#i love the elementals but i feel like if being a legendary is solely based on elements then the rarity would be called elemental

[stargazeraldroth]

Hot Take: If Black Pearl Cookie Shouldn’t Be A Legendary Because She’s Not An Elemental, Then Neither Should Timekeeper Cookie

So idk if this opinion is very popular still or anything like that, but I genuinely don’t understand why people have such an issue with Frost Queen Cookie and Black Pearl Cookie being Legendaries? Like I get the whole thing about the Elementals and all, but if being an Elemental Guardian or whatever they’re called is the criteria for being a Legendary, then how do you explain characters like the Dragons, Dark Enchantress Cookie, and Timekeeper Cookie?

Btw this is just a ranting post, it’s not meant to be taken too seriously!!! I’m not trying to offend anyone with this, I’m just tired of people harshly criticizing the new Legendaries in Kingdom and calling them “fillers” when that same logic applies to Ovenbreak’s Legendaries. I feel like Tumblr’s a relatively chill and safe place when it comes to sharing opinions, at least safer and more open-minded than TikTok seems to be, so I thought I’d voice my input here. There’s a TLDR at the end.

At the very least, Frost Queen Cookie has known relevancy to the Elemental Guardians as she’s one herself, she’s just Kingdom-exclusive (and with how many Ovenbreak-exclusive characters there are right now, I feel there’s zero reason to complain about this or use it as an argument). You can argue that the Dragons are something of Elementals themselves, but they’re really just like Beasts of Old or something. I don’t know how applicable this is to Ovenbreak Legendaries, but according to the CRK wiki (and yes I’m aware it’s fandom-run and therefore not 100% reliable in interpretations), Legendaries are defined by their god-like statuses and immense influence over Earthbread. Now, with that in mind, let’s take a look at the Legendaries who aren’t Elementals.

1. The Dragons. The Dragons are listed as Legendaries in Ovenbreak, but they’re given the unique rarity of ‘Dragon’ in Kingdom (which I think is complete bs but that’s not the point). The Dragons themselves aren’t Elementals, at least to my knowledge, they DO however have god-like statuses (just look at Longan. Literally just look at Longan Dragon), immense amounts of power, and have a lot of influence over Earthbread’s history. Therefore, they’re deserving of a Legendary status.

2. Dark Enchantress Cookie. The main antagonist of Kingdom (and possibly Ovenbreak? I haven’t seen much Cookies of Darkness content for that game yet, so I’ll mostly be focusing on CRK). You could potentially argue that her status comes from being the reborn version of White Lily Cookie, but the Ancient Heroes are directly connected to the Elements or anything just because they have Soul Jam. Let’s look at some of Dark Enchantress Cookie’s accomplishments throughout CRK’s storyline so far;

- Unleashed havoc on the Night of the Witches and presumably killed at least some Witches, beings who were known to be incredibly powerful and were worshipped as gods by Cookiekind. This is essentially the Cookie Run equivalent of slaughtering gods.

- Waged a war against just about all of Earthbread, or at least the kingdom run by the Ancients, single-handedly causing one of the biggest tragedies in Earthbread’s history. The Dark Flour War not only brought an entire era to an end, but it completely changed the course of Earthbread. Like, the only reason the Crème Republic exists in the way it does is because of Dark Enchantress Cookie declaring war against everyone. And from the looks of it, we’re going to be getting a Dark Flour War 2 (Electric Boogaloo: The Sequel No One In Earthbread Wanted) in future updates of Kingdom.

- Defeated all five of the Ancient Heroes in a battle. You can argue that she had the Cake Witch with her, but these are the five Ancients who were presumably at their peak state during this battle. Still, you could probably argue that there’s a weird situation with White Lily Cookie in this scene, but even then, that’s four Ancient Heroes who are presumably at their peak state.

I was also gonna bring up how the Soul Jam got shattered/scattered at the climax of the Dark Flour War, but I honestly don’t know if Dark Enchantress Cookie did that or if Pure Vanilla Cookie did that when he sealed her away, so I’m not gonna use that as a point. But regardless, literally the whole Night of the Witches situation and the Dark Flour War makes her one of the most important figures in Earthbread’s history. Dark Enchantress Cookie is a TOP example of a Cookie who deserves the Legendary rarity without being connected to the Elements.

3. Timekeeper Cookie. I don’t know Timekeeper’s canon pronouns off the top of my head, so I’ll be using they/them. Feel free to inform me on those. But anyway, Timekeeper Cookie literally has no connection to the Elements. There isn’t even anything you can argue about this. Their control and mastery over time comes from their Sonic Embroider, which is an invention. It’s not an inherent power or anything. Because in order for Timekeeper Cookie to have a connection to the Elements, Croissant Cookie needs a connection to the Elements. I feel like their status as a Legendary also comes from their role as the Director of the Time Balance Department, and the way Timekeeper SEEMS like a God of Time or something. But they’re not. However, we can’t turn a blind eye to the god-like status and power they do have.

4. Black Pearl Cookie. My god, the amount of times I’ve seen people call Black Pearl a “filler” or “false” Legendary is insane. And the arguments I’ve always seen, or the ones I remember anyway, all boil down to her not being an Elemental. Again, that’s a flimsy argument considering Timekeeper Cookie’s a Legendary without being an Elemental. Black Pearl Cookie at least has some association with an actual element, which is water, being a mermaid and all. Besides, Black Pearl Cookie is literally the subject of a legend in the CRK world, which is what her and Captain Caviar Cookie’s whole update was about. The Black Pearl Islands and Duskgloom Sea, which are like her “kingdom”, can be considered the Bermuda Triangle of the CRK world. We see in the event itself that she’s capable of growing to a gargantuan size and is responsible for sinking countless ships that entered her territory. Something I’ve noticed about the Elementals is that they all have some kind of myth or legend surrounding them, like the City of Wizards being one of the Seven Mysteries of Earthbread (or whatever Wizard Cookie said), the Millennial Tree itself being viewed as a sacred tree of Earthbread, and Frost Queen Cookie being known as the Frost Witch in the myth at Cotton Cookie’s village. Black Pearl Cookie is incredibly powerful and is the legit subject of an existing legend in the CRK world, so why wouldn’t she have the Legendary status?

Idk, it just feels hypocritical when people bash Kingdom’s Legendaries when their arguments can apply to Ovenbreak’s Legendaries as well. But for some reason, Ovenbreak’s Legendaries get passes because they’re the OGs or whatever? You can’t bash Black Pearl Cookie for not being an Elemental Cookie when Timekeeper is right there. And I absolutely love Timekeeper, they’re on of my favorites, but if being an Elemental is the criteria for being a Legendary, then they shouldn’t be a Legendary.

TLDR: Legendary Cookies aren’t solely Elemental Guardians. There are Legendaries who aren’t Elementals. And if Black Pearl Cookie’s a “filler” Legendary for not being an Elemental, then some of Ovenbreak’s are “filler” Legendaries by those standards as well and don’t deserve the rarity.

[adobe-outdesign]

Which pokemon do you thinj shld get a regional varaint? (You can choose whichever region youd like)

That depends on the region--they're not gonna add new variants to old regions (probably). Ergo, whatever Pokemon should get them really depends on which ones make the most sense for the new region as I feel like that makes for the best variants (in general, Alola and Hisui have better ones than Galar in this respect).

With that said, here's some Pokemon I'd just like to see get variants at some point, whenever a good region pops up for them:

Jynx: Sounds backwards to want my least favorite Pokemon to get a variation, but there are elements of it I like, and the idea of an icy siren is really cool. If they gave it a variant that looked more natural and fixed its face I might actually like it.

Paras line: I'd love to see a variant wherein it never developed the mushrooms, so we get to see what the bug looks like sans cordyceps.

Voltorb line: I just want a variant of these that are actually tiny, and could pass for actual Pokeballs, thus making more sense why someone would try to grab them and loose a few fingers. Bonus points if it looks like a different type of Pokeball.

Abra line: It defiantly doesn't need one as much as other Pokemon, but fuck it. I'd love to see a fighting-type of these guys just for the irony, given how frail they are despite looking formidable.

Drowzee line: Another biased one, but these guys are based on baku. It would be sweet to get a Hisuian variation that leans into that more, and it would fit with the ancient Japanese aesthetic given that they're yokai. Also, this line has really suffered competitively over time and could use a refresh anyway.

Any given fossil: Would love to see what these Pokemon originally looked like, as it's generally implied the revived versions aren't perfect. Maybe there's a region closed off enough that they never went extinct or something.

Unown: Basically the same thing but in a different language

Ho-Oh: I'm not big on legendaries getting them but I want this solely because they could finally actually make it rainbow

Gulpin line: Would be great to get an aquatic variation, seeing as they're a little like gulper eels.

Snorunt line: Make them fire-types or something. Why are they shivering all the time if they're an ice-type?

Shinx line: They can randomly see through solid objects, so maybe a psychic-type?

Sigliph: I'd love to see different art styles for these guys depending on what region they're from and what their ancient art looks like

Ducklett line: fighting-type black swans. Swans are mean as hell and I think it's time we acknowledged it

Vanillite line: all I'm saying is that it should be gelato-style in Pokemon Italy

Heatmor/Durant: poison-type Durant based on velvet ants that have made Heatmore equally poisonous by consuming them, like poison dart frogs

Honedge line: Different type of ancient weapon

Yungoos line: Stated to be imported, maybe they look different back home?

Dhelmise: Different parts being used instead of anchor depending on what's sunk in that area. Maybe submarines?

[taehyung-rambles]

Best BTS Songs of All Time - A.K.A. BTS Songs that Deserve a Grammy (Up To BTS, the Best)

So, I’ve been wanting to make this list ever since the Scammys incident, and I’m excited to share these opinions will all of you.

I’m saying upfront that I really do think, at the very least, BTS’s last three album series deserve a Grammy (for all a Grammy is worth now), but I’ve made this a short list to highlight the very best in BTS’s music. I’m going to post about my favorite BTS songs later because most of BTS’s music, to me, is the best music there is. However, I tried to stay objective with this list and only mention songs that have a special quality about them that sets them apart from even BTS’s own exceptional discography.

Here’s the quick list in order from bottom to the best BTS song of all time:

DNA

Magic Shop

Life Goes On

Mikrokosmos

Dionysus

MIC Drop

BLACK SWAN

Blue & Grey

Spring Day

ON

Note that, by the numbers, Dynamite is technically BTS’s best song of all time. However, I’m not making this list based on commercial success, but rather, the qualities of the songs themselves.

If you want to read my thoughts on these songs, please keep reading:

10. DNA

There have been many BTS songs that hit perfectly the entire way through for different reasons. For instance, Boy In Luv has interesting melodies for every member at all times; the vocal throughout Lights is consistently gorgeous, the production in FAKE LOVE is stunning. DNA is the only song in BTS’s discography that hits all of those elements perfectly, and turns it up to eleven. The other songs on this list have a degree of this, too, but DNA can even be separated from those songs because it’s got a special vibe and energy to it that no other BTS song has. Ergo, I think DNA is probably one of the most well produced BTS songs of all time.

9. Magic Shop

I couldn’t resist dropping Magic Shop on this list. The intent of this song was very important to me in deciding to include it. How many artists today would write such an intimate song dedicated to their fan base? I kind of have a similar reasoning for including MIC Drop, but Magic Shop is always going to be a legendary BTS song. I don’t think sensationalism determines a good song, but in Magic Shop’s case, the sincerity and emotion that was put into everything from the vocal to the production (shoutout to Jungkook for that) makes it feel really special. Beyond that, the melody line is stunning; Magic Shop probably has some of the best melodies in all of BTS’s discography.

8. Life Goes On

Besides the peaceful melodies and relaxing vocals, I think Life Goes On deserves to be on this list because of the message it sent. It came at an extremely necessary time during a difficult period in human history. However, I don’t actually think that’s enough to put it on this list; the reason Life Goes On made it is because it conveyed it’s message throughout every facet of this song. Taehyung’s vocal tells the story, the melodies tell the story, the way Yoongi’s vocal tone was used tells the story, and so on. It’s really rare to be able to tell a story with only sound in modern music, but Life Goes On is able to do it, even if you’re only listening to the instrumental or the hum of the member’s voices.

7. Mikrokosmos

Mikrokosmos has such a punch of emotion to it and, honestly, may have the best melody line out of any song on this list, let alone the rest of BTS’s discography. It’s not easy at all to produce something that's so gripping, so BTS managing to produce that with Mikrokosmos counts for something. It’s an almost unexplainable perfection that comes out of the production, the melodies, and the vocals, but I think “perfection” is the correct word to use. I mean, how could that not be considered one of BTS’s best songs of all time?

6. Dionysus

When I was making this list, this was one of the songs I put on it before even considering what else could be on it. In fact, Dionysus is one of the two songs that made me think about making this list. I mean, what a power song this is. The themes used within the lyrics, the analogies used within the themes, are enough to place Dionysus on this list, but the production. The production value in Dionysus is absolutely through the roof. Everything from the way the instrumental was mixed to the way effects were used on the vocals makes Dionysus stand out. Whatever BTS did to produce this song, it was golden.

5. MIC Drop

We start off the top 5 with MIC Drop. MIC Drop is on this list because it’s iconic, but it isn’t iconic in the same way Dynamite or FAKE LOVE is; it isn’t iconic because of the repeatability or the melody line--it’s iconic because of the quality. That isn’t to say that Dynamite, FAKE LOVE, or any other highly successful BTS song doesn’t have a high degree of quality in them, but MIC Drop was sensationalized despite the lack of a distinct melody line. Again, I’m not doing this based on popularity, but I do think MIC Drop’s popularity came because it’s such a brilliant piece of songwriting. The lyrics of MIC Drop are, more or less, the sole reason it’s made this list--and I think that’s a damn good reason considering the lyrics MIC Drop has. You can find clever and cutting lyrics all over BTS discography, but nothing can touch MIC Drop.

4. BLACK SWAN

BLACK SWAN is so unlike any other BTS song--really, any song at all. There are a lot of things I could say about BLACK SWAN, but the main points are: production and concept. The concept for the lyrics in BLACK SWAN are absolutely heartbreaking, and connecting that to the process of turning into a black swan is genius. The production is--for lack of a better word--insane. Like I said, this sound cannot be found anywhere else in BTS’s discography--not even on MOTS: 7, which is probably BTS’s most experimental album to date (even though BE is a close second). The fact that BLACK SWAN is able to stick out that much in my eyes makes it clear that it’s one of the best BTS songs of all time.

3. Blue & Grey

This song. Oh, my goodness, where do I begin? I genuinely believe that Blue & Grey is one of the best songs ever, period. Taehyung did an amazing job writing and producing this masterpiece. The lyrics alone are enough to include it among BTS’s best songs of all time, but melodies and the vocals are absolute gorgeous. Blue & Grey has the best harmonies of any BTS song, in my opinion. Also, in the same way Life Goes On is able to tell its story throughout every facet of the song, Blue & Grey is able to do that also. You can feel every bit of emotion Taehyung was feeling when he wrote it, whether you’re listening to Yoongi rap, Jikook harmonize, the instrumental, or Taehyung closing out the song. Everything about Blue & Grey speaks, and I don’t think any other BTS song has done that.

2. Spring Day

Were you expecting Spring Day to be on this list? Were you expecting it to be number one? I don’t think there’s a lot to say about Spring Day that hasn’t already been said. It’s a masterpiece. It feels big, doesn’t it? It feels like it’s telling you something important, and you’re beholden to listen. That’s the magic of Spring Day is that it’s so captivating. From the production to the vocals to the melody and everything in between, Spring Day stuns me every time I listen to it. It’s a song that’s very much alive, if that makes sense, and I don’t think anyone would disagree that BTS found something special when they created Spring Day.

1. ON

ON was the main reason I wanted to make this list. I knew it was gonna be on here, and I knew it was gonna be number one. Something about ON is so, so special. The arrangement of the song is exceptional, and that working around the instrumental is absolutely brilliant. By the way, the instrumental is so good? The production slaps; I’d say this is definitely the absolute best production in BTS’s discography. Also, the tone and sound of ON is so unique, similar to BLACK SWAN. A big part of ON being on this list, though, are the lyrics. What a concept, honestly. Every point I’ve made on this list for why these songs are the best BTS songs of all time apply to ON, and more. It’s so hard to explain clearly, but when I listen to ON, it immediately grabs my attention. Ever since I heard it the first time, I’ve known this is BTS best song, and it absolutely deserves a Grammy.

Thank you for reading. Let me know if you agree, disagree, or would change anything about my list. Again, I think BTS’s music is the best there is, so maybe you think there are other songs that deserve a Grammy. Let me know in the replies!

[matpisound]

memes, and the role of music

Yeah, you heard me right. I'm gonna be talking about memes. Lately, I've been thinking about how much music has become intertwined with meme culture, and how certain songs can become memes on their own. Given that I write a music blog, I thought I'd write about my thoughts on the subject. How DOES music reach meme status?

Well first, we have to define what a meme even is. Obviously it's not just an image edited with a funny caption in Impact font or oversaturated to the point at which it's incomprehensible. Music has to be involved somewhere in there, or else this whole argument falls to pieces. There has to be a broader definition somewhere, right? Yes, there is, and it gives us a perfect grounding for establishing the meme status of music. According to Wikipedia, the term "meme" was coined in Richard Dawkin's book The Selfish Gene, and it defines the word as a cultural entity that can be considered a replicator; basically an idea that can be spread by people copying it and showing it to others, and it can include images, melodies, behaviors, and anything else that can easily be transmitted.

So why does this matter? We can now devise a way to categorize music memes based on what aspect of culture they appeal to. I won't go into every single meme song that exists, but I will go over some of the biggest meme songs in the past couple of years, and there are four main categories that all of them fall into:

Songs that have some sort of cultural significance on their own

Songs relating to shared cultural experiences

Songs that serve as part of a meme, without which the meme potential is lost

Remixes, typically of a sound that has cultural significance

For songs with their own cultural significance, we need look no further that January 2021 with the sea shanty craze; specifically, "The Wellerman". It's a perfect example of how social media has become embedded in musical culture and how sites like TikTok can bring people together through features that allow collaboration. Adam Neely made an in-depth video on this, but the gist of it was that the duet feature in TikTok allows people to come together with collaborative projects like singing sea shanties in a time when we're forced to stay apart. There are other songs that became memes through similar means. "Gangnam Style", "The Cha Cha Slide", and "The Cupid Shuffle" all became popular to the point of memes because they went viral on social media (mainly YouTube) and they were participatory in the sense they had signature dances, which were easy enough for anyone to do, solidifying them into a widespread culture. Some songs are memes due to their established presence in this culture, and they're songs people are expected to know either within a certain group or just in general. Just think "September", "Mamma Mia", and even "Renai Circulation" all became memes simply because of their existence within modern culture.

Culture also follows songs that are entertaining, i.e. funny, and funny songs are part of the epitome of meme culture. These come from the very early days of YouTube all the way to some of the newest TikTok audios. Take the keyboard cat on YouTube for example. Who doesn't love a cat in a suit playing some funky tunes on a keyboard? And Nyan Cat; an upbeat tune made out of synthesized meows while a cat with a PopTart for a body flies through space while farting rainbows. These random gems reflect the spirit of the internet in terms of creativity and just pure fun. There are also songs that are almost like musical shitposts; songs that have almost no meaning but exist for the sole purpose of entertainment through the random. Big Shaq's "Mans Not Hot" is such a fun song, and was really popular a few years ago because of its random lyrics and especially the verse that was just beatboxing. Songs that are so bad they're funny are popping up a lot as well. "Gucci Gang", sporting a laughably terrible sounding beat and 99% of the lyrics just being "Gucci Gang", climbed its way up to meme status just because of how bad it was. The meme status of these songs depends on the hilarity and ridiculousness that internet memes were founded on, and because of that, have embedded themselves into the worldwide meme culture.

Next is songs that relate to shared cultural experiences, so basically all of the movie tunes, game soundtracks, and just other experiences that aren't inherently musical, but contain musical elements. Everyone loves Smash Mouth's "All Star", and was popularized through none other than the hit movie Shrek. On its own it's a great song, but it's unlikely it would have reached the fame it has today had it not been for Shrek, which in and of itself has become a meme. Of course, the other one that everyone knows is "Megalovania" from the game Undertale. Its simple musical motifs combined to make it the insanely recognizable tune it is today, and has almost detached itself from its source entirely. Mario Kart has had several songs that have become memes, including "Coconut Mall" as well as "Dolphin Shoals", which gave birth to the famous Mario Kart Lick. And who could forget about Star Wars with its main theme, "The Imperial March", and "Duel of the Fates" among others. Lazy Town gave us a few gems as well, like "Cooking by the Book" and of course "We Are Number One". Most of these reach meme status because there are simple musical elements that make them instantly recognizable and can trigger pleasant memories of whatever media they came from, that media being a shared piece of culture among the majority of a generation. "All Star" begins that iconic leap from the the root to the fifth of the scale on the opening line, and "Coconut Mall" creates that frenzied feeling like entering a Macy's on Black Friday which just makes it so fun to listen to.

I need to take a minute to comment on the songs in this category that arguably had the biggest impact on the culture of this generation: Minecraft Parodies. Simply say "Creeper" in a room full of high schoolers and I guarantee you it will be followed by a chorus of "Aww man", most likely followed by the rest of the song. You probably already know what song I'm talking about. "Revenge" by CaptainSparklez and Tryhardninja was the song that powered a generation of Minecrafters, and its resurgence in recent years was met with a flash flood of nostalgia and overall good vibes. We had other hits that grew to immense popularity, like "Fallen Kingdom" and "TNT", along with countless others (and I really do mean countless). The parody craze was so prevalent, some people who otherwise probably never would have gotten into music began releasing hit songs. Not to mention all of the original Minecraft songs that came into the spotlight, like "Take Back the Night", "Creepers Gonna Creep", and so many others. This craze spread beyond Minecraft to some newer games like Fortnite, which allowed the creation of one of the most popular parodies today: Leviathan's "Chug Jug with You". Overall, these helped define a generation and not only allowed musicians to be involved in the things they like, but also allowed many people into the world of music.

This next category involves music that became associated with a certain format, as in there's little to no meme within the music outside of that format. The one everyone knows is the iconic Rickroll, the act of building suspense and breaking the tension with the beginning to Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" rather than whatever else would logically release tension. Meme formats are tailored to the individual song, and this is no different. The song begins with a sudden electronic drum fill before going into an upbeat 80s dance tune. Often the video preceding the Rickroll will build up to something desirable to the viewer, and that sudden fill subverting their expectations invokes a sense of disappointment, having been cheated out of their reward. However, the fun sound of the rest of the song helps ease that disappointment. The Coffin Dance and Shot on iPhone memes employed a similar concept by building up tension and releasing it by cutting to the music. However, here the music played throughout to help build up that tension while a video, often depicting someone doing something risky or getting hurt in some way, cutting to just the music at the climax of the clip. This employs driving principle of EDM, building up tension and releasing it at the drop. The meme works by mirroring that suspense and resolution of the video with that of the song, and that resolution being different than what would otherwise logically happen is what allows the meme to spread. Obviously, this isn't the only way songs can be part of a format; songs like "Baka Mitai" and "Shooting Stars" have all had their time to shine. However, these memes that work to subvert the expectations of the audience arguably have the biggest impact of the songs in this category.

Finally, we have the remixes, which typically involve altering any of the songs from the above categories. One of the most popular forms of the remix is the mashup, and who better to bring up here than the legendary SilvaGunner, whose videos advertise a track from a video game OST, but end up being some other meme mashed up into it. The reason mashups work as memes is because it subverts our expectations, even when we know it's a mashup. Our brains know how each song goes, but when we listen to them together it creates something completely new that either sounds great or absolutely horrendous. Yet we still listen to them because they're interesting. Additionally, remixing a meme song in a funny way is a common form of musical meme. It can occur through, super heavy distortion, or repeating a section of a song throughout the song at a level far more than a mere motif, or deleting parts of a song leaving only the memeable parts, or simple pitch shifting, among so many other ways of remixing. The possibilities are endless. The reason remixes are such good memes is they take songs with cultural significance and change them entirely, giving them a whole new meaning.

Well there you have it. Music and memes have gone hand-in-hand since the very beginning, and as culture evolves and memes become more advanced, there's no doubt that these threads will entangle themselves even further. Thanks for reading and if you have any interesting thoughts on music memes or just wanna talk about your favorite ones, feel free to share! That's all, and I'll catch you at the double barline!

[spiderdreamer-blog]

She-Ra and the Fallacy of Superficial Comparisons (SPOILERS WITHIN)

So as evidenced by my last post, I’m thrilled with how She-Ra turned out! Excellent emotional payoffs, great acting, beautiful visuals, super gay, all the great stuff ya want in a show ending like this. And I’m happy both for myself and the fandom at large, but I must admit to a certain....annoyance in things I am seeing in it.

Like comparisons to a certain other DreamWorks animated 80s reboot series that ended nearly a year and a half ago called Voltron Legendary Defender. A series that, even with its flaws, I’m still very quite fond of and meant a lot to me personally (for one, it helped me meet my awesome and nerdy-ass boyfriend).

And it would not be entirely accurate to say that I LOVED the ending of that series in the same way that I do for She-Ra or that I agreed with every choice that it made as a story, as I do not even whilst agreeing that some of the elements I’m less fond of were well executed on their own merits (namely Allurance, some of the magic and worldbuilding, certain episodes that are weaker narratively). But that’s as true for She-Ra, at least in some of the particulars I mentioned in a previous post, as it is for anything, and I think the early seasons in particular aren’t as strong in many areas as the later ones while still being pretty good. I also believe the comparisons here don’t hold as much water as some people think and do neither series any favors. I will explain my reasoning in three major points below, and hope you at least find them edifying even if you’re not convinced.

1. Fundamentally different builds as series do not a good comparison make

First, let’s do a basic breakdown comparison of the two series:

Voltron: Five idiots get involved an intergalactic war for survival against a thousands-of-years-old empire with a resistance organized by a magic space princess with access to ancient superweapons that the bad guys ultimately want for their own purpose.

She-Ra: Local idiot fights war on behalf of evil empire against magic princesses, decides that’s bad, gains access to ancient superweapon that the bad guys ultimately want for their own purposes.

Now, obviously, since these are playing in somewhat adjacent genres (magical girl sci-fi, giant mecha) and premises, there are admittedly some similarities in the above, but you may have already noticed the big difference: Voltron is an ensemble show. She-Ra is Adora’s story first and foremost.

“But ho, Spider!” I hear you saying in the voice of an old timey radio announcer. “She-Ra HAS an ensemble cast! It holds The Princesses of Power as its subtitle! They even have a Best Friend Squad!”

Ah but see, I whisper back in a confident nerd voice, here is where we get into that “different nature” thing: the difference is point of view.

Voltron starts us with one character’s point of view (Shiro), but he is notably already in a group and team atmosphere. And this continues in subsequent scenes throughout the pilot episodes: Lance, Hunk, and Pidge are introduced being a team, badly, and we are informed about our next party member, Keith, through Iverson telling us both he and these guys, implicitly and explicitly, suck at this. We generally follow all these characters not solely as individuals, but as part of groups and ecosystems. It’s rare, in fact, that a character is completely and utterly alone, or close to it.

She-Ra, by contrast, firmly puts us in Adora’s headspace from the first moment. The opening scenes of its pilot are dedicated to fleshing out how she feels about the Horde, singularly, and Catra; the other Horde members like Lonnie and Kyle are, at this point, incidental. And while we switch to other perspectives, it is Adora’s actions that primarily drive the story for herself and her own self-actualization throughout, whilst the other characters either react or further their own plans because of her (Catra’s entire arc is based on what she perceives as Adora not loving her).

Ergo, while She-Ra has an ensemble cast that builds up over time, Adora is its primary protagonist, while Voltron ends up with six lead characters and an ensemble built around those. Thus, the character writing styles and arc goals are completely different/not truly comparable in my mind.

2. Opposite thematic ends

The other main issue here, I think, is that Voltron and She-Ra ultimately have different thematic goals entirely.

Voltron, as I see it, is about loss. Most of the major characters, heroic and antagonistic, have lost something personal, be it family, friends, or autonomy. These losses and their reactions to them drive the motivations for most of what occurs in the plot and arcs: Zarkon kicks off everything by refusing to admit that his wife will die and he will lose her; Lotor does not truly hate his father until he loses Ven’tar and her planet; Allura’s loss of her people and world spurs her into action against the empire; Pidge’s loss of her father and brother prompts her to forge her disguise; Keith’s loss of his parents and then Shiro both times are a major motivating force in his psychology; and so on. Death is also on the table much more readily than She-Ra, with the stakes being incredibly high from early on; there’s an entire episode subplot focused on the Balmera and its people that drives home what this war is costing them and thus, by extension, the rest of the universe.  The danger levels are also apparent at any moment with organizations like the Blade, who take it as a certainty that they could die in the flash of an eye, or Pidge, who is ruthlessly attacked by Haxus and Sendak without hesitation despite her clearly being younger. Thus, the fates of several characters like Lotor, while tragic, are consistent with the series’ tone and what it says about loss: if you let it consume you, instead of eventually moving forward, it will destroy you.

By contrast, the only named characters in She-Ra we truly see die or that people lose in ways they cannot really come back from are Mara, Light Hope, Angella, Shadow Weaver, and Horde Prime. And this is not to say that She-Ra handles this sort of thing poorly, mind, but the thematic focus is far more on breaking the cycles of abuse and self-actualization as the primary driving force. It is not really a “war/action show” in the same way that Voltron is until really the final season, and even then, the thematic focus remains the same: Horde Prime, the epicenter of everything that has happened, is less of a warlord and more an abusive cult leader that boosts his own self-actualization over that of his clones and the people that he conquers. Hordak’s rejection and kickstarting of the conquest of Etheria to desperately seek Prime’s approval is born out of this abuse. Shadow Weaver, meanwhile, is an abusive mother figure from the word go, manipulating and grooming figures like Micah, Adora, and Catra. Thus, the arcs have a different focus: it’s not so much about regaining what has been lost as figuring out who you are and what you want to do with your life instead of what your abusive parents or leaders do. And it does this excellently, especially in the final season where characters fully affirm their new selves.

3. Tearing down one series to boost another does not say as much about the latter’s strength and uniqueness as you think it does.

Finally, I think what tends to bother me most about the superficial comparisons is that I don’t think it does either series any favors to drag the other down as comparisons because they’re so different and focused on different things at the end of the day. Voltron is telling a war story where bittersweetness or tragedy can be an ever-present force even amidst life and love, and also giant robot brawls are here. She-Ra is not, even with the tragic things that can occur in the narrative. Neither does this really get at why She-Ra is SPECIFICALLY as good as it is, and truth be told, I’d much RATHER be talking about that and Noelle Stevenson’s gifts as a storyteller and creative force.

More than that, while I think, yes, She-Ra does some things better than Voltron ultimately does (namely explicit and stated onscreen queer representation, though I maintain that it is intensely weird to assume creators in kid’s television are just lying to you about what they can or can’t accomplish when most creators, even with more “visible” rep, have the same stories about running into interference from the higher-ups)....I also think Voltron does some things better than She-Ra (hang on, setting up my bomb shelter). For instance, I believe the ensemble writing is much stronger from the get-go, whereas She-Ra takes a good while to build up its cast and even then, many of the other princesses can often function as guest stars in Adora’s narrative/having subplots that don’t really affect her main story; something like, say, Entrapta’s budding romance with Hordak has far more of an effect on Catra’s storyline than it does the title character, arguably. In fact, the show only gets stronger as it focuses more on the others and builds up those relationships, such as the Best Friend Squad growing distant and fighting more as things drag on, or Scorpia’s confidence to leave Catra when she’s a bad friend.

To use a more specific example in terms of ensemble writing, this is something that I think weakens the initial separation of Entrapta from the group in Season 1 when they think she died on a mission; we’ve spent so little time building up this group dynamic that it’s hard to say they’re really bosom friends at this point even if the supposed death has shocked them. By contrast, when Shiro is gone in the early part of season 3 of Voltron, it’s a palpable, hard-hitting loss because we’ve spent so much time with him as part of the larger group, and all the characters are clearly affected by it/trying to live up to the example he set. There’s also more of a sense of mystery as to what happened to him; we don’t get answers until 5 episodes into the season, whereas we learn of Entrapta’s survival almost immediately.

I also think it’s an unquestionably better action series throughout, with Studio Mir’s fluid, dynamic style boosting already great choreography and tension. As stated in an earlier post, She-Ra is not precisely BAD at this, and got better as time went on, but I can think of many standout fights choreography and emotion-wise in Voltron. Not so much for this until pretty much the end. NE4U is a very good animation studio, but their strengths and focus, like Mir a lot of the time, are on character acting and visual comedy; one of the best runners in She-Ra is how, say, they animate Entrapta’s hair as being an extension of her body and how it interacts with her tools or other people. In terms of fight choreography, a lot of brawls tend to boil down to “throw magic/swat people away with sword, rinse and repeat”. It’s not a series I watch or rewatch specifically for the action like Voltron or other Mir shows like Kipo.

CONCLUSION

Ultimately, what I’m trying to say here is....you don’t have to like what Voltron did with its narrative or character arcs compared to She-Ra. I recognize there are arguments to be made in terms of poorer representation on some fronts or it being less “satisfying” a conclusion in its bittersweet tragedy than She-Ra’s near-unequivocally positive end for just about everyone. But I think it’s poor analysis to compare series that have little to do with each other beyond superficial commonalities because you were more personally satisfied by one than the other. What I’d like to see more of is solid comparisons of, say, Legendary Defender to past franchise depictions or other mecha franchises that it takes clear inspiration from like Macross or Gundam. That, to me, will tell you far more about it and how it succeeds or fails. By turn, She-Ra has, like Steven Universe before it, far more in common with magical girl or shoujo series like Sailor Moon or Revolutionary Girl Utena in terms of aesthetics, tone, and thematics. To me, that’s where the REAL fun is, not trying to boost your new girlfriend over your old one.

[inikavulpixelreviews]

Let’s Talk About Pokemon - The Rookidee Family

821: Rookidee

...Honestly? Move over Fletchling, I think I have a new favorite basic bird.

Not that the competition is very stiff. Rookidee pretty much just has Fletchling to contend with. But Rookidee succeeds where most basic birds don't in actually having an amusing visual gimmick. At a first glance, you'd be reasonable to think that it's just a REALLY angry bird with a scowl and red pupils. But in actuality, those red dots are its real eyes and the white parts are just a marking! Nice!

Also that is PEAK songbird body stylization right there. Look at how friggin BORB it is. That juxtaposed against its mean face facade is just funny to me. It works well with the idea of it being that it's scrappy and loves fighting despite how small it is.

I really dig that color scheme too. It's half a shame it doesn't keep it (but half not that bad cause HOO BOY) but it's nice and striking while still feeling fairly naturalistic for birds. In fact, the bird it's based on pretty much IS these colors, getting them from the Eurasian Blue Tit. And it takes the more prominent “eye” markings from the Great Tit. That's two Tits for the price of one!

822: Corvisquire

I like that by now, most of the basic regional birds get really angry or mean-looking during their second stage, but Corvisquire here keeps the funny dot-eyed gimmick from Rookidee, heehee. And while it does drop almost all other Tit elements, it's now picked up some Blue Jay! Knocking out all sorts of birds in one line here. It may not STAY a Blue Jay, but it all checks out by the end since it's becoming more and more of a corvid.

And as you can pick up with names of these Pokemon, there's a bit of a knightly theme going on here. When I reviewed the Flying type, I made a suggestion for a Blue Jay Pokemon that had a “defend the weaker birds from predators” sort of theme to it, since Blue Jays often scream in alert to warn, albeit possibly incidentally, smaller birds of when predators are nearby. While the Pokedex doesn't say it does anything of the sort, it being a Squire eventually to be promoted to a Knight, you COULD say it fights off Pokemon that prey on the Rookidee and other small birds. Even if you kinda have to headcanon it.

The Pokedex does state that it's smart enough to use tools in battle, much like actual corvids. Corvids are well known for being some of the smartest animals out there, so it's nice to see that acknowledged at least!

Curiously, these two are Pure Flying type. Erm... finally? Maybe? I guess they're starting to shift away from the idea that Flying has to be paired with a Pokemon in all cases with a sole exception. I'm fine with it, it just seems weird cause I figured our first mono-Flying non-Legendary would be a wind elemental of some sort.

Personal Score: 8.5/10

823: Corviknight

And then there's Corviknight, a Pokemon that's won me over ever since it was first revealed last year. And BOY is it a winner, and easily the best all-around “basic bird” final evolution as well. It drops the Mono-Flying oddity in favor of becoming Flying/Steel, now decked out in a beautiful suit of armor that's just angular enough to communicate its metallic look while still being flush and natural looking to not look out of place.

And given all the hair it has, I would assume we got ourselves a raven Pokemon as well! It could pass as either ravens or crows, they're similar enough birds. Corviknight just has hair on the beak even to the point of having a full-on beard when one of the differentiated factors of telling a raven from a crow is the amount of hair it has on its beak. Corviknight also generally fits the pop culture language of what a raven is, all brooding and black and red.

And LOOK at that color scheme. Mwah. Pure monochromatic deliciousness. It's a rare case where a modern Pokemon rather uniformly sticks to a single color with slight variations. Makes it look like it'd fit right in with Gen 1 a bit. It's such a dang majestic design too, you could've probably passed it off as a Legendary Pokemon.

G-Max Corviknight:

And Corviknight is our first newcomer that already has a Gigantamax form to it. It doesn't change it up very much, but it's still a very solid and wicked design! I think I just prefer normal-size Corviknight because its design is just so dang clean, but the red markings are still pretty cool, and it even has a fleet of metallic feathers that it deploys for attacks. That is a badass concept for a Kaiju-size bird. I was pretty rough on the G-Max forms before, but the ones for Gen 8 Pokemon tend to be pretty solid if not excellent. Probably because they were designed WITH G-Maxing in mind, instead of getting new forms in retrospect. I may prefer normal Corviknight, but this G-Max form is a neat little add-on that doesn't sully the taste of Corviknight any.

Personal Score: 10/10

[Archive]

[bigskydreaming]

For the fic ask meme, 4, 16, 24, or 28

I will answer 16 now, because No Reason, Just Whimsy, but stay tuned as I’ll probably end up answering 4, 24 and 28 at some point anyway, because like. No Reason, Just Whimsy. *Shrugs*

16.  If you only could write one pairing for the rest of your life, which pairing would it be?

I can’t tell you, see, because I would simply make that one pairing endgame and everything else leading up to it like, contain all the other ships I could not bear to be without. (Hahahaha this is why I could never be a romance author, I can not abide by the rules of HEA or HFN in relationship stories to save my LIFE). So, y’know, SPOILERS.

No but also I’m completely aware that this is cheating and not the point of the question. But I can not choose though, that is the point, like, have you met me? I am the original poster child for ADHD. I’m THAT old.

So instead I will simply say that in the realm of Teen Wolf, Scanny is very very very important to me, which like, surprises no one. But also I would still fight someone who tried to take either Scira or Scallison from me, I remain obnoxiously fond of Scackson’s potential, and I’m still out here being like, the sole Scosh (Scott/Josh Diaz) shipper in all the land, I’m pretty sure, lmfao. 

And I mean, also there’s Scyle, of course. I could never give up the Scyle.

As far as Marvel goes, like, I am going to be riding the high of Bobby/Christian being canon for quite some time, as anyone who has known me long knows that I have been shipping this ship since Christian was first introduced and then written offstage like two issues later….seventeen years ago.

(I have a lot of issues with straight writers making gay characters’ gay-specific tragedies and traumas like….someone ELSE’S angsty back story, while they themselves are just shuffled off the page and considered irrelevant. For those who don’t know, Christian is Emma Frost’s gay older brother who she adored and when their father had Christian institutionalized against his will because he was gay, this was what made Emma break away from the rest of her family for good and set her on the road to becoming the White Queen of the Hellfire Club. 

And then, despite like, this being life-defining for her, not a single writer in the next fifteen damn years ever thought to ask themselves…..hmmm, why would Emma Frost, one of the most powerful telepaths in the world and someone whose personal morality in no way makes her above using those powers, her wealth or Hellfire resources however she damn well pleases in the name of protecting herself, those she cares about, and advancing her agendas…..why would this woman who has never let anything stand in the way of what she cares about before like….simply just…never once in all the years since she was a teenager think to herself….hmm, what if I simply go to the institution where my beloved brother is kept against his will, and just…..made them release him?)

So, aside from always thinking Bobby/Christian would be a great ship with amazing potential given Bobby’s unique history and dynamic with Christian’s sister and the fact that Christian shares a lot of the same traits, backstory and other elements that make Emma an amazing and multi-faceted character and he’s just been sitting there in Limbo for fifteen years with all this untapped potential just waiting to be mined….

I’m always going to be gleeful about this ship and with a special fondness for Sina Grace for bringing Christian back from comic book Limbo and laying the foundation for this ship, like, just because like……I feel its long overdue and the only way to ACTUALLY make anything decent out of the bullshit that was mining his oppression for the sake of another character’s angst: by finally giving HIM the chance to be a character who is affected by all that, developed and moved forward from all of that, is the FOCUS of all that…..and even more importantly, now after being left offscreen for fifteen years by writers who considered his narrative nothing more than tragic filler….he finally has a chance to be an example of a gay character who gets to come BACK from all of that and move FORWARD from it, and like…find healing and happiness with another character, like Bobby.

So Bobby/Christian is actually hugely important to me for a variety of reasons, especially right now since this is all just happening recently, and I will love them forever and in defiance of the inevitable bullshit some future writer pulls that will piss me the hell off. Y’know, just going off of Vegas odds or whatever.

Aside from Bobby/Christian I’ve also always had a weakness for Bobby/Johnny Storm because they are the most iconic ice and fire characters out there and I am basically twelve. I also have blogged at length in the past about all the reasons I’m a huge fan of Bobby/Bishop and not just because their ship name would make them a literal bop. Again, I refer you to the thing where I’m basically twelve. But yeah, there’s a whole history there where when Bishop first came back into the past and met the X-Men who’d all been legends in his time, he kinda fanboyed a little over Bobby because of Bobby’s future legend, and then was kinda like….oh, that’s it? about him once he got to know Bobby and Bishop became like, the physical embodiment of underwhelmed. 

And ever since then Bobby’s always low key been like, a hyper-active puppy around Bishop, like, trying not to SEEM like he cares an awful lot about whether or not he’s managed to impress Bishop but because he can’t be subtle to save his life, mostly just coming across as “am I living up to the hype now? how about now? am I legendary NOW? What about now?” and I dunno. Its just kinda cute and a fairly unique dynamic, and Bishop has this deliberately bland, blink and you miss it sense of humor with the right writers and that I’ve always thought has a ton of potential for him to be privately amused by this tendency of Bobby’s, enough that he’s unwilling to confess to him that Bobby actually earned his respect years ago by this point, and he just doesn’t want to let Bobby know because then he’d stop. 

And then in terms of DC, I’ve posted a lot a lot a loooooooooot about my love for Dick/Kory in canon, and how they - and by extension we - were robbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbed, and if DC doesn’t give me my canon Mar’i and Jake Grayson one of these days, I don’t care if they have to import them from another universe and then have this universe’s Dick and Kory awkwardly try to co-parent them while living their own lives separately before finally coming back together and falling in love all over again and then becoming a single united family unit forever and ever in the most ridiculously complicated comic book version of the Parent Trap ever, like…..

I can’t even think of an over-exaggerated threat creative enough to convey just how badly I want and need this, DC, give it to meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee plzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

And then also, I’ve actually posted a lot a lot a loooooooooooot (though not in a few years, probably, so those posts are all super old, lol) about how I think Kyle and Donna are a criminally under-rated canon couple and were actually really really good together because they went through so much together and Kyle literally grew so much as a character specifically on the things Donna called him out for the first time they dated, like, literally so he could be BETTER, and then with how anticlimactically they ended...because the thing is, they never actually even broke up! It was this thing where like, when Donna went to LA with Kyle for his high school reunion and to literally MEET HIS MOM, like HELLO, that is not a basic relationship step, that is Advanced Dating, like…..that is where they were at in their relationship when Donna literally got the call then and there that her ex-husband and her son had just died in a car accident. 

And Donna was devastated of course, and Kyle was devastated too - for her, and also in his own way, because he’d adored Robert and like, there were these issues where they were super cute and took him to the zoo together and Kyle was bonding with him and just like, melting over this kid, and Robert and Terry were killed by a drunk driver, and like, there was a later story where Kyle just went apeshit on this drunk driver he encountered because he had all these repressed feelings about Robert’s death and how it had hurt Donna and he’d made sure not to show any of that to her or even let on that he hurt for Robert’s loss in his own way, because he didn’t want to make it about him, he KNEW better…

And anyway, the point is…they never actually broke up in the sense of either of them at any point being all, oh we no longer love each other or think this can work, we need to end it. Instead, Donna said that she needed to take some time away from Kyle and everyone else and just…come to terms with what she’d lost and figure out who she even was now in the wake of that….and Kyle totally understood, didn’t argue or try and change her mind, he just said take as much time as you need, I’ll be here when you’re ready, and oh btw, here’s this lantern construct of a locket that I want you to keep because as long as it exists you’ll know that a part of me is still thinking about you and wanting you to be happy, wherever that is.

And then like…..less than a year later, DC did their super weird Dark Angel story where Donna was erased from reality and then had to be ‘recreated’ from Wally’s memories, and for awhile just existed in the form and identity she’d been recreated from, which was based entirely on what Wally knew of her and thought and felt about her, and so there were huge gaps in her identity where she was missing stuff she should have known but didn’t now because WALLY didn’t know about it.

Such as how when Donna met Kyle’s subsequent sorta-girlfriend Jade some time later - I say sorta because she and Kyle were still figuring things out at that stage, and Jenny-Lynn in part didn’t know if she wanted to actually get into a relationship with him because she thought he was still in love with Donna - well anyway, when Donna and Jenny-Lynn met in a later issue and she said all this to Donna, Donna reassured her not to worry about it, she was reading more into it than actually existed because she and Kyle had never been that serious anyway. 

Which. SCREECH! Brakes please. HOLD UP. 

Like, I’m sorry JAY FAERBER YES I REMEMBER IT WAS YOU WHO WROTE THAT ISSUE UGGGGGH, but like, in what UNIVERSE is “dated, broke up, then got back together later because she thought Kyle had matured a ton since they first tried dating and now they were so much stronger as a couple that she oh I dunno, introduced him to her son and they went on playdates together, went with him to meet his mom, had a never-vanishing lantern locket construct that signified just how much he would always love her” uh…..’never been that serious anyway’? I’m. What? Does not compute.

BUT WHATEVER.

LOL. Anyway, point is, so things like that actually make sense when you factor in the role Wally’s memories and perspective played in who Donna literally WAS for awhile (and the understandable existential crises she went through as a result). But like, at the point in time when Kyle and Donna were most serious, Kyle was still fairly removed from a lot of the rest of the DC universe, he wasn’t a core member of the JLA yet and usually operated independently, and he and Wally were NOT close at all yet, let alone friends….in fact, for as long as Donna and Kyle dated, Wally pretty much still actively hated and resented Kyle for just existing, since he’d always been close with Hal since he was a kid and Hal was his Uncle Barry’s BFF-and-homosexual-life-partner-in-all-but-name. 

Like, it was only after Kyle became one of the core JLA alongside Wally that the two of them finally worked out their mutual antagonism and became friends, but before that, Wally was NOT shy about expressing he hated this new GL guy and wanted nothing to do with him, even though it was for unfair reasons, sooooo……like, its not really that shocking that even though Wally and Donna are two of each other’s oldest friends and super tight, like, he was never going to be the friend she called up to let him know how great things were going with her and Kyle these days, lol, y’know?

So it makes sense that when Donna was first magically reconstituted thanks to Wally’s memories/view of her (btw, this was because Wally was out of phase with reality and was in the Speed Force at the precise moment that Donna was erased from reality by the Dark Angel’s magic, and that’s why he alone remembered her and was the template for undoing what the Dark Angel had done). But anyway, it makes sense that she would for a time have had very little memory or even knowledge of her and Kyle’s prior relationship, and basically just know/remember what little Wally actually knew of it. So from her perspective then, it could very well have seemed that they were never that serious, and everyone but Kyle like….kinda just nodded and figured okay, you would know after all, and just…..everyone ended up walking away with the idea that they were just this brief fling and neither had ever had strong feelings for each other, let alone love.

The problem I’ve always had is that eventually Donna DID regain her full memories and her own sense of self, and like….she was Donna again, through and through, existing as she always had without being limited to just Wally’s view or memory of her.

Soooo, at THAT point, she should have been perfectly aware of what her and Kyle’s relationship had ACTUALLY looked like, in its entirety, and I mean, I can understand them not getting back together at that point. It’d been years, they both were in very different places, Kyle had eventually gotten together with Jade after it was expressed by Donna herself that there was no reason not to, given that its not like they were ever that serious….so by the time Donna herself would have realized otherwise, I can totally understand her feeling that the moment had passed for them, that Kyle had moved on (just as Kyle had only ‘moved on’ once he felt there was no longer a chance of them returning to what they were). Like, all of that is super weird and complicated even by ridiculous comic book soap opera standards, so I mean….lol, how do you even BEGIN that conversation, y’know?

Buuuuuut, it just kinda sucks that at no point after that Faerber issue has any later writer ever had either Donna or Kyle discuss their previous relationship(s) in terms of what it ACTUALLY was, for BOTH of them, rather than just this trivial, ancient history fling that neither had ever been super invested in….even though for several years in the nineties they were one of THE major hero couples in comic books.

So. Yeah. As evidenced, I have a lot of unresolved Donna and Kyle feelings lol.

And then of course, there are and always will be my epic “OMG DICK AND KYLE COULD BE THE GREATEST SHIP AND END ALL THE SHIPS LIKE COULD YOU EVEN IMAGINE” feelings, but like. That’s a thirty pound tome in and of itself, so. Like. Just picture the two of them standing staring soulfully into each other’s eyes and then me, creepily fixated on them twenty feet away, chin propped up on my hands and going awwwwwwww while my own eyes like, sparkle anime style but also are the heart-eyes motherfucker meme at the same time.

[victorluvsalice]

AU Thursday: Tell Me Where To Find Shelter -- Weird And Complicated Video Game Crossover AUs Strike Again

Okay, so last week I offered you all an updated rewrite on my old Fallout 4 Sole Survivor!Victor AU, Tell Me Where To Find Shelter. And at the very end of said update, I let you know that I had an idea for fitting Alice into the AU --

Specifically, my Malkavian Alice from Vampire: the Masquerade -- Bloodlines.

Look, the fact of the matter is, Fallout 4 and Bloodlines have been rather closely connected in my head from day one of my purchasing them -- hell, I got them during the same Steam sale! (Along with the BioShock series entire, which is why I had a couple of posts about Tell Me Where to Find Shelter back in 2016, then it dropped off the face of the earth -- I played Bloodlines first, and followed up with that series.) And my “Londerland Bloodlines” playthrough of Bloodlines was done concurrently with my starting up Fallout 4, so -- yeah. Me wanting to figure out how to cross the two over was probably inevitable.

I know what you’re all thinking, of course -- “how the hell do you make this sort of crossover work?” Well, I have had a few ideas:

-->This version of Malkavian Alice and her adventures in 2004 Los Angeles would be much more like the standard fledgling’s, given that the Corpse Bride characters are now born in the future. So the person she saves in the hospital is Heather (who she does manage to send away in time to save her life), and the Giovanni party goes down without dragging an undead version of Lizzie into the mix. Obviously the story and setting would have to be tweaked to fit better into Fallout’s alternate history (though given what the computers in the original game are like, maybe that’s easier than expected). She still goes Independent, and escapes from Los Angeles in the wake of LaCroix’s explosive death, making her way slowly but surely to the East Coast because she has had enough of California and everyone there.

-->She manages to get on with her unlife, watching the growing tensions with China and the Resource Wars with unease, but keeping to herself and doing her best not to let her humanity slip as she gets older. When the bombs fall, she’s sleeping the day away in a basement bunker she set up in Boston -- but the destruction from the explosion ends up collapsing part of the ceiling, burying her in rubble -- with a chunk of timber piercing her heart. She ends up in a staked torpor. . .

-->Until Victor shows up at her location at night to clear out a few raiders who are taking over the place as a base. One of the raiders yanks out the stake to use as a weapon, has three seconds to wonder why it’s got fresh blood on it -- then Alice explodes from her centuries-long hiding place and drinks him dry. Victor is too stunned at first to actually shoot her, and once Alice’s blood thirst has been quest, she immediately puts her hands up and does her best to show she means him no harm. They talk, Alice explains what happened (and goes ahead and admits she’s a vampire when Victor explains about the nuclear apocalypse -- who gives a shit about the Masquerade when the world has ended?), she offers to help with the remaining raiders to prove her good intentions, Victor accepts, and they take down the assholes together.

-->Obviously, Alice isn’t immediately “unlockable” as a companion -- she’s still got her sunlight thing, after all! She and Victor chat about it, and Victor, feeling bad, offers his assistance. Alice accepts -- she misses the sun -- and says that she’ll stay where she is for the moment (after finding a non-partially-collapsed basement to stay in) and keep raiders and monsters out while he searches for information. And so the “Here Comes The Sun” quest begins, with Victor searching for a way to counteract the sunlight curse! I’m thinking this would end up interacting with the Cabot family stuff, because I don’t think it would be hard at all to change the source of their immortality, and the artifact upon Lorenzo’s head, from something alien to something vampiric. Maybe Lorenzo’s partially possessed by the spirit of an Antediluvian, and it’s turned his blood into something close enough to vitae it can make ghouls? At any rate, Jack manages to whip something up after examining some of Alice’s blood (which, naturally, she’s kind of nervous about, but what choice does she have?), and it successfully stops her from burning up in sunlight (though she is weaker in it). A grateful Alice thanks Victor (and Jack) and agrees to travel with him to experience the Commonwealth.

-->As they go on together, they end up getting closer -- Alice likes that Victor is generally a good guy and sympathizes with the story of his lost family; Victor likes Alice’s snarky wit and strong sense of justice. As they share more details of their lives, help out the settlements, and battle monsters together, they realize they’re growing feelings for each other, and eventually get together, facing off against the Institute as a couple and parenting Synth Shaun/Chester together afterwards. (Alice jokes a lot that it took both her dying and the end of the world in general to finally get a domestic happy ending.)

-->Alice’s starting clothes would be a simple blue dress and apron with black buckled boots (the dress would naturally have a big bloody hole right over her heart when she first wakes up; she patches this after you leave her to her own devices for a bit), and she’d have the Tal’Mahe’Ra Blade (her prize from her storming of the Hallowbrook Hotel, taken from Andrei’s lair) as her standard weapon. She has a unique bite attack, being a vampire, and can still use Obfuscate (turning invisible to sneak past/sneak attack enemies) and Dementation (inflict debuffs on enemies so they’re confused and can’t shoot straight, or kill a single enemy from fear alone), though both have a cooldown so Victor can’t rely on her just spamming that to take care of every raider for him! XD Her perk would allow you to drain blood from enemy corpses (which other companions would find less disturbing than outright cannibalism, but still fairly creepy) and/or increase the healing capabilities of blood packs. I’m thinking, once romanced, she’d also have a unique variation of the “Lover’s Embrace” temporary perk, “Love Bite” -- Victor wakes up with HP not fully restored, but the XP boost is greater than “Lover’s Embrace” (+20% vs +15%).

-->Other vampiric elements of the Commonwealth would include:

A) That blood bank you can find? Those bags of blood are warm and fresh because there’s a Tremere there who has built up their power and knows some rituals for preserving the stuff. Unfortunately, they’re also very low humanity by this point, so they end up being a nasty surprise fight.

B) There’s a secret settlement of vampires that is made up of all the various fledglings you could pick from in Bloodlines, having learned to live together after the destruction of vampire society along with human when the bombs fell. The local Tremeres managed some blood sorcery that infused a mutfruit tree with human blood, so plasma fruit, a la The Sims 4, is a thing for them, and allows them to live in relative peace with their human neighbors (though they’ll happily drain anyone who attacks them). They’d probably have a quest revolving around either talking down or killing some vampire hunters who have been eying their base, and they could be persuaded to allow Jack Cabot and family to study them in exchange for vitae to help them stay in their immortal states. Also, the Malkavians openly call Victor the “Sole Survivor” and offer roundabout tips on his quests -- if he can decipher them. XD

C) This is just one that amuses me -- this universe’s Mysterious Stranger is none other than good old Caine! He’s trying to be a little more helpful to mortal and Kindred alike in the post-apocalypse, and has decided this means “showing up randomly to help people out of tight spots before vanishing again.” Alice, upon seeing him, jokes that the cabdriver thing didn’t work out, huh?

D) I’d kind of like to make stimpacks developed from vampire or ghoul blood to explain just how it is they can heal crippled limbs so fast -- the wiki didn’t provide much of an answer there! Which means anyone who uses them is at least slightly a ghoul. . .which might explain a few things about carry weight and why some enemies are so tough. (Legendaries have more vitae in their system, prompting the power-up, maybe?)

So yeah -- that’s how I’d get Bloodlines and Fallout to work together, and thus have my Malkavian!Alice and Sole Survivor!Victor be a couple in the wasteland. Because why make a crossover simple when I could make it way more complicated than it needs to be? XD Look, I just like the mental images I have of them together -- and of Alice taking out a whole army of baddies by hitting them with Voice of Bedlam to throw them into absolute chaos.

[atekasey]

My Top 5 Games of 2019

As I like to do every year, here’s some collected ramblings about my opinions of some games I played and really liked this year. While there were a lot more than 5 games that I enjoyed this year, I only had strong opinions about these 5. Without further ado, here are my thoughts on my top 5 games of the year of our lord 2019.

DISCO ELYSIUM

Full disclosure: I have not finished Disco Elysium; I am about three quarters of the way through the 3rd day. Regardless, I loved so much of what little I played that I consider it one of the best games of the year, based solely on the world-building and characterizations I’ve encountered so far.

Disco Elysium is an adventure game/RPG where the only stats you build up are personality stats and thought processes, which affects how you talk to people and interact with the environment. The main plot is about you playing as an amnesiac cop tasked with solving a murder at the centre of a labour dispute, but to be honest I couldn't really care less about the main plot. Not to say the plot is bad per se, it just didn't grab me like how the setting and individual characterizations did. The main plot was nothing more than a vehicle for me to explore and find out more about Revachol, its residents, and how all of them came to be who they are. The amazing writing that underpins every interaction is what makes the individual interactions so compelling.

When I woke up every morning (in the game world, mind you), the only thing I wanted to do is talk to people, conveniently ignoring the dialogue choices that furthered the plot until the end of the conversation. The pétanque-playing veterans who have some scathing opinions about communist theory, the paledriver who's mind is corrupted by nostalgia, the mysterious balcony smoker who I later learned was part of the homosexual underground, the Semanese race theorist who I wanted nothing more than to punch in the face if not for my low physical instrument stat, these are just some examples of the extremely varied characters you meet while you investigate some dead dude or whatever, I guess. Speaking of the paledriver, learning about the true nature of the pale from the White Pines rep was a pivotal moment for me personally, as it made the world feel both unique and existentially terrifying. All these little details and more create the rich tapestry that is Disco Elysium. Also, some dude was murdered??? Who cares about that, I need to make my sorry-cop sing depressing karaoke!

I should really get back and finish it.

CONTROL

I remember the first time I read SCP-087 back in the day, and it introduced me up to the horrifying (and sometimes comedic) world of SCP. For those who don't know SCP (which can stand for "special containment procedures" or "secure, contain, protect", depending where you look), is a collaborative fiction wiki about fake government reports on the supernatural and paranormal. It's the bureaucratic nature of SCPs that really drew me into reading them, making it feel like I was reading real government reports.

So imagine my delighted surprise when I first played Control, I picked up the first of many report-type collectible and saw that it was written almost exactly like an SCP entry. Control is a game that asks "what if the SCP Foundation was a real branch of the US government?" and goes off the deep-end with that premise in the best possible way. The bureaucratic mundanity of the Federal Bureau of Control really shines in these reports, as you read report after report of some other-worldly phenomenon while also reading reports about the monthly book club. Beyond that, actually playing control was fun and engaging... up until the end. Jesse is a great protagonist, and the characters you meet along the way have great personality and give life to the bureau. The Oldest House is a fascinating setting to explore, with it’s brutalist look and nooks and crannies that change and spiral off in otherworldly ways. Unfortunately, for all the build-up the story was leading to, it ends on a pretty lame whimper. But the lackluster ending did not sway my overall love for Control. No one makes games like Remedy at the AAA level, and I'm happy they are making games like Control. I cannot wait for the DLC for this game to get back into it.

Also, the PC version of control does a phenomenal job at showing off how ray-tracing really is the future of lighting and graphics. The real-time reflections alone, where the scene I was watching was reflected almost perfectly on a pane of glass like an actual reflection (in real-time, no less!) was a marvel to look at. And, not since Quake 2 did coloured lighting look so pretty. Suffice to say, Control justified my RTX 2080 purchase single-handedly.

AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES

I have what one can say a love/hate relationship with the Zero Escape series. The first entry, 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors, is one of my favourite games of all time (currently ranked 3rd, if you care at all, which you probably don't, sorry to bother you), and while the cliffhanger ending of the sequel, Virtue's Last Reward, made me excited to see where the series would go, Zero Time Dilemma ultimately did not offer a satisfying conclusion. Not only did ZTD barely resolve any of the threads started in VLR, but it was a very disappointing conclusion to the entire Zero Escape series as a whole (Junpei and Akane's story just getting a tossed-off mention after you beat the game about how "they lived happily ever after" and nothing else? THEY DESERVED BETTER!). So when it was announced that the creator of the Zero Escape series, Kotaro Uchikoshi, was making a new game called AI: The Somnium Files, I was cautiously optimistic. I hoped ZTD was just a one-off and not indicative of a downward trend starting to happen, and Uchikoshi still had it in him to tell a compelling story.

Very fortunately (for me at least), AI: The Somnium Files delivered in the best possible way, meeting and thoroughly exceeding my expectations.

It took some time before the game adhered itself to me as a truly great game, unlike Zero Escape. In the Zero Escape games, given the Saw-like murder games the characters were forced to participate in, there was an sense of urgency to the story that helped propel it right from minute one. AI, on the other hand, is more procedural, which makes sense given that you're playing as Kaname Date, a cop who has a fake eye that is also an AI named AIBA (trust me, it makes sense in context), trying to solve the murder of his adopted daughter's birth mom. Not to strip the act of murder from the seriousness it deserves, but AI ends up being more lighthearted than the Zero Escape games, which only made me enjoy the game more. AI takes its time to explore it's story and characters, letting scenes breath and focus on characters instead of the mystery at hand, allowing said characters to have more development and growth. I bring this up only so I can talk about Mizuki Okiura, Date's adoptive daughter, who quickly becomes the standout character from the game. A back-talking, street-wise 12-year-old punk who forces her way into becoming Date's "partner" as he unravels an ever-growing conspiracy of politics, missing eyeballs, and twitch streamers (again, please trust me, it makes sense in context).

She also has a lead pipe she likes to beat people with.

Mizuki is the best.

She is THE BEST!

Make an entire game about her YOU COWARDS!!

...Anyways, structurally, AI plays similarly to Zero Escape, but with more adventure game elements to it. You still follow a flow-chart that branches depending on story choices you make, and you need to see all branches to complete the story. Not to keep comparing AI to the Zero Escape games (that's why I'm playing this game, so that's the lens I'm analyzing this game through; this is my essay, I can do what I want, you’re not my real dad), but unlike the Zero Escape games, AI ends on a legitimate, no-fooling, unambiguous happy ending that couldn't have put a bigger smile on my face. Sure, it was corny, but the entire game was corny, and ultimately I didn't care! I was just happy that I wasn't uber-depressed after playing one of Uchikoshi's games! It even ends on a dance number consisting of the entire cast of characters!

AI is a good time all-around!

(Except for the murders. Those are bad...probably...)

RED DEAD REDEMPTION 2

Yes, this game came out last year, but honestly I don't care. I played it this year and that's all that matters. However, as I am coming to this game later than most, most of what can be said about Red Dead 2 has already been said by way smarter people than I am, so I won't retread any of that well-trodden ground. So, I'll keep this short: Arthur Morgan's journey is one of the best told story in AAA gaming to date, and never have I felt more like a rustic cowboy wandering the the old west. People harped on the sluggish nature of the controls, but I honestly liked it, as it added to that feeling of being a wandering cowboy. I took my time meandering through the the forests of Roanoke Ridge, the deserts of New Austin, and the red earth of Scarlet Meadows. There was nothing more that I enjoyed in this game than gearing up, getting on my horse and just riding aimlessly until I encountered something that catches my attention, whether that be a 3-star animal, a legendary fish, or even a dilapidated church on a civil war battlefield. I put in well over 100 hours on PS4 earlier this year, and I've put in another 100+ hours on PC, and I don't see myself putting it down anytime soon.

Fucking superb, you funky little cowboy game.

OUTER WILDS

Outer Wilds is not only the best game of 2019, but probably one of my top 5 favourite games of all time. It's hard to describe what makes Outer Wilds a truly one-of-a-kind experience for me without spoiling the ending. It's a game driven purely by exploration and discovery. Knowledge of the world and how it works is the sole "progression" system in the entire game; so much so that you can beat it in your very first first session if you happened to have the discoveries spoiled for you. Go into as blind as possible, that’s what I did and it made the experience all the more special. Play this game, you will not be disappointed.

At this point, I will be spoiling the major parts of the story of Outer Wilds, primarily the ending, because it is the thing that I have not been able to stop thinking about since I first experienced it. Be warned that there be major spoilers beyond this point. Given that Outer Wilds is all about discovery, I highly recommend you do not read anything beyond this point if you haven't beaten it. Again, play this game, you will not be disappointed.

One of my earliest existential fears was when I learned about the lifespan of stars in the second grade. I remember it vividly: sitting in class, hearing my teacher describe the stages of a star's life, going from normal-sized star to red giant, then eventually to a supernova, then explaining that will happen to our Sun as well. The dawning realization that the Sun will grow to a size that will envelop the Earth terrified me beyond anything that has ever terrified me up until that point in my albeit short life. I couldn't sleep for days without fearing that the sun will expand, consume the Earth and burn everyone I ever loved alive. It didn't matter that my teacher said it would take millions upon millions of years before the Sun ever reached this stage, this was my single-biggest fear.

Fast-forward 23 years later to beginning of June of 2019, I pick up Outer Wilds based on the buzz the game was getting. I knew the game was based around a time-loop à la Majora’s Mask, but had no idea about one of it’s biggest “mechanics,” so to speak. My first few runs in that game resulted in premature deaths, so it took me a little bit to realize that the Sun explodes after 22 minutes and envelops everything in a fiery blaze. Seeing my childhood fear unfolding right in from of me just drove me to unravel the mysteries of the universe I inhabited, if nothing more so that I could find a way to stop it. As I learned more about the ostensible precursor race, the Nomai, whom were fixated on finding something called the Eye of the Universe but perished before they could find it, I got it in my head that, if I can just do what the Nomai failed to do, I could stop all of this from happening. Every time the time loop started, I would run out into space and unraveling the mystery further and further, each time being obliterated by the sun at the end of 22 minutes (or dying in a really stupid physics-y way), getting closer and closer to finding out what’s really going on.

Eventually, I discovered enough information to accomplish the task of reaching the Eye of the Universe: I found the coordinates of the Eye, a ship with the necessary warp-drive to get there, and a power source to make it all happen. With the keys in-hand to finally unlocking the answer to this mystery, I set off on what would be my final run: I performed the necessary tasks, said one last goodbye to the Solar System, and barreled into what I would eventually learn is the quantum singularity of time and space, a.k.a the Eye of the Universe. I stepped out into a vast, cold emptiness of quantum existence that was the Eye and wondered around, looking for something, anything. After falling through what seemed to be a quantum vortex, I eventually found a museum not unlike the one you find at the beginning of the game; a museum that is part of the tutorial for the game. This museum contains a picture at the entrance showcasing the founders of the Outer Wilds Ventures space program, the in-universe space program your nameless, faceless alien character is a part of. However, in this quantum facsimile of this tutorial museum, which is cloaked in darkness save for the sole light emanating from your spacesuit, you're positioned to see the same picture you saw at the beginning of the game, only this time a new caption appears when inspecting it:

"Outer Wilds Ventures was founded by Feldspar, Gossan, Slate, and Hornfels to explore a solar system at the end of the universe."

I'm not trying to be hyperbolic when I say that: reading that caption started to make me go through the 5 stages of grief. I was immediately in denial of what I just read. “How could the universe be ending? The Hearthians just started their space program! How unfair it is for them for the universe they were just about to explore to end like that! Also, this is a video game! You’re supposed to give me the feel-good ending of being the hero and stopping the universe-ending event from ever happening!” As I explored the quantum museum more, the fact that the universe actually ending became more and more apparent and harder to ignore. Then, I recalled pieces of information I encountered during my travels that hinted (or plainly stated and I was too deluded to acknowledge them) that the universe was ending, and transitioned to the 2nd stage of grief: anger. Anger at myself for missing something so obvious and deluding myself into thinking that I could enact change on such a cosmic scale. I quickly entered the 3rd stage, bargaining, as I tried to snap myself out of it. “The game was pulling a fast one on me,” I told myself, “I hadn't reached the "end" of the ending yet, maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. Let’s not count all our chickens before they hatch!” I interacted with with the final prompt in the quantum museum, which transported me to a forest filled with galaxies. One by one, I watched these galaxies explode and fade from existence, until all that was left was darkness. It was at this point, I truly realized there was no stopping this, and I transitioned into the 4th stage: depression.

Through my depression, I stumbled across the dark, quantum glade to where I eventually found a quantum facsimile of myself, which no joke spooked me. Then all of a sudden, a campfire appears. The game asks me to settle, roasts some marshmallows, which I do, I guess. “What else can I do? It’s all pointless, the universe is over!” As I roast marshmallow after marshmallow, I'm eventually joined by a facsimile of the first Outer Wilds Ventures companion I met after launching into the stars for the first time: Esker. Esker  (”Feskermile? does that work?”) wants me to gather all the other facsimiles of the Outer Wilds Ventures folk I’ve met during my travels and have one last campfire jamboree. Still feeling defeated and hopeless, I begrudgingly set out into the darkness of the quantum forest to find Feldspar, Gabbro, Chert, and Riebeck, along with Solanum, the kinda-but-not-really-last-living Nomai I met on the Quantum Moon. Once everyone was gathered around the campfire, they started played the tune I've heard all throughout my travels in the solar system. A melody that immediately starts flooding my brain with memories of my adventures: seeing the islands of Giant’s Deep being flung into space by a storm of tornadoes; the asteroids of Hollow’s Lantern destroying the surface of Brittle Hollow, revealing a black hole core; traversing the endless fog of Dark Bramble while dodging giant eldritch anglerfish; watching the sand majestically trade places between the hourglass twins. All of these memories and more came rushing to the forefront of my mind as I listened to the characters I’ve come to know and love play the same blissful tune that propelled me on my journey up until this exact point.

As the members of the Outer Wilds Ventures space program and the both-living-and-dead Nomai finished playing their song, a new universe is born from the ashes of the doomed universe we're all currently in, which indicated to me that this is truly the end, not just for the universe, but also for the game in general. So, with a heavy sigh, I went around the campfire one last time and spoke with every character as a way to say goodbye. It was when I talked to Riebeck, the ever-optimistic banjo player, that I finally transitioned into the 5th and last stage of grief: acceptance.

"The past is past, now, but that's... you know, that's okay! It's never really gone completely. The future is always built on the past, even if we won't get to see it."

A wave of catharsis washed over my entire being. Grief is a feeling that I never truly felt while playing a video game before playing Outer Wilds. Sure, I've been sad when I character I liked gets killed and the like, but I never experienced grief so profound like the one I felt during the ending of Outer Wilds. It was grief for a universe still teeming with life about to end; it was grief for a species that just started looking at the stars not being able to fully explore their own domain; it was grief for a species that never saw the fruits of their scientific labour; ultimately, it was grief about the inevitability of death. Abject terror flooded my mind when I finally realized that the universe was truly ending and I was powerless to stop it. But that single line of dialogue from Riebeck allowed me to appreciate what was happening. I was finally happy, not because it was truly over, but because I was able to experience everything I did up until the very end. No ending, no matter the cosmic scale of it, can ever take away the memories I had existing in this universe.

With that, I collected myself, took one last look at everyone around the campfire, and collapsed the singularity, ending the current universe and giving birth to a new one, with the clearest sense of purpose I've ever had: I was finally able to confront and conquer one of my biggest fears.

[aion-rsa]

Superman & Lois Episode 2 DC Comics and Movie Easter Eggs and References

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This article contains Superman & Lois spoilers.

There’s no question that Superman & Lois really knows its stuff. The first episode was a genuine love letter to Superman history, and proved once and for all that you can do a faithful, reverent take on the Man of Steel legend without just retreading stuff people have seen a thousand times.

Superman & Lois episode 2 digs a little bit deeper for its lore, but once again pulls tons of terrific deep cuts from both DC Comics and the character’s history in movies and on TV.

Here’s everything we found…

Captain Luthor

Captain Luthor is from a world that was ravaged by an evil Superman (one wearing the black suit that we saw him wear on Elseworlds). Could this mean that this Luthor is from a world similar to Earth-3 in DC Comics, where the people we know as heroes are in fact evil and vice versa? If so, Captain Luthor could be Alexander Luthor, the power-suited and heroic champion of Earth-3 who fought against an evil Justice League known as the Crime Syndicate.

We have much more about Captain Luthor right here.

Human Defense Corps

One of the soldiers working with General Sam Lane is referred to as “Rosetti.” Could this be Colonel Reno Rosetti of DC’s Human Defense Corps? I think so, especially since it leads into…

7734

The mysterious 7734 is more than just “HELL” in numeric and backwards form. Its existence dates back to the Superman: New Krypton special, which kicked of a massive saga in the comics that eventually culminated in War of the Supermen.

There, 7734 was indeed the brainchild of Sam Lane, and it was meant to keep the planet safe from Superman-style extraterrestrial enemies. It blended military expertise with Lex Luthor-esque super science, so you can see how/why Captain Luthor might have been involved on his world.

Morgan Edge

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It’s not often that we get an Arrowverse character created solely by the legendary Jack Kirby, but that’s Morgan Edge! Edge first appeared in Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen #133 in 1970. This isn’t Edge’s first turn in the Arrowverse, having been played by Adrian Pasdar on Supergirl already. This appears to be a different Morgan Edge than the one Pasdar played (who ended his Supergirl run as a known criminal rather than the shady vulture capitalist we see here), which is certainly a result of changes made to reality in the wake of Crisis on Infinite Earths (like the recasting of Sam Lane and his warmer relationship with Clark and the very existence of Jordan Kent and the aging up of the boys to teenagers).

Chrissy Beppo

The character of Chrissy Beppo is a new creation for the show, but her name harkens back both to the classic Superman comics and to the trailblazing CW superhero series Smallville, albeit by way of the comics. The Smallville Legends web series expanded the universe of the show and featured a Smallville Ledger columnist named Christopher James Beppo.

The Beppo name comes from Superman comics of the 1960s, where it turned out that Jor-El had used a Kryptonian monkey as a test subject for the rocket that sent Kal-El to Earth. Beppo the Super-Monkey (look, the Silver Age of Comics was a weird time, ok?) eventually made his way to Earth, gained powers, and served alongside the Legion of Super-Heroes in the Legion of Super Pets. No, I am not making this up. This wasn’t even the 12th weirdest thing in Superman comics between roughly 1950 and 1969, so don’t @ me (or do!)

There’s another big Smallville connection, too…

Mayor George Dean

The sharp-eyed folks at the ever-reliable Kryptonsite pointed out that Mayor George Dean is played by Eric Keenleyside. And while Mayor “Dean” could possibly reference former TV Superman Dean Cain of Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman fame, he has a more direct connection to the Superman mythos, however minor.

Keenleyside played Chloe Sullivan’s father in a deleted scene from the Smallville pilot. He later turned up as “Mike the Bartender” in a single episode of Smallville season 2, “Suspect.”

Man of Steel

The music all through this show evokes the mood of Hans Zimmer’s excellent Man of Steel score, but it’s particularly noticeable in the Fortress of Solitude scenes. Additionally, the idea that it was a depletion of natural resources that started Krypton’s eventual spiral into destruction is something from the comics, but that was really spotlighted well in Man of Steel.

But speaking of that Fortress…

The Fortress of Solitude

The Fortress of Solitude looks slightly more claustrophobic than the way we’ve seen it portrayed on Supergirl in the past (where it featured the statues of Jor-El and Lara, a whole bunch of visible Kryptonian tech, and even a Legion flight ring) but hopefully we get to see more of it in the future. That being said, the color is consistent with the way we’ve seen it elsewhere in the Arrowverse and it’s still appropriately cold and icy looking.

The notion of using a sunstone crystal to operate a control panel that produces a hologram of Jor-El (more on him in a minute) who functions as the AI of the Fortress of Solitude as well as Kryptonian history teacher originated with 1978’s Superman: The Movie, which is not only incredibly influential on this show, but has seen elements of it increasingly adopted by the comics as well.

That holographic map of Kryptonopolis looks pretty cool, too. I can’t attest to whether or not this is the first mention of Kryptonopolis in the Arrowverse (we’ve had plenty of talk of Kandor and Argo City, of course).

Also, in the Son of Superman story by Peter Tomasi and Patrick Gleason which helped introduce Jon Kent in the comics, Clark does indeed take his son to the Fortress for evaluation after he first starts to display his powers. Only there it’s a much younger Jonathan (since Jordan has yet to be introduced in the pages of DC Comics).

Jor-El

That’s Angus McFayden (Braveheart) as Jor-El and he looks pretty cool in the role. It’s only recent portrayals of the character that have given him facial hair, which has also become the standard in the comics, too (in the past, Jor-El often looked pretty much indistinguishable from his son). Even though Clark said in the previous episode that his mom made him the costume (at least that cool early version we saw), it’s important to note that the “S” is still very much intended as the family crest of the House of El, just as it has been established on Supergirl.

There’s one other neat touch on Jor-El’s costume that feels like another nod to Superman: The Movie, though. The black and white color scheme is very similar to how Marlon Brando’s Jor-El dressed in that film, and in particular, the white sections of the costume reflect light in a way that’s very reminiscent of those costumes. It’s really cool.

New Carthage

Lois makes reference to some failed investments that Morgan Edge made in New Carthage. New Carthage is a fictional town in the DC Universe, roughly located around upstate New York like Poughkeepsie or New Paltz or somewhere. And like that latter college town, it’s the home of Hudson University, where Dick Grayson went to college. Folks, if this show is gonna keep dropping Batman deep cuts, I’m just gonna have to keep pointing ’em out!

Batman? Is that you?

On that note…Moldova is a real country, albeit one that was parodied/fictionalized as “Moldavia” in the very first episode of the 1966 Batman TV series, “Hi Diddle Riddle.” If you want to include the “Rory’s First Kiss” joke on the movie marquee from episode 1, this is the second Batman Easter egg on the show. No? Too much?

Friday Night Lights

The Smallville High football team is coached by “Coach Gaines.” Gary Gaines was the Permian Panthers football coach who was played by Billy Bob Thornton in Friday Night Lights. Helbing has also pointed out the Friday Night Lights vibes they want to evoke on this show with its football sequences, and how Lois and Clark handle small town parenting.

Conduit

The Sequoia movie theater has some graffiti that seems to be the initials BK or KB. Could this be Kenny Braverman, the supervillain known as Conduit who knew Clark had powers back in Smallville? OK, fine, I’m probably reaching here.

Miscellaneous Stuff…

The moving company that the Kents use to move from Metropolis to Smallville is called “Change of Pace” with the slogan “Go anywhere, anytime.” This may or may not be an echo of a sentiment Superman & Lois showrunner Todd Helbing expressed to me in a recent interview about the decision to move Superman’s base of operations. “The way we approached it was, if Flash is the guardian of Central City and Supergirl is the guardian of National City, Superman is the guardian of the world,” Helbing says. “So it really doesn’t matter where Superman’s based. He can fly anywhere in the world in a matter of seconds. Once you understand that, it really doesn’t matter where his home turf is… it could be anywhere.”

The post Superman & Lois Episode 2 DC Comics and Movie Easter Eggs and References appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[laceyspencer]

Return to the Spirit of the Athens School (Raphael, 1509 – 1511) and to Humanistic Culture- Juniper Publishers

History

The School of Athens is one of a group of four main frescoes on the walls of the Stanza (those on either side centrally interrupted by windows) that depict distinct branches of knowledge. Each theme is identified above by a separate tondo containing a majestic female figure seated in the clouds, with putti bearing the phrases: “Seek Knowledge of Causes,” “Divine Inspiration,” “Knowledge of Things Divine” (Disputa), “To Each What Is Due.” Accordingly, the figures on the walls below exemplify Philosophy, Poetry (including Music), Theology, and Law. The traditional title is not Raphael’s. The subject of the “School” is actually “Philosophy,” or at least ancient Greek philosophy, and its overhead tondo-label, “Causarum Cognitio”, tells us what kind, as it appears to echo Aristotle’s emphasis on wisdom as knowing why, hence knowing the causes, in Metaphysics Book I and Physics Book II. Indeed, Plato and Aristotle appear to be the central figures in the scene. However, all the philosophers depicted sought knowledge of first causes. Many lived before Plato and Aristotle, and hardly a third were Athenians. The architecture contains Roman elements, but the general semi-circular setting having Plato and Aristotle at its centre might be alluding to Pythagoras’ circumpunct (Figure 1).

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Economy Social Science or Positive Science? The End of a Sociocultural Model

A visit to the Vatican Museums gives a chance to explore the history of humanity through its genius and works of art. The masterpieces found there illustrate the sense of aesthetic and cultural values of that history, the spirit of those who created them, the inspiration and willpower that guided their task. In short, what human beings have been capable of producing is simply amazing.Initially visitors admire the beauty of these works, often without asking themselves what the artist wanted to express, just taking in the exterior image while failing to observe the sense and spirit that breathes through their works. Among these masterpieces, a really outstanding one (and very pertinent to this book) is The School of Athens that Raphael painted starting in 1508 when, aged 25, he was called to Rome by Pope Julius II. Raphael grew up during the Italian High Renaissance and drew on legendary characters who have contributed to creating world history as we know it today, adding his own contribution [1-5].

In that extraordinary, perhaps unique period, artists, poets, intellectuals, scientists, philosophers, mathematicians and physicists met and exchanged ideas in an ongoing dialogue about the essence of man, which was the focus of their interest. A cultural scene free of dogma and intolerance was created, one open to a cross-fertilization of ideas that led to a great leap forward in creative and intuitive thought. A similar cultural scene had previously existed during the golden age of Athens and the thinking of that time can rightly be considered one of the cornerstones of our history and culture [6-8]. In his fresco Raphael portrays the characters with such masterly brush strokes that even their spirit reaches out to fire the imagination and penetrate the heart of those viewing it. The leading lights of that era are all there, gathered around the two central characters – Plato, his finger pointing skywards to indicate the world of ideas and the spirit, and Aristotle, who instead stretches out his hand palm down to indicate the real world and scientific experience [9].

The world of ideas and the spirit can never be divorced from an empirical quest for truth. So, everything must be focused on a search for what is true, for beauty, to promote the primary aim – the fulfilment of human happiness. But the world was by no means a paradise in either ancient Athens or in Raphael’s time. Both were times in which life was generally extremely hard, unrefined, times of trepidation and suffering. And yet despite these conditions human beings managed to achieve moments of sublime creativity [10].

Today we ought to be in a completely different situation from that of Plato and Raphael, thanks to the progress and power of technical knowledge. A knowledge which has become an end for the modern world, one that should have provided answers to satisfy our primary needs, releasing us from our “shackles”, reducing inequalities, freeing us, at least in part, from a life of fatigue and suffering in physical terms. Scientific knowledge should have helped to create a situation in which our free, inventive mind could once again be the driving force of life, leading us to that dimension of spiritual joy we admire in splendid works of art [11].

This is what Keynes thought would happen. In his essay Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren written in 1930 he said: ‘Thus for the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem – how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, which science and compound interest will have won for him [...]. The love of money as a possession – as distinguished from the love of money to the enjoyments and realities of life – will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semipathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease’. Sadly, this has not been the case, in fact, the very opposite has happened. Technical-instrumental knowledge has become moral knowledge, an indisputable truth and so in no way open to discussion [12]. It dictates the rules for everyday life to the point that humanity itself has become its instrument. The technical culture of modern times has failed to achieve the aim that was hoped for. However, it is not the culture that is at fault but the improvidence of homo sapiens.

We have failed to redistribute wealth; inequalities, famine and poverty have increased; we have not resolved major health problems afflicting most of the world’s population. Technical knowledge has separated us from our souls, made us sterile and impersonal, incapable of true human relations and the profound sentiments of love and joy. Unless, that is, these are linked to the sole satisfaction of material and fleeting pleasures. We have imprisoned thought, disintegrated family bonds and forced youngsters to roam the streets without hope. All of us have made this mistake, given that responsibilities are always personal, even if at different levels. This modern age needs rethinking if we are not to find ourselves once more facing chaos [13].

The first step we must take is to ask ourselves if all this talk about the economy being the cause of the crisis of these times is true. Can we continue to think that all the misfortunes mentioned previously are the result of the malfunctioning of rules governing the economy? Or should we admit that a cultural model which has produced the opposite results to those intended has collapsed? Our lack of a social and spiritual life, of creative and intuitive thought, the drabness of an existence in which we are no longer capable of questioning the meaning of life itself ‒ can all of this depend on a malfunctioning of the economy? Is economy social science o positive science? We urgently need to review our recent history [14]. We must question the role we have assigned to the economic sciences and methods of study these have been based on for the past thirty years. Methods effectively founded based on the fundamental idea that economic sciences and the underlying choices and decisions involved are “totally” independent from human nature. So, this means our emotions have no bearing on these choices and decisions. The assumption has therefore been that given equal conditions and information the results will always be the same, thereby endorsing a rational approach that cannot be questioned.

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The New “Leviathan” Is Finance as an Unconventional Weapon: The End of Real Economy and Human Spirit. History ‘S Evolution

Instead the technical-rational culture applied to a social science like economics has produced a non-science. Friedrich von Hayek already warned us of this in his speech on accepting the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 1974: ‘It seems to me that this failure of the economists to guide policy more successfully is closely connected with their propensity to imitate as closely as possible the procedures of the brilliantly successful physical sciences – an attempt which in our field may lead to outright error. […] This brings me to the crucial issue. Unlike the position that exists in the physical sciences, in economics and other disciplines that deal with essentially complex phenomena, the aspects of the events to be accounted for about which we can get quantitative data are necessarily limited and may not include the important ones.

Hayek’s warnings didn’t manage to halt the diffusion of a model that we could define as “the mirage of rationality”. Today we find ourselves having to face the failure of a model that has separated the nature of people from the results of their activity. We have ignored six thousand years of history with an arrogance that can only have been inspired by the hubris of technical science and interests that the latter ought to have legitimated. The inseparable bond between the technical culture and economics, as recognized and studied, leaves the door wide open to humanity’s ancestral greed. A limitless hunger for profit realizable only through material goods. It creates the very system we are prisoners of today and is the source of a deadly risk. The risk of a society in which we become objectivised and lose all sense of ourselves, of our life, our feelings and creative ability [15-18].

It is artistic masterpieces that show how our most intimate being is rooted in a sense of creative spirituality as opposed to being concerned exclusively with an obtuse rationality for its own sake. So today the time has come to again make economics a tool and not an end. A process must be launched to humanize it, abandoning the absoluteness of a rational approach that repudiates history. Rethinking our role and the sense of our life is the real challenge we must face all together, for ourselves and for future generations [19]. In this context, some declarations on the non-role of the humanistic (classical) school and culture provide evidence of shallowness, a limited real culture, falling into dangerous demagoguery because in the long run, despite all the good intentions of this world, the lesson that history teaches go unlearnt. In this sense, among the “good” reforms - adjectives do not replace content and must be defined with respect to the ends (good for what?) - the purely technical school certainly has some positive aspects but the debate on the humanistic school and on the uselessness of dead languages explains better than any other argument the aforementioned perception of the incorrect understanding of the real historical moment we are living. The judgement of the futility of dead languages is a dangerous cultural drift of the debate on the best type of school in the world - the classical (in this author’s opinion) - precisely today that humanism is the path to take to overcome the era of barbarians, as Vico defined the extreme limit of the social and moral degradation that marks “the courses and recourses” of a cyclical history. The great G.B. Vico who wrote “New Science” in 1725 had had a stroke of genius on the cyclical nature of history because the nature of its actor has never changed and history is dictated by the emotional nature of man perennially struggling between the path of aggression and that of solidarity - Eros and Thanatos in ancient Greek – which the genius Freud, profound scholar of Greek and Latin, had analysed drawing on the psychic structure of human nature [20-22].

Historical periods alternate according to the prevalence of one or other social model tending to greater or lesser solidarity or aggressiveness, in this case, the conflicting socio-cultural context contributes to enhancing the aggressive part of the human soul, ending up in the pains of war. The pain of confrontation between men then leads to wisdom as the great Aeschylus and the Greek tragedians - Sophocles and Euripides - had foreseen; 2000 years passed before another great tragedian such as Shakespeare joined their ranks. Man is not naturally good, otherwise religions would not state as the first commandment “love thy neighbor Fas thyself”. Vico evidenced the changing of the time of the gods, heroes and barbarous men representing the worst period from which man must try to return to the time of the gods [23].

The long waves that run through the times of history show the drama of human life from the Greek thought whose ancient language is not commonly spoken today but the content has contributed and still contributes to the development of Western civilization and represents its cultural matrix. Is it better to have living languages but dead thought or dead languages but living thought? We are at the end of a socio-cultural model that has raised technical and instrumental knowledge to incontrovertible truth by attributing it purposeful and metaphysical value that it does not have, and so the questions we had asked of philosophy, religion and mythology, today we ask of medicine and the measurable science. The single technical-rational thought has removed from our lives the fundamental rights written in 1948 with the blood of two devastating wars, stifling creative and intuitive thinking. We have returned to a type of Alexandrian, industrious, scientific culture dedicated only to the facts but without the ability to make real and important discoveries for the profound life of man and incapable of creating a single true value [24].

The deification of technology and the principle of utility have as their “nemesis” the increasing aridity in the field of artistic, philosophical, religious and even scientific achievements. Technique becomes an end and man the means. At least since Keynes, a profound scholar of classical studies, no general theory has been produced and precisely in the “The End of Laissez-Faire” he wrote, “A study of the history of opinion is preliminary to the emancipation of the mind. I do not know which makes a man more conservative – to know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past” [25]. In the end, history vindicated him and disavowed the foundations of the Chicago School who helped deify finance. After Keynes, economics and finance took on the role of the philosopher’s stone that solves the problems of life, and economics from a moral and social science has been unnaturally turned into an exact science. This is the great deception of a science devoid of scientific foundations whose deviated nature was first condemned by Aristotle in “Politica”, which students today should read, and not only those in classical schools [26].

Economics - oikia nomos - was born as and remains a social science, only the interested can consider it exact and only in order to use it as a monetary weapon with the power to destabilize social systems. Only a return to the convertibility of money into a real asset -the gold exchange standard -can remove it from the mythological context in which it was falsely issued and return it to a means of exchange and not a value. Today we are in a profound anthropological crisis, a kind of transition between the late Roman Empire and the Middle Ages, as Vico wrote, “historia se repetit”. We do not yet understand the roots of our problems, so we continue to worsen the state of things.

Every single day we see all types of devastation and continue talking about the economic crisis and not the real crisis of man as a person who has given up thinking, leaving us at the mercy of ancient ghost that seemed to have vanished after two devastating world wars but duly reappeared in a global age as the biblical damnation. “… The educational system, which is first and foremost a training school devoted to ‘useful knowledge’ and the crafts. Its chief business is to prepare successful businessmen, craftmen, engineers and technicians, lawyers, doctors, teachers, preachers and so on. Mastery is sought in such arts as amassing a fortune, farming, home cooking, barbering, the invention of machines, research work, teaching and preaching. Elementary, high-school and college education – all are oriented principally in the same direction, paying scant attention, if any, to the forgotten purpose of real knowledge and wisdom: the nature of true reality and true values” wrote Pitirim Sorokin in 1941 in his work “The Crisis of our Age”, which would seem to have been written in the future [27].

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The Role of Humanistic Culture

The humanities school (this from someone who went to a scientific school, yet with great attention to classical studies; but at the time, the school closest to home was chosen) was introduced by Giovanni Gentile in his last book “Genesis and the Structure of Society” where he theorized the humanism of work, anticipating the problems of today and noting that classical culture was crucial to develop thinking and creativity, qualities which today have withered. The history of man shows that knowledge and thought are fundamental to carry society forward over time.

The a priori forms of prevention are harmful and short-term, classical studies marked the lives of many who carried the world forward: Fermi, Rita Levi Montalcini, Maiorana, Dulbecco, only in the sciences in Italy but also Pirandello, Carducci ... But if we look at history, we have Keynes, Hayek, von Mises, Freud, Bertrand Russell, Einstein, Marx, Leibnitz, Heisenberg. Bernard Shaw said, “ Napoleon and other great men were makers of empires, but these eight men whom I am about to mention were makers of universes and their hands were not stained with the blood of their fellow men. I go back 2,500 years and how many can I count in that period? I can count them on the fingers of my two hands. Pythagoras, Ptolemy, Kepler, Copernicus, Aristotle, Galileo, Newton and Einstein -- and I still have two fingers left vacant”, all with the same classical culture as inspiration.

Humanity over centuries has sent little men to appear for us at the edge of the abyss on which the Earth travels, the suns blazes and light parades. All great politicians who extended the Commonwealth studied at Oxford and Cambridge, where the basic subjects were classical from Greek and Latin, they absorbed a more integral vision of human nature and the way in which history evolves. Since the technical-rational cultural model has prevailed, we have lost touch with the flow of history because we only look at the future as a guarantee of success. Thus, “homo sapiens”, as we presume to call ourselves, while seemingly very attentive to understanding the causes and effects of physical ills is no longer able to understand the relationship between cause and effect in his history. He behaves as if the past had never existed and as if history had never shown similar situations to those, he now finds himself before, pushed to a form of repetitive coercion.

The consequences of this historical blindness are before our eyes every day, seeing the disasters of US foreign policy dominated by the idea of technical power and unable to understand history because its ruling class has lost touch with it and has forgotten the cultural lesson of the founding fathers who were accustomed to speaking in Latin and Greek. A cultural model that is also experiencing a dramatic moment of social instability due to poverty, unemployment, inequality, devastating social pathologies, but continuously hidden and masked by the media mystifying reality.

If the principle of utility is the only principle applied, then only that which is useful or instrumental serves, and life itself becomes a means to achieving short-term material desires. If this principle is invoked to denounce classical studies as non-vocational, the ancient languages have died but the thought that lies beneath them shines more than ever, and the study of their structure helps to develop the most important thing that man can do but seems to have unlearned by only studying technical subjects, namely, “thought”. We have lost the ability to think, because thinking takes effort, time, does not pay right away and is dangerous, as Bertrand Russell said, “Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth – more than ruin, more even than death [28].

Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible; thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid... Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man …. But if the thought is to be held by many, not the privileged few, we must deal with fear. It is fear which stops the man, lest their cherished beliefs are not going to be illusions, fear that the institutions with which they live will not be harmful, fear that they themselves will not be less worthy of respect would have assumed”.

Given what has been said previously it seems we need to rethink our way of being a society. The desire to give space to humanity’s sense of omnipotence again seems to have whisked it back in history – to the myths of Prometheus, of Icarus – and force it once more to face the eternal dilemma of human destiny. A more social vision of life will be needed in order to re-pacify people with themselves, one in terms of relationships and not as single individuals, and to redefine the priorities of their needs. This doesn’t mean curtailing progress but conceiving it in a different way. In this sense the priority becomes to refocus on people’s spiritual dimension, today subordinated to the physical one, which determines choices and priorities of their needs. The spiritual and religious dimension are not closely bound to a religious belief because the ability to “feel” is within each one of us, it is innate. Today it is dormant but not lost, our task is to recover it, starting from each single moment of every day of our life, in relationships that bind us to others.

We need to return to a relationship with the natural world that the real economy can help reconstruct. Contact with this facilitates growth of the social dimension, not only considered as a series of mere chemical but also emotional reactions, which must once more become the subject of economics and other social sciences. All of this doesn’t mean renouncing the vital contribution of sciences in our life, but the acceptance of evidence that they cannot be absolute values, they cannot be considered moral knowledge to the point that we are induced to consider only the material dimension of our life. The return to a more spiritual dimension is a course to follow because it is written in the agenda of our history that, as European philosophy has attempted to describe, seems to follow a continual alternation over time of the predominance of material decadence and spiritual revival. In fact, we cannot renounce our spiritual dimension without renouncing living: we have a permanent nostalgia for our own being beyond material aspects, a nostalgia that is alive in us like embers that lie dormant under ashes.

In his work Homo creatus est written in 1986, Hans Urs von Balthasar speaks of “man’s nostalgia”, reminding us that this need for a spiritual dimension is an innate feeling, first mentioned in Greek philosophy that aimed to explain the sense of harmony of life. Starting from Plato’s Symposium, in which all the participants discuss Eros who has nostalgia and flies off towards the supreme and divine beauty, to Plotinus’ key concept of conversion (epistrophé) and of nostalgia that hastens towards the return (hormé), all of Greek philosophy only considered the issue of the true nobility of man. Man, who must not be content with fleeting pleasures and joys unless he wants to renounce satisfying his aspiration to happiness. The focus of this search for wisdom (philosophia) is always the blissful life as being man’s aim and his ultimate essential form, towards which he tends after his conversion from mere earthly captivity (think of Plato’s allegory of the cave). Given that, as we have said, the difference between the natural and supernatural was unknown in Greek philosophy, it was expressed in the fall of the human soul from the divine heights from which, however, man brings a spark that forces him to feel nostalgia for what was once his country, the paradise lost.

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Conclusion

Begin Again from People, The Sense of Humanistic Culture

Sixty-five years have passed since various premonitory considerations were made by Europe’s philosophers. During this period the facts have borne out their intuitions as to the danger of relying on a technical culture alone to provide guidance for society. Today it would seem that the role of feelings is making headway in people’s hearts ‒ appropriate answers and conduct in the face of change can no longer be postponed. It is time for people to realize what happens to a society when it fails to invest in social relations and the need imposed by history to again make social capital the focus of our interests. We must understand that social capital cannot be replaced by economic capital. A good society is always the precondition for growth of economic values and empirical evidence would seem to confirm this thesis.

But the question is whether we will manage in time to dominate this current, limitless greed and aggressiveness in favour of a greater focus on a sense of fraternity and solidarity expressed by love for others. Homo sapiens really does seem to be rather stubborn as regards understanding its own errors. A species that seems to be very attentive as regards learning the causes and effects of physical ills but that has not yet managed to correlate causes and effects in its history. Conceptually, similar situations to those we find ourselves having to face today have occurred before. Perhaps this explains why history is ignored, as if by doing so erects a kind of barrier to the fear of having to face suffering. Whether Homo sapiens will manage to deserve this appellation is difficult to say, time will tell if intelligence will turn out to be a benefit or a curse. Should it turn out to be a curse, this will only be because of a failure to use a truly precious gift, namely, our “humanity”, in an intelligent way.

The past few centuries have seen revolutions, wars and other tragic events that have ended, even in recent times, with solemn declarations of peace and democracy. But unfortunately, in the brief course of one generation they seem to disappear. And so, the history of progress of civilizations continues a course filled with doubts. Answers to the needs of an increasingly global society represented by a culture that relies on a single philosophy – technical knowledge as an end in itself – is showing it has reached the end of the line with the collapse of society and the very essence of humanity.

The time has come to rethink economic studies, making a move away from the technical-rational paradigm that has proved inappropriate for the aim assigned to it, to a different one capable of broadening the field of studies to include human nature as a decisive variable. An approach that considers human beings as “individuals” in an integral sense in order to provide a complete and constructive contribution towards the development of society. Absolute faith in scientific progress has ended up by creating an exaggerated sense of omnipotence that in the end has turned against us, because our ability to govern this tumultuous growth has not kept pace with it. Humanity has become so infatuated with its conquests that people have lost sight of themselves, ending up by considering their very own lives as if they were just another consumer good. As Guardini said, people must again find the ability to bring the excess of power that has been created over their lives under control by returning to an order of things capable of restoring harmony within themselves and the world

‘In a context of uncertainty unparalleled in history, one that in no way compares to developments in our ability to dominate nature, people now aspire to a valid order that can remain under their power. An order that is both useful and promotes human progress, capable of reconciling humanity with the extent of its scientific knowledge, which today is perceived as an absolute value, placing it at the service of the search for a more widespread common good’ [9]. Now, perhaps, the boundary of the enigma and this hope seem better defined and can therefore lead to a clearer answer for everyone, while remaining fully aware, however, that responsibilities are always an individual concern. Let us hope that in the middle of all this confusion and uncertainty we manage to see the light and find the right path to follow. A path that humanity must find in order to fulfil its destiny and its unique and creative mission on this Earth (Figure 2).

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Going Big - Game Informer

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Going Big - Game Informer

Introduction

Since Pokémon’s debut, the mainline series has existed solely on handheld devices. Being able to adventure in the world of Pokémon while being anywhere in the real world is enticing, but fans have long clamored to see the series deliver a mainline console RPG. However, developer Game Freak was reluctant to create a game that players couldn’t take with them. The release of the hybrid Nintendo Switch changed everything.

Now, unrestrained by the traditional limitations of dedicated handheld devices, Game Freak sets out to make what it considers to be the ultimate version of Pokémon. We traveled to the team’s Tokyo headquarters to learn the inspirations behind the various additions and advancements of Pokémon Sword and Shield.

Walking into the unassuming Carrot Tower in Tokyo, you would never guess the creators of the highest-grossing entertainment franchise in the world were just a couple hundred feet above you. After a short elevator ride and a stroll through a plain, twisting hallway, a door opens to a conference room and you’re suddenly presented with the rich history that has been made here. Lining the walls of the conference room is every game, every soundtrack, and hundreds of figures from the world’s largest entertainment juggernaut.

While the shelves housing the mainline entries of the Pokémon series read like a history book for Nintendo’s handheld devices, when you get to the end, Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu and Let’s Go, Eevee immediately stick out as the sole console entries. The games, which released last year on Nintendo’s current flagship platform, effectively transitioned the series to the hybrid format. But while those reimaginings of the first-generation games served as a crowd-pleasing bridge to the next evolution of the franchise, they did more for the development teams at Game Freak.

The Pokémon Let’s Go games served as a way for the studio to get down the development basics for Nintendo’s new console – introducing new features, like wild Pokémon appearing in the environments and a giant leap forward in terms of visuals. Fans enjoyed these games and loved having a modern remake as a starting point for the franchise on Switch, but Game Freak had greater ambitions with the new technology than simply recreating past glories.

During the development of the Let’s Go games, the team realized creating games on Switch was no small task when compared to developing on lower-resolution handheld devices. “I think the biggest takeaway was how the graphics and rendering work is so different from the 3DS,” says Pokémon Sword and Shield director Shigeru Ohmori. “Needing to staff up and figure out how we’re able to get that to work really well on Switch takes more time, and we needed more resources.”

The studio grew in size, nearly doubling the core team since the development of Sun and Moon. With 180 to 200 core members, hundreds of outsourced and external partners, and a large marketing department, the full team is massive. When you factor in the localization teams across the nine languages the game is launching in, Ohmori estimates that around 1,000 names will appear in the credits of Pokémon Sword and Shield.

Using key takeaways from the Let’s Go games, the rapidly growing team at Game Freak forged ahead with its vision for the next generation of Pokémon games. “We set out with the idea of making the ultimate, strongest, the best Pokémon game yet, being on Nintendo Switch, the first time an all-new generation is coming to a console,” Ohmori says. “It was really just kind of applying this idea of ‘ultimate’ to every facet of the game: gameplay, visuals, everything. That was really the theme for when I set out making the game: the greatest Pokémon game.”

  Battling the Status Quo

Battling the Status Quo

To craft the “ultimate” Pokémon game, Game Freak put everything under a microscope. Across seven generations and five video game systems to this point, familiar battle mechanics that have stood the test of time always carry over in the series. Since the beginning, players have taken part in turn-based battles with Pokémon that can learn up to four moves. Despite that basic formula remaining firmly in place over the years, Game Freak has explored ways to change it up.

“I think with the Pokémon games, you’re taking the elements that existed before and add onto them with every game, but we don’t just take the elements for granted,” says planning director Kazumasa Iwao. “Each time we make a new game, we review what’s there and make sure they make sense for the project and that we’re confident we can make them fun for the next game.”

  Why Did A Console Game Take So Long?

Since the series’ inception on Game Boy in the 1990s, fans have begged Game Freak for a mainline Pokémon RPG for home consoles. Until the release of the Nintendo Switch, that project would have compromised what Game Freak considers one of the series’ most important aspects.

“We think it’s really important to not have the experience be totally closed,” says producer Junichi Masuda. “Having it facilitate the real-life interactions – playing with friends in the same space, and talking with each other – facilitating that is a part of the Pokémon experience, rather than just what’s happening on the screen. It’s fun to play alone at home as well, but it’s probably more fun if you’re playing with friends at a festival.”

Masuda also points toward the in-store Pokémon distributions that happen at retailers across the world. During these in-store events, players can bring their systems in or obtain an exclusive card to download a special Pokémon. “We do that so you can go there to that location and you may run into a friend or meet somebody you didn’t know before and connect through the game,” he says. “Those moments turn into memories and add value to that Pokémon you get; every time you see it, you’ll remember that experience, and we think those experiences are valuable.”

Now, with the Switch offering the best of both the home console and handheld worlds, Game Freak is excited to finally give fans the mainline Pokémon RPG they’ve been wanting for decades without sacrificing its desire to have the games be portable.

  According to Ohmori, the team even thought about changing up the very core of the battle system from the traditional turn-based experience, but reconsidered when thinking of the initial themes for this next entry. “With Sword and Shield, we felt like expressing the turn-based battles in their ultimate form,” he says.

With that level of willingness to re-examine the core tenets of the series, the team looked toward other ways to experiment without completely disrupting the beloved balance. Even mainstays like Pokémon being able to learn four moves was looked at. The studio considered bumping the number of moves up to five, or even down to three, but nothing felt right.

“If you make it five or even more than five, that makes it so a lot of the Pokémon can really do anything, and it becomes a lot harder to read what your opponent might do because there are just that many more possibilities of moves they could use,” Iwao says. “I think that hurts the balance of the gameplay quite a bit. At the same time, even if you reduce it by one to three, you really start seeing there are haves and have nots in the Pokémon world. Like, these Pokémon are obviously way stronger than the rest of these Pokémon. We keep coming back and finding that four is the right number for the current battle system, but it is something we revisit.”

One recent example of Game Freak changing things up with the series prior to this generation is how Pokémon Sun and Moon did away with Hidden Machines (HMs). This convention, which was in place since Pokémon Red and Blue, allowed players to teach moves that Pokémon can use both in and out of battle. They acted as keys of sorts, allowing players to access new areas once they obtain the right HM and corresponding gym badge to allow them to use the ability outside of battle. In Pokémon Sun and Moon, those HMs were replaced by Ride Pokémon. The team wanted to give players a higher degree of freedom in Pokémon Sword and Shield, and as such, didn’t feel the concept of HMs fit into the themes of the new game.

While that modernization is carried over from Sun and Moon, several new elements are being introduced into Sword and Shield that differentiate it from past games. The Exp. Share item, which spreads experience points learned to all Pokémon in your party is no more. Instead, Sword and Shield automatically spreads out the experience without an item.

In perhaps the biggest modernization to the core elements of the Pokémon franchise, the game now autosaves. In past mainline Pokémon games, you had to remember to stop and save occasionally or run the risk of losing substantial progress if you turned off the system or your batteries died. With Sword and Shield, players benefit from an autosave functionality that seamlessly records your progress in the background as you go. However, for those who want a more traditional Pokémon experience of stopping the action to manually save, you can turn this feature off; I imagine that will be a popular option when it comes to facing off against Legendary Pokémon.

Competitive players also have a new way to fill their parties, as a new backend parameter helps players use the Pokémon they catch from the outset of play in competitive battles. “Traditionally in the series, you start with your starter Pokémon and then you catch a lot of Pokémon in the beginning, and those are with you throughout your whole adventure, and the player gets attached to them,” Iwao says. “But a lot of times, they get into the competitive battles and they find they can’t actually use those Pokémon or they’re not competitive, so they have to go out and find the exact right Pokémon or breed them in a certain way to make sure they’re viable in competitive battle.”

To address that issue, Pokémon Sword and Shield introduces new systems that allow your favorite Pokémon to become useable in competitive matches. While Game Freak won’t elaborate too much, Iwao says players will know it when they see it. In previous games, you could have a Pokémon with all the right stats, but a personality that makes it a bad choice for competitive, meaning it wasn’t the best choice in high-level matches. With Pokémon Sword and Shield, players can still breed to try and obtain the perfect specimen, but they also have ways to circumvent that problem. “We’re doing a lot of stuff in the back end introducing systems that allow players to make sure that Pokémon they want to use in competitive battles are viable,” Iwao says.

These changes are just the start of what sets Pokémon Sword and Shield apart from prior Pokémon games, but before the team could really fit the pieces together, it needed to decide on where it would take place.

Going To Galar

Going To Galar

Concepts for what is now known as Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield began floating around during the development of Pokémon Sun and Moon, but it wasn’t until the media tour for those games that things started to click into place. While touring the world in the lead up to the release of 2016’s Sun and Moon, Game Freak co-founder and Sword and Shield producer Junichi Masuda became fascinated by London and the U.K. “I remember being there with the feeling of the country and I was also looking at the history and the strength the country has; that inspired me to base the region off that,” he says.

Masuda and Ohmori began kicking around ideas for a region inspired by the U.K. To brainstorm, the team turned internally to an invaluable asset: James Turner, who has been designing Pokémon since the fifth generation of the series. While he now resides in Tokyo to work at the Game Freak headquarters, he grew up on the British countryside.

This concept art showing the player’s home was used as reference when creating the game’s 3D model

Throughout his time at Game Freak, the team spoke highly of the U.K., but it was never in serious consideration to be a region for a game. However, at a certain point, Turner began picking up on some hints that his home country might be in the running. “I was working on a different project and they were beginning development on what would become Sword and Shield, and I would hear from people working on it, ‘We have some things we want to ask you about. We need your opinion on something,’ and I’d be pulled away from what I was doing” he says. “It became pretty clear they were thinking about England and they wanted my opinion about the English countryside or the culture and stuff like that.”

Eventually, the quick questions about England became inquiries about him joining the team for the next Pokémon game. When it was revealed the studio was planning a region called Galar based on the U.K., Turner’s brain kicked into overdrive thinking about what in the U.K. could translate into a Pokémon game and what should be highlighted.

Turner was named art director for the project and he began making a list of what he hoped to accomplish with the design of the new region. Having grown up away from the major cities, he knew the importance of making the countryside just right. “The greenery of the countryside, the patchwork farmlands – that’s a really beautiful aspect – the pretty small towns, and the big cities as well – they can be really impressive; I wanted to get that across in the game.”

In addition to getting the beauty of the rolling hills and the impressive nature of the cities across, Turner wanted to bring a level of authenticity to the region beyond just the landmarks everyone knows from postcards. “I also wanted to convey the small details that people who come from the U.K. or people who visit the U.K. a lot, they can look at them and feel familiar, and it doesn’t feel like a rough interpretation, but something that is really true to the details,” he says.

One example of Turner helping the studio accomplish this came with the signboards scattered across the region. Initially, the designer of the signboards used a medieval fantasy style for the signs. Turner rejected the design in favor of pursuing something more authentic to the real-life region. He pushed the team to create something more familiar to people who have been to the U.K., recreating the kinds of fonts and color schemes used in the actual signs in Britain.

Despite this push for authenticity in the Galar region paying homage to the U.K., Turner understands players want variety and exaggerations in the world. “It is based on the U.K., but there are more colorful locations as well within the game to create a sense of adventure,” he says.

What’s In A Name?

What’s In A Name?

Pokémon Sword and Shield’s name draws inspiration from the setting of the Galar region, but a lot more goes into naming than just picking something related to the area. Traditionally, the names of mainline Pokémon games have some relationship to the themes of the game or other games in the series.

After two generations of color-based games in Red and Blue followed by Gold and Silver, Masuda thought of Ruby and Sapphire as the start of the “jewel” series, which concluded with the following generation’s Diamond and Pearl. For Black and White, while it was technically a return to color-based naming conventions the series started with, he more wanted to represent two opposing colors. However, starting with X and Y, Masuda was presented with a unique challenge as it was the first time the games were launching worldwide simultaneously.

“We wanted to make sure we had a title that would be shared across all the different countries, so we wouldn’t have to localize the titles,” Masuda says of Pokémon X and Y. “Up until then, all the titles had been localized; Red was Rouge in French. I wanted to make sure for the first title to be released worldwide at the same time, it would be a name that could be the same everywhere.”

For Sword and Shield, Masuda wanted to look toward the themes of creating the strongest, ultimate version of Pokémon. The names Sword and Shield weren’t decided until the last minute. However, the team had art for the two Legendary Pokémon. One was a dog holding a sword in its mouth, while the other was a dog with a head shaped like a shield.

  Creating a Pokémon

With just over 800 Pokémon currently in the National Pokédex, the series is bound to eclipse the 1,000 mark either this generation or the following one. With so many distinct designs and styles, it’s remarkable the team can continue churning them out the way it has over the last couple decades.

The process of creating a Pokémon is an intense one, often beginning with a simple request to an artist. These requests are often saying they need a concept of a Pokémon for a particular scenario or are looking for a specific direction for a new creature. From there, the artist creates quick sketches with few details, which are shown to the team requesting to see if they’re heading in the correct direction. The groups iterate on the design based on feedback, with the gaps getting longer and longer each time as the artist adds more and more detail with each iteration.

For art director James Turner, who has been designing Pokémon since Gen V, one of the major challenges is coming up with something that hasn’t yet been seen in the series. “There are a lot of Pokémon,” Turner says. “To me, it’s like trying to park in a really crowded car park or something. You’re going this way, there’s a car there. You’re going this way, there’s a car. You’re trying to find some unique space. This color scheme has been used before, this animal has been used before. You’re trying to find something unique. That’s important.”

On top of that, it’s important that every aspect of a Pokémon’s design has potential real-world functionality and logic behind it. “You can’t just come up with a cool looking design or a cute-looking design that hasn’t got any logic behind it,” Turner says. “This Pokémon has these cool, big horns, and it looks mean and tough, but why would it have those horns? How does it live? How does it exist in this environment? That’s really important. If there’s no meaning behind the decorations, then they’re not really necessary for the design. We have to think about how this creature exists in the world and how it lives in the world.”

As a part of this process, only a very small percentage of concepted Pokémon make it onto the final lineup of creatures. According to Turner, it’s close to two or three out of every 10 Pokémon drawn make that into that game. However, once a concepted Pokémon makes it to a certain point down the design path, it’s rare they’re outright stopped.

Many of these concerns are addressed in meetings where the teams come together and determine which concepted Pokémon are in the game and which are out. It’s not always about the design of the Pokémon in question; sometimes it’s about the game already having a new electric or rock Pokémon and not needing another.

“There are really quite detailed opinions about that kind of stuff,” Turner says. “When you see a Pokémon at first, you think, ‘Oh that’s a cool design.’ But then if you start to think about it logically: Why would it exist in this world and what role would it have? Even though they are cool designs, there can be opinions that come up that makes it, ‘Actually that doesn’t quite fit within what we want to do this time around.’ There are a lot of detailed discussions.”

For those Pokémon that don’t make it into the game, there’s good news: The “rejected” designs often return in later games. “People submit designs for one generation, and they don’t get approved,” Turner says. “It might be just because it doesn’t fit within that region or it might be because the idea is not fully cooked yet. So they will go away with that design, and then the next region, the next game will start and they’ll bring it back, and maybe they’ve modified it a little bit, or maybe it fits better within the lineup, and those designs go ahead. I’ve seen them become final Pokémon within certain games.”

  The name derived from the Legendary Pokémon fit in with both the themes Masuda wanted to pursue, as well as the region, but it also took on new meaning for the team. “When a person goes to choose which version they want, maybe in the back of their mind, if they had power or strength, would they use it to fight or use it to protect? Maybe deciding what they would do with power when they choose which version to get,” he says.

The final order of business when it came to naming was to decide what those Legendary dogs that inspired the names of the games should be called. “Those were the last things we were able to determine. We thought it would be interesting to go back to colors with the Legendary Pokémon,” Ohmori says. “One of the things I had in my head was that in the Galar region, these were just kind of rumors; no one has actually seen them in the story. ‘I saw this red knight or this blue knight-looking creature.’ That’s the myth in the region, and I had this initial idea of ‘The Cyan’ or ‘The Magenta.’ Rather than going 100-percent straight like that, we played a little bit on the sound, like ‘Zacian’ and ‘Zamazenta,’ ‘The Cyan’ and ‘The Magenta’ to make it more like a name. The actual idea is that people would be like, ‘That Cyan!’ or ‘That Magenta!’ They’re describing it.”

  Turning Trainers Into Stars

Turning Trainers Into Stars

In addition to getting the visual design to feel authentic, Game Freak wanted to embrace the sports-centric culture of the U.K. Trainers are treated like star athletes, complete with collectible League Cards. While filling your albums with League Cards from A.I. and human trainers can be a fun goal (each card even has trivia or information about the trainer’s personality on the back), I enjoyed creating my own League Card, even with an extremely limited selection available in the build.

Even before customizing my character’s appearance on the card, I can choose from different backgrounds, effects, and frames. From there, I reposition my trainer on the card, and adjust their pose and facial expression before slapping a laminate coat of my choosing over the entire card.

You can also equip your trainer with a jersey and give them a number. However, if you’d rather go for a more casual look, Pokémon Sword and Shield gives you more customization options than has ever been seen in the series.

Past entries let you customize your outfit by selecting a top and a bottom, but now you can take it down to a granular level. Sword and Shield’s trainer customization options allow you to choose shirts, jackets, pants, dresses, socks, shoes, backpacks, hats, glasses, and gloves. You can also choose from several hairstyles to complete the look.

The team wanted shopping in the Galar region to remind you of shopping in a fashionable street in England. “That can feel very familiar for people who live in the U.K.,” Turner says. “There were a lot of bits here and there that I pulled from my own experience.”

Much like shopping in real life, you’re going to want to scour all the stores possible to find the right piece to complete your outfit; you can’t just go to one store and expect to see the entire collection of clothes. “There’s actually different clothing brands that serve different genres of clothing, and you’ll find that different towns specialize in some genres over the others,” Ohmori says.

Fashion even changes from town to town, encouraging players to bounce around to find the perfect look. “Big-city fashion is different from small-city fashion, and then there are more kind of punkish towns you can visit too,” Turner says.

The tribute to British sports culture continues with stadiums full of people during big battles. This setting delivers a new kind of atmosphere not seen in mainline Pokémon games to this point. The crowd reacts as action unfolds in the arena, including uproars, cheers, chants, and songs. The stadium itself also changes with the action, with certain things displayed on the screens around the arena, as well as music that plays.

All of these elements brought by the Galar region felt like a natural fit for the Pokémon series, but where it proved most valuable was in helping Game Freak begin to pull together disparate elements it wanted to implement into one cohesive vision.

Giant Ambitions

An early piece of concept art conveys the team’s desire of portraying Pokémon battles in the Galar region to look and feel like a sports broadcast

Giant Ambitions

The team had various ideas in mind for new features that could appear across the adventure, but they were nebulous and unattached. Several of the ideas they had in mind suddenly started snapping into place thanks to the idea of basing a game in a region inspired by the U.K.

“Just in general for a Pokémon game’s development and where the ideas come from, usually in our heads we have all these different ideas, existing as individual parts,” Masuda says. “For example, maybe we’ll have an idea for a connectivity feature, or a battle feature, or a Pokémon, then they’re kind of all existing in your head, then you’ll have these moments where, for example, you’re traveling or you’re going to a media interview session and you’ll feel the atmosphere of that location and all of it will come together like, ‘This is a good location to feature all of these other ideas I already had in my mind.’”

“There were definitely a lot of ideas,” Ohmori says. “There were a lot of ideas we explored for this game that we ended up not using. It all goes back to us having these individual parts swimming in our heads and finding the right one that makes sense for the game.”

Art director James Turner wanted to capture the colors and mood of the UK (including the patchwork farmland) in this concept art focusing on the homes of the player and rival

One of those ideas that seemingly snapped into place with a U.K.-inspired region was the new Max Raid Battles. For the first all-new console game in the series, Ohmori wanted to include a feature that reminded him of his younger days playing Nintendo 64 in the same room with his friends. He began brainstorming for ways to recreate that feeling, but didn’t have any great ideas. He eventually found inspiration in the mythologies of giants involved in the founding of ancient Britain.

The result is Max Raid Battles, where players can gather together with other trainers to take on massive Pokémon together. If the team of players can take down the giant creature, the trainers are rewarded with the opportunity to catch the defeated Pokémon. While that may sound familiar to anyone who has played Pokémon Go, the idea actually predates the implementation of raids in the mobile smash hit.

“The initial concept of having cooperative battles against a Pokémon – the raid idea – came before raids were even implemented in Pokémon Go, but we saw Pokémon Go implement this raid feature and how popular it was for people to get together in the same space and enjoy these cooperative experiences,” Ohmori says. “I think there was some influence, like how in Pokémon Go, you don’t need to be a hardcore battler to enjoy the raid battles; it’s really easy to invite a friend. We wanted to have that element in Sword and Shield’s raid encounters as well.”

However, before raids were introduced in Pokémon Go, this mechanic in Pokémon Sword and Shield was simply referred to as “cooperative battles.” With the term “raid” now cemented in the lexicon of millions of Pokémon fans across the world, Game Freak decided to play off that word to make the feature instantly recognizable for a large chunk of its fan base.

Much like Pokémon Go’s raids, the battles are ranked using a star system; the more stars a raid has, the more difficult it will be for players. According to Iwao, players might be in for a rude awakening if they think they can just coast through the higher-ranked Max Raid Battles.

“I think it’s going to have a kind of difficulty we haven’t seen in a lot of main series Pokémon games up until now,” Iwao says. “Even for me, a seasoned Pokémon player, even if I go with one of the five-star Max Raid Battles, I can definitely run into situations where I’m not able to win.”

Thankfully, you can alleviate headaches by joining up with friends or choosing raid levels appropriate for your team of Pokémon. Even if you go into a Max Raid Battle alone, A.I. teammates will join to fight alongside you. In addition, you can also even the odds by temporarily growing your own Pokémon to massive scales using one of Sword and Shield’s centerpiece new features: Dynamax.

Taking It To The Max

Taking It To The Max

While Dynamax’s inspiration was a direct result of Ohmori’s understanding of U.K. myths, the inclusion of Pokémon on this scale simply wasn’t possible in a satisfactory way on handheld devices. Game Freak wanted to use the higher resolution of the Switch and the larger screens of televisions to demonstrate a strong sense of scale. Not only do the enormous Pokémon look bigger than ever before, but the small Pokémon on the roster also look appropriately small.

This is further on display when players use Dynamax to make their Pokémon grow to unprecedented sizes. Seeing a Dynamaxed Pokémon next to a trainer on a big screen shows off the scale Game Freak hoped for. Ohmori says this display would only be possible on a high-resolution platform like the Switch. “On the 3DS, if you showed some of the huge Pokémon, the limited resolution would probably make the player character be like a single pixel or something,” he says with a chuckle.

  How Different Are Sword And Shield?

Pokémon games have traditionally released in pairs, with the titles featuring some different Pokémon and other smaller differences. For example, in Sun and Moon, the day and night cycles were reversed, affecting certain items and encounters during different parts of the cycle. Pokémon Sword and Shield carry on the tradition of certain Pokémon being exclusive to each version, but based on which version you get, the gym leaders are also affected.

According to director Shigeru Ohmori, the gyms are split into a system resembling major and minor sports leagues. “There are 18 different types of gyms in the story, and depending on the version, which gyms are in the minor league and which gyms are in the major league are different,” he says. “For example, in Sword, the fighting-type gym will be in the major league, but in Shield, the ghost-type. The idea is that every year, the Galar region is playing and which gyms make it into the minor league versus the major league changes.”

For clarification on this quote from Game Freak, read this additional statement.

  The concept of having Pokémon grow to become giants satisfied another goal of the team going into its first all-new console Pokémon game. “If you’re playing on the TV, there’s probably going to be other people in the house like family or your parents,” Ohmori says. “We wanted to make what you were doing on the screen look impressive or something that makes it look like, if the kid is playing it and the mom comes by like, ‘Wow, you’re really doing something cool there!’ Kind of like the idea of it being a sport, for example. It’s impressive to watch as a sport, and maybe the kid is like a really powerful sports player.”

Outside of impressive visual sequences showcasing larger creatures and a colorful aura, Dynamaxed Pokémon also feature much more powerful attacks. Even the most useless Pokémon like Magikarp can suddenly become formidable through Dynamax. This mechanic replaces systems from past games like X and Y’s Mega Evolutions, and Sun and Moon’s Z-Moves as the powerful equalizer in battle.

To take the new feature for a test drive, Game Freak held an internal tournament. The team came away confident that not only will competitive play embrace the Dynamax ability, but it will add an extra layer of strategy for players of all skill levels.

“You don’t have to give the Pokémon an item, so you can trigger it whenever and create this element of suspense or keeping people on their toes since they don’t know when you’re going to trigger it or what Pokémon you’re going to use for it,” Ohmori says. “In Sun and Moon, with the Z-Moves, you had to give the Pokémon the Z-Crystal to trigger it, so if the effect of any item goes off, you know that Pokémon isn’t holding a Z-Crystal and you can feel at ease and then plan your strategy around that. With Dynamax, since it doesn’t require an item, you’re never going to have that feeling of being at ease since you don’t know that this Pokémon isn’t going to unleash this Dynamax power. But at the same time, it doesn’t feel cheap.”

While some fans have expressed concern that the Dynamax mechanic might be overpowered in its ability to change the course of matches, by installing a three-turn limit for the transformation, Game Freak thinks it has struck the right balance. “For a long time, we were going back and forth between three turns and two turns,” Ohmori says. “It sounds like a small difference, but it’s a huge thing we had to work with the balance. Also, tweaking the strength of the moves. Just working with the battle design staff to get that balance right. It took a very long time.”

In addition, if a trainer Dynamaxes a Pokémon, it tips off their opponent as to what’s coming, allowing them to prepare for the approaching storm. “Technically you can switch out your Pokémon after you’ve Dynamaxed or just defend, but since that’s a waste of the Dynamax, the expectation is that you’re going to attack to take advantage of that power,” Ohmori says. “That allows your opponent to read what you’re going to do, so that gives a little bit of balance there.”

Dynamax is sure to play a massive role in Pokémon Sword and Shield, but it’s not the only way Pokémon can grow exponentially during battle. Every Pokémon can use Dynamax to power up, but a certain subset can take the concept further through a special variation called Gigantamax. Much like Dynamax, this causes the Pokémon to rapidly grow in size. However, it’s not simply a power boost. In addition to visually changing the Gigantamaxed Pokémon beyond what Dynamax does, this new form grants different attributes. This means that for some Pokémon that have the ability to use both Gigantamax and Dynamax, the trainer must have the awareness to correctly determine which transformation to use for their current battle situation.

These transformations are more than just gameplay mechanics in Sword and Shield. In fact, Professor Magnolia is specialized in researching the Dynamax phenomenon in the Galar region. These transformations are sure to be centerpieces of not just the gameplay, but the narrative as well.

“The lore of the land is that the Galar region has this sort of mysterious energy that can power up things and make them massive, and we express that through the battle system; when they get bigger, they become stronger,” Iwao says.

Going Wild

Going Wild

While Dynamax is something Game Freak says wouldn’t be possible on older hardware, the new Wild Area brings several technological advancements together into a vast expanse within the Galar region – a wide-open space where players can roam freely and catch Pokémon. However, it combines both synchronous and asynchronous connections to other players to populate the area with trainers from both online and local sessions.

In addition, players can meet up to trade, battle, or cooperate in the aforementioned Max Raid Battles, all of which is seamlessly autosaved as you play. “We’re only able to do this because we’ve figured out all these technologies and figured out how to make it work, making sure we can have this kind of online matchmaking happen in the background while you’re walking around and not interrupt the player,” Masuda says. “Traditionally when the trade would happen, you’d have a hard save screen where you’d stop right there and save the game, but we’ve finally made a way to make saving happen in the background seamlessly without data being corrupted. Even though it looks like a super simple feature, it’s actually been a lot of work behind getting it to actually work in the game.”

The Wild Area also plays host to Pokémon Camps, another new feature in Pokémon Sword and Shield. As players roam the expanse of the Wild Area, they can set up camps for them and their Pokémon. Once in a camp, you can let your party of six Pokémon out to play. In addition to interacting with the Pokémon directly through throwing balls for them to fetch or brushing them, you can also watch them interact with each other.

You can also cook for yourself and your Pokémon. Based on the ingredients you use and how good you are at the cooking minigame, you can make different versions of curry with rice. Other players can join you in camp to help you cook and eat with you. Game Freak teases that eating with other trainers can have definite benefits.

  The Cost of Advancement

The myriad advancements of Pokémon Sword and Shield are exciting, but a few months ago, the games made headlines for what’s not going to be in them. During E3 in June, Masuda stated that not every Pokémon from the past will be able to be imported into Sword and Shield. This caused many members of the community to express their disappointment that their favorite Pokémon might be left out from the first all-new generation to appear on consoles.

When I ask Masuda about the Pokémon not making the journey to the Galar region for Pokémon Sword and Shield, he says having so many Pokémon with each passing generation has become nearly unmanageable if the team wants to continue implementing new features.

“Up until now, we’ve been proud we’ve been able to include so many Pokémon in the games, but as a result of that, there’s actually been quite a few features or gameplay ideas that we’ve had to abandon in the past,” he says. “Going forward, thinking about the future of Pokémon, we want to prioritize all those new gameplay ideas, and want to challenge ourselves at Game Freak to create new ways to enjoy the game. That’s really what drove the decision for this new direction.”

While he won’t elaborate on how many or which ones didn’t make the cut, Masuda says the decision was a result of collaborative talks with Nintendo and The Pokémon Company. According to the producer, the decisions surrounding this move weren’t easy. “A wide variety of discussions happened; it’s not just one kind of criteria for deciding the Pokémon are going to appear in the games, but a lot of different reasons, a lot of different directions, a lot of debate over which ones would be the best in the game,” Masuda says. “I think one example of that is figuring out the Pokémon that would make sense for the setting of the game the most; these Pokémon look like they could live in the Galar region. We really spent a lot of effort deciding which would best fit the setting of the adventure and the features that we wanted to implement. I think players will be satisfied. There’s quite a few Pokémon that you’ll encounter in the Galar region Pokédex, so I think players will have fun seeing all the Pokémon.”

While it’s disappointing to be potentially unable to import your favorite Pokémon from a past game, there is an additional silver lining outside of the new features this enables Game Freak to implement going forward.

When I ask Masuda if the cut Pokémon will return in the future, he leaves little doubt. “Definitely,” he says. “You can look forward to seeing Pokémon that don’t appear in these games appearing in different regions in future games. I think Pokémon Home, for a lot of players, will serve as a launching pad to gather them all there and then embark on future adventures.”

The Ultimate Pokémon Game

On the surface, Pokémon Sword and Shield may look like just an upgraded version of the mainline Pokémon games to this point, but several changes and upgrades have helped Game Freak come closer to realizing its mission of creating the best Pokémon game to date. With improved hardware, a fully realized region to explore, and exciting new mechanics and ways to battle – not to mention an entire new generation of Pokémon to encounter, catch, and battle – Pokémon Sword and Shield certainly has the potential to deliver on Game Freak’s lofty ambitions. Now, players don’t have long before they’ll know if the long-requested leap to consoles was worth the wait.

  This article originally appeared in the November 2019 issue of Game Informer.

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Akame ga Kill!

Kill All These Words

Alright, heads up right off the bat: there’s some uncomfortable homophobia in this show towards Bulat, one of the male characters introduced early on who pretty clearly has a preference for men. The show treats this as a joke, and it’s a real sore spot. 

Akame ga Kill! (exclamation mark included) is... not what I was expecting. I’d heard it built up as a grimdark murderfest where you never know which character’s going to bite the dust next and it never quite felt as dire as all that. Mostly because all the murderkilling is interspersed with wacky slapstick bits. It’s a mixed bag, really. I like it, sure, but it doesn’t quite gel with me enough that I’m really into it.

Join me for a deep dive and spoilers below.

Akame ga Kill! suffers from a problem I’ve seen a few times in anime, which is that it rubberbands between two tonal extremes. On one hand, there will be scenes of slapstick comedy with chibi character models, and on the other hand are the scenes of violence and cruelty. Like in the first episode where it turns out that the nice rich girl who shelters Tatsumi tortures poor people in her spare time.

Yeah, it’s a sadistic show, or at least feels like it wants you to think it is.

Don’t believe her lies.

Let me first take a step back and give the rundown of some basic stuff. Akame ga Kill! is about Tatsumi, a guy from some podunk village who tries to join the imperial army in the city to get money to send back home. He ends up falling in with Night Raid, an elite group of assassins working for the Revolutionary Army trying to overthrow the corrupt empire. And right there I think the show missed a trick. I was expecting a mid-season twist where it would turn out that the Revolutionary Army was just as corrupt as the current regime and Night Raid would have to deal with that, but for the most part the Revolutionary Army is a non-entity in the show. Outside the final two episodes its presence is limited to a few resistance contacts.

An almost unforgivable oversight is how little attention the show gives to the danger beasts, the monsters that inhabit the land of... wherever Akame ga Kill! takes place. They get very little screentime as the show focuses mostly on Night Raid’s assassination targets. Another missed opportunity, I feel. On the upside, at least the danger beasts get lip service in that each of the Imperial Relics wielded by the tough fighters in the series is made from a legendary danger beast. It would have been nice to, y’know, see these powerful monsters on screen, but one takes what one can get.

The worldbuilding on the whole is pretty weak. The general aesthetic is pretty generic fantasy, but the major characters have some pretty anachronistic outfits and apparently guns are semi-standard issue to the armed forces? It’s a little distracting, but still forgivable because it feels like the background details take a definite back seat to the characters.

And speaking of characters: Esdeath.

Not gonna lie, I did originally get into Akame ga Kill because I wanted to know what Esdeath’s whole deal was.

Esdeath’s relationship with Tatsumi initially made me roll my eyes pretty hard, but it is handled better than I was afraid it would be and at least affects the plot in interesting ways while adding flavor to both characters. My one gripe is really that it should have had more setup instead of Esdeath falling in love at first sight. And it does eventually lead to the most emotionally affecting part of the whole show (more on that later).

Esdeath drawing Tatsumi in that amateurish anime style is one of the best little bits of character I’ve seen in an anime.

Now to get back into the meat of the thing:

Accusing a work of being emotionally manipulative is pointless because yes, every creative work is trying to make you feel something. But problems arise when you can see the strings. Akame ga Kill!’s attempts to make you feel sorry for a character who has just died or is about to die they just become tedious. It’s kind of fun to guess who’s going to get killed off based on what (usually tragic) backstory we see during an episode, but once the show actually starts drawing out the actual death scenes I start losing interest.

This is even more of a problem when the show tries to get us to care about the Jaegers, Esdeath’s team of relic-wielders who try to hunt down Night Raid. It spends a lot of time building up their characters and relationships, but my problem is that they’re the bad guys. They all work for a system that we’ve only seen to be oppressive and corrupt and none of them seem at all interested in bettering it, only protecting the status quo. So in the end I just can’t find it in me to dredge up any real feeling for them beyond wondering when they’ll die and how melodramatic it’ll be. The worst offender here is Seryuu, the Paladin type who’s definitely Lawful... something (let’s not get into D&D alignment quibbling here). She’s constantly talking about Justice while seemingly ignorant of the irony when the ‘justice’ she’s championing is rotten to the core. It might have been nice to see her have a change of heart and join Night Raid but there was never any real hope of that happening.

Seryuu (who’s family name is inexplicably ‘Ubiquitous’), pictured here with her relic Coro in the form of a jacked-as-fuck puppy. 

Now, to be fair in the final few episodes Run does reveal that he joined the Jaegers to try and change the empire from the inside, but he’s also the Jaeger we know the least about so it doesn’t have a whole lot of weight. Plus, he survives so we don’t get to revel in the tragedy of seeing someone with good intentions cut down before they get a chance to effect real change. In a similar vein, Wave feels underused as it takes him to the final few episodes to finally decide to start bucking the system.

There is one death that did get me though, and that’s Tatsumi’s death in the second-to-last episode. It works so well because up to this point the show had been treating Tatsumi like the main character, letting us forget that it’s Akame’s name in the title. Tatsumi’s death also provides a nice emotional payoff to the romance subplot with Esdeath. It’s one of the real high points of the series because how genuinely unexpected it was.

That one moment aside, the thing about Akame ga Kill! is that I’m not sure if it’s making a sincere effort to tug at heartstrings or if the melodramatic deaths are just part of the show’s whole overblown aesthetic. While not tonally consistent with each other, the wacky comedy bits and the girmdark gore bits at least feel like they tie into each other thematically in that they’re both extremes. This also matches the show’s bright, cartoony artstyle. Even the character designs are over-the-top, with the aforementioned anachronistic design elements. Plus the initial members of Night Raid have hints of a sentai team’s color-coding going on. It took me a while to figure out that’s because the show’s leaning into being something of a caricature.

I mean, the fact that the second-to-last battle is against a gigantic mech should clue you in that the show was trying to be over-the-top and not taking itself too seriously the whole time. Something I admit to being kind of slow on the uptake about. Even the main villain, the corrupt Prime Minister Honest is a total cartoon. And I can’t mention the ridiculousness of the show without a special shoutout to Seryuu’s mid-season upgrade where during fights she gets Coro to bite off her robotic arms to replace them with various weapons.

This over-the-topness is even more emphasized with Akame ga Kill! Theater, a series of web shorts that aired on the official website and are supposed to be watched after the corresponding episode of the main series. Each episode of Akame ga Kill! Theater is about a minute and a half and consists solely of chibi slapstick

So where does that leave us?

Well, technically I think that Akame ga Kill! is a good show. The antagonists Night Raid goes up against have interesting and varied abilities, the action scenes range from well done to amazing, the animation is good, and when the music stands out it really stands out. My own lack of enthusiasm for the show comes from I think one part unrealized expectations and two parts finding the melodrama tedious.

Akame ga Kill! is a series that’s worthy of respect, even if it didn’t end up blowing me away.

A happy Esdeath. She is possibly the best-defined character in the show.

Postscript: Akame ga Kill! feels to me like it’s cut from the same cloth as Blood-C. So if for whatever impossible reason you want a show that is 100% Lex-approved and have a limited amount of time, I’d say check that one out instead. 

[tokupedia]

Kamen Rider 45th Anniversary File: Wizard

2012:

The Metal Heroes Series celebrates its 30th anniversary with a mini-revival in the form of a film crossover with Gokaiger and a Gavan movie! Kenji Ohba returns as the legendary Retsu Ichijouji and a new Gavan appears: Gavan Type-G! Gavan also gets a crossover tie-in with Go-Busters to promote the Gavan movie! The Metal Heroes Space Sherrifs also crossover with the Kamen Riders and Super Sentai in Super Hero Taisen Z in 2013.

IT’S MORPHIN TIME! Power Rangers terms seep into Super Sentai with Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters, a series that tried to do some new things including a two front battle with the villains both on the ground and in a separate MegaZord.

The Symphogear Series debuts with its first season, showcasing superhero Magical Girls of a musical nature. Aoi Yuki (aka MADOKA!) , who would later be in Kamen Rider, is the main hero Hibiki Tachibana! (Ha! Tachibana!)

The Zetman anime debuts, featuring a hero called Alphas who is inspired by an tokusatsu-styled anime show.

Smile Smile Smile~ Smile PreCure! debuts and airs on the Sunday kids block with Go-Busters and Wizard. It features everybody’s favorite tokusatsu fangirl and the fandom’s unofficial mascot Cure Peace! Cure Peace’s voice actress would later go on to voice Sailor Mercury in Sailor Moon Crystal!

Ultraman Saga debuts in theaters featuring some members of AKB48 and a new fusion Ultra: Saga. A fusion of Zero, Cosmos and Dyna.

The first Super Hero Taisen film is released, in celebration of 10 years of Super Hero Time.

Takeru Satoh, aka Ryotaro Nogami from Kamen Rider Den-O steps into an awesome role as Kenshin Himura in the live-action Rurouni Kenshin movie! This is a great film, that it is- gozaru!

Cyborg 009 is revived in the film continuation 009: Re Cyborg. One perk of this film was minor changes to the 00 Cyborgs such as 003 seemingly gaining technopathic abilities and 005 trading in his stereotypical tribal marks and mohawk for a full head of hair and his markings being red “veins” that glow when he turns on his super strength. Both of these aspects would carry over to yet another incarnation.

During the time of Wizard, Japan was in pretty bad shape. It had been hit by a nasty earthquake and tsunami and Fukushima was now the location of the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl and became a ghost town. 

So after the tragedy, when it came time to choose the theme of the next series, Tsuyoshi Kida decided on one: Hope and overcoming despair. And given how the previous Rider was a mechanical marvel of science, the staff decided to go full opposite and have a Rider who was pure fantasy based by having a wizard as the hero. 

Kamen Rider Wizard saw a few changes, the transition from the use of Panasonic Varicams to Arri Alexa HD cameras for the cinematography, more CGI use including a few of Wizard’s forms that were fully CG. This series is also the last fall series to be premiered in September, as the staff decided to push for an October scheduling to extend the show and plug more merchandise. (In this case, the Legend Rider Wizard Rings) It also continued a trend from OOO that fans either love or hate: a “singing” Rider belt that plays a catchy tune with each form change.

But the biggest one that resonated with fans was a positive and progressive milestone, for the first time in the franchise’s history, an openly gay actor would be working on the series. Kaba-chan is also now retroactively the first transgender actor in Kamen Rider, as she transitioned from being a man to a woman after the series ended. Its certainly more progressive than western superhero movies were on that front until recently. (Ex.”Have you ever tried..not being a Mutant?”) .

Naturally, the LGBTQ community of the fandom were happy about the hiring as were activists who knew of Kamen Rider and this bit of news was featured in various articles on the web and drew praise on some forums. *Kuuga thumbs up*

We also see a more western inspired series in terms of mythology. Wizard’s dragon is European style in motif rather than Asian, the monsters are named after beings from myths and stories and have traits of those creatures in some cases. The myth of the Philosopher’s Stone is also referenced, which has an FMA bent to how it is made.

This also marked the first televised debut of a (sorta) original Female Heisei Kamen Rider...that actually lives! Granted, she does get taken out of play sometimes, but at least she survived! Though future installments of the franchise unfortunately would not be as kind (*fingers crossed for Poppy to live*).

We see how skillfully detailed some of the costumes Blend Master and PLEX would make, as the designs of the Wizard suits are fantastic. Wizard himself is very photogenic for a Kamen Rider, with a gemstone/wizard motif mixing primary colors with black and silver and a flashy leather duster coat. The gem on his face combined with the silver trim make out the “face” of the Rider and the wrists and ankles break up the black on the arms with gemstone wrist cuffs and anklets.

Sejii Takaiwa really gets a workout this season, as the Wizard costume is light enough for him to do flips, twirls and acrobatics and pull off some impressive moves and he even dual wields swords and does double gun kata this season. (He even shoots the guns Gangsta style again like he did in Den-O)

Having a magic motif, Wizard gained powers that no other Kamen Rider had ever used before as spells. Also, there are donuts, lots and lots of donuts. This is very important to know.

This series is brought to you by the magic of Plain Sugar.

There seems to be some love outside Japan for Kamen Rider Wizard in media, as a member of the Marvel Comics art team drew one of Wizard’s magic circles in a comic!

But now let’s show the Ringed Mage of Hope. Its Showtime Da!

WIZARD! PLEASE!

RIDER RIDER RIDER!

(Mr. Soma, ringed mage extraordinaire circa 2012)

Real Name: Haruto Soma

Haruto was traumatized as a young boy when his parents got in a car accident and he was the sole survivor. Before his parents died in the hospital, he was told by his mom and dad to never give up hope and be strong. 

He tired his best to live up to that and got a shot at being a pro-soccer player, but left the profession when his friend Kazuya got hurt because of him and because what happened next the following day.

Later the next day on March of 2012, he was an unwilling participant in a mystic sacrificial ritual called the Sabbath during a solar eclipse. In a moment reminiscent of Go Nagai’s Devilman, Haruto feels a demonic force emerging and nearly destroys him but his hope and determination to live drive the creature, known as a Phantom, back into his body. Most of the people around him though were not so lucky as they died immediately from their despair overwhelming them and spawned Phantoms of their own. 

This re-ignited Haruto’s survivor’s guilt and out of nowhere comes a white wizard who congratulates him on surviving after saving him from a Phantom, carrying a girl named Koyomi.  The white wizard offers him a contra-er, I mean belt and the power to save people from the Phantoms and asks to care for the girl in his stead.

Six months later, the Tokyo Police are investigating a crime and happen upon monsters in a warehouse. One of the officers, Rinko Daimon is saved by Haruto who transforms and drives them off. (Daimon...DIAMOND! I just got that. Oh, the terrible puns.)  The Phantoms were targeting Rinko as she is a Gate, a human with latent magic potential that can create another Phantom if they fall into despair. Haruto defends her again from the Phantoms and destroys Rinko’s Phantom by going into her Underworld to keep it from getting out. But as a side effect, she cannot utilize magic and is now an ordinary human.

Later, Haruto saves another Gate called Shunpei who is overeager to become Haruto’s apprentice as he has wanted to learn magic ever since he was a child. He ends up joining the group and Rinko takes an interest in Haruto’s activities using her connections with the police and communications with Section Zero of Japan’s National Security Agency.

Haruto goes around helping Gates find their hope again and in one holiday episode we learn how Santa Claus operates in the Kamen Rider Universe. (It is implied by the fact he can enter Underworlds that Santa is a wizard!)

Haruto faces some hardships as he further battles the Phantoms, but presses onward as the Final Hope of Magic and humanity, Kamen Rider Wizard!

Powers:

Agility, skill in kicking style combat and acrobatics (The kicking fighting style due to strong leg muscles from his soccer training).

Quite a lot of them actually via spells cast from the Wizard Rings:

Super Strength (Varies: Capable of becoming a buff Hulk-sized Wizard with the Excite Ring to holding a HUGE MEGAZORD SIZED AXE in Infinity form).

Skilled Marksmanship and Swordsmanship including dual wielding. Gun armed with silver bullets that can bend their trajectory to hit the target. Given the bullets are silver, yes, he can potentially kill werewolves as a bonus. Weapon can gain elemental augmentation to enhance attacks.

Strom creation: capable of creating gusts, hurricanes, thunder storms and blizzards. Capable of using wind energy to hover or propel himself in the air. Can generate massive bolts of lightning to shock his targets extra crispy. Freezing ability.

Creating localized seismic events and mystical terrakinesis (able to hurl boulders at targets, create sand or stone traps to hold enemies in), gravity distortions. Subterranean drilling.

Disguise generation or wardrobe changing.

Shield generation, varies in strength depending on what elemental form Wizard is in and how much mana he has left.

Size manipulation: Able to shrink in size to about half an inch or smaller. (A first in Kamen Rider, as J just shrunk back to normal size.) Capable of enlarging his arms to knock back waves of enemies or make his blade Zanbato sized.

Knockout spell

Light generation to blind foes or use as a way to navigate dark areas.

Create chains to bind enemies or use as a safety net.

Temporary cloning of both himself and his gear.

Elastic limbs

Creates holes for enemies to fall into/alter the environment (Ex. have water from a tank pour onto a monster) or for a quick getaway.

Noxious stink fumes.

Enter mirrors like Ryuki does

Time travel, maximum effect seen is 5 years into the past. Exact limit unknown. 

Teleportation

Summoning familiars to aid him.

Astral projection of his Rider form to defend his own Underworld

Portal creation, mostly utilized to grab things Haruto has left behind (like his donuts) or for handy storage of his gear in a pocket dimension to call upon when needed.

Rider Finisher spells

Flame and Water Generation

Water gel form like Black RX Biorider form.

Wings, Claws, Tail and fire breathing dragon head via merging with WizarDragon.

Can create Christmas joy by restoring gifts (temporary power given by Santa)

Summon other Kamen Riders to his location immediately in an emergency.

Weaknesses:

Despite the awesome power he wields, Haruto’s spells are governed by mana. Based on early episodes, the mana of this series operates under a kind of Equivalent Exchange methodology. Use a spell, it drains the body’s energy to create the mana to cast it. The stronger the spell or the more spells are used, the more energy the caster burns unless they “level up” thier magic by training their bodies and gaining more power from the Phantom inside them or external mystical devices enhancing the magic. 

As such, Haruto needs to eat high calorie foods or high sugar foods such as donuts to keep his metabolic rate stable enough to avoid going into shock or simply passing out. Resting does help too, so Haruto is a heavy sleeper when his mana runs dry. Mana can also be siphoned away from Haruto if a spell is used or some apparatus capable of such is present. If his mana gets low, his spells are not as effective and weaken and eventually the Wizard Driver will stop working

If Haruto’s spirit is broken and he falls into despair, he risks his Phantom getting out and that would result in him dying and the WizarDragon wearing his flesh as a suit to blend in until his next meal. (Though that danger is no longer 100% present as the two have made a mutual agreement and respect one another after the birth of Infinity form).

If his Underworld is entered by a Phantom or other mystical being, his powers could be destroyed if Dragon dies. This would render him Muggle and thus able to be killed as he would have no magic to defend himself.

The Wizard Driver can be jammed by sticky substances or prevented from being used by binding Wizard’s hands away from the Hand Author buckle of the belt.

The Wizard Rings are sometimes fickle, as some of them have spells that can be only cast when the target of the spell is wearing them (ex. Sleep Ring). The Rings are also somewhat fragile, as a Rider Punch can break them if Wizard isn’t careful. This puts a disadvantage to Wizard as he can only use grappling, spells and palm strikes in close combat and must compensate by using his weapons and legs. (Though the Dragon forms make up for that as Land Dragon and Infinity Dragon use claw attacks.)

Haruto was shown in the Wizard finale special as unable to defend himself against the super speed of the Worms, meaning speedier enemies or Riders such as Kabuto can possibly outmatch him.

Last is a more psychological one, Haruto has an acute case of survivor’s guilt that does affect him, but in a mostly positive constructive way. However, he does have weaker moments where his failure to help someone can weigh heavily on him (Ex. Koyomi), even distancing himself from his old life before becoming a Kamen Rider.

Gear:

http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/WizarDriver

http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/Wizard_Rings

http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/Wizard_Ring_Holder

http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/PlaMonsters

http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/WizarSwordGun

http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/Machinewinger

http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/Wizard_Ring_Box

http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/Drago_Timer

http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/Magic_Stones - Not really part of the gear, but an essential for crafting new Rings to cast new spells.

http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/WizarDragon

Signature Finishers:

Kick Strike: Wizard’s Rider Kick, comes in various elemental forms but mostly the same as wizard does some flashy acrobatics or jumps to execute the kick after charging power from the magic circle under his feet. A variation called the Strike End utilizes WizarDragon transforming into a giant flaming clawed boot and Wizard kicking it to smash his foes with the force of a meteor.

Slash Strike: Standard Rider Slash. Variants involve using elemental power, enlarging the blade with the Big Ring or cloning the WizarSwordGun for a double slash. The Dragon forms enhance the power of these attacks.

Shooting Strike: Standard Rider Shooting attack. Can be augmented with elemental power and can be used in a double shooting attack if Wizard could pull off scanning both WizarSwordGuns. The Dragon forms enhance the power of these attacks.

Dragon Breath: Flame Dragon’s finisher, a Rider Shooting attack. Wizard Flame Dragon scans the Special Ring and WizarDragon’s head on his chest comes alive and the Rider flies up and rains a massive burst of flaming dragon breath upon his foes.

Dragon Sonic: My personal favorite of the Dragon finishers. Wizard uses his wings and super speed as Hurricane Dragon to creates a powerful gust of hurricane wind around the enemy, lifting them into the air, he then scans the Thunder Ring and repeatedly zaps lightning bolts at the target then fries the Phantom with one huge skyscraper sized lightning bolt.

Dragon Smash: Wizard Water Dragon freezes his target with the Blizzard Ring, then skates to it with an ice magic charged Dragon Tail and uses the tail as a sword to slice the enemy in half.

Dragon Ripper: Using gravity manipulation via the Gravity Ring, Wizard Land Dragon pins down his foe and then slashes them with the Dragon claws.

Dragon Claw: Double Rider Slash with the Dragon Claws.

Strike Dragon: Wizard combines the elemental powers of his Dragon Forms into one shot as the magic of fire, water, earth and wind hit the target and then Wizard flies at super speed and kicks the enemy so hard they go FLYING INTO THE SUN. The downside is using it and All Dragon form depletes Haruto’s power really fast so the attack must connect or else he will be defenseless.

Dragon Shining: Wizard Infinity Form charges a massive amount of mana into the AxCalibur, which makes the axe grow to gigantic size. Wizard then goes into a leaping swing to cleave the target.

Shining Plasma Strike: Wizard Infinity Form hits the Hand Author repeatedly and then throws the AxCalibur and uses his magic to manipulate its movement to repeatedly strike the target. Its movements in this attack are almost similar to Den-O’s Extreme Slash.

Infinity End: Wizard’s ultimate Rider Kick. Using the power of Infinity Dragon form’s wings to propel the kick, the skull of WizarDragon appears on Wizard’s right foot and “bites” the target before it hits. There is also a spinning kick variation and an enhanced version when he goes to Infinity Gold Dragon form.

Finale DA!

Enemies:

Sou Fueki

http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/Sou_Fueki

Aka The White Wizard aka Wiseman aka Kamen Rider Wiseman 

A former physics professor who was desperate to save his little girl after she got sick, but his daughter died and he refused to accept it. He then turned away from his scientific profession and became obsessed with the occult and experimenting with it. He seems like a benevolent benefactor to Haruto as the anonymous white wizard, but he has much more sinister motives in mind for Japan and their magic users. He also pulls the strings of the Phantoms posing as their leader, all the while he does not care about them and simply wishes to restart his own plans.

As seen in his re-apperance in a Kamen Rider Ghost spin-off, he is a father who loved his kid a little too much and refuses to let her go and move on, as he proclaimed the whole world could be sacrificed of human life just so he can have her alive again. Ghost, being a hero who values life, was disgusted by Fueki and gave him a proper beatdown with the help of Wizard’s power in the form of an Eyecon.

Phantoms:

Phantoms are demonic beings that reside inside humans called Gates, individuals who possess the potential to use magic. The Phantoms goal is to try to create more of their race by repeating the process that created them; putting a Gate at thier absolute lowest by taking away thier hope and leaving them in soul-crushing despair and depression. 

This will cause the unborn Phantom to emerge from the Gate’s Underworld and kill them, with the Phantom then replacing their host’s control over their bodies, wearing them as flesh suits to hide among people until they need to change into monster form. However, if a Gate overcomes their despair and gains hope, the Phantom will be sealed back in and the Gate will have the power to use magic as a mage or wizard. Otherwise destroying it and the Gate’s magic potential is the only way to keep it from coming out. Some like Wizard’s WizarDragon are more benign after they are sealed again, though in Haruto’s case it was because he proved to his Phantom that Hope is more powerful than Despair.

While Phantoms have a clear goal, some have personality quirks that make them either uninterested in the mission or do things in a manner that go against what they were assigned to do. (Including the really dangerous ones like Legion)

Aside from Wiseman, there are three generals:

Medusa

Phoenix

Gremlin

To ensure they stay on task, the Phantoms are given Ghoul grunts to dispose of interference or aid in the endeavor. (Fear and intimidation also help as motivators for them to work) 

Phantoms are mostly extinct thanks to Wizard, but he remains vigilant as Gates are still out there. In times like these where it seems Hope is in short supply, he must prepare for any Phantom that comes. (or an evil Pac-Man)

[infraredpenguin]

First Impressions - The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

It’s usually a good sign when you sit down to play a game at 2 in the morning just to get a quick taste, only to look up and see it’s daylight outside. That’s exactly what happened last night when I first experienced the latest entry in the legendary Zelda franchise. Before I continue, I should probably say that I am playing Breath of the Wild on the Wii U, so I can’t speak to performance on that console.

Right out of the gate, I was actually pretty pissed off. Why? Well, because the Wii U gamepad has a persistent notification to switch to playing solely on its screen, and this notification is constantly fading in and out. I have a hard time dealing with stuff in the periphery of my vision, so this was extremely aggravating at first. I tried finding ways of turning off the screen or making use of my Wii Pro controllers, only for nothing to help alleviate this frankly idiotic flaw.

Thankfully, after an hour of playtime, I was so enthralled I completely forgot about my gamepad’s screen.

I will say, however, that I’m sick of companies fucking with their customer-base, doing shit like Nintendo has done here, essentially gutting the Wii U version of the game (a game they were definitely selling Wii U hopes on before) to promote their new console. They definitely had map and inventory functionality on the Wii U gamepad before, as well as examples of this kind of stuff in other games like Wind Waker and Twilight Princess HD. The gutting of these features for parity with the Switch, is shameful and insulting, but I digress.

Breath of the Wild is a fantastic game, and the degradation of what could have been doesn’t change that. So, here are a few major impressions I’ve had with the game so far:

1. The world is beautiful and awe-inspiring. From the art style to the sheer, terrifying scope of it, this is a world that begs you to explore it, and BotW has provided a multitude of reasons to do so. You’re really not forced into doing anything you don’t want to. Even the starting region, the Great Plateau, despite having a critical path to it prior to opening up the rest of Hyrule, gives you a staggering amount of leeway in terms of approaching your objectives and satisfying your explorative urges. Being a huge explorer-type, myself, I am legitimately fearful of what this game is going to do to my psyche... How will I escape from the lure of the wild?

2. The lack of handholding is refreshing and well executed. With minimal guidance that you almost have to seek out yourself, the game expects you to figure things out. The ways in which different objects react to each other, how Link behaves using different tools, and other elements such as the surprisingly engaging cooking system, all encourage the player to explore in some way or another. Death is a constant companion, or at least the threat of it is if you plan on being truly adventurous. Thankfully, all of this is backed up by a surprisingly robust save system for a Zelda game, ensuring you never lose too much progress and allowing you to dictate the flow of your experience.

3. Combat is dynamic and satisfying, but ‘ho boy, the controls for this game are a battle in and of themselves. Simply put, controlling Link with the Wii U gamepad feels kind of janky, and this is coming from someone who actually quite likes the gamepad. I’ve never felt as clumsy playing the Zelda HD remakes or Xenoblade Chronicles X or any other of a multitude of Wii U games I love as I do playing Breath of the Wild. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but something just feels off, feels slightly unresponsive, and nowhere was this more apparent than in the fight against a hidden boss enemy in the starting area.

Beating this stony adversary felt like it required some arcane contortion of my hands, trying to juggle the Z-lock with the camera and jumping, running, and attacking. I blame a great deal of this on the binding of jump and run, diametrically opposed to one another on the X and B buttons. Now sure, once I went into the options and swapped them so jump was set to B and cancel/run set to X, things started falling into place a little better. Just picture trying to fight something by attacking with Y while dodge is either on B or X. One of those configurations is more natural for your thumb, plain and simple.

Unfortunately, even after some hours, I’m still not 100% in love with the control scheme. Using the wrong attack or accessing the wrong quick inventory isn’t exactly routine, but it happens often enough. Ultimately, it forces me to wonder why in the hell you can swap controls between 2 specific buttons but can’t reconfigure everything to your liking. This is nothing new with games, and is just one more way that developers disrespect their audience (especially disabled gamers, but that’s a topic for another day). There’s just no reason for it to be this way when it could be so much better.

4. That being said, there’s so much in this game to love that the janky controls are a comparatively minor concern. Once you leave the Great Plateau for the wider world it’s hard not to feel unbridled excitement for what’s waiting for you out there. This game has so far captured my sense of wonder and adventure better than any open world game I’ve played before (and I’ve played a ton). The best part is how much direct agency you have as a player, and the best example of that is in this game’s version of Ubisoft’s ICONIC™ Map Towers.

Rather than literally every other game with some form or another of a tower wot fills out your map, the Sheikah Towers expect you to do all the hard work. Sure, you climb them and it fills out your map, but only visually by drawing in some actual details into an otherwise featureless dark expanse. It reveals no Points of Interest, no objectives, and perhaps just as important, no other map towers!

Instead, you are expected to either wander aimlessly (a perfectly valid pursuit), or bring out your Sheikah Slate’s scope function, and cast your gaze all around the majestic world surrounding you from your lofty vantage. And if you do see something interesting in the distance, you simply place a marker pin from the scope and can then choose to convert that pin into different stamps on your map for future reference.

You don’t even have to be at a dedicated tower to do this!

I found myself exploring a ruined building at the top of a tall hill, thought it had a clear perspective on the surrounding locale, and decided to take out my scope for some marking right then and there. I sought out visible Sheikah Towers and marked them, as well as nearby Shrines and marked those too. I even saw some imposing foes in the distance and slapped down some skulls for future reference. The Sheikah Scope makes it a painless, and above all else, a satisfying experience.

Breath of the Wild is one of the only open world games in recent memory that actually trusts its players to their own agency, and it is infinitely better for it.

5. Right now, my favorite part of the game is easily discovering my little Korok buddies in the environment? Why, you ask? Because they are adorable, obviously... In all seriousness though, the fact that you have to keep your eye out for strangeness in your travels and solve a few mini-puzzles here and there makes them one of the best incentives for active exploration I’ve seen in a game. There may be some patterns to watch out for, but I’ve discovered at least 10 different ways for these forest fairies to manifest in the world, and I’m sure I’ll stumble across many more. I managed to find 15 of the little scamps before leaving the confines of the Great Plateau, and it was tempting to look for more!

So there you have it, my initial impressions of the latest Zelda game. Obviously it’s not perfect by any means, but I do think it has the potential to be the greatest expression of what an open world game can be if we stop trying to make everything painfully obvious.

I can’t wait to see the rest of this enormous world and how the story plays out, but who knows how long that will take...

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These Carnival Costumes Have the Best Message: ‘You Are Beautiful, You Are Sexy, You Are Gorgeous’

Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago — falling this year on Feb. 27 and 28 — is known for the throngs of masqueraders who take to the streets to parade in flamboyant, expensive, sometimes feather- and sequin-laden costumes. It’s a beloved spectacle for which the pair of Caribbean islands is known, and an important part of the culture.

And everything about the elaborate getups — from creating them to moving through the day in one of them — is an art form that takes much forethought. “At the end of the day, a costume is an outfit,” Valmiki Maharaj told Yahoo Style in the days leading up to Carnival. He’s the executive creative director of Lost Tribe, a 2-year-old Carnival “band,” as a group of marchers joined together by a costumed theme is called. And while the band’s theme may vary from year to year, he says, it’s always meant to bring out the beauty in all participants. “When you wear something, you should be dressing for your body. You should not be dressing for what you think you want to look like,” Maharaj continued. “You are beautiful, you are sexy, you are gorgeous.”

The celebration of Carnival is one that comes before the Catholic observance of Lent, much like Carnival in Brazil (also happening this week), and Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Its roots can be found in the traditions of the islands’ French colonizers, but the festivities were adopted by Trinidad and Tobago’s African-descended people after the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. They added their own traditions over the years, resulting in modern times as a wonderful display celebrating the nation’s rich history and its diverse people. The dayslong celebration, powered by the calypso and soca music, and steel-pan rhythms native to the land, is full of tradition, competition, and “Trinbago” culture.

In the costumes of the masqueraders — who “play mas” by registering with a band — you can see influences from the country’s Indigenous, East Indian, and African-descended populations in all manner of dazzling, dramatic fare. And the way that’s reflected has evolved over time. Along with the ensembles that have become an established and storied part of tradition, there are certain silhouettes, characters, and aesthetics of the costumes that have gone in and out of style over the years. But the elaborate, dramatic nature of the outfits remain the same — and putting them together is definitely a tall order.

Still, it’s one that Maharaj executes with grace. He spoke with Yahoo Style about what it takes to create a stellar costume, and his vision behind Lost Tribe’s 2017 “riddim” theme, which was created with Trinidad and Tobago’s rich culture in mind — and as a way to represent all the nation’s cultural influences, different though they may be, to reflect one beautiful identity.

Yahoo Style: What inspired this year’s set of costumes?

Valmiki Maharaj: Our history itself. This year, the theme is “riddim” (rhythm). We’re designing the sound of Trinidad and Tobago … through the most iconic rhythmic elements we have in Trinidad, which is the Laventille rhythm section. The rhythms that are played on the drums and the building of the drums themselves are uniquely Trinidadian and have been inspired by the Indian culture, Arabic/Middle Eastern culture, Chinese and Asian culture, and the African culture in Trinidad and Tobago. We were able to build a band and a design so that one costume would not be innately African alone — you would see elements of the other cultures in it.

The Cutta costume for example, draws from Middle Eastern and Indian design aesthetics. But we use African fabrics for it… and styled it a little differently because of the leggings and the hood. I call that my “Amber Rose” of Carnival this year. With the Bamboo costume, the weaving patterns on the back are very reminiscent of our Amerindian heritage, but the way JP Richardson designed the costume, is very Asian inspired, also. What we try to do as well is use alternative materials in such a way to be able to inspire the designers a little bit more. So you will see, JP used the bamboo, and in the Arieto costume, they used a lot of dyed leaves.

[In general], inspiration, for me, comes from fashion trends, from my travels, from colors — but the biggest inspiration to me is the masqueraders themselves. I spend lots of time talking to masqueraders, observing them on the road, seeing how they move. A costume has to be wearable. We’re not designing it for you to leave in your bedroom at home, or throw on the side of the road after you cross the stage. I want you to wear it all day. I want you to enjoy wearing it.

So how does a Carnival costume go from concept to reality?

On one side, you have those like myself who when you’re inspired, you sketch first, and then that leads to getting materials and so on and so forth. We mainly go to New York for materials. Some people do the opposite. They get inspired by the materials and then they put them together, so they will get beads and sequins and so on. They start to play with them, the shape, the movement, and from there the look develops. Both those methods work, but to each his own.

How have Carnival costumes evolved over the years?

When Carnival started, we had characters that came directly from the pages of our history books. Then from that, you had bands that were inspired by, well, art reflects life. Peter Minshall [a Carnival costume designer who rose up in the 1970s] affected the entire industry. Minshall was pop culture at the time — if you were anyone in society playing mas, you were playing mas with him. Many years later, it turned into [legendary bands] Poison and Barbarossa, which was the beginning of the bikini and bead mas days. Then the Tribe band was born… and came up with the concept of a fully all-inclusive band, which tapped into something different. Now, you have a group of consumers who look at [Carnival] as a tourism product. They want something that is on par with a cruise. We took that and ran with it.

What’s the Lost Tribe aesthetic?

A lot of different bands were designing the same type of costumes over and over. We sought to innovate and present something that was nostalgic and reminiscent of something that we had seen, but at the same time, combine the best of yesterday with the services, quality, and vibe of that Tribe road experience. There is a certain ethnic feel the band has had for the past two years – that is solely because of the particular themes we have started from. Next year, we are doing something that is totally off that beaten path, and something that is way more international theater than local patterns.

You’re already looking to next year! What’s the costume-making schedule?

In theory, we start a year and a half in advance. But it also, in certain situations, starts way before that. From one Carnival to [the next] technically isn’t a full year. We [reveal the costumes] in July, which is only six months from the Carnival itself.

What are some of the main challenges that come with designing for such a range of masqueraders?

Trinidad is in an economic crisis right now, so the main one would be the cost. We have to try to find a way to give the masqueraders what they want, with it being as affordable as possible [this year’s costumes hover around the $700 range]. Another one would be wearability. Like any fashion designer, you’re influenced by trends, but at the same time you want to give them something that they want. During Carnival, particularly, everyone wants to be a Victoria’s Secret model, but you need to find ways to make it accessible to everyone and design a costume that everybody will love, but also feel comfortable in. … We try to design all the bands with a variety of options. For example, one section will have the wire bra, while another will have a monokini section. Some will have thicker sides, some will have a body chain. In the end, we design across the board to have something to please every masquerader.

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‘Iron’ Costume at Carnival 2017’s Lost Tribe Band Launch

The “Iron” costume, seen here in the men’s version, was named for “the first strike, very heartbeat and soul of the rhythm section.” (Photo: Kyeon Lucian Constantine)

Source: Yahoo Style

‘Djun’ Costume at Carnival 2017’s Lost Tribe Band Launch

This look got its inspiration from the “djun-djun” drum of the iconic Laventille Rhythm Section. (Photo: Kyeon Lucian Constantine)

Source: Yahoo Style

‘Dudup’ Costume at Carnival 2017’s Lost Tribe Band Launch

A bright, festive look that pays homage to the “Dudup” pan, which is a rhythm instrument made from a single barrel. (Photo: Kyeon Lucian Constantine)

Source: Yahoo Style

(Photo: Kyeon Lucian Constantine)

Source: Yahoo Style

‘Jab’ Costume at Carnival 2017’s Lost Tribe Band Launch

“‘Jab’ means ‘spirit,'” the Lost Tribe website explains. And this costume celebrates the unique and flowing spirit of J’Ouvert, or the kickoff of Carnival. (Photo: Kyeon Lucian Constantine)

Source: Yahoo Style

‘Bamboo’ Costume at Carnival 2017’s Lost Tribe Band Launch

A look inspired “by the Tamboo Bamboo instrument.” (Photo: Kyeon Lucian Constantine)

Source: Yahoo Style

‘Areito’ Costume at Carnival 2017’s Lost Tribe Band Launch

“Areito,” the Lost Tribe costume catalog explains, is a “traditional Amerindian rhythm-based prayer ceremony.” (Photo: Kyeon Lucian Constantine)

Source: Yahoo Style

Carnival 2017: Lost Tribe’s Band Launch

Source: Yahoo Style

Source: Yahoo Style

Source: Yahoo Style

Source: Yahoo Style

‘Cutta’ Costume at Carnival 2017’s Lost Tribe Band Launch

This swirling yellow costume gets its inspiration from the Cutta drum. (Photo: Kyeon Lucian Constantine)

Source: Yahoo Style

Source: Yahoo Style

Carnival 2017: Before the Lost Tribe Band Launch

Masqueraders, just days before Carnival Tuesday, picked up their costumes at the Hilton in Trinidad. (Photo: Kyeon Lucian Constantine)

Source: Yahoo Style

Masqueraders, just days before Carnival Tuesday, picking up their costumes at the Hilton in Trinidad. Here, a piece from “Bamboo.” (Photo: Kyeon Lucian Constantine)

Source: Yahoo Style

Picking up a “Bamboo” costume before Carnival Tuesday. (Photo: Kyeon Lucian Constantine)

Source: Yahoo Style

Masqueraders picking up costumes, such as this “Areito” headpiece. (Photo: Kyeon Lucian Constantine)

Source: Yahoo Style

Masqueraders picking up costumes. (Photo: Kyeon Lucian Constantine)

Source: Yahoo Style

Masqueraders waiting in line at costume pickup. (Photo: Kyeon Lucian Constantine)

Source: Yahoo Style

A masquerader picks up his “Jab” costume. (Photo: Kyeon Lucian Constantine)

Source: Yahoo Style