never met them because the DCOM experiment didn't go down like it did, their relationship wouldn't have been mended either They'd still just end up like how they did at the end of VLR. Essentially dead to each other "You're not who I thought you were, goodbye"

Friend: very true it certainly seems like by this game they were never really going to be able to talk it over on their own he was a necessary mediator

Me: Not to mention If Carlos never met THEM, he'd never realize the cause of the reverie syndrome to save Maria

Friend: True! Gosh she's kind of a whole anomaly herself

Me: Yes! I think it could be cool if the they worked her more into Carlos and his abilities tbh Let's think back to the 999 lore The idea of the Sender and Receiver If Maria was the "sender", she could have gone into reverie when she was stuck in the fire, trying to save herself and her family. She continues to be stuck in reverie because she keeps simulating how to a) save her family totally and b) save Carlos from all his other eventual dooms The problem with saving her family is that there is a huge world crisis going down soon that's gonna wipe out most of humanity anyway! So? Make sure Carlos goes to DCOM to save her and have her essentially be a satellite quantum simulator to feed Carlos his insights And through that also learn from Akane and Junpei (or just the experience itself) that either the timeline where their parents was also saved still exists but isn't percievable Or come to terms with their death by still having Carlos that survives both DCOM and the would-be apocalypse And thus be able to lay the endless simulations to rest and wake up (With the added cute twist that she already knows Akane and Junpei and their relationship with her brother when she wakes up. Thus why she's so invested in it in the epilogue)

Friend: that is a bizarre kind of adorable and sweet! she's his own quantum computer though I wonder if they'd be able to still use those abilities after she wakes up in that case

Me: I'm guessing it'd just go back to working like it did in 999. Carlos himself might be able to do it on his own from longtime exposure too, who knows.

#Zeph rambles #zero escape #zero time dilemma #ztd #zero escape ztd #zero time dilemma spoilers #I just went through all the games with my friend #Because if I had to suffer the third installment so did he #I do think you can fix this game #But it requires a serious polish

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mamuzzy · 2 years ago

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I love all the republic commando stuff you reblog! I just finished the books and I’ve started the game. Who’s your favorite character?

I'm glad you like it! RepComm needs all the love it can get! It was a long time since I got engaged in a book series this much and I'm currently reading Imperial Commando.

Republic Commando is full of interesting and complex characters, be it clone, jedi or the members of the Cuy'val Dar, and the Delta Squad also got more depth (which probably will motivate me to also try the game!) and I think the complexity comes from the fact that nobody is black and white morally and personality-wise, they are on a spectrum of greyness which allows them to show both their good and nasty sides. Makes it feel real. I could go with Kal Skirata and Walon Vau… but the question is more about who is my favorite and not the one I can fill a page of character analization.

Soooo I go with Ordo Skirata. I'm sure if the author had spent more time with Nulls other than Ordo and Mereel, then we could have gotten more picture of the rest. But every tiny detail he gets in the books made me invested more in him emotionally (and probably a bit on personal level, haha!). Daddy's little walking higly-competent anxiety-bomb. I would learn to bake a cake for you everyday just to make you feel loved, safe and keep your belly full, precious little meow-meow. Every scene with him being self-conscious, awkward and anxious if he is good enough to be loved by the person he cherishes the most, is always feeling like a punch in the gut. I love him so much.

#I'm pretty sure Ordo would love to be called precious little meowmeow #I'll die on that hill #Ordo Skirata #Republic Commando #Repcomm #star wars #peony answers

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cathygeha · 22 hours ago

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REVIEW

Wolf Six by Alex Shaw

Wolf Six #1

Pulse pounding thrill ride from beginning to end ~ Couldn’t put it down!

What I liked: * Ruslan Akulov: elite soldier, assassin, ghost, strong, lethal, intelligent, orphaned young, raised by his grandmother, loyal friend, strategic thinker, calm in crisis, The Machine or Wolf 6, intriguing

* Bato Dorzhiev: The Beast or Wolf 12, taller than many, strong, ex-military, loyal friend, lethal, Ruslan’s friend and like a brother, hope he shows up in future books

* Mandy Murphy: ex-FBI analyst, computer wizard, grieving widow, wants revenge for her husband’s death, brilliant, possibly lethal, enjoyed watching her and hope she will be part of the series

* Getting to know Akulov as the story progressed and the complexity of his character

* That I felt part of the story and cared about the outcome

* The plot, pacing, setting, and writing

* Reading a new-to-me author that I would like to read again

* Coming in on the first book of a new series

* The way all the threads of the story came together

* The twists and turns with some truly bad guys to hate and some morally gray ones, too

* Knowing that there is another book in the series to look forward to

* That it was set in Ukraine as it is in the news at the moment

* All of it really except…

What I didn’t like:

* Who and what I was meant not to like

* Thinking about what must go into training elite military men and women and how it might impact them positively and negatively

* Thinking about the motivations of some of the characters in this book and what might have caused them to be and do what they did

Did I like this book? Yes

Would I read more by this author/in this series? Definitely

Thank you to NetGalley and Boldwood Books for the ARC – this is my honest review.

5 Stars

BLURB

The first in a BRAND NEW action thriller series from the Wilbur Smith Prize-Shortlisted author Alex Shaw. ‘Another excellent stripped-back, razor-edge thriller from Alex Shaw’ - New York Times bestselling author James Swallow Killing for a living is easy, living for a reason is much harder Meet Ruslan Akulov. In the shadowy world of assassins for hire, he is known as ‘Wolf Six’. A Ukrainian raised in Moscow, conscripted into Russia’s most covert Special Forces unit ‘The Werewolves’, Akulov is full of loathing for the country that built and then broke him. The only rules he follows now are his own. Unable to shake the guilt of his past, Akulov has made it his business to seek out those who prey upon the innocent. The name Wolf Six is legendary - whispered by those who know it with fear. But when Akulov accidentally thwarts the armed robbery of a Chicago Bank, he pits himself against both the Russian Bratva and the CIA, setting into motion a spiralling sequence of events which will bring his past back to haunt him, and potentially turn his future to ashes… His mission of retribution takes him from Chicago to Kyiv, to Havana and back into the US, where Akulov must stop at nothing if he is to remain alive. No simple mission, even for the world’s deadliest assassin. Perfect for fans of Tom Wood, Vince Flynn and Mark Greaney, this is an explosive action thriller you won’t be able to put down.

AUTHOR BIO

ALEX SHAW B.A.(Hons), P.G.C.E. spent the second half of the 1990s in Kyiv, Ukraine, teaching Drama and running his own business consultancy before being head-hunted for a division of Siemens. The next few years saw him doing business for the company across the former USSR, the Middle East, and Africa. Alex is an active member of the ITW (The International Thriller Writers organisation) and the CWA (the Crime Writers Association). He is the author of the #1 International Kindle Bestselling 'Aidan Snow SAS thrillers' COLD BLOOD, COLD BLACK, COLD EAST and the new DELTA FORCE VAMPIRE series of books. His writing has also been published in the thriller anthologies DEATH TOLL, DEATH TOLL 2 and ACTION PULSE POUNDING TALES 2 alongside International Bestselling authors Stephen Leather and Matt Hilton. COLD BLOOD, COLD BACK and COLD EAST are commercially published by HQ Digital HarperCollins in English and LUZIFER Verlag in German. Alex, his wife and their two sons divide their time between homes in Kyiv, Ukraine and Worthing, England. Follow Alex on twitter: @alexshawhetman or find him on Facebook.

#Alex Shaw #Wolf 6 #Boldwood Books #NetGalley #assassin #Fiction #Thriller #Suspense

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aubreyathame · 1 year ago

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im gonna fucking explode i was thinking about delta from ztd and i was trying to say the whole "my motives are complex" line but every time i try to do it the only voice i can give it is the fucking gman from half life and i don't think i'm prepared for that

just fucking. "my motives are...cccomplex, mr.. freeman."

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sammybloo · 2 years ago

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It's time for answers!

Due to an error on my part, 2 of these things never happened. You will also notice, 2 answers were tied for first place. However, one of those two answers is a thing that definitely happened.

Explanations for all options under the tags. Spoilers for all three games included.

A villain has prosopagnosia: prosopagnosia, or face blindness, is a condition that makes it harder for you to remember and identify faces. It isn't really a problem with memory, so much as your brain isn't tuned in to the subtle differences in facial features (size, placement, etc) that make faces memorable. A person with prosopagnosia recognises people from external queues - voice, mannerisms, style, etc. My mum has prosopagnosia, and I definitely have dome trouble recognising faces.

The villain of the first game (Ace) has prosopagnosia. This is clearly identified, by name. The protagonist (Junpei) becomes clued into this during a scene where Ace has to correctly sort a series of pictures of the game's cast. He freezes up, and refuses to do it. It's worth noting, few people would struggle to sort these photos even if they had prosopagnosia, because the characters have varied ethnicities, ages, styles, body types, etc, and all of these things are visible in the photos.

Ace later identifies his prosopagnosia as a leading cause for his evil deeds. He is conducting experiments on children in order to find a way to see the world through other peoples' eyes, so he will be able to recognise faces. I am only aware of one other character in media who is identified as having prosopagnosia, and he is also a villain. Wonderful to see this harmless neurological quirk immediately being associated with evil as it comes into the cultural conciousness!

Someone makes a virus that kills 6 billion people to maybe kill one terrorist: His motives were complex. The only debate here was that Delta didn't explicitly make the virus, but he certainly unleashed it.

Someone meets their child that was conceived in a different timeline: In fact, both parents meet both of the children they had together. Hell, the robot version of the mother meets the daughter and neither is any wiser. This one happens a bunch in the third game, and is only possible because of an item we'll discuss later.

It's time for answers!

Due to an error on my part, 2 of these things never happened. You will also notice, 2 answers were tied for first place. However, one of those two answers is a thing that definitely happened.

Explanations for all options under the tags. Spoilers for all three games included.

A Sudoku puzzle becomes the emotional crux of the plot: The entire purpose of the first game is that Akane must concoct a situation in which Junpei can telepathically communicate the answer to a Sudoku puzzle back in time, to avoid the death of her 9 year old self. This is the moment of the first game – I think a majority of players would cite this as the most memorable bit. So why did so many people vote for this option? Well, as I’ve learnt since making this poll, they actually replaced the sudoku in the PC remake with an entirely different puzzle! I have no idea what the justification for this was, but it feels like a huge blunder to change such an iconic scene.

A plot point requires the main character to never see their reflection: In 999, the first thing Junpei does when he wakes up is find a mirror to look in, to ground himself in his impossible situation. By contrast, in Virtue's Last Reward, Sigma bypasses every opportunity to catch even a glimpse of himself. @kommunistkaitou mentioned in the tags that they recorded 129 objects that Sigma should have reasonably seen his reflection in. If he had caught any of these, he would have noticed that he was in his body from 45 years in the future. He also apparently never scratches his robotic eye at any point, nor feels his longer hair.

A pivotal character is added, and then retconned to never exist in the next game: It turns out this answer is contentious with some fans. Whether you’re satisfied with Zero Time Dilemma or not, the situation I’m about to talk about is a pretty cut-and-dry example of a retcon.

In Virtue’s Last Reward, if you collect all the secret files, you get a secret ending, called “Another Time”. Most of the content of this ending seems very likely to be canon. For the most part, characters are just detailing what they plan to do next. But the character you control in this section is someone very special - ?. ? is an entity that has somehow shifted into Kyle’s body. It shows little awareness of its own identity, but knows everything about the events of the game so far. In Another End, Akane says that ? will be essential to the events of the next game. She says the same of Kyle, whose conciousness has shifted back into the past due to ?'s arrival.

The atmosphere in the fandom about this reveal was pure hype. ? is an entity with unbound access to the world - an uncontrolled variable. It is all-powerful and unknowable. The writer, Uchikoshi, acknowledged that ? was the equivalent of a character/concept from one of his previous works, an entity known as Blick Winkel. In its previous appearance, BW had only been there right at the end - how would the presence of such a character shape an entire game?

The answer is, it wouldn't. Zero Time Dilemma released with no reference to ?, and no appearance of Kyle. Shortly after, Uchikoshi explained that the Another Time ending was non-canonical, but he had previously talked about it in Q and A's without ever indicating this was the case. This is the very definition of a retcon.

A few people argued that since ? is the player, by definition it is present in the game. However, there's a big difference between "the player" and "an entity that has seen the game world from the perspective of the player and then manifests in the world with the ability to act and speak". I'm not here to yuck anyone's yum, if you're fine with how it played out that's okay, but there was definitely a shift between the expectation set by VLR and what was delivered in ZTD.

A character finally takes off their helmet, but their whole head comes off: And they were a kid and everything! The helmet-head is a big sphere so it rolls away. Poor Sean.

And the last thing that actually happens is... Aliens are introduced in the last entry in the series! Oh, how many people chose to forget. In the Zero Escape series, thought and conciousness can travel through time, but physical matter cannot. This is all thrown out the window in ZTD when they introduce The Transporter, a device that can duplicate matter across time and space. This device becomes a bandaid over all sorts of plot questions, and two of the characters even have sex in it. Where did such a device come from? Aliens.

A few people noted that we only have Zero II's word for it that the device was really created by aliens, and that's a fair point. Of course, if he was lying, that still leaves no real explanation for where the Transporter came from.

So, the two that didn't happen! First of all, the one that was purely my bad. Clive Palmer is NOT inadvertently canon. Clive Palmer is a shitty Australian billionaire with overblown ambitions. Among other harebrained schemes, Clive has long insisted that he is in the process of constructing the Titanic 2, a modern, functional replica of the original vessel. For the longest time, I believed that this ship was the one that the events of 999 take place on. However, this is just completely incorrect, and doesn't hold up to the slightest amount of research. The original Nonary Game took place on the Gigantic, a sister ship of the Titanic. I am proud to say I approached the creation of this poll with the same intellectual rigour Clive would have.

And finally, NO-ONE in mortal danger stops to explain the Trolley Problem. This one tricked a lot of people. There are so many similar moments, like someone explaining the completely fictional concept of Ice-9 while the characters are trapped in a freezer. The general consensus was that although no-one remembered the Trolley Problem being explained, it must have happened at some point. Alas, it simply did not. The third game has a few Trolley Problem-like situations, but no-one points it out by name, or even really explores any of the moral implications.

And, that's it! Honestly, there could easily be 3 more polls for Zero Escape without any repeated items.

#zero escape #999 #vlr #ztd

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elephant-in-the-pride-parade · 2 years ago

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💌 🤍 🎀

🎀 Give yourself a compliment about your own writing!

I have gotten really good at organizing and finishing long fics. Especially after all the mistakes I learned from finishing 300,000 words of Sailor Moon H, Half Blood Prince, I think now I've really hit my stride plotting longer fics out so that they stay within a manageable length. I've gotten much more confident starting them out and knowing what it takes for me to finish one even if the writing process takes a long time.

🤍 What's one fic of yours you think people didn't "get"?

Not a whole fic, but part of the plot of one...

In The Parent Trap I had done a lot of work re-tooling the antagonist. The movies had a stereotypical female gold digger charicature for the father's fianceé and I knew from the start that I didn't want to cast Seven in that roll. I also wasn't particularly enthused about what it would imply for KJ's judgement if I assigned her a male fianceé who had such enmity for her child.

The compromise was to give the antagonist role to a newer boyfriend "Nick", who would have a more complex ulterior motive than just coveting the status of being an Admiral's husband. The time traveling canon villain Braxton was a good fit.

I tried to drop hints about his secret identity into the text, but I don't think I was able to do so effectively. It's something that bothered me through the back half of the writing/posting process. I was never sure if the foreshadowing wasn't strong enough or if people were simply enjoying him as a two dimensional romantic antagonist and were skimming those details. It was a challenge to drop enough hints to make the audience and the child character suspicious without also making KJ seem to have dreadfully poor romantic judgement. I think if I have the opportunity in the future I'd try to rework the Nick / Braxton content to try to strike a better balance so that the reveal of his identity wasnt as much of a shock.

💌 Share something with us about an up-and-coming WIP that has you excited!

I'm working on "The Universe to Bend," a Voyager Novel Era story that brings back the Kremin Imperium and Omega Continuum as related threats and pits the exiled, bitter Denzit Janeway and a grieving, outcast Q against them. I've wanted to do something with Denzit for a while. (I always hated that they just dumped her on Sormana and were like "She gets to be a single mom now, she wont mind giving up her old space explorer dreams for that"). Q also gave me the chance to resurrect the Protostar and Hologram Janeway for the adventure, and to see how the Maquis crew from Denzit's original universe is faring without her Voyager. The last one has been really really exciting! I have gotten to explore a Chakotay would have to make it through the Delta Quadrant with his Maquis raider without ever meeting his universe's Janeway!

#writing asks #elephantwrites #thank you anon!#sailor moon fanfiction #star trek voyager fanfiction #beyerverse #beyerverse fanfiction #kathryn janeway x Q #kathryn janeway/Q #denzit janeway #denzit/q

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alto-tenure · 8 months ago

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Congrats on finishing ZTD! What did you think of it?

The tag for when I start talking about ZTD negatively as of right now is "my feelings on ztd are as complex as delta's motives", which I think is the tl;dr of it all.

For a not "too long; didn't read" version...

(CWs: discussions of suicide, crude language used for canon behavior)

I had fun playing it, to start with. I enjoyed most of my experience playing ZTD. Going through the Execution fragments multiple times to make sure all the teams got executed was a slog, and once the novelty of the fragment format wore off it felt as though the game took forever to really kick into gear. Triangle was one of the last fragments I did before embarking on Carlos's Wacky Shifting Adventure via Ambidex, but I think had I done it earlier I would have found the pacing worse. The fragment format does kind of shoot the game's pacing in the foot at times. And I despise this game's lock system. It's really hard to tell when you're being locked out of the rest of a fragment vs the fragment being over. Also sometimes the locks are more generally nonsensical, which worked in my favor during my playthrough but in C-End you can get there without having confronted the FCFS decision at all, meaning you won't have the context to where Carlos went. You can get Q-1 straight away, without any of the foreshadowing from other Q-Team fragments of Mira's background. The nonlinearity of ZTD can work for it, but after enough time with the game and enough looking at the global flowchart (the good one, not the one with the video thumbnails) you start figuring out the patterns in advance. Some fragments take away suspense from others, too, like how doing Poison first takes away from the suspense of Fire in the decision to drink the antidote or not.

The graphics I'm okay with letting go because the fact that ZTD exists at all is frankly a miracle. But I will note that sometimes they made it difficult to take certain scenes seriously when I know they wanted those scenes to be. The shock-value-gore is whatever, I don't really care either way, and the worst parts were that I couldn't look when the HF showers went off & when Diana and Carlos committed their respective suicides. Sometimes the read on the game as "camp" is fine, and other times I feel like the game really wanted me to take it seriously and it just didn't land for me as something serious. I wanted to laugh.

Akane in this game...I think in some ways the people writing her dialogue were taking her personality as "June" at face value without considering the facade that it is (versus the parts of it that aren't; it isn't all an act), but I don't agree with the criticism of "it feels like Akane was replaced by a clone in ZTD". There were definitely portions in the game where I thought she was being too altruistic, but I don't think it's so OOC as to be written off as "not her". It definitely isn't perfect writing, but I think people in some ways were expecting too much of it.

Delta came out of nowhere for me, and even seeing the evidence it still feels cheap. Can't get over my initial reactions, I guess.

I actually don't hate Eric. He's kinda interesting. Admittedly, the most interesting thing about him is never really discussed again, but holy shit am I invested in his fucked up family.

I also really like the plot device of the ambiguity of whether Carlos killed Delta or not, but had I been playing without contact with the community I'm not sure I would have...known about the post-game epilogue files at all. Maybe a more traditional VN style sequence over the credits would have been suited for it, or something? Or more like a normal movie, as opposed to little scenes in prose.

All in all, I'm grateful this game exists, and I'm glad I played it, and I had fun with it overall. It was a net positive experience, even though I'm not without my criticisms of it.

#zero escape #ztd spoilers #answered ask #evil-city #my feelings on ztd are as complex as delta's motives

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