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camryndaytona · 4 years ago

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Books with Queer Happiness

Since today marks the last day of Pride Month, I thought it might be fitting to share a list of LGBT books that have happy endings.

Wonders of the Invisible World by Christopher Barzak Published by Knopf Books for Young Readers on September 8, 2015 Pages: 352

Seventeen-year-old Aidan Lockwood lives in the sleepy farming community of Temperance, Ohio—known for its cattle ranches and not much else. That is until Jarrod, a friend he hasn't seen in five years, moves back to town and opens Aidan's eyes in startling ways: to Aidan's ability to see the spirit world; to the red-bearded specter of Death; to a family curse that has claimed the lives of the Lockwood men one by one…and to the new feelings he has developed for Jarrod.

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Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour Published by Dutton Books for Young Readers on May 15, 2014 Pages: 307

A love letter to the craft and romance of film and fate in front of—and behind—the camera from the award-winning author of Hold Still. A wunderkind young set designer, Emi has already started to find her way in the competitive Hollywood film world. Emi is a film buff and a true romantic, but her real-life relationships are a mess. She has desperately gone back to the same girl too many times to mention. But then a mysterious letter from a silver screen legend leads Emi to Ava. Ava is unlike anyone Emi has ever met. She has a tumultuous, not-so-glamorous past, and lives an unconventional life. She’s enigmatic…. She’s beautiful. And she is about to expand Emi’s understanding of family, acceptance, and true romance.

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Not Your Sidekick (Sidekick Squad, #1) by C.B. Lee Published by Duet Books on September 8, 2016 Pages: 283

Welcome to Andover… where superpowers are common, but internships are complicated. Just ask high school nobody, Jessica Tran. Despite her heroic lineage, Jess is resigned to a life without superpowers and is merely looking to beef-up her college applications when she stumbles upon the perfect (paid!) internship—only it turns out to be for the town’s most heinous supervillain. On the upside, she gets to work with her longtime secret crush, Abby, who Jess thinks may have a secret of her own. Then there’s the budding attraction to her fellow intern, the mysterious “M,” who never seems to be in the same place as Abby. But what starts as a fun way to spite her superhero parents takes a sudden and dangerous turn when she uncovers a plot larger than heroes and villains altogether.

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Ash by Malinda Lo on September 1, 2009 Pages: 264

Cinderella retold In the wake of her father's death, Ash is left at the mercy of her cruel stepmother. Consumed with grief, her only joy comes by the light of the dying hearth fire, rereading the fairy tales her mother once told her. In her dreams, someday the fairies will steal her away, as they are said to do. When she meets the dark and dangerous fairy Sidhean, she believes that her wish may be granted. The day that Ash meets Kaisa, the King's Huntress, her heart begins to change. Instead of chasing fairies, Ash learns to hunt with Kaisa. Though their friendship is as delicate as a new bloom, it reawakens Ash's capacity for love-and her desire to live. But Sidhean has already claimed Ash for his own, and she must make a choice between fairy tale dreams and true love. Entrancing, empowering, and romantic, Ash is about the connection between life and love, and solitude and death, where transformation can come from even the deepest grief.

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Love: Beyond Body, Space & Time by Hope Nicholson, David Alexander Robertson Published by Bedside Press on September 30, 2016 Pages: 125

"Love Beyond, Body, Space, and Time" is a collection of indigenous science fiction and urban fantasy focusing on LGBT and two-spirit characters. These stories range from a transgender woman trying an experimental transition medication to young lovers separated through decades and meeting far in their own future. These are stories of machines and magic, love, and self-love. This collection features prose stories by:Cherie Dimaline "The Girl Who Grew a Galaxy," "Red Rooms"Gwen Benaway "Ceremonies for the Dead"David Robertson "Betty: The Helen Betty Osborne Story," Tales From Big Spirit seriesRichard Van Camp "The Lesser Blessed," "Three Feathers"Mari Kurisato "Celia’s Song," "Bent Box"Nathan Adler "Wrist"Daniel Heath Justice "The Way of Thorn and Thunder: The Kynship Chronicles"Darcie Little Badger "Nkásht íí, The Sea Under Texas"Cleo KeahnaAnd an introduction by Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair "Manitowapow," with a foreword by Grace Dillon "Walking the Clouds".Edited by Hope Nicholson "Moonshot," "The Secret Loves of Geek Girls"

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Last Seen Leaving by Caleb Roehrig Published by Feiwel & Friends on October 4, 2016 Pages: 336

Flynn's girlfriend has disappeared. How can he uncover her secrets without revealing his own? Flynn's girlfriend, January, is missing. The cops are asking questions he can't answer, and her friends are telling stories that don't add up. All eyes are on Flynn—as January's boyfriend, he must know something. But Flynn has a secret of his own. And as he struggles to uncover the truth about January's disappearance, he must also face the truth about himself.

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Queens of Geek by Jen Wilde Published by Swoon Reads on March 14, 2017 Pages: 262

Three friends, two love stories, one convention: this fun, feminist love letter to geek culture is all about fandom, friendship, and finding the courage to be yourself. Charlie likes to stand out. She’s a vlogger and actress promoting her first movie at SupaCon, and this is her chance to show fans she’s over her public breakup with co-star Reese Ryan. When internet-famous cool-girl actress Alyssa Huntington arrives as a surprise guest, it seems Charlie’s long-time crush on her isn’t as one-sided as she thought. Taylor likes to blend in. Her brain is wired differently, making her fear change. And there’s one thing in her life she knows will never change: her friendship with her best guy friend Jamie—no matter how much she may secretly want it to. But when she hears about a fan contest for her favorite fandom, she starts to rethink her rules on playing it safe. Queens of Geek by Jen Wilde, chosen by readers like you for Macmillan's young adult imprint Swoon Reads, is an empowering novel for anyone who has ever felt that fandom is family.

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Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, #1) by Benjamin Alire Sáenz Published by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers on February 21, 2012 Pages: 359

A lyrical novel about family and friendship from critically acclaimed author Benjamin Alire Sáenz. Aristotle is an angry teen with a brother in prison. Dante is a know-it-all who has an unusual way of looking at the world. When the two meet at the swimming pool, they seem to have nothing in common. But as the loners start spending time together, they discover that they share a special friendship--the kind that changes lives and lasts a lifetime. And it is through this friendship that Ari and Dante will learn the most important truths about themselves and the kind of people they want to be.

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Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda (Simonverse, #1) by Becky Albertalli, Mathilde Tamae-Bouhon Published by Balzer + Bray on April 7, 2015 Pages: 303

Sixteen-year-old and not-so-openly gay Simon Spier prefers to save his drama for the school musical. But when an email falls into the wrong hands, his secret is at risk of being thrust into the spotlight. Now Simon is actually being blackmailed: if he doesn’t play wingman for class clown Martin, his sexual identity will become everyone’s business. Worse, the privacy of Blue, the pen name of the boy he’s been emailing, will be compromised. With some messy dynamics emerging in his once tight-knit group of friends, and his email correspondence with Blue growing more flirtatious every day, Simon’s junior year has suddenly gotten all kinds of complicated. Now, change-averse Simon has to find a way to step out of his comfort zone before he’s pushed out—without alienating his friends, compromising himself, or fumbling a shot at happiness with the most confusing, adorable guy he’s never met.

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The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon on February 26, 2019 Pages: 848

A world divided. A queendom without an heir. An ancient enemy awakens. The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction – but assassins are getting closer to her door. Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic. Across the dark sea, Tané has trained to be a dragonrider since she was a child, but is forced to make a choice that could see her life unravel. Meanwhile, the divided East and West refuse to parley, and forces of chaos are rising from their sleep.

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Princess Princess Ever After by Katie O'Neill Published by Oni Press on September 6, 2016 Pages: 53

"I am no prince!" When the heroic princess Amira rescues the kind-hearted princess Sadie from her tower prison, neither expects to find a true friend in the bargain. Yet as they adventure across the kingdom, they discover that they bring out the very best in the other person. They'll need to join forces and use all the know-how, kindness, and bravery they have in order to defeat their greatest foe yet: a jealous sorceress, who wants to get rid of Sadie once and for all. Join Sadie and Amira, two very different princesses with very different strengths, on their journey to figure out what happily ever after really means -- and how they can find it with each other.

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Check, Please! Book 1: # Hockey by Ngozi Ukazu Published by First Second on September 18, 2018 Pages: 288

Helloooo, Internet Land. Bitty here! Y’all... I might not be ready for this. I may be a former junior figure skating champion, vlogger extraordinaire, and very talented amateur pâtissier, but being a freshman on the Samwell University hockey team is a whole new challenge. It’s nothing like co-ed club hockey back in Georgia! First of all? There’s checking. And then, there is Jack—our very attractive but moody captain. A collection of the first half of the megapopular webcomic series of the same name, Check, Please!: #Hockey is the first book of a hilarious and stirring two-volume coming-of-age story about hockey, bros, and trying to find yourself during the best four years of your life.

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The Color Thief (The Color Thief, #1) by Emily Poirier on December 10, 2018 Pages: 420

The King and Queen of Teqell have kept a terrible secret for twenty-seven years. Now, it's killing them. Magic is draining them of their color, and they are dying. Princess Helena is obligated to marry and ascend to the throne, told to ignore what she has learned and accept their fate, but she cannot. Instead, she hatches a flimsy plan with Dresden, one of her Royal Guards, to right this wrong. They must help each other travel across the kingdom that she helps rule but has largely never seen while evading other Guards who would bring them back to the castle and stop short their quest. On the way, Helena must also struggle with her changing and complicated feelings about her own family, keep her first and only friend, and reevaluate magic's role in her kingdom.

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Just Juliet by Charlotte Reagan

Ever wondered what lesbian love between two teenage girls feel like? Read the story of Lena and Juliet. Lena Newman is 17 years old and pretty satisfied with her life. Until her world is turned upside down. Juliet James is the new girl at school and very quickly manages to send Lena’s heart wild. Juliet introduced Lena to a part of herself she didn’t know was there, taking her on an emotional journey where loyalty, friendships and family relationships are tested. Juliet represents the road less traveled. Will Lena take it?

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I Can't Think Straight by Shamim Sarif Published by Enlightenment Press on November 11, 2008 Pages: 216

Tala, a London-based Palestinian, is preparing for her elaborate Middle Eastern wedding when she meets Leyla, a young British Indian woman who is dating her best friend. Spirited Christian Tala and shy Muslim Leyla could not be more different from each other, but the attraction is immediate and goes deeper than friendship. As Tala’s wedding day approaches, simmering tensions come to boiling point and the pressure mounts for Tala to be true to herself. Moving between the vast enclaves of Middle Eastern high society and the stunning backdrop of London’s West End, I Can’t Think Straight explores the clashes between East and West, love and marriage, conventions and individuality, creating a humorous and tender story of unexpected love and unusual freedoms.

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Carry On (Simon Snow, #1) by Rainbow Rowell Published by Wednesday Books on May 9, 2017 Pages: 522

Simon Snow is the worst Chosen One who's ever been chosen. That's what his roommate, Baz, says. And Baz might be evil and a vampire and a complete git, but he's probably right. Half the time, Simon can't even make his wand work, and the other half, he starts something on fire. His mentor's avoiding him, his girlfriend broke up with him, and there's a magic-eating monster running around, wearing Simon's face. Baz would be having a field day with all this, if he were here — it's their last year at the Watford School of Magicks, and Simon's infuriating nemesis didn't even bother to show up. Carry On - The Rise and Fall of Simon Snow is a ghost story, a love story and a mystery. It has just as much kissing and talking as you'd expect from a Rainbow Rowell story - but far, far more monsters.

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Of Fire and Stars (Of Fire and Stars, #1) by Audrey Coulthurst Published by Balzer + Bray on November 22, 2016 Pages: 389

Betrothed since childhood to the prince of Mynaria, Princess Dennaleia has always known what her future holds. Her marriage will seal the alliance between Mynaria and her homeland, protecting her people from other hostile lands. But Denna has a secret. She possesses an Affinity for fire—a dangerous gift for the future queen of a kingdom where magic is forbidden. Now, Denna must learn the ways of her new home while trying to hide her growing magic. To make matters worse, she must learn to ride Mynaria’s formidable warhorses—and her teacher is the person who intimidates her most, the prickly and unconventional Princess Amaranthine—called Mare—the sister of her betrothed. When a shocking assassination leaves the kingdom reeling, Mare and Denna reluctantly join forces to search for the culprit. As the two become closer, Mare is surprised by Denna’s intelligence and bravery, while Denna is drawn to Mare’s independent streak. And soon their friendship is threatening to blossom into something more. But with dangerous conflict brewing that makes the alliance more important than ever, acting on their feelings could be deadly. Forced to choose between their duty and their hearts, Mare and Denna must find a way to save their kingdoms—and each other.

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sylvieusedhyperbeam · 7 years ago

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annnd hacking away in my own little corner

just. casually hammering away on my own Villainous AU don’t mind me folks.

AU isn’t really titled yet so for now i’m’a just call it ‘Virtuous’. idk i’ll think of something better. if there’s an AU out there called Virtuous already then i’ll work faster to think of something better and change it. for now i’ll... just have to ask you to be patient. :I;;

White Hat

Not much different from other White Hats of various other AUs, though the backstory/origin is different. As a youngling incarnation, he was an embodiment of good that went about the multiverse to keep things in balance against the Chaos, which his fuckhead ‘bro’ Black Hat embodies, respectively.

Used to be a lot more erratic and somewhat violent in this purpose, since in those first few early millions/billions of years, he operated a lot more around instinct than reason or logic. He was a force that didn’t really have a chance to... think about what he was doing. In other words, yeah, in those early ages of the multiverse he saw things in very black-and-white terms and he and Black Hat caused some shit for some worlds.

Of course, he does know better now and has developed a much more refined, intelligent response to evil and malevolence. And nowadays, rather than a mansion of splendor and indulgence, he lives in what some might describe as a white and turquoise airship that comes down to base to settle every now and then, lending it the appearance of a mansion.

He runs a business similar to Black Hat’s, where he gives heroes that serve the Light shields, cures, elixirs, all the stuff they need to help balance the multiverse and drive back the Chaos. He doesn’t do it for money, of course, though heroes ARE inclined to give him some generous donations because ‘eeeey, airships that sail the multiverse don’t keep themselves in repair, not without White Hat seriously taxing his reserves, anyway.

These days he’s very polite, as well as far kinder, more compassionate than he was in his early days. He’s also a huge dork with a soft spot for antiques who loves learning about the cultures and shit of other worlds, since even as old as he is, new worlds emerge in the multiverse all the time and so he feels very humbled by it all and seeks to always learn more! Loves gardening, loves cooking, loves art, loves anything involving the act of creation or bringing harmony, really. Also really loves singing, and his singing voice is very soothing, pleasant, with the inherent ability to help ease away sadness or anxiety.

Standard design for him might be like any standard White Hat, though I’m contemplating teal on him instead of blue. :|a HMMM.

Doctor Trug

To answer potential questions, roughly translated, trug can mean a lot of things. One of which includes ‘deception, swindle, elusiveness’, meaning yeah, Trug was basically a conman alchemist who worked his way up to a professional thief of many talents. Being well versed in both dark magic and evil sciences as well as being manipulative as shit, he served the Chaos and sought to undermine the Light as a more direct agent. How he managed to get the direct attention of the eviler Embodiments, well slap my ass and call me Betty, that’s anyone’s guess.

Buuuut a mission gone wrong with an attempt on the life of an early Embodiment kinda found him facing some hard-ass time in a multiversal prison. Which... yeah, a questionably normal human facing time in THIS particular prison, it was bound to be a preeeeetty bad time. Because you don’t wanna end up at in a multiversal prison. You really don’t.

Until of course White Hat intervened and opted to ‘rehabilitate’ him, and seeing a chance out of serving time at Holy Shit Eldritch Horror Sing-Sing, Trug of course ‘jumped’ on the chance and played it up all ‘OH THANK YOU SIR WOW SIR SUCH MERCY SIR’ thinking ‘wow what a fucking sucker’. He assumed that working for White Hat would be simple enough if he just played on White Hat’s kindness but... yeah, it’s a hell of a lot more taxing than he originally thought it would be. TEEHEE.

Anyway, Trug is rude as shit and looks out for number one. He’s an ambitious motherfucker though, with a really solid work ethic based mostly around prideful standards he holds himself to whenever he’s researching a cure or a counteraction to a villain’s bullshit. He thinks nothing of experimenting on human beings or using dark magic for his own means, but White Hat forbids it on all counts, and well... talented as he might be, Trug isn’t stupid and knows better than to try going toe to toe with an Embodiment.

He can also be very manipulative when he wants to be, and often is for either something he wants or just for the hell of it. He’s the kind of asshole who will literally argue that the sky is green just for the sake of arguing, if he’s bored enough. He hates people, for the most part, though he does enjoy people-watching to an extent and making up bullshit backstories about them (if you’ve ever seen Always Sunny in Philadelphia, you get my meaning here).

Don’t really have a design in mind for him yet. LMAO i act is if though i’ll actually draw them, or that i actually CAN draw for that matter.

Gemencia

A very peppy young girl with a few magical abilities, in lieu of the more physical/likely genetically mutated abilities of her respective counterpart. Gemencia is a girl who can utilize telekinesis, as well as low-grade stasis fields that can freeze people or objects in place for a short time, about ten or fifteen seconds or so. How she does this, well, she can’t say even she knows. She doesn’t really remember much about her own backstory, just that she kinda-sorta raised herself in the more nature/magic based world she came from before she decided to become a treasure hunter.

And BOY HOWDY does she love treasure hunting. Like, the girl is GOOD GOD unafraid of anything on so many levels, so she often tends to do crazy parkour shit on the face of rocky mountains, pick fights with people ten times her size, annnnd maybe do a whole mess of shit without really thinking. She tries to do RIGHT by people, don’t get me wrong, but if the rules look like they need bending or broken? She’ll bend ‘em a little. Or a break ‘em. A lot. And not give any shits.

Her impulsive love for adventure and helping people in her own crazy way eventually led her to hear tales of the Embodiments, super eldritch beings that maintained the balance of a neat nifty thing called the multiverse, and instantly became determined to see it all for herself. Loving to do things for people and help people, of course she wanted to seek out the Light Embodiments and become the most awesome treasure-hunting hero the multiverse had ever seen.

SO! Seeking out White Hat to be her teacher seemed as logical an action as any!

With the help of some magic users who showed her how to travel to other worlds, she kinda world-hopped and bummed around for a while in search of White Hat until she finally found him, when his airship settled in the same world she was in by pure chance.

She just... kinda started following him around. And when he got back to his airship one day he just sorta found her there, where she was all ‘HEY ‘SUP I’M STAYING HERE NOW LOOK I BROUGHT CHIPS :D’ and White Hat just kinda... sighed and rolled with it.

Gemencia loves, loves, LOVES spontaneity. She’s a wanderer at heart, and loves seeing what entire worlds have to offer. She loves a good brawl every now and then, cartoons, hard hitting punk rock music, collecting artifacts and treasures, and has a refined interest in mythology and lore that might surprise people who don’t know her very well. As a treasure hunter, she’s been inside old temples, ruins, torn palaces, catacombs, all things that have exciting stories of old war and battles and ancient evils falling at the hands of ‘super TOTALLY badass’ heroes, and it’s from these legends that she became inspired to strike out on her own and become ‘THE MOST SUPER BADASS HERO’ that ever hero’d.

Not above swearing, indulging (be it huge meals or drinking), or pulling dangerous/impulsive stunts though when White Hat doesn’t keep her in line. If you befriend her, you have a fiercely loyal buddy for life who will fuck others UP if they try to mess with you, but be warned that you’ll be getting dragged along for a few... adventures when the mood strikes her.

Her design includes light blue hair, and rather than a lizard hat, she has a big-ass fox hat with long fox-styled hair. :U I chose this because foxes are natural foragers, known for leaping to literally pounce into the ground to find their prey. Gemencia is about the same as a treasure hunter, known to leap right into things in search of the various rare jewels and treasures and ‘OOOH NEAT’ artifacts that she kinda hoards away even if she doesn’t know WTF they even do. Also tends to wear orange and black stripes, in lieu of Dementia’s magenta. :T

EDIT you all thought i forgot 505′s counterpart didn’t you? ....well you’re half right. i half-forgot, half-okay-what-the-hell-am-i-doing. but anyway, here we go!

404

404 was originally an animatronic for a family restaurant - no not THAT one this ain’t a FNAF crossover get that shit outta here. He was a regular animatronic up until Trug decided it would be super funny and edgelordy to reprogram it to not only frighten kids, but hell, rob the restaurant’s safe during closing hours and bring him the loot. The restaurant owners kinda pitched him, Trug took him, and installed a few more fun TRICKS on him while he was at it to make him a better partner-in-crime. Because why not, it would be a waste of perfectly good machinery otherwise.

Of course, it began smoothly enough at first... until 404′s AI kiiinda-sorta gained sentience. After that point, he became lazy, grouchy, and at times outright refused to obey Trug’s orders on the grounds of ‘I don’t feel like it fuck you’.

Trug deactivated him and decided to use him for spare parts, but kinda never got around to disassembling him. When White Hat took on commuting Trug’s sentence, the two traveled to Trug’s hideout so that Trug could pack in order to feel as comfortable as possible while out traveling the multiverse with White Hat. White Hat took notice of the big cuddly looking bear and whoops reactivated him, and then promptly forbade Trug from deactivating him again because LOOK AT HIM ALL HE NEEDS IS LOVE.

Trug wishes 404 would rip White Hat’s leg off and beat the shit out of him with it.

404 won’t do it out of pure spite.

Anyway, 404 contrasts 505 by way of being pessimistic, coldly logical, seeing no point in frivolities and only wishing to lie around all day and eat. Thanks to Trug’s alterations, he does have nifty things like heat sensors, night vision, and even a vehicular mode where he can turn into a small car for quick escapes, but good luck getting him to actually use a single one of these things without bribing him with honey.

He also contrasts 505 by being... well, mechanical, instead of organic.

404′s design consists of purple fur, and atop his head is a little satellite dish instead of a flower. His eyes are big red iris shutters, the kind you see on camera app logos, with a yellow center.

#villainous #villainous au #i told you fuckers i was a sucker for AUs #but you didn't believe me #WHY DIDN'T YOU BELIEVE ME #white hat #i might write from THIS au from now on just a heads up

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entergamingxp · 5 years ago

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Langrisser I & II Review — The Perfect Way to Discover a Tactical RPG Classic Series

March 11, 2020 4:00 PM EST

Langrisser I & II is a sleek, simple, and addicting tactical RPG that sucks you in, just like your own reflection on a set of big, polished shoulder guards.

Back in 1987, three years before the first Fire Emblem game, a Japanese company named Masaya launched Ethlead Senshi, a tactical RPG for Japanese PCs. The game had all the basics found in every tactical RPG nowadays such as stats, skills, and different classes of units including those of the flying and naval variety. A few more tactical RPGs later, Masaya launched Langrisser I on Megadrive in 1991, a simple, short, but addictive and intense tactical RPG, taking place in a world named Ethlead and using lore from Ethlead Senshi. Released as Warsong outside Japan, Langrisser I ended up being remade together with Langrisser II multiple times in Japan. And now, a brand new remake, Langrisser I & II is upon us on PS4, Switch, and Steam. I can tell you right now, it’s definitely the best way to experience or rediscover these classics.

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“I can tell you right now, [Langrisser I & II is] definitely the best way to experience or rediscover these classics.”

Langrisser I released in Japan during a golden era where a character’s power level was directly proportional to the size of their shoulder guards. Cool elves, sexy dark elves, along with detailed magic systems and worldbuilding were the norm. Record of Lodoss War was in full bloom, and Slayers had just started. Japanese people wanted fantasy, and Langrisser I delivered. The story stars Ledin, a prince who must suddenly flee his kingdom in the face of an invasion from the empire. Together with the friends he makes along the way, he ends up retrieving the legendary sacred sword, Langrisser, in order to fight an ancient, resurrected evil threatening the world. It’s a pretty straightforward fantasy premise, and nor the characters or the story rarely get any deeper. The remake, however, has plenty of different story routes you can end up on depending on your actions during battles, allowing for a lot of replayability. One run alone won’t take you more than twelve hours to beat.

Langrisser II, seeing it’s a sequel, originally released three years later in 1994 and greatly improves on the first game’s weaknesses and has a much more memorable cast. You’ll probably encounter more story development and characterization in the first five chapters of Langrisser II than in all of your first Langrisser I run. And while the battle system didn’t change an inch, maps, battle situations, and objectives are more varied overall. Beating Langrisser II will take you longer than Langrisser I, and it has even more story route bifurcations, including hidden stages.

In both games, using the story chart, you can go back to any previously cleared story chapter, while keeping your items and levels to try out other routes. For those seeking a challenge, Langrisser I & II both include a New Game+ where you can inherit (or not) your items and levels, and choose to increase the difficulty. However, note that the story chart resets itself in New Game+, which is a choice in this remake that I cannot comprehend and is pretty annoying overall. I vividly recommend keeping a save right before your run’s final battle.

The battle system of Langrisser I & II is similar and yet extremely different than nowadays’ more popular tactical RPG series such as Intelligent System’s Fire Emblem or Bandai Namco’s Super Robot Wars. While there are various types of terrains, each granting attack or defense bonuses, there are no elevation-tied systems, nor are there differences in whether you target a unit from the front, sides, or back. There is no permadeath, either.

“The battle system is simple and yet extremely addicting, intoxicating, and never gets boring.”

In Langrisser I & II, each named character in your army is a Commander, a powerful individual who can recruit Mercenaries. The type and amount of Mercenaries a Commander can recruit will be based on their Class. Each Commander has its own Class Tree, and they can switch Classes after garnering enough Class Points, earned after each level up. While the original Langrisser I & II were pretty strict with this system, this latest remake is generous with Class Points. It also allows you to switch back a Commander to any previously unlocked Class to adapt to the situation.

Mercenary Units also each have their own strengths and weaknesses, with Infantry defeating Spearmen, Spearmen having an advantage over Cavalry, and Cavalry overwhelming Infantry. This is a simple triangle, which is complemented by many other types of units and weaknesses, such as undead monsters, marine units, archers, and magicians. As long as you properly check enemies’ stats and magic before rushing in, most Langrisser I & II maps won’t pose you too much trouble and are pretty well balanced.

During battles, Mercenaries accompany their Commander and get a significant stat boost as long as they stay inside their Commander’s Area of Command. Moreover, the more HP a Mercenary unit has, the more powerful they are. Mercenaries also recover HP when standing adjacent to their Commander. As such, the basic strategy in most of Langrisser I & II’s maps will be to stick together as you march toward enemies, using your Commanders’ offensive, healing or buffing/debuffing magic spells adequately. The last trick to it all is how all Mercenaries will disappear when their Commander is defeated. Defeating the Commander first will result in less experience and money, so you’ll be constantly thinking about whether to farm or try to remove a threat as quickly as possible. The battle system is simple and yet extremely addicting, intoxicating, and never gets boring. The games are also just the right length, to avoid being repetitive.

Mercenaries can each be moved manually, and doing so will be crucial at certain moments. However, their movements can be automated, with four different global strategies to order them, Attack, Rush Defend, and Standby. This, however, brings us to Langrisser‘s biggest flaw. While the Mercenaries’ movement process can be automated, you still have to wait for it to happen. When both your army and the enemy side each have over six Commanders, each with four or more Mercenaries units, Battle Turns in Langrisser can be really long. This is true even if you can skip the battle animations, which are represented with super cute SD versions of the Mercenaries skirmishing and also include pretty cool character artwork cut-ins. While the character movement speed on the map is quite fast, an even faster speed-up turbo function would have definitely benefited this remake. This is the main reason why I’d highly suggest playing Langrisser I & II on the Nintendo Switch for its portability over other platforms.

Langrisser I & II is fully voiced with Japanese voiceovers with a cast including popular seiyuu such as Ayane Sakura and Saori Hayami. The cast all did a great job portraying the characters and their emotions. Even the story summary between each chapter is voiced, narrated by Eri Kitamura, who also voices Langrisser‘s recurring character, Jessica. Music-wise, the rearrangements of this new remake are pretty nice overall. For veteran fans, the original Megadrive OST can be activated, bringing back the works of Hiroshi Fujioka (not to be confused with his homonym, Segata Sanshiro’s actor), Isao Mizoguchi, and Noriyuki Iwadare (nowadays highly popular outside Japan for some of the Ace Attorney games).

Langrisser I & II‘s localization is also pretty good. There are sentences where one or two minor details were left out, but that’s inherent to translating Japanese under time constraints and with few contexts. It’s not something you’ll notice anyway if you can’t understand the voiceovers, and 80% of the time, a few sentences later you get that missing detail conveyed in another form. I’d also point out that surprisingly, the game can be set to other languages; Chinese, Korean, and Japanese are all included, which is nice for those willing to practice other languages through gaming.

Lastly, I cannot speak about Langrisser without mentioning the biggest defining aspect of the franchise: its character design by Satoshi Urushihara, one of the best character designers and artists of all time. The game’s Japanese Limited Editions took full advantage of this fact. This remake also allows players to switch anytime between Satoshi Urushihara’s original designs, and brand new redesigns by Ryou Nagi, the original character designer of the Ar Tonelico series and Heavy Object.

Sadly, the new character designs by Ryou Nagi are very hit and miss and tend to remove a lot of the characters’ individuality, which is extremely weird as Ryou Nagi is usually an excellent artist. The difference in detail is like night and day when you look at the different versions of Betty, a brand new Langrisser I character created for this remake, who appears in one of the new story branches. The first Betty artwork above is the Urushihara’s version, the second one is Nagi’s version, and the third one is from the recent Langrisser Mobile, and its redesigns are much better than in this remake.

“However, you shouldn’t judge Langrisser by its cover, as it has great themes and strong female characters.”

Ryou Nagi also recently redesigned the characters for the remake YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love at the Bound of this World, and I believe this remake and both Langrisser I & II suffer from the same character design problem. This is a rather disappointing aspect of this remake, though I believe most people discovering the series or who aren’t longtime anime fans won’t even care. It’s important to note, however, that playing with the Ryou Nagi redesigns also add story event CG scenes to the game. They are numerous and pretty well drawn.

As a side note, I’d also point out that except for some of the female cast’s revealing clothes, there is virtually no sexual fan service in Langrisser I & II, whether you were looking forward to it or apprehending it. Though I’m sure the bikini armors by themselves can be off-putting for some, and I understand that. However, you shouldn’t judge Langrisser by its cover, as it has great themes and strong female characters. This is actually unsurprising when it comes to Fantasy Japanese works like these. I’d definitely recommend Record of Lodoss War, Slayers, and Langrisser I & II, to those who think that kind of Japanese stuff is inherently sexist, such as certain people at Sony of America.

Overall, this new Langrisser I & II remake is definitely the best way to get into the series and enrich your tactical RPG culture. Sure, the Sega Saturn remake’s cool anime cutscenes weren’t added in this new remake, but you can always watch them on YouTube.

The Langrisser series was pretty silent this past decade. The latest brand new game in the series, Langrisser Re:Incarnation Tensei, released on Nintendo 3DS in 2015, is notorious for being particularly bad. This new Langrisser I & II remake is definitely the kind of spur the series needed, and it seems that both this remake and the previously released mobile game are setting up the foundation for a full revival. Hopefully, developers Extreme and Chara-Ani, the companies who now own Masaya, have remakes of the other Langrisser games in the works, so more around the world, myself included, can finally discover the series.

March 11, 2020 4:00 PM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/03/langrisser-i-ii-review-the-perfect-way-to-discover-a-tactical-rpg-classic-series/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=langrisser-i-ii-review-the-perfect-way-to-discover-a-tactical-rpg-classic-series

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caveartfair · 7 years ago

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Inside the Weird and Magical Collections of Artists

Eric Baudelaire. Courtesy of the artist and Art Brussels 2017.

Josephine Meckseper. Courtesy of the artist and Art Brussels 2017.

Spend enough time with artists and you’ll find that most are collectors of one sort or another. Jeff Koons, for example, famously indulges his appetite for Old Masters paintings and works from the 19th century. Others accumulate far less precious things: knickknacks, tchotchkes, even restaurant menus. Why? Koons has said that his collection serves as source material for his own output; in other words, art begets more art. But a better answer, one expansive enough to encompass even the most mundane tastes, is that things beget emotions.

This April, a pop-up exhibition within the 2017 Brussels Art Fair explored this proposition. Curated by Jens Hoffmann and Piper Marshall, “Mementos: Artists’ Souvenirs, Artefacts, and Other Curiosities,” sought, in Hoffmann’s telling,“to bring in a completely different idea of value that isn’t always present in an art fair itself.” The curators asked 73 artists to loan them objects of personal or emotional value, along with a brief text detailing the story behind each object.

Few of those objects in the exhibition had any inherent or resale value. In fact, the show offered up any number of things that make us ask why one might want to own them at all, things that, were they not presented in the sort of large vitrines you might find in a natural history museum, could easily be mistaken for castoffs destined for Goodwill or the garbage.

French artist Laure Prouvost contributed a dessicated teabag, for instance. While it happened to dry in a sculpturally compelling way—she likes its “unusual shape”—Prouvost chose the bag for the web of associations connected with it. For one, it reminded her of the years she spent assisting the artist John Latham, whom she considers her “conceptual godfather.” In the studio, Latham always insisted they dry and then reuse teabags. “So, the teabag,” Prouvost explains, “became a symbol of my experience with him.” Tea has also been a component of her work for quite a while. For a spring exhibition at London’s Serpentine Gallery, she contributed a number of teabags drying on a radiator grill; teapots figure in her piece Wantee (2013), which is in part a fictional meditation that reimagines Prouvost’s grandfather as a conceptual artist.

Installation view, "MEMENTOS Artists’ Souvenirs, Artefacts, and Other Curiosities" at Art Brussels 2017. Photo David Plas. Courtesy of Art Brussels 2017.

It turns out that the things people have lying about are terrifically engaging (philosopher Martin Heidegger’s outhouse toilet seat, anyone?), particularly when they come with private stories attached. When I ran into him there, the British artist Shezad Dawood said he thought the show succeeded so brilliantly because it “indulges our innate perversion of wanting to go through someone else’s knicker drawer.”

Of course, when you rifle through someone else’s private things, sometimes you come upon things you don’t exactly need to see, such as the attractive glass bubbles that the Hungarian artist Andrea Éva Győri has filled with her father’s sperm. (An accompanying text helpfully informs us that Győri’s mother collected it.)

Still, even if it is prurience that first attracts us to such mementos, the stories behind them illuminate one of the most pervasive attributes of contemporary art: nostalgia. We encounter it in every fair and gallery—a wistful yearning for analog photographs, outdated video games, broken-up bands, old typefaces, toys, not to mention bygone styles of painting and design. A catalogue of longing could stand in nicely for one of recent artworks. It seems to me that what gave “Mementos” lasting significance was that, without explicitly trying, the exhibition parsed an entire grammar of nostalgia.

There is the odd, everyday thing—like Prouvost’s teabag—that becomes a Proustian madeleine, calling to mind a host of past experiences. There is the heroic object, such as the saw-toothed shark’s jaw that Benoît Maire keeps to remind himself of, he writes, “a decisive moment in my life.” (While diving off the Ivory Coast in 2004, he came face to face with a large shark—and killed it with a harpoon.)

As spectators outside the action of these artists’ inner lives, we have to take such stories at face value—and the phrase is key, for it is the tales associated with them that imbue these objects with emotional or personal worth.

Malgorzata Szymankiewicz. Courtesy of the artist and Art Brussels 2017.

Kendell Geers. Courtesy of the artist and Art Brussels 2017.

This is true, it seems, even when the stories are false. American artist Betty Tompkins loaned a carved wooden box that her grandfather made, according to family lore, in debtor’s prison before World War II. Later, after Tompkins had sent the box and her text to the show’s curators, she found out the real history. Debtors’ prisons were already a thing of the past by the time her grandfather was incarcerated. Instead, he had been busted for a fleecing scheme, and he entrusted his furniture business to a brother-in-law while he was away. When he got out, the brother-in-law refused to return the business to him, and so, on the night of his daughter’s (Tompkins’s mother’s) high school graduation, he killed himself. A tale of woe, yet one that only adds to the wooden box’s emotional patina.

The American artist Eric Baudelaire collects his grandfather’s paintings precisely because they’re fakes. The work he displayed in Brussels, seemingly a portrait of the great poet and critic Charles Baudelaire by Émile Deroy, was in fact one of many copies Baudelaire’s grandfather made (and which Eric grew up believing were real). And whether or not the lineage implied by the canvas and the artist’s famous patronymic is real is anyone’s guess. “Fake is great,” the artist writes.

As is misdirection. Perhaps the last thing we might have expected from the seminal American photographer and filmmaker Larry Clark was the paintbrush he sent in for this survey, yet there it is in the vitrine. Clark took up painting at age 71 while recovering from surgery because, he writes, “it was something I could use without a lot of effort to capture my thoughts.” Painting, he says, has entirely shifted his approach to artmaking.

Installation view, "MEMENTOS Artists’ Souvenirs, Artefacts, and Other Curiosities" at Art Brussels 2017. Photo David Plas. Courtesy of Art Brussels 2017.

Psychologists regard nostalgia as a means of sustaining self-continuity: It’s the emotional fuel that drives the stories we tell, linking the person we once were to the one we are today. You might keep a meaningful tool, like Clark’s brush—or a sentimental item, like the small, blue velvet pouch with the ashes of a childhood dog, Tyler, that L.A.-based artist Alex Israel displayed. (The kitsch object being another common type of nostalgia item.)

When I asked him about it, Israel told me he hasn’t collected the ashes of any other dead pets but that he does have a bin in his studio, which he calls the Scrapbook. “In it,” he says, “you’ll find everything from a menu from Kate Mantilini (a Morphosis-designed L.A. restaurant I once frequented that’s now closed), to a Kardashian family Christmas party favor: a crystal bowl etched with jaguars around its rim. I’m always auditioning objects, looking for stars to cast as sculpture in future projects.”

Studios have become beaches on which the scraps and oddments of an artist’s life washes up, only to be recycled, given new roles in new dramas. As we sift over those beaches, we learn much about the collecting artist but also about ourselves. Repositories of memory and sources of inspiration, the nostalgic objects artists keep “could also be said to be cultural markers,” says Marshall. Each tells part of the story of “how we’re negotiating various systems.” These items may help forge our ongoing sense of self, but in aggregate they fill in a picture of the culture from which they, and we, come. For Marshall, this makes such items inherently political.

Photograph of Josephine Meckseper’s bookshelf by Daniel Dorsa for Artsy.

Josephine Meckseper would certainly agree. For her installations, the German-born New Yorker gathers readymades—everything from hosiery to old advertisements to sculptural models—which she thinks of as “as signifiers and representations of capitalism.“ Bringing them together in her mirrored displays is “like looking at culture through collective eyes, and he eyes of future generations.”

While not a collector of things, she considers herself rather “a temporary custodian of objects,” in part because, she says, “I grew up in a large, old house in Germany filled with my parents’ collections of old 19th-century toys, contemporary art, and rooms filled with bookshelves. Subsequently, I don’t feel the urge to collect.”

Interesting that for us the word collect has come to mean own. Meckseper might not consider herself a collector, but she does accumulate things—mostly books. ( “Primarily,” she says, “because I read them.”) To the Brussels show, she loaned a first edition of Hunter S. Thompson’s The Great Shark Hunt, an overt cultural marker—it compiles the late author’s gonzo political journalism—that functions, too, as a comment on the current cultural and political situation. It is also, inevitably, nostalgic, as Meckseper herself obliquely acknowledges: “Now that we have entered a digital age, the book as a physical object containing narratives and content on a page feels even more significant.”

Installation view, "MEMENTOS Artists’ Souvenirs, Artefacts, and Other Curiosities" at Art Brussels 2017. Photo David Plas. Courtesy of Art Brussels 2017.

Kris Martin. Courtesy of the artist and Art Brussels 2017.

Meckseper’s practice provides a glimpse into the way certain people transform ordinary objects that are invested with cultural sentiment into art. Today we call those people artists. In the past, it was shamans or priests who transmuted common, artisanal things into magical entities. Which goes a long way toward explaining why the Dutch artist Folkert de Jong collects tribal art along with contemporary works. Pieces like the Indonesian fertility sculpture, with, de Jong writes, “funky hair and oversize penis,” which he showed in Brussels, put him “in contact with something primal and connect me to the fact that we are part of nature.”

Dawood is himself the owner of an assortment of ancient Egyptian magic and occult items. “I have a shabti, which is a ceramic glazed mummy, in blue,” he tells me, “and a beaded mummy mask, as well as two or three magical amulets.” At “Mementos,” you could gaze upon his pair of kohl-rimmed eyes, from an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus, mounted on a brown Perspex stand, and which he bought in Paris. The platitude of the eyes being the windows to the soul comes to us from ancient Egyptian magic, he tells me. His text adds, “I like the idea of something from the ancient past meeting a 1970s future that doesn’t quite work out.”

It’s the way of all things: They travel through time accruing to this or that person, and live out an awkward future with objects from other eras. Perhaps it takes the eyes of an artist to recognize the magic in connecting them anew.

—Daniel Kunitz

Cover image, right: Portrait of Josephine Meckseper in her New York home by Daniel Dorsa for Artsy.

from Artsy News

#Artsy News

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camryndaytona · 4 years ago

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Queer Happiness

Since it’s pride month I’ve been seeing a lot of people making lists of books with LGBT characters, which I think is a wonderful thing to do. However, there are a lot of books with LGBT characters that may not have a happy ending or that may focus entirely on troubling issues such as discrimination or the AIDs crisis. While these are certainly important topics, I wanted to share a list of books that may have a much happier message.

Wonders of the Invisible World by Christopher Barzak Published by Knopf Books for Young Readers on September 8, 2015 Pages: 352

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Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour Published by Dutton Books for Young Readers on May 15, 2014 Pages: 307

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Love: Beyond Body, Space & Time by Hope Nicholson, David Alexander Robertson Published by Bedside Press on September 30, 2016 Pages: 125

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Queens of Geek by Jen Wilde Published by Swoon Reads on March 14, 2017 Pages: 262

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Not Your Sidekick (Sidekick Squad, #1) by C.B. Lee Published by Duet Books on September 8, 2016 Pages: 283

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Draw the Line by Laurent Linn Published by Margaret K. McElderry Books on May 17, 2016 Pages: 516

Adrian Piper is used to blending into the background. He may be a talented artist, a sci-fi geek, and gay, but at his Texas high school those traits only bring him the worst kind of attention. In fact, the only place he feels free to express himself is at his drawing table, crafting a secret world through his own Renaissance art-inspired superhero, Graphite. But in real life, when a shocking hate crime flips his world upside-down, Adrian must decide what kind of person he wants to be. Maybe it’s time to not be so invisible after all—no matter how dangerous the risk.

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Last Seen Leaving by Caleb Roehrig Published by Feiwel & Friends on October 4, 2016 Pages: 336

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Ash by Malinda Lo on September 1, 2009 Pages: 264

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Carry On (Simon Snow, #1) by Rainbow Rowell Published by Wednesday Books on May 9, 2017 Pages: 522

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source http://camryndaytona.com/2020/06/queer-happiness?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=queer-happiness

#my blog

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