#frontiers just doesn't really have an excuse though

[antirepurp]

Your Knuckles posts made me think about Knuckles in SA1 and how a major part of his story (and his theme) is peace! Peace with himself, peace with the world around him. Basically he's the antithesis of his ancestors. That's something that these recent developments miss about him! For all the jokes about Unknown from M.E., "Freedom will be waiting when serenity is restored." is a line that gets overlooked, but it speaks to how different he is from the ancient echidnas!

yeah this. sa1 and weirdly the games that followed (except maybe heroes) all had an anti-military message in them, and while it's more obvious in the other ones sa1 does it a bit more subtly with how it portrays the echidnas in everyone's flashbacks. they were Warriors, and it was the wars they fought against others and themselves that brought them to their demise. whether that's an adequate portrayal of ancient civilizations is a bit of a different topic i don't have the knowledge to tackle appropriately atm, but it gives an important contrast with knuckles and shows how different he is from his ancestors. he does not wage war, he protects his home and takes care of it, ensures peace on angel island above all else. he may spar with his friends but that's much more akin to something like doing sports than anything. what makes knuckles so great is that despite his physical prowess and ability in combat he is a peaceful guy who does not seek conflict, and if he gets into an actual fight he's doing so for the sake of Protection. the movies painting him as a Warrior and forces and frontiers associating him with military positions feels like such a gross misinterpretation of his core character

[tiredandoptimistic]

I know that Tangled: the Series has it's flaws, but it's also literally the ideal sequel series conceptually (and I love it forever). They didn't unravel the happy ending of the movie, they just looked at the established traits of the characters involved and elucidated how they would continue to play against each other.

Rapunzel is an eighteen-year-old who just got free from her abusive mother for the first time in her life. She's been dreaming of adventure for years, and just had two days of wild exploration. She finally got to experience the world she spent so long imagining; of course she would want to keep that going, of course she wouldn't be happy living as a princess in a castle. But also, it makes perfect sense for her to be conflicted because she's always lived through stories, so she takes the concept of "happily ever after" very seriously. All the most important people in her life (Eugene, Gothel, and King Frederic) have always reinforced the idea that you should strive for a life of peace and rest, meaning that until Cass, she thought she was weird and wrong for wanting something other than a life of luxury. And she does enjoy the luxury. There's enough new and exciting things within the city walls to keep her busy and excited for a few months, but eventually she was always going to feel that pull to explore new frontiers and meet new people.

Speaking of the people who influence her, they all have valid reasons for acting the way that they do. Eugene has already experienced years of adventure, so he's familiar with the bad parts and disenchanted with the good. For him, life in the castle is the novelty, so that's where he wants to stay. It's his relationship to Rapunzel that changes him, allows him to experience the world through her eyes, to see the beauty and wonder that she finds everywhere. He doesn't quite get where she's coming from at first, but he loves her and is able to come around and understand her point of view and do what it takes to make her happy.

Then there's Frederic, who's a somewhat complicated character. The movie didn't give him much of a character (not even a line of dialogue), and he exits as a purely benevolent symbol of "happily ever after." That worked for the movie, but the show needed conflict; so Rapunzel's parents needed personalities. Even though the writers didn't have much from the original text to go off, it's not difficult to infer that the man who spent eighteen years aware that his negligence allowed his daughter to be kidnapped (or killed, he didn't know what happened to her) would become rather protective of said daughter once reunited with her. The way he treats Rapunzel, doing everything he can to keep her locked up and ignorant, isn't good but it's understandable. He's been king for decades and he's exhausted, he wants to give his daughter the sort of happy and peaceful existence that he didn't have. He doesn't understand that she could go through all the shit that happened in her two days of adventure and want to go back out there. He's so confident in what he wants for her that he doesn't stop to listen to what she wants for herself. Now, again, these feelings are no excuse for his actions, but they do explain them. Frederic is fundamentally a good guy who's trying his best for his family, he just needs to learn to listen to what they say they need. (Which he does! Eventually. This is what character arcs are for).

It's just really neat to me how they looked at the movie and took these characters and thought about how they would come into conflict, how putting "THE END" on the screen wouldn't actually solve their problems. I love me a good villain, but sometimes it's nice to watch something where everyone involved has a good point and they just need to communicate and compromise a bit to find the best solution.

[crusherthedoctor]

I hate how sonamy shippers use the "it's just slapstick, it's comedy!" argument as a get out of jail free card whenever someone criticizes Amy's bad behavior with her crush in the 2000s. That doesn't automatically excuse all criticism

Nevermind that many fans still give Tails flack for his controversial moments in Lost World and Forces, to the point where the Wildly Inconsistent line in Frontiers was an extremely on-the-nose nod to those complaints in a bid to pat itself on the back for regurgitating his SA1 arc and pretending it's new. If criticism is allowed for the divisive portrayals of the rest of the cast, it should be allowed for Amy's as well. I don't care if she got too much hate in the past, because the opposite extreme isn't any better, and that applies twice as much if it frequently involves dragging other characters through the mud or undermining their own achievements, be it Tails, Knuckles, Cream, Elise, etc.

In general, while vindication by history is one thing, the way so many blatantly bad choices have been getting the "it's actually really clever because..." retcon has been driving me batty. Battle!Amy is good now, because muh flaws (there are better ways of showing her intentional flaws). Silver trusting Mephiles immediately is good now, because muh naivety (except I thought his naivety wasn't supposed to make him an outright idiot). Eggman being upstaged in every game is good now, because it compliments muh themes (who cares about the long term damage to his reputation). I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Insert r/BatmanArkham joke here.

If any awful or questionable character moment can be spun as though it was secretly clever and well thought out all along... why bother criticising anything? Why bother criticising anything in IDW? Why bother criticising anything in Prime?

[randomthefox]

Honestly I really would hope that everyone who bitches and moans about Sonic Frontiers "ruining" Eggman would have the integrity to rage against the Sonic 3 Movie, because it ACTUALLY LEGITIMATELY ruins Eggman, but I'm not holding my breath. I'm sure the excuse would be "oh he's a different version of the character he's Jimbotnik so they can do whatever they want and it doesn't matter" or whatever. But you KNOW people are going to be infuckingsufferable about Eggman BECAUSE of this movie. People are going to start saying things about Eggman and justify it with "yeah well that's what it's like in the movie, so it must be true of game Eggman too!"

I am just telling you though with no exaggeration: everything that people say Frontiers did to Eggman, "humanizing" him and making him "sympathetic" and turning him into a dad? Sonic 3 Movie actually does all of those things, but even worse. Yes really.

Total Spoilers under the cut

The emotional story arc of Jimbotnik in this movie is literally "Grr family is dumb I hate family >=( .... =o? Grandpa? Grandpa! ;-; grandpa! ^^ ..... Grandpa? D= grandpa =( .... I have learned that my real family was Agent Stone all along =) "

I'm not fucking exaggerating that's the whole story Jimbotnik goes through. He literally has a scene near the beginning where he's talking to Sonic about how he was an orphan who grew up alone without parents and without love and without family, and Sonic goes "well maybe if you did have a family who loved you you wouldn't have turned into a super villain."

Then Jimbotnik meets Jimerald and he's like "GRANDPA ;_; " and then spends the entire rest of the fucking movie fucking simping for him. Culminating in the worst possible moment in my opinion, the moment that made me wince. The moment where Jimbotnik gets on his hands and knees and starts kissing Jimeralds feet.

Jesus H fuck and a Christ.

I know I shouldn't be surprised that people who rag on Frontiers for ruining Eggman will probably give this a pass but holy fuck please have some integrity.

The movie ends with Jimbotnik sacrificing his life to save the planet and as he's about to die he sends a heartfelt message of love and appreciation to Stone telling him he was the real family all along.

THAT was fucking ruinous man. And people are going to be such insufferable assholes about Eggman because of this holy fucking shit. People are going to say Game Eggman is secretly good deep down and only became evil because his family didn't love him enough. Because of this movie. You mark my words.

[emeraldthelynx]

Your Digimon/Battle Network au is really really interesting.

Lay it on me

Okay! I have been waiting for an excuse to do this! This is a whole infodump, so everything is below!

The story starts out a bit like Digimon Adventure because the Battle Network crew fall into the Digital World, literately. At first the Navis don't know how to do anything with their new Digi-forms (especially since they're pretty much just blobs in their In-Training forms) and the PETs are completely inoperable. Eventually the PETs become Digivices, and they establish a connection with the Digi-Navis, letting them understand their new forms and later evolve.

I have so much worldbuilding, a couple of plot beats, but I don't have much of a story as of yet, especially since I want it to be episodic. The Digital World is kinda like if you took Adventure's, Frontier's, and Fusions', threw in a bit of X-Evolutions, and mashed them all together. That just means that there's lots of little villages, odd human-world things here and there, and a healthy chunk of lore. I do know that the Digital World is incredibly ancient in this story, even in human-world terms. I don't know who the bad guy will be, I'm stuck between having a Digimon bad guy or a human bad guy, and since it's set after MMBN2, I "technically" can't use Sean or the Professor. (I might though.)

The Navis are kinda confused about the Digital World because, on one hand, they are still data and can do data things, but on the other hand, they get hungry and sleepy and all that stuff. Megaman cannot handle spicy stuff whatsoever, Roll doesn't mind any food, but she does like sweets, Gutsman will literately eat anything, Glide has a refined pallet, and is kinda a picky eater, and Protoman doesn't care, unless somebody has strawberry pocky. (It was the first thing he ate, and is now kinda obsessed with it.) Megaman is also having a bit of a crisis because he's a human who was turned into a Navi who is now a Digimon, and Digimon exist in the same space as the Operators, but they're still data. He's not quite sure what he is now. I kinda want to have a plot where they meet some Bakemon and Megaman's crisis gets worse.

When they eventually get back to the human world, to stop another crisis, time between the Digital World and the human world become synchronized, and the NetNavis have the Digimon code in their systems now, and can leave the Net in their Digimon forms. I just love the idea of Digimon popping out from the little tiny PET screens. (The PETs also have a hologram function now, since they've been upgraded to Digivices, kinda like Beast and/or Appmon.)

And I also have this whole plotline where Protoman looses his shades, goes berserk and evolves into a really wild form, and when he de-Digivolves back they're still missing and he really doesn't know what to do.

There's so many more things floating around in my head, just kinda playing pinball, so if there's anything more specific that you want to know about, please ask! Thank you so much for the Ask!

[plaexus]

In my opinion, sm is really making sure that aespa doesn't get into trouble cause they are their main money makers at the moment and everyone knows about how aespa ruled 2024 (and possibly the majority of 2025), and the girls have not had that much freedom because of these restrictions, but the debut of this new sm gg in february will definitely be benefitial for aespa, maybe they won't get as overworked because the company will mainly focus on one gg at once (we all know sm is incompetent), and since they will be seniors at the company and are now heading for the fifth year, they will even have more freedom to be themselves, we might actually see jmj moving to that big house and expressing their affection much more publicly, or the girls will have freedom to release self written songs or go solo (i personally see mj making a youtube channel and aeri defo wants to release self made music) , I might get attacked for this but 2024 was peak aespa, 2025 will also be peak for aespa but less than 2024, and they will probably be chiller the upcoming years, which is not bad at all, they wont be the main focus of the industry all of the time, the more years they have in the industry, the more freedom they have, and who knows, maybe in 3 years or so when we get contract renewal news or aespa goes into a small hiatus (or yearly comebacks like red velvet) we do see a picture appearing on the internet where jmj are soft launching their marriage in Thailand 🤷‍♀️.

Idk i was just spilling my thoughts over here, it might not be that coherent to read lol

sometimes, there's such a fine line between caution and negligence, so i'm still quite frustrated with sm in general regarding aespa's management. i would say sm has never been a risk taker when it comes to its girl groups, that is, providing them opportunities to break frontiers. when they do, and many sm ggs obviously have, it's by their own effort and fan and gp love, not because of some serious calculated strategy by sm. anyway, that was off-tangent, but i do agree that there is a good deal of caution in handling ggs, for good reason in a lot of cases (considering all the harrassment they get, how one [excusable, justified] "mistake" as perceived by the public could topple their entire career)

for aespa, i'm hoping crying begging for at least 2 more years of 2024-like success, but with a healthier pacing of schedules. this feels like a pipe dream, but i'm always wishing for the best for aespa. i've witnessed several smngg debuts, so i know more or less how this goes, though sm is a bit more different know with their multi-production centres structure. i want to be optimistic that this will prevent drastic changes to aespa's promotions, but we'll have to see.

nevertheless, i hope the greater amount of freedom that they might have being a more senior group would serve them as well as you described it

[dcviated]

our flag means death :: open

some starter prompts

@runefactorynonsense sent: [Maybe she was keeping an eye out for him to get back from Trampoli this past time, hm? And didn't have an excuse at the ready? ] ❝ i, um…i missed you. ❞  

The road back into Kardia could be said to be lacking in spectacle. Once you hit the north-south highway heading west from Trampoli, it's a rather straight passage. Worn cobbles, a wide berth given by most of nature. For travelers and merchants that's a good thing. Safe! But... it's just not a lot to look at. A far cry from the winding trails of the frontiers of Norad.

Raguna had found way of transport back east with Lute's cart, but the merchant painter was heading north from here. No dice. The final leg of the trip back this time would be taken on foot.

The sun was falling to the wayside by the time the familiar clearing and smooth stones of the town square came into view. And. Someone else.

"Who's that?" He asks, to the zero people within earshot. Not that the figure needed to be to react. On seeing them, they also leave their post leaning against a column to step over at... what even was that pace? Something fast. Something measured. "Uh..." Raguna stops, the sun impeding his recognition until the familiar bob of hair gives accent to the attire. "Lynette! What were you doing out here-"

Because certainly, it couldn't have been related to him, right?

❝ i, um…i missed you. ❞  

Or maybe it was... Hold on! Much more importantly than that! Doesn't Lynette look ridiculously cute right now?! That faint furrow of reluctance settled within an altogether flustered expression. Which, of course, Raguna's dumbfounded staring does nothing to alleviate.

"You... have a really nice look on your face right now. Sorry, I couldn't help but notice. It's cute. Nothing bad. I promise. Uh! But! It's good to be back!" Raguna makes sure to tag on, not intending to tease her too much. "You didn't have to wait for me here though. I would've found you to say hi."

Raguna chuckles good naturedly.

"Because I missed you too."

[mariocki]

Virgin of the Secret Service (ATV, 1968)

"A bomb, at Dawki, on Tuesday, killed nine enlisted men; an explosion in the mess at Chamba bereaved eleven British women; and furthermore, Major Hamilton lost three fingers of his right hand, a great loss! Major Hamilton was one of the finest polo players in the North-West Frontier."

That most prolific of TV writers, Ted Willis, might have been excused for resting on his laurels by 1968. He had two long-running hits under his belt already; Sergeant Cork (1963 - 1968) was just drawing to a close on ATV, whilst BBC juggernaut Dixon Of Dock Green (1955 - 1976) rumbled gamely on, and Ted himself was now Baron Willis of Chislehurst - he had well and truly made it. Never one to stay idle, however, Ted pitched a new series to ATV, something a little different: where much of his work until this point had concentrated on the police procedural, his new show was to eschew the groundings of realism in favour of dashing spies, exotic locales and grand comic book style adventures. So Virgin Of The Secret Service was born.

Even by the standards of mid-60s, non-ITC television, Virgin is pretty obscure, and there's precious little information out there about the series. I can make some informed guesses, but they are only guesses; clearly Ted wanted to try something different, and the series is certainly unlike anything he had created to that point - or indeed, much of what came after. Gone were methodical investigations and wise, older detective figures - in came sword fights and deadly tarantulas and exploding tennis balls. The subtle, wry humour of Cork and Dixon is replaced with outlandish, arch pastiche. Drawing heavily on the Boys' Own magazine style of serialised adventure story, with dashing heroes and foreign villainy clashing all around the British Empire of Old, the series is a larger than life tribute to a style of storytelling that had already fallen out of fashion.

Whether it was a success or not, I don't really know - like I say, there is very little information out there. I suspect not, and it certainly hasn't entered the public consciousness in anything like the way some of its' contemporaries have. Certainly it didn't last long - one series of thirteen episodes. I suspect - though I'm guessing again - that it was never conceived to be the sort of durable hit that Ted was known for. The sets and the costumes look impressively expensive, and the concept simply doesn't lend itself to multiple seasons of adventure. It is, though, for thirteen brief episodes, gloriously, brilliantly fun.

[skaruresonic]

I don't really think seniority matters as much as the willingness to research and play the games. I'm not sure if I feel comfortable calling myself a "veteran" fan, because while I technically have played a lot of Sonic games, my knowledge base doesn't feel comprehensive enough outside of the general range of the early Adventure games to warrant discussion. Can't talk about TSR or Riders, for instance, because racing games bore me and so I never finished them. Or '06, which I refuse to finish on the basis of it being an utter soul-suck of a game. I've been a Sonic fan since 2002, though sometimes I forget that fact because I go through "gap years" in which I feel distant from the series for some reason or another. Back in 2006-2010 it was the inability to play new releases because broke. In 2014, it was Boom, which everyone was sort of... weird... about. Nowadays it's the alienation I feel for the utter hype surrounding IDW, Prime, and Frontiers. This ride is for life, but it's not always a smooth one.

In addition, real life needs attending to, my knowledge of the games tends to become hazy and vague after a while, and I don't necessarily have the time to play and refresh my memory. There are also details about the games that I've overlooked the first time around, such as the fact that Sonic and Shahra both call the antagonist "the" Erazor Djinn multiple times throughout SatSR, implying his name is a title, as opposed to fandom which simply refers to him as "Erazor Djinn," implying it is a name.

I've been in the privileged position of growing up with my preferred era of games. During my childhood, a new Sonic game would come out roughly every year. These days it's harder to access that era of games because some of them, like Shuffle or Battle, are abandonware.

While these roadblocks are real and valid, on the other hand... In this age of having practically any information you want to know available at your fingertips, it's no excuse to just Say Whatever you want about those games. There's the inability to access the game, and then there's the refusal to meet it halfway. Far too often you encounter the latter over the former.

Certainly, I won't pretend to know about every single Sonic game there is. That's why I don't talk about them. I talk instead about the handful of games I do know about. Hopefully, I might say something interesting about them every once in a while. hello yes can I gush about those semi-transparent reflections in SA2 DC I promise I'm normal about it

The other day @woodchipp and I were talking about how modern fandom seems to base their impressions of a game on "vibes" rather than playing the games for themselves. This is how you get wild takes divorced from reality, when folks value aesthetics over accuracy. In any case, my stance has always been that you don't necessarily have to know every single little detail about any given game; you just need to know what you're talking about in a general overarching sense. I'll know you haven't played the game when you neglect basic, unmissable plot points.

For example: "Tails found Emerl on the beach in Battle" tells me you haven't played Battle, because Sonic finding Emerl on the beach is what kickstarts the entire game. "SA2 never shows us where Shadow stole the Chaos Emerald from" tells me you haven't played SA2, because the game specifies that detail twice - once in recap, once during a cutscene - and you would have known that had you been paying attention.

[vikenticomeshome]

Cyberchase - Cyberspace is a Dystopia (part 1/?) - The Cybersite Clearing House (and their Prizes)

Does anyone remember the "Cybersite Clearing House Prize Patrol" from Season 1 Episode 12 "Of All The Luck"?

To briefly discuss the plot of the episode, The Hacker captures the "Lucky Charms of Cyberspace" that massively improve his luck. His new luck is so incredible that he falls on the ground, digs under that spot, and finds Motherboard's Operating Manual. It doesn't work against the kids though, and they beat them.

But let's go back to "Cybersite Clearing House" company and their Prize Patrol crew. This is an expy of the real-world "Publishers Clearing House" direct marketing company. They are famous for their Prize patrol van, which goes around awarding large money prizes to members.

Excuse the crunchy quality. This commercial is apparently from 2002, the same same year the episode aired, and I thought it was more authentic than using a modern one.

Now, before we go into how the Cyberspace version works, we need to talk about The Hacker's lucky charm powers in this episode. We don't really know how far this power extends. As I said before, he digs up a copy of Motherboard's Operating Manual under his own hangar in the Northern Frontier. What are the chances that this manual ended up right under this spot, especially since he laid down this hanger long before he had the lucky charms? Why on Earth would someone have buried a copy of this very important text in The Northern Frontier in the first place, as opposed to holding it at Control Central or within Motherboard's Vault at the Cybrary? It is possible that the lucky charms allow The Hacker to warp reality, similar to the Totally Rad Ring or the power from the Cosmic Crumpets. If he is a reality warper, then it is possible that he subconciously created the Cybersite Prize Patrol to hand him his prize without him having to list a finger. That would also explain why he loses his Cybersites at the end, when his luck is removed.

However, I find that solution unsatisfying. It's just more reality-warping like what we saw in those other episodes. I'm going to operate on the assumption that the Cybersite Clearing House already existed as a entity that follows the laws of Cyberspace with their prizes. I believe that one of three possibilities happened, which led to The hacker being declared the winner, and then having his prize taken away.

Maybe The Hacker never entered into the contest. Then, when someone won the contest, The Hacker's good luck caused the Cybersite Clearing House crew to read the wrong name and award him the prize by mistake. Then, when he loses his luck, the realize the mistake and take the prize to the real winner

Maybe The Hacker entered into the contest, but then someone else actually won the contest. Once again, The Hacker's good luck caused the Cybersite Clearing House crew to read the wrong name and award him someone else's prize. Then, when his luck goes away, they realize their mistake and take the prize to the rightful winner.

Maybe The Hacker entered the contest, and he won legitimately. Then, when he loses his good luck at the end, the Cybersite Clearing House crew takes his prizes away and gives them to the wrong person.

Personally, I prefer theory #1, as The Hacker seems to have no idea who these people are when they show up. If he had entered the contest, he probably would have recognized their van and gotten excited.

In any case, we're operating under the assumption that this group is real. We are also assuming that they are allowed to give out these prizes under Cyberspace law. We never hear Motherboard talk about them directly, but there is no evidence that she has ever gone after them for breaking the law. Let's let them tell us what The Hacker won.

Cybersite Prize Patrol: All seven hundred and thirty seven Cybersites shown here are now yours!

There is plenty to criticize about the real-world Publisher Clearing House company. They work in direct-marketing. They have been sued repeatedly over the years for lying about the chances of winning their prizes. They've been sued over selling customer's data without consent.

However, Publishers Clearing House has never handed out entire cities or countries as prizes. The show never goes into the terms of The Hacker's ownership of these Cybersites. Is he now the head of state? For example, if the Cybersite "Happily Ever After" is in that pool of Cybersites, is he just automatically the new king? Does he just own all the land, businesses, mineral rights, or any other economic interests in that Cybersite now? What happens to the citizens of that Cybersite? Does he own them too? Are any of Cybersites immune to ending up in that pool, or could someone just win Control Central and become the new Potentate?

I originally though that The Hacker somehow won the prize again in that same episode, as the same board gets pulled out again with 312 more Cybersites on it. However, Baskerville clarifies that this is "something about an oversight refund from the government". He doesn't clarify what sort of refund, but since its coming from the government, I assume it is a tax refund. I'm not sure I believe that The Hacker pays his taxes.

This could turn into a conversation in the same vein as the original prize. We don't know whether the refund was legitimate or not, as his luck going bad at the end could have caused him to lose it either way. I think we can all see the ethical issues of Motherboard giving away Cybersites as part of someone's tax refund. At least we can probably blame this on the virus making her loopy, on top of The hacker's luck. Perhaps The Hacker was supposed to get 312 Snelfus on his tax refund, and Motherboard accidentally gave him 312 Cybersites instead. We all remember the Buddie List versus Baddie List problem from "All the Right Angles".

Of course, he gets all of his sites taken away at the end.

Everything's okay now, right? No. Remember that we started off on the assumption that the Cybersite Clearing House company was real and acting within the law. Somebody won that pool of 737 Cybersites. We don't know precisely what that means for the citizens, but it cannot be good.

Also, suppose The Hacker wins the prize legitimately and doesn't get screwed out of his win. It would be just like "True Colors", where The Hacker was legally allowed to call an election and run against Motherboard. As long as he is operating within the law, there's really nothing Motherboard or the Cybersquad can do about it. It makes me wonder what would happen at that point if the Cybersquad started moving against him anyway. I expect that Motherboard would have to put her foot down and stop them, which is a dynamic that we've never seen on the show.

[fay-run]

3 + 6 for your durge character? :)

3. Does your Tav have any comments or advice when you recruit other companions?

rhea would be picked up as a companion right there on the beach, staring longingly at one of the corpses < 3 so if you decide to recruit her, she should be with you for every companion you recruit afterward. though her and shadowheart connect later, she is wary of her at first, due to how similar they are. they both are reserved and withdrawn, and not willing to talk about themselves. she decides that if her reason for this is because she secretly wants to kill everyone she sees, shadowhearts reason can't be very good either.

she doesn't have much to say about astarion at first. to her, hes just some uppity, obnoxious man who will probably get himself killed whether he joins them or not. when astarion pulls a knife on the pc, rhea actually laughs at him. she doesn't see him as dangerous at all.

wyll she is 100% on board with recruiting. she hopes allying herself with someone as good-aligned as the blade of frontiers will keep her in check. gale shes indifferent to, but she thinks it'll be good to have a mage on their team, and mentions that. karlach is way too loud for her, but the proof of how good of a fighter she is is all around them. the only companion she really objects to recruiting is halsin (after reaching moonrise and curing the shadowcurse). i don't have a good reason for this. she just doesn't care for halsin.

if you decide to recruit minthara, she'll mention that the drow looks eerily familiar. this is because they likely passed each other once or twice at moonrise.

6. Do they have any secrets that can be revealed? What are the prerequisites for this secret coming to light?

this is a doozy of a question for durge. spoilers for act 3 in the second paragraph.

in the beginning, she tries to keep her urges from the rest of the group. she does successfully hide alfira's body, so she essentially gets away with her murder. but after that, she turns into a nervous wreck. constantly panicking over what they'd do to her if they found out what she was, trying her hardest to both control her urges and hide the fact that they're even there from her companions. eventually this blows up in her face, and she brutally kills gandrel (the gur hunter), because her twisted mind sees the fact that he's there to kidnap astarion as an excuse. once she comes to, she is 1000% convinced the others(besides astarion) will either kill or abandon her; either out of fear or because they see her as an unnecessary risk. to her surprise, they do neither. instead they listen to her, and vow to aid her in her fight against whatever this thing is. if she were a companion, this is where the pc would have the option to either accept her and vow to help her, send her away from the camp, or kill her. at this point in the story shes so lost and scared and self-loathing, if the pc decides to kill her she won't even try to fight back. its not like she hadn't thought of doing it herself a thousand times since killing alfira.

as for her other secrets... the thing is, she doesn't remember these secrets. the first one: the fact that shes a bhaalspawn, comes to her in a dream. she only tells astarion and shadowheart at first, but jaheira knows without being told (this is canon, you can watch the durge/jaheira scene on youtube). jaheira convinces her to tell the others, both for their own safety and to solidify their trust in her. which she will absolutely need, because when they meet gortash, it is revealed that she was originally the mastermind behind the entire absolutist plot. pretty much everything they've endured is the result of her past selfs actions. this takes a heavier toll on her relationship with the party, especially with karlach. this is another point in the story where the pc can accept her, abandon her, or try to kill her. at this point, she has been fighting long enough that she won't just let you kill her, you will enter combat.

[1358456]

Pokemon Emerald Random Team Run Part 2

Okay. Time to continue.

Hey, I have a delivery for a Mr... Stern? Yeah, I'm going to need you to sign a confirmation of delivery. I don't have an invoice or a bill of lading, but... wait. I'm not being paid for this. Just take the damn thing.

Hmm. 3 to the right and 2 up, eh? All right...

The instructions LIED! Hmph. Fine. I'm going to ignore this place.

... How very rude. Not all of us can afford fancy shmancy transportation, you know. ... Also, was it in this game or in ORAS where you can get both bikes?

Huh. I don't remember this place at all. There were also the knock-off Battle Factory tents in places that used to have Pokemon Contests. The Hyper Rank in Slateport got replaced, for example. I don't think I've ever used those places.

... Fun Fact. Back in Generation IV, I got the final symbol for every facility in the Battle Frontier, EXCEPT for Battle Factory. Using rental Pokemon is a disaster. Who the f*ck makes a TIMID GARCHOMP?!

Anyways...

This took 5 tries. It turns out, when 4/6 things are very weak to Electric, and most of my heavy damage comes from either Psychic or Thrash, a Magneton becomes the final boss.

Oh. This is something I always wondered about. Even from Generation I, certain Gym Badges are referred to having an ability to "raise your Pokemon's (insert stat)". But... I never noticed anything. Probably because I never have anything fully EV tracked. Still though, is this all a bunch of lies, or do certain Gym Badges give your party EV points in whatever stat?

Then again, who cares.

Another HM that's NOT thrown in my face during an unavoidable scripted event! I had to actually ask around for this thing! 0/3 HMs were thrown in my face so far, compared to Platinum version, where 7/8 HMs were thrown to me in an unavoidable scripted event.

Hmm... This is a scripted event, sure, but I wouldn't call it unavoidable. After all, I'm not forced to clear this up, or to ever come here, really. Me clearing the path here is not a mandatory story event. So... 0/4 HMs were unavoidable so far.

I don't think this lady will be ready for my hot takes on this fight...

Oh wait. I'm the random func... no I'm not... a declared integer variable that's set to be a random integer between 1 and 386 (if done properly). So I should respond to this interview in a suitable manner!

Gabby: "So tell us, what did you think about our battle?"

I picked a random letter and a random word from that list.

... Is there though? I have a feeling that this lady doesn't know what she's doing. In Korea, this is known as "동문서답" or "東問西答". The phrase could be translated as "asked (問) about the east (東) and answered (答) about the west (西)". As in, the answer given had literally nothing to do with the question being asked.

Gabby: "Left, or right?" Random: "Pineapple!"

Hey, I completed the deliveries, and... I get nothing in return? ... Oh that's right. The Pokenav was a pre-payment. Okay. Fine. ... By the way, where'd that green suited dingus go? Did he actually get fired?

Oh, there he is. He just got kicked out of the office. Demotion, then.

In Ruby, Aqua is good, Magma is bad. In Sapphire, Aqua is bad, Magma is good. In Emerald, they're both assholes. Hehe. Makes sense.

Archie: "Whose side are you on?" Random: "Winter!"

Flannery's spamming... Attract? What are you, Whitney?

... You know, your dad's trying real hard to hook us up, and now here you are, hitting that antagonize button. To be fair, none of the female player characters look tough, since they're all kids, after all. But you know what? I'm using this as an excuse.

Are... your postal workers on strike too? "Yeah! Disruption of service! That's the coolest thing ever!" ... No wonder Devon Corp. made ME deliver their letter and package...

All right, kid. Let me tell you what this situation calls for.

You've probably already disappointed plenty of them. "I'd be real surprised if you had a lady, my friend."

She's right behind you, and she's not impressed.

Well, now that I made a whole town relish in the fact that they're nothing but a disappointment, I think I'll call it a day here.

Brawley: "Hey, so... uh... people in this town are all up and about disappointing girls. I could've sworn they were talking about some postal strike until an hour ago, and now they're all going about disappointing girls left and right!" Roxanne: "????"

[jackalopc]

WIP list~ (last updated 22 February '25)

most of this is Triple Frontier, COD:MW, and Hades as of right now! (i'll be updating with links later! but you can already find some of these started on my ao3 under the same username)

Triple Frontier

BURNED (burn notice au) [multi chapter + stand alone's] [TAG]

as the name suggests, an AU based off of the show, burn notice. santiago "pope" garcia is a burned spy and has been dumped back in tampa (aka: home); where he's reluctantly reunited with his friends from his military days (which includes his not-not ex, will "ironhead" miller). he's kept busy (and in trouble) as he adjusts to being back home, trying to figure out who burned him, and getting his job back.

UNNAMED (the old guard au) [multi chapter + stand alone's] [TAG]

au based off the movie, the old guard. the guard is run by the oldest immortal, red; and he's rapidly losing faith in the fight and humanity as a whole. only made worse when they're betrayed and their abilities discovered, putting the lives of him and his guardsmen at risk. oh and there is a new immortal in that of a young housecleaner in columbia... will feature a few OC guardsman + an OC love interest for red (redfly's char). ben, will, pope, and catfish are ofc also immortals.

UNNAMED (sugar baby au) [multi-chapter, limited in scope] [TAG]

a ben x frankie focused au. frankie is now a flight instructor, owning and running his own flight school with his military friend, pope. he happily co-parents his almost 10 year old daughter with her mother, though they aren't together. he's trying to get back into the swing of things but between limited time and dating app's he's not quite finding who he wants to just have a good time with. meanwhile ben is now the assistant manager of a great gym and his fighting career is taking off. he lives with his brother, who needs the extra support post TBI that got him medically discharged. he can't really bring people to his place, but he's tired of his standards having to be so low to just include 'actual privacy', 'basic hygiene', and 'somewhat interesting' (it's hard being mid 30s in a 20s year olds game). so the signs up on a sugar baby app, if nothing else just because he's at least slightly more likely to find what hes looking for- even if he's not really interested in the money aspect (though it doesn't hurt). it's not long before him and frankie match...

Year of the OTP Event Challenge (OT4 focused) [prompt challenge, 1 per month, 12 total] [TAG]

as it sounds, just the Year of the OTP challenge. mine is focused on the OT4 for triple frontier: pope / ben / catfish / ironhead & all combos possible in that.

maybe i'll be a better man (by the time you come to your senses) (redfly + rediron focused) [series] [TAG]

series centered on rediron -- tom "redfly" davis/will "ironhead" miller -- with background open, poly relationships between the four (not counting redfly). starts with the fic "maybe i'll be a better man (by the time you wake up)". will be a mix of different fic's of various ratings and sizes, etc.

if you'd like to help support this work in particular you can find a post to rb here!

HOT FOR TEACHER (teacher/college student au) [limited ~2 chapters] [TAG]

just a shameless excuse for smut tbqh. older college students will & ben casually lusting after their teahers, santiago and frankie respectively and making them squirm. ironpope & fishben.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (reboot)

Alone, Again* (ghostsoap centric) [series] [TAG]

based off my one-shot 'alone, again'. series made of mutliple fics of various ratings and lengths. slowburn ghostsoap. primarily ghosts pov for now. slower paced and more introspective.

From Field to Vase (ghost roach florist/tattoo artist au) [limited, multichapter fic] [TAG]

chapter 1 of 9 up. E rating will be for one chapter at the very end. should be able to skip it tho. florist!roach & tattoo artist!ghost. roach is a vet and learning to live life again after recovering from his brutal injuries. finding comfort in his new job as a florist.he meets tattoo artist ghost who works across the street w/ his fellow vets as well; when he needs some flowers for reference.

UNNAMED (ghostsoaproach, jealousy au) [limited, multichapter] [TAG]

a 'we each have two hands, dumbass (affectionate)' scenario. established ghostroach, end game ghostsoaproach. soap has feelings for ghost, but then roach joins the 141 and its discovered they're in a relationship with ghost. soap can't help but be jealous of roach, for a man who was never his. and whats worse is he's starting to like the guy too. what he doesnt realize is ghost likes him too and roach takes a liking to him, and they're both trying to figure out how to get with him.

Hades (Game)

BRING YOUR OWN HORSE (club au - pwp) [multi standalone chapters, each a pwp one-shot] [TAG]

porn with lore, but no plot. zag centric. a shameless excuse to write smut tbqh. no plot, just random background lore that vaguely ties stuff together. but designed so that you can read whatever chapter you want tho it is in chronological order. zag x everyone basically. PORN WITH LORE, BUT NO PLOT.

From A to Z! (kindergarten au) [multi chapter, limited] [TAG]

a PZA (patroclus/zagreus/achilles) au where zagreus (and basically all the olympians) are teachers. zag teaches kindergarten and this school year, he has the son of patroclus and achilles in his class. slowburn, eventual PZA. pyhrus meanwhile meets telemechus who is in his class, and a little hermione in the class across the hall. disabled!zag, adopted!zag. deeply deeply au. zag was adopted by demeter and more or less poseidon; his entire fam is very protective of zag. features... practically everyone + a few others. some chars who are in hades 2 are there but i'm not incorporating hades 2 into the story at this time. does not feature hades or persephone.

[crusherthedoctor]

I like how Sonic 06’s defenders and their arguments never conform or line up with one another, like each of them has a different interpretation and headcanon to the game’s plot and characters.

Some say the Time Travel works in X way, others say it works in Y way, and so on, even though it’s never outright stated in the game any of this, and their own theories have their share of inconsistencies and holes with what the game shows us. Then there are the ones who say Mephiles is a 400 IQ villain whose actions were all according to his masterful and sadistic plan (despite all the other characters becoming fucking dumbass for all the ass plot to happen), and there are ones who says he’s supposed to be a dumbass and a coward, even though Eggman in the end props him up like a master manipulator who trolled them all, so I’m not exactly sure if the game confirms this view.

There is never a consensus on what exactly is the case on these things and it’s so funny to me. Maybe someone could say that because the story is so complex, deep and masterful, one could draw many interpretations from it. Like, yeah, it’s totally not because everything in the story is poorly explained, established, shown and executed, making everyone have the chance to fill in the gaps with any kind of bullshit the game shows and establishes or even what it doesn’t show and establishes lol.

Surge might have dethroned him as my least favourite Sonic villain of all time (funny how it didn't really take that much effort beyond simply being as annoying as possible for my tastes...), but Leslie the Dark is still a shoddy result who similarly did not earn his fandom acclaim. Much like how my personal distaste for Frontiers doesn't mean I'm suddenly going to start fawning over '06, or any other game I consider too flawed to consider good in the unironic sense.

You can tell Mephiles was set up to be the ultimate mastermind, and that him failing to line up with that role was not intentional. Notice you'll get fans gushing over how brilliant he is, but once you point out the issues with him, then they'll switch gears and act as though his flaws were deliberately woven into his portrayal. Either that, or that you can't expect perfection from a Sonic story (which is hilarious since most fans make a big deal about how they care more about the story than the gameplay, to the point of excusing certain installments of their non-nitpick shortcomings if they find the story to be halfway decent). It's no different to claiming Scourge was always meant to be a parody, despite how he would frequently be presented as the biggest and baddest threat with no irony whatsoever: it's a lazy excuse to justify bad writing, and very obviously such.

The only reason you could give Mephiles for going out of his way to convince Silver to kill Sonic is that he couldn't do so himself for whatever reason... which goes out the window when he ends up doing the deed himself anyway. It's not like he was too busy either, since up to that point, he spent the rest of his time fooling around with Shadow in ways that didn't really contribute anything to his ultimate plan. Or that he could have teleported all the Chaos Emeralds to his destination from the start, since it turns out he can do that as well, with no reason provided in the game as to why he didn't do so beforehand. While you can write a villain whose indulgements might occasionally drift from their overall scheme, you need to be smart about it, and provide context that doesn't compromise the story's structure.

This is what happens when prioritizing cheap power level thrills overwrites the plotting. To my dismay, this would not be the last time it becomes an issue in a Sonic game. *looks at Frontiers' shortsighted milking of super forms*

The recent push to retcon '06 in general as secretly brilliant is always going to be an example of why I don't take a statement as gospel just because it's a popular one. Yes, '06 does have some moments worthy of praise, and some ideas did have potential, but that doesn't mean the final overall product is actually good. The humans still look uncanny. The world still leans too far into realism for realism's sake. The gameplay remains as broken as ever, and no amount of praise given to Project '06 will change that the original game remains broken. Elise's character being reevaluated and appreciated is nice, but she was still used poorly in the plot. Silver might be powerful, but on top of being made to piggyback off of Shadow's popularity (and the majority of his creative process being little more than "think Trunks"), he was ultimately portrayed as a total idiot, and the way they framed him beating Sonic was just as unearned as Mephiles' kill, and contributed to Sonic's poor treatment in the game as a whole. Do I even need to go on, given what game that nearly killed the franchise we're talking about?

It's frustrating for me because not only can I express fondness for a less than stellar product while also acknowledging its quality with no issue at all (I am fully trained in the ways of Enter the Dragonfly and its lip flapping muppet models), I also happen to love stories that deliberately keep some of the details ambiguous in a way that's satisfying and intriguing instead of coming off as a cop out. So for people to hold up '06 as an example of that offends me lol, especially after so many years of later games being beaten over the head because fans cried up and down about not settling for mediocrity.

So we won't settle for perceived mediocrity, but outright shit is fair game?

[glassmarcus]

Pokémon Violet has Transcended Embarrassment

*Played in November 2022, Written in December 2022

Pokémon Violet does a surprising amount well. I still think it has a ways to go both as a Pokémon game and as an open world game, but it's still head and shoulders above what I expected and honestly MOST Pokémon games. I didn't presume much because this was rushed, but that's really not a new issue. This franchise is categorically rushed at this point. The last new batch that was actually finished cooking was Generation 5, and those are what I would classify as outliers.

You can look at games like Pokémon Platinum and Emerald and view them as easy cash grabs because dumb kids will buy the same game twice without reservation. I didn't buy Platinum when I was 11 because I thought I was getting grifted. "Why would I buy ANOTHER version of Pokémon Pearl?", "That game was awesome! There's not much to improve on", "I'm not gonna save up my allowance just so I can get a third option for a fire type" were the thoughts I had on the matter. It was after returning to Pokémon in my senior year of high school, when I replayed every Pokémon Generation, where the illusion shattered before my eyes. Pokemon Pearl...is really slow. Every action you take in that game is as slow as a Shuckle. It has the lowest speed stat of any Pokémon game by far. I didn't realize it before, because my perception of time was suspect when I was a preteen, but that game was not optimized at all. It wasn't recycling the same product, it was charging for the completed version. It's a patch, you put up money to get. That doesn't make it excusable really, but at the end of the day I'd rather a finished version of a game exist than not.

It probably wouldn't have been good to market it as Pokemon Diamond and Pearl: Actually finished edition, but it would have made it clearer to me as a consumer what was on the table. That's pretty much what they tried to do with Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon a decade later, but the complete versions of those games just happened to be worse than the betas. Plus, it's not like there is no precedent in the series for transparent updates that should have been there at release. It's just that most people don't know about them. The versions Pokémon that were released world wide had drastically better sprites and a few bug fixes to boot when compared the original Pokémon Red and Green. And even then, every version of Generation 1 is still full of holes. Pokemon, at its bare foundation, is a franchise that is OK churning out products that could use another year of development. Games like Yellow Version and Crystal looking back were honestly the only ones I'd consider pure cash grabs. Pokémon Yellow didn’t fix much from Red V2 and Blue. Gold and Silver were more or less complete. Ruby and Sapphire though, while they weren’t egregious in any way, the lack of post game content left them feeling like they were hurried in development, especially compared to the previous games' massive post game. This makes Emerald feel necessary in retrospect. People whine and cry about the lack of battle frontier for a reason. It wasn't just an additional thing, it completed the experience.

Platinum was the first case where a fix was implemented mainly for technical reasons rather than content ones. And because of those technical kinks being ironed out, the rest of Gen 4 and Gen 5 were as polished as the series has ever been. Then Pokémon X and Y happened. And while the performance wasn't an issue, it certainly had the same problem of feeling like a ton was left on the cutting room floor. Gen 6 is probably the most reviled generation of Pokémon and I can't help but think that's because A) they really are the worst games, and B) they had no “patch release” to fix any of its problems. I have fond memories of Gen 6, but that's because I had too much free time on my hands and they made EV training and online battling painless. The games themselves I've beaten twice and don't remember any of. It's the essentials with no flourishes, and as much as people would have welcomed another version with some meat on it's bones, a Pokémon Z would never happen. Sun and Moon had a dearth of content and a surplus of technical issues. An update for that game felt more necessary than in Gen 6. And like I said before in Ultra Sun and Moon’s case, they barely fixed anything and made that story worse and added content that was bad.

This marked the end of the "Third Version" era. If the things added just detract from the game, then why bother making them at all? Downloadable Content always seemed like the obvious route for Pokémon to go, but was never feasible due to the hardware. Any extra content they can't add on release, can just be developed later and sold for the price of not an entirely new game. Things like performance and bugs can be fixed in updates as well. So there's no real need to buy an entirely new version. Sword and Shield came out, lacked content, but announced DLC to make up for that lack of content. The DLC was decent, but that didn't really sway public opinion about the game itself. Its legacy is that of a paint by numbers poké. This is all based off the osmosis of opinions I absorbed from the circles I hang around in. Still haven't touched them myself. It's getting to the point where I'm about to play Sword and Shield for the sake of having my own opinion on it when I spend far too long developing context for these essays. It's agonizing having this gaping fissure in my Pokémon knowledge, but those games do look painfully mediocre, so I have no drive to try them.

People can look back at Gen 4 and think fondly of it because while it was initially a slog, it was improved later. Not just because it was optimized, but because the adventure itself was tweaked to be improved. DLC fixes the amount of content that can be contained in the game, but it does nothing to fix the distribution of said content. The main journey is still underwhelming and no additional content will change that. The third version wasn't just a patch, it was a second shot. There are design decisions and story beats which can be tweaked. Changes that would be awkward if done via an update. No matter how polished an addendum is, it can't make up for a rough draft being so rough. And that's what I was worried about for the new games. Because I knew they would be drafts just like almost all Pokémon games initially are.

Pokémon Violet has issues. It has spelling mistakes. It has busted grammar. It has misused vocabulary words. But it's still coherently formed and carefully crafted. It just turned in its work without using spell check. The base game is strong and nothing about it is broken. It's just kind of embarrassing, but the game confidently shrugs it off. Violet is populated with glitches, but the only one that really matters is the memory leak one after a long play session. Violet has extremely rough looking animations, but you will get over it and not really care after a few hours. The indoor exploration feels like a cheap visual novel, but that ends up being a small percentage of play time. Violet has low fidelity graphics, but the art direction more than makes up for it.

It might be because I played them back to back, but Pokemon Violet reminds me a lot of Sonic Frontiers. It's not Broken and Embarrassing like Sonic 06; It's not Broken, but polished on surface level like Sonic Lost World; It's just Embarrassing sometimes. And that’s funny. Most of the wild bugs you find in the game are things you laugh at and move on from and Violet is the same way. I'm not condoning games lacking polish, but I really can't get too upset at it. The only true killer is performance slowing down the pace of battles to near Gen 4 rates, and that is something I would call a major issue. Especially after how quick it was in Pokémon Legends Arceus which released in the same year.

I'm of two minds about this. Yes, they should give the game more time so that it's polished and presentable. I don't want to support smooth brained upper management and I wouldn't say I PREFER things to look awful, but when you change your perspective you can appreciate how hysterical this game turned out. We're at a point where Pokémon is unstoppable and the vote with your wallet approach is futile. So all I can do is be happy with the product being good enough. And yea, this is good enough. Probably the best Nu Pokemon game, an age bracket I’m gonna say extends from Gen 6 and onward. Not sure I can say it’s better than any of the old ones though. Why? Because they are far different experiences with different goals. Old Pokémon games were about building your team and overcoming obstacles. These new ones are about exploring and finding your favorites. There's probably more challenge here than in any from the past decade, but I still had to really try to not be over leveled. I was training like 20 Pokémon at the same time here, and caught 300 by the time I got to the credits. It's a middle ground between a traditional Pokémon and a Legends game. Which makes it not great at either. There's no satisfaction in overcoming anything, but exploration isn't as smooth as in Arceus. There's just...more of it. I remember areas in Arceus because they were smaller and had land marks and locations where only certain things happened. Violet is just larger and more connected, but it has the same motifs spaced out further. This game lacks interesting locales and events, and while the things you do are fun, I'd rather just do them in Legends where it's faster. It does nothing old better. Battling and catching is not what you go to Pokémon Violet for if you want the pinnacle of those activities.

The new it brings to the table is the best part though. Multiplayer works. Just being able to point out where things are to people and experiencing new Pokémon in stereo is the most magical part of this game. The synchronous wonder you feel during unions do a lot to enhance the feeling of adventure. It wears off once you're near the end of the game and things are inherently less exciting, but it's still relatively seamless and only additive. It starts to feel like a MMO. But instead of massive it's micro. People have been asking for a Pokémon MMO since the dawn of high speed internet access, and while it's not there yet, it's at least something.

The story is also the best the franchise has had due to its approach. Instead of 1 story arc that takes itself far too seriously and takes too long to tell, you are given 3 story arcs with a final one at the end. Each story arc is easy to follow and character driven, endearing you to the setting and cast. All 3 are genuinely touching tales. And when things started to pop off and get serious at the end, I was more engaged in learning the outcome more than other Pokémon games aside from maybe Sun and Moon. I can attribute a lot of the strengths of this story to those games as well, but they’re held back by linear structure and can feel like you are getting pelted by story at all times. In Violet, no storyline feels like they are interrupting your adventure because you can do them at your own pace. I liked this game about as much as Moon, but I will never replay that game. The story is far too obtrusive. So I have to prefer Violet just based on how much replay value it has, not just because the story is structured better, but because I'm certain my next play through will be FAR different.

The non-linearity is yet another thing this game brings to the table. A lot of people were bothered that this game doesn't have level scaling for gyms and other equivalent goals. I expected them to do this so you can do things in any order you want. But they didn't and it was a great decision, because now it feels like I’m breaking the rules by doing things out of order. It feels more free when there are structures you can surmount. I liked doing gyms out of order in the first two Gens and this is the logical extension of that. Having the challenges curve with badge amount makes it feel like you've been placed in a bounding box and would make it impossible to attempt to punch above your weight class. Personally, I think it's good for players to have the freedom to get bodied by lv 30 Pokémon near the beginning of the journey. It builds character.

Having a variety of goals also helps break Pokémon out of its linear structure. You can swap between storylines whenever and in any order you like. And each one gives different rewards. If you prioritize movement, you take on titan sized Pokémon to get traversal upgrades. If you want higher level Pokémon to obey you, take on gyms. If you want a wider variety of attacks for your Pokémon, you take on Team Star. The path the player walks along is not driven entirely by curiosity, but by implementing a system that supports prioritizing some modular aspects over others. Players who beat the game will end up at the same place, with the same abilities, but with a different story. Pokémon has sort have always been that way. Everyone becomes champion with a different team that you bonded with along the way, with their own tale of how they succeeded in each challenge. But now that those challenges have no order, there's an even greater variance the narrative you can craft.

I wish this game was finished. I want there to be free updates that enhance performance and fix memory leaks. I want there to be DLC with more to explore. But I do not want a third version. Because the bones of this game are strong and Game Freak is really onto something.

[d2kvirus]

Dickheads of the Month: December 2023

As it seems that there are people who say or do things that are remarkably dickheaded yet somehow people try to make excuses for them or pretend it never happened, here is a collection of some of the dickheaded actions we saw in the month of December 2023 to make sure that they are never forgotten.  

The pro-Israel lies continued apace with Danielle Greyman claiming that all those photos and footage of dead children and babies being pulled from rubble in Gaza aren't actually dead children or babies, but actually lifelike dolls which Hamas placed there - which definitely doesn't make it look as if the Netanyahu apologists are so far gone they refuse to acknowledge dead children as human beings just because their "side" keeps bombing houses and hospitals they happen to be in at the time of yet another missile strike

...which was soon followed by David Collier lecturing Medecins Sans Frontieres  for having the sheer gall to report that they witnessed Israeli tanks destroying their clearly-marked vehicles by accusing MSF of not just "empowering and protecting" Hamas (because of course) but also accusing MSF staff of being Hamas agents, which is an interesting twist on "Look what you made me do"

...though then we had Benjamin Netanyahu decide to go Full Baddiel by accusing the International Criminal Court investigation of war crimes by Israel of being "antisemitic" - although he sprinkled in a little Trumpism too by referring to them as "fake war crimes" because why the fuck not at this point?

...as opposed to Eli David who responded to the death of Refaat Alareer and his entire family in an Israeli airstrike (one of those "fake war crimes", I presume?) by gloating that he deserved it because of a tweet. That's right a fucking tweet is now justification for your death in the eyes of Netanyahu apologists

...meanwhile the always calm and rational Tzipi Hotovely was once again raging about letting Israel "finish the job" without being asked the obvious question about what that means (clue: it's genocide) and following up with talk of how Palestinians have been allowed to live in peace for seventy years with heavy "So therefore..." connotations to what she was saying - even though what she was saying was, you know, a complete fucking lie as Palestinians have not been allowed to live peacefully next door due to Israel making sure they don't and more importantly can't live peacefully

...and then it turned out that the Israeli Defence Force really need to keep their murder boners under control when it emerged that they "mistakenly" shot and killed three Israeli hostages who were shirtless and literally waving white flags at the time they were gunned down - contrary to what Bethany S Mandel said about Hamas having them wear burqas when moving them from place to place which is why the IDF "mistakenly" shot them, by the way

...on the subject of murder boners David Azoulai apparently wanted to say that his was even bigger, advocating that the Israelis should make Gaza look like Auschwitz without considering that, hey, maybe that sort of rhetoric makes him look so utterly demented that he's reduced Auschwitz to a threat to make towards Palestinians?

...while on the other hand Fleur Hassan-Nahoum had her own way of dealing with reports that the IDF had bombed a Catholic church in Gaza: by pretending that there aren't any Catholic churches in Gaza, in spite the inconvenient little detail about how there are - and there's one less, due to the IDF bombing it

...but speaking far more plainly was Itamar Ben Gvir when he said that Israel should execute Hamas members they have in prison every single day that the Israeli captives are not returned, a statement which actually becomes even more monstrous when you realise who is and isn't a Hamas member in the eyes of Likud is based solely on how many people were around to witness them being shot or bombed regardless of age

...meanwhile Naftali Bennett was having trouble keeping track of his dogwhistles when he accuse Iran of being a terror octopus, apparently forgetting that any and all references to an octopus is "antisemitic" because that's what the hard Zionist extremists were screaming about Greta Thunberg

Ultra-relatable nice guy Rishi Sunak showed everyone just what an ultra-relatable nice guy he was by thundering how the UK is a sovereign country - which means that the government can overrule UK courts to bulldoze through whichever batshit insane policies it has decided are the hills they want to die on, in this particular instance the Rwanda policy which has been deemed unlawful repeatedly by British courts, and now Rwandan courts are looking into how unlawful it is

...and then a few days later Rishi Sunak showed just how in charge of his own party he is when he claimed the additional £100m of taxpayer's money given the the Rwanda scheme was signed off by Suella Braverman, which suggests that he doesn't even know when his (now ex-)ministers are throwing around colossal piles of taxpayer's money - or he knew and he's just a fucking liar

...but don't worry, ultra-relatable nice guy Rishi Sunak (and the camera crew he had with him) bought a few boxes of mince pies in a shop in King's Cross Station to give to key workers, which definitely didn't look staged nor draw attention to how those key workers continue to be diddled out of a pay raise but a few of them might get a mince pie at Christmas if they were in Sunak's vicinity

It took less than a month before Javier Milei opened the fascism box and, oh boy, he did so with gust not just ordering the army to break strikes and arrest protestors but also to take away the children of anyone arrested for either of the former

...and once Javier Milei opened the fascism box he just kept on going, introducing 300 new laws overnight without debate let alone a vote in parliament, laws which included complete deregulation of the housing market and planning permission, selling off state assets for chicken feed, and removing public transport subsidies meaning bus fares cost ten times what they did the previous week

Habitual liar George Santos managed to make history, becoming only the sixth Congressman to be expelled from Congress in US history, and all it took was him spending campaign funds on his Onlyfans subscription

Barking MP Margaret Hodge was so casual with how she told the News Agents podcast that she did everything in her power to prevent Jeremy Corbyn from becoming Prime Minister in 2019 - you know, the exact thing centrist twerps have spent four years saying was just something that you'd imagined. I'm sure that Keir Starmer will hear this and consult the constitutional rules of the Labour Party and expel her from the party, which is what they say he should do...

Unifying force for good Keir Starmer once again showed his credentials to lead Labour by praising Margaret fucking Thatcher, which seems to be a trait of his inner circle given Rachel reeves also did so, because if one thing will appeal to Red Wall voters it's praising the person who made their communities destitute in the 1980s

Once again billionaire manchild Elon Musk had another one of his genius ideas, this time deciding to run a poll about whether he should reinstate Alex Jones - in spite Jones being in repeat violations of Musk's ToS on Twitter, let alone the Twitter ToS of people who had a clue what they were doing

...this was soon followed by billionaire manchild Elon Musk publicly arguing with MS Word's inclusiveness function - and then arguing with the Twitter Community Note which pointed out that you need to activate the inclusiveness function in order for it to work

...and then billionare manchild Elon Musk demonstrated what a small, petty little douche he is by removing Disney+ from Tesla's streaming options as he continued his bizarre rants at Disney removing their ads from Twitter as if they were the only company to not want their ads promoted next to far right material, once again making the Very Clever Business Move of pissing off Tesla customers who definitely haven't gotten sick of his shit by now

Brilliant idea by the Israel Defence Force to drop pamphlets with a QR code on them telling Palestinians to leave the area so they can bomb more hospitals and schools and claiming those too are Hamas outposts, what with Gaza not having internet for over a month due to the Israelis cutting it off thus making the QR codes unusable for anyone who they dropped a leaflet on

Looks like the Jewish Chronicle was really determined in their efforts to smear Owen Jones, bringing out Hadley Freeman under the impression that she qualifies as "the big guns" - only for Freeman to vomit out an article riddled with factual errors that somehow, in an article putting out a hit Owen Jones for the version of "antisemitism" where valid criticism of Israel are "antisemitic", still found space to bleat non-existent fears about the trans community in spite being about as relevant to the subject as Freeman is to journalism

The GTA6 trailer dropped and billionaire manchild Elon Musk could only pontificate about how he couldn't get past the tutorial of GTA5 as it required him to shoot police, with Ian Miles Cheong wading in to say he too couldn't shoot police in Clusterpunk 2077...only for Twitter's Community Notes to say that was bollocks, but of course we all know the real reason neither can shoot NPCs in videos games is because NPCs are their target demographic

I get the feeling that Grzegorz Braun thought that taking a fire extinguisher to Hanukah candles in the Polish parliament would be a guaranteed vote-winner, as opposed to what it actually did which was make him look like Basil Fawlty's fascist cousin

So nice of proven liar Boris Johnson to sneak into the Covid enquiry at the crack of dawn in order to avoid the people outside who might have had a few things to say to him about his handling of the pandemic by arriving there long before they arrived, which makes him look so brave and non-guilty

There are ways in which Michelle Mone could improve public opinion about her and MedPro making off like bandits with dodgy PPE contracts, but bankrolling a documentary where she moans about people not liking her while claiming she had no idea how her company kept getting these dodgy contracts is not it

...though quite why Laura Kuenessberg though it was a good idea to jet off to Spain so her flagging show would have an exclusive interview with Mone begs all sort of questions, not least why the first question wasn't "Why did you want to be interviewed in Spain, is there any reason you don't like the thought of the British authorities knowing your exact location?" - though Michelle Mone still managed to repeatedly implicate herself in a car crash interview where she couldn't even deny everything properly

...all of which caused Lord Bethel to go on the offensive by posting screengrabs of WhatsApp messages between himself and Mone. This would be the same Lord Bethel who had previously told the Covid enquiry that he had quite conveniently lost all his WhatsApp messages when changing his phone but suddenly he found them, which I'm sure Rishi Sunak and proven liar Alexander Boris De Pfeffel Johnson would be thrilled to hear given how they to had lost all WhatsApp messages

Yet again Liz Truss left the nation wishing she'd just fuck off into obscurity where she belongs, but no, we have to see her make Vote Leave architects Matthew Elliott and Jon Moynihan life peers in her resignation honours list

The current Health Secretary Victoria Atkins demonstrated just how qualified for the job she is by calling junior doctors "Doctors in training" during a TV interview, meaning she's either too stupid to understand what a junior doctor is or she's being patronising and failed to understand how being patronising made her sound too stupid to understand what a junior doctor is

You would think that waffling gargoyle Nigel Farage would be used to losing by now given the amount of elections he's lost to opponents both human and dolphin, but no, the grifting cunt did not take his coming in third place on I'm A Celebrity well and is whipping up his followers into attacking ITV because his bot campaign failed to win, which is frankly begging ITV to withdraw the £1.5m they paid him to be there

Bold move of Rafael Edward Cruz to introduce a bill to limit the use of preferred pronouns when you consider how he uses the preferred pronouns of Ted Cruz in his everyday life

Nominative determinism debunker James Cleverly once again did that thing where he opens his mouth and something utterly moronic spills all over the floor, this time thinking it would be a good laugh to joke about slipping Rohypnol into his wife's drink to keep her quiet over Christmas - a few hours after a crackdown on drink spiking was introduced by the Home Office, which just so happens to be the department Cleverly is the head of...

Totally normal behaviour from Derrick Evans to tweet a picture of Christmas tree ornaments that depict various members of Biden's cabinet being lynched on a Christmas tree on Christmas day - followed by an utterly cowardly attempt at walking that one back after it quite surprisingly drew a lot of backlash, with him claiming it wasn't his tree and admitting it was in bad taste...possibly because the FBI are particularly grumpy when having to talk with people who joke about murdering the government if they make those jokes on Christmas Day

So nice of Johnny Mercer to remind people that he exists by spending days on end yelling about Carol Vorderman on Twitter - not least because this was the latest in a long list of examples of Tories failing to understand the Streisand Effect, as it only drew attention to the fact Vorderman pointed out his pledge to reduce homelessness in the ex-military worked so well that it increased in 2023

Suffice it to say James Somerton did not take his utter dismantling at the hands of H.Bomberguy particularly well, with him rapidly deleting all socials and leaving co-writer Nick Herrgott to take the flak - and Herrgott didn't help himself by trying the defence that he can't be accused of plagiarism as he never did any research

...though somehow Internet Historian fans decided that they were the true victims of the H.Bomberguy video and that meant that H.Bomberguy must be destroyed, best exemplified by one of them posting on Kotaku in Action (which is still a thing, in 2023, long after the basis of GamerGate was exposed as a bitter ex-boyfriend making shit up...) offering a cash reward for any evidence that allows them to destroy H.Bomberguy, which is totally a normal response to pointing out that IH plagiarised the shit out of an article for a video

...and then James Somerton crawled out from under the rock he was hiding under in order to issue the standard nonpology - and by complete coincidence, with the nonpology video up he reactivated his Patreon without telling anyone and unprivated the videos on his Youtube channel, all in the hope of getting a nice little payout

Of course beanie-wearing testicle Tim Pool is the sort of person who spends days of the only life they will ever live trying to teach Grok AI to be transphobic and post the evidence of him doing so in the belief it doesn't make him look like a sad, pathetic waste of jism

Potato in a t-shirt two sizes too small for him Ricky Gervais has once again demonstrated what a thin-skinned little twerp he is by searching for his name on Twitter so he can retweet anyone and everyone who praised his latest Netflix comedy special, you know, the one which narrowly beat the competition from the fireplace effect for your TV screen for the prestigious title of most-watched thing released on Christmas Day

For some reason Joey Barton decided to put a lot of time and effort into trying to pick a fight with Mary Earps, presumably because he was narked by misplacing his book of inspirational quotes to post online and pass off as him having some sort of knowledge

So either Fntastic were in way over the heads with The Day Before and scaled back severely on their promised features when the game was released...for all of five days before it was pulled from Steam, or Fntastic were a bunch of scam artists who ran away with the money for their piece of shit game which they flung onto Steam before announcing the company closure - and judging by the statements they've issued, literally saying "Shit happens" in one case, the latter looks far more likely