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theoneforgameofthrones · 6 years ago

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Daenerys Targareyan: The Path Towards Madness.

Okay let's begin.

Intro: I read book 1. And then, I binge watched seasons 1-6 after season 6 finale. By that time, I knew all the major theories like L+R=J, dark!dany, targ!tyrion etc.

So, I was paying extra attention and these are some of the obvious moments where I felt they showed Dany's mad side show. Some points, you may find valid. Some points you may find silly and over-reaching. In any case, this is what *I* felt.

Feel free to have discussions. Appreciate positive critisism. However, just yelling/abusing will not be tolerated.

1. Lack of Empathy

Her obvious lack of empathy when her brother was killed.

I did not expect her to save him. I did not expect her to mourn him. I did not even expect her to cry for him. I did, however, expect a reaction, any sort of reaction, when someone close (despite him being an abusive asshole) dies that suddenly and that violently.

2. Her facial expression during Drogo's speech.

"I will kill the men in iron suits and tear down their stone houses! I will rape their women, take their children as slaves and bring their broken gods back to Vaes Dothrak!"

3. During her Breaker of Chains phase, she conviniently seemed to forget that she used to practice not only slavery, but also pillaging while she was with her khalesar.

Master Illeryoi owned slaves. Her brother owned slaves. She was gifted slaves to teach her how to please the Khal.

Her husband was a war-lord and her khalesar constantly raided and pillaged villages. They killed men. They raped women. Remaining alive women were taken as sex slaves and later sold. That was their way of life. She saved Mirri Maz Duur and several other women from the fate of gang rape and murder but they were still dragged along side the khalasar as slaves. In books, the reason MMD was not sold was so that she can assist Dany during childbirth.

4. The burning of Mirri Maz Duur (MMD)

This is going to make sense to a lot of people. But confuse the fuck out of many. But let's see.

In colonized countries, we have a term called "Savior's Complex". It is where a colonizer raids a country, steal its riches, impose extreme taxing, destory most of its heritage and then expect praise for bringing something (could be education, technology, architecture).

Dany takes the complex another step above. She not only expects gratitude from an enslaved MMD while dragging her along with her khalesar with sole purpose of assistance with childbirth, she also expects her to save the life of her husband. The war-lord whose khalesar raided her home, pillaged her village, killed her countrymen, raped/killed her countrywomen, dragged remaining alive women along with the khalesar to be sold later. Despite all this, Dany expects gratitude from MMD for her life. This flawed logic however is thrown back in her face.

"So, tell me again exactly what it was that you saved?"

"Your life."

"Why don't you take a look at your Khal? Then you will see exactly what life is worth, when all the rest has gone."

This is an old age tale of revenge. Khal raided her village. She took revenge on them for destroying her temple. Dany burned her for it.

What completely bamboozled me in this fandom was how much people hated MMD for what she did while completely making Dany the victim in this scenario while forgetting that MMD was the orginal victim who was not only an enslaved prisoner of war, but also gang-raped victim of her khalesar's doing.

5. Ser Barriston's words.

Ser Barriston in Mereen, tells her to treat injustice with mercy. She replies that she will treat injustice with justice.

Another quote by Ser Barriston: "He gave people the people the justice he thought they deserved."

Justice and what people in power percieve as justice is often very different.

6. Daenerys' justice for the crucified slave children

She did that by choosing 163 random Great Masters and crucifying them to avenge the 163 slave children. This seems like justice. But is it, really? They never recieved trial. They were never proven guilty. Like Hizdahr Loraq said, some of the masters were not in favor of crucifying children and tried very hard to stop it. Who knows how many other good masters she crucified?

This is a direct parallel to Ser Barriston's words about Mad King Aerys: "He gave people the people the justice he thought they deserved."

7. She stopped slavery only when it benefitted her.

Some of you, while reading point 6, may have thought, "They were SLAVERS! So what?!".

Well, while choosing 163 masters, Dany decided that all Masters are her enemies. She decided that all of them deserved punishment. She decided that they were guilty just for engaging in slavery while conviniently forgetting that if that were the case, she should be the one in the first cross.

8. She burnt Great Masters without even investigating who were behind the Sons of Harpy's attack.

After Ser Barriston's death, we again get to see more of her twisted sense of justice. By her own words, "Who is innocent? Maybe all of you are, maybe none of you are. Maybe, I should let the dragons decide."

It is not supposed to be called justice if you punish (and a cruel punishment, at that) without even caring whether they are innocent or not.

9. "You are a conquerer. Not a ruler."

Time and time again Dany proves this to be true. She conquered Yunkai and left immeidetely. The slavers took back the city in no time. She closed off the fighting pits and refused to open them despite being told that participants will be free men who enter willingly. This is where ruling comes in. Any place she conquered and freed, she failed to put something else to keep up the economy. She collapsed the economy so bad that slaves were selling themselves again.

10. Wrongful imprisonment.

Dany finds that Drogon has harmed children. The correct response is to either train or punish the dragons. She, however, imprisons the two dragons who werent at fault while Drogon ran free. Does that mean she is not responsible for whatever terror or death Drogon caused to wherever he flew off to? What exactly does imprisoning Rhaegar and Viseryion get her?

What kind of justice is it where the accused is free while the innocent get prisoned for association. Again, feeds into the twisted justice train.

11. Twisted Justice. Hipocrisy. Again.

While many men were fed to dragons, Hizdahr Loraq was imporisoned. He begged for mercy in terror.She also decides that she will show her respect for Meereen by marrying a member of one of its great families. For a woman who was forced into marriage and "sold like a broodmare", she sure didn't feel any moral dilemma in making a terrifed man betroth her. His death though, proved that he was not at all involved with Sons of Harpy and he was imprisoned for nothing.

12. Burning POW's

Burning Tarly's (father and son) was a direct paralell to her father burning Ned's father and brother alive. You cannot hide behind "It was a war. She gave them a choice." No matter what defenses one can attempt to give her, killing (forget burning) POW is a war crime. So is forcing prisoners against their own side of war.

13. Defending cruelty in path of justice

She killed Tarly's and defended that decision, by saying that was necessary.

When Hizdahr asks her how many men will have died to achieve her goal, she says "They would have died for a greater cause." She is talking about destroying cities and sure, that must be for a greater purpose.

When Tyrion reminds her that about what her father planned to do when she said she wnated to burn Mereen to the ground.. her response was "This is different,". How, exactly?

"The easiest way to defend cruelty is to say that it is part of the destiny."

14. The insinct to burn down cities.

By s8e01, she has wanted to burn down cities thrice. Meereen - once. King's Landing - twice. Both times, she had to be talked out of it by her advisors. The fact that her first instinct when her plans were failing was to burn down cities. Direct parallel to Aerys wanting to destroy king's landing because he thought there were traitors everywhere. The fact is that a person can surrond themselves with good counsel. But it is not necessary that the counsel is always heeded. Which is what happened to Aerys. He was going incresingly mad for months and his counsel members hid the fact from the outside world because they thought they could control the madness. We all know what happened in the end.

Since s7, Dany has been becoming increasingly paranoid about Tyrion's loyalty and increasingly more frustrated with every loss. How long before she decides not to listen to them anymore?

15. The entire collonialist/white savior imagary presented in Essos.

It is amazing how most of the fandom either ignores it or is just unaware of it.

Though this point doesnt parallel anything to the show, i just found it extremely cringy. I am sure members of most colonized countries would. I cant even beging to describe how cringy that mysha scene was.

16. The typical white priviledge mentality.

She wants to inherit her ancestor's throne and power. But she doesnt want to repent for her ansestor's sins and betrayal.

17. Wrong sense of entitlement

She truly believes that she is entitled to the North's fealty. She asks Jon Snow not to judge her based on her ancestors and in the same breath asks him to hold up the vows of his ancestors.

But, whatever vow the Starks made to the Targareans was broken the moment Aerys decided to burn the Starks. The fealty was made on promise of protection. Technically, any member of the houses that Aerys burnt, is no longer accountable to the vow.

Still, she expects everyone to uphold their fealty but refusing to accpet that her father broke that fealty when he decided to burn the vassels (whom he promised to protect) alive.

18. Savior Complex

Some parts of Dany reminds me of how missionaries work.

"Will your God punish me for not praying to him if I did not know about him?"

"No."

"Then why did you tell me about him?"

I believe one thing about Daenerys Targareyan. That she truly wants to help people. That she truly wants to save people. But her problem is, she wants to be the one to save people. She doesnt seem to understand that some people dont require saving.

She talks about freeing the world of tyrants and in the same breath refuses to give North the independence that they demand in solidarity. How is that not the definition of tyranny?

This is Westeros. I am not expecting a democracy and free elections. If she wants to be a conquerer, then she can be one. If she wants to bring to bring together the 7k, she can. What she cannot do is talk about destiny, talk about a wheel, talk about breaking the wheel, and and then do the exact same thing her ansestors did years go by spinning the wheel so that she is on top.

19. She was smiling when she saw that her dragons terrified people of Winterfell.

20. "They eat whatever they want"

Is that really the correct way to respond to people are already scared/cowering over the arrival of dragons? To people who have never seen such beasts before? Did she forget that few seasons ago "whatever they want" that Drogon ate were children?

21. Jaime's trial

She made Jaime stand trial and was heavily leaning towards punish him despite the fact that she knew what her father had planned and what Jaime Lannister had done. She openly spoke in favor of the Mad King in front of Northern Lords. When Tyrion intervened, she publically breated him and questioned his loyalty. Further adds to the Mad King's paranoia and unwillingness to listen to counsel.

22. Jaime Lannister

Not only has he tried to kill her, he has also questioned her intentions twice. The only living person who knows about Mad King more than anyone is perhaps Jaime Lannister. When he questions Tyrion, "Is she really different? Are you sure?" in a sceptical tone. If he doesnt trust her or thinks she had the Targ madness, then I am willing to bet that she probably does.

23. Her decling human connections

the show seems adament in making her seem alone. Like a stranger in her own home land. In an episode full of emotional reconnections, tenderness, friendships and relationships, she is shown all alone. In later episodes, she is incresingly shown alientated: Theon coming to fight for the starks despite being her bannerman, death of the Jorah, Tyrion's withdrawal.

24. jorah was her mercy.

She had shown jorah mercy despite his betrayal. She cared for him and most importantly, completely trusted and listened to him. When she felt no remorse about berating Tyrion and strongarming Sansa, jorah urges her to forgive tyrion and to try and make amends with LAdy of Winterfell. And, she listened to him. He is the only advisor she fully trusts and listens to without having to worry about wavering loyalties. And jorah's death is going to be the acorn in Ice Age that started the avalanche.

<<2 episodes left. will add more after next one airs.>>

This is not to say that she was an evil character. She was a good person with good intentions and bad execution with a twisted sense of justice and destiny. But, the journey to hell is paved with good intensions. Dany was a character who had the potential to be great. But she was always headed to doom. She is a good person whose downfall will be due to pride, ambition and obsession with destiny. She will chose her fate with a sound mind but a flawed personality. Her story will not be heroic, but tragic. Not because of what she was, but because of how she could have been.

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0poole · 5 years ago

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The Best and Worst parts of past Pokemon games

I’ve watched ShayMay’s 7-hour analysis on Omega Ruby and as you’d expect it’s getting me to think about what are actually the best and worst parts of Pokemon in the past. I’m still glad he literally goes through the entire game going into both the good and the bad of the game, and I’m basically only bringing it up because of the sheer amount of effort put into it. Obviously the video was made before Sun and Moon came out so thankfully some of his quandaries have been solved, but still it’s interesting to see the on and off of certain things throughout the series. Most of the time it gets better as time goes on, but still, it feels like you could get an amazing Pokemon game just by piecing together the features of past games (even if you’d definitely need a few additions to get it perfect, if that’s even possible).

To be honest I really am slowly falling out of favor with Sword and Shield, and it kind of makes me hope that Gamefreak can still get better. Even though the games sold like hotcakes, hopefully they have the heart to realize a ton of people didn’t really like the direction, even though it still isn’t “bad,” just worse than it feels like it should be. Even though bad direction can’t be remedied by other things, the fact that they are a multi-billion dollar franchise really makes it feel like they could afford to make it better, especially when past games did do what people wanted...

Since it’s the most relevant...

DLC/”Enhanced” Versions:

I will genuinely take DLC over “enhanced” versions any day. Even though you’d think a lot could be improved between the base versions and enhanced ones, that’s usually not the case. The only ones that truly changed the game were Black and White 2, since they were treated more like sequels. Even golden games like Platinum didn’t divert much, even if it is an objectively better version than Diamond and Pearl. Considering the games are now going to be a solid 60$ each, it would be even crazier to expect someone to buy the base and enhanced versions. Only paying 30$ for multiple expansions (at least two, could be more) with the content of said expansions being put out as a free update otherwise is a much better deal. The only people this hurts are the types who reasonably wait for the inevitable enhanced version and only buy that instead, since it’s always better, even if only a little. As far as I know, however, Pokemon is one of the only game franchises that releases enhanced versions of games soon after their release (as in, not years later when technology advances and they can profit off nostalgia), so really they’re just becoming more normal by doing this.

Of course there’s the argument that there shouldn’t be any DLC or “enhanced” versions, and all the content of the game should be included in the base game. It would obviously be preferable to not pay for it, but as is painfully obvious, even the richest groups can still be money hungry. Considering they’re inevitably going to make one or the other, DLC is going to be the better choice overall because it’s much more expandable. You rarely got to see a substantial amount of content added on in the enhanced versions. If they made us pay 30$ for the Isle of Armor and Crown Tundra separately, that would be crazy. But, since it’s 30$ for both, they could easily insert more bits alongside the rest of the Expansion Pass, maybe allowing them to carry a game for multiple years under less resources on their part compared to trying to make a whole new game. That way, maybe they can devote even more resources to future generations and remakes. That’s all just speculation though. I’m kind of impatient, writing all this before the day it releases and when we get more info for the future, so basically just take this as my opinion the whole time before the DLC came out.

Honestly, though, I almost always fall into the camp of gamers completely misrepresenting the concept of DLC, saying they just cut off some of the content and made you pay extra for it. A few bad apples really soured the bunch in this case, because, even though Sword and Shield did feel kind of lacking in some places, saying the Isle of Armor or Crown Tundra would’ve been a seamless part of the game no matter what is just obviously wrong. The games felt “complete” in the sense that it is all they wanted it to be, and it has a clear start and end. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s unfinished. Again, obviously it would be better if it was free/included already, but that’s just a given.

In a similar vein…

Remakes:

Basically, I love the usual formula for remakes. I actually really liked ORAS, and I feel like it improved on so much, making me actually like Hoenn as a region. Even though I played them closer to when they game out, RSE feel like a slog compared to modern stuff, especially with the lack of the physical/special split. I can definitely feel some nostalgia for the originals still, but 90% of the time I go back to those games looking for nostalgia, getting bored by the time I get to Rustburo, and turning it off. As mentioned by Shaymay, there’s still a ton wrong with it, but I’d much rather play them all the way through compared to the originals. I do still want to force myself through them eventually, though.

Heartgold and Soulsilver are widely considered to be the best games in the whole franchise, so I don’t have to say much. I’m not a Johto nut so I’m not the best at selling it, but I will say it feels so much more colorful and polished visually than the rest of Gen 4.

Firered and Leafgreen have the same problems that make me dislike RSE, but Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee are the strange cases that make the future so uncertain. I liked them for what they were, but I swear God if they do that one more time it’s going to make the fanbase erupt. The Let’s Go formula worked for Kanto because a lot of the people playing Go are people who knew the original games but not the newer ones, making Let’s Go a good entry point with mostly familiar territory and slightly dumbed down gameplay. It may work again if they do a Let’s Go in Johto, but if they do it for Sinnoh, since it’s the next one on the chopping block, it’s going to fall insanely flat. Barely anyone who only loves Go also seriously wants to play through Sinnoh. There’s little nostalgia there, and the nostalgia with Sinnoh resides in everyone else who loves the games as they are/as they originally were. Plus, people say they’re some of the hardest games, so dumbing them down ruins part of the appeal more. Since remakes pretty much entirely profit off of nostalgia (and partially from people wanting to experience a region without the limitations of its origins) they really need to just, you know, remake the game. Same deal as any Pokemon game, just with better (if you’d call it that) graphics and modern sensibilities. Considering all remakes (IMO) look better than their originals, I don’t think we have to worry an insane amount about them looking as iffy as SwSh. I don’t think they look THAT bad already, but I definitely think they’re some of the ugliest in the series.

I will say that I do still want remakes to happen. I’m a sucker for nostalgia, and I love seeing graphically enhanced versions of past regions. Also, my favorite region is up next, so I really just want to see what happens. I’m a shill so it can’t make me hate the originals more. Or, you know, maybe that just makes me a normal, reasonable person...

Graphics:

Obviously we just want texture quality, model quality, etc. But, I think there’s something to be talked about with the overall art style.

I’m not gonna lie, I was kinda into the chibi-esque models of X/Y and ORAS. It did feel like it trivialized the more serious characters, like the villains and major legendaries, as they looked too cute, so it’s probably for the best if we stick to “normal” proportions. It felt weird when I first saw Sun and Moon, but I got used to it. I always wanted to make my character look as cute as possible so the chibi style helped with that, but I have gotten some good results from Sword and Shield.

For character customization (if it even counts as “graphics”) I think Sword and Shield really hit the nail on the head. I’m kinda biased, because Moon and Ultra Moon had a really shitty shade of purple as their designated “purple” clothing, and SwSh really got my favorite shade of it right. I do think it’s great to have one style of clothing under different, generally standardized colors. But, I definitely think we need more body types. Like, one of the main reasons I play as a girl in games like this is that the boy character doesn’t even look like me anyway, so there’s really no good reason to play either. Even if it’s just one separate character option for each gender, like a Skinny male/”Round” male/Skinny female/”Round” female I’d be fine. Obviously I’d want some character sliders at some point, like pretty much every other game with character customization does, but I can settle for one more generation. The alts could even be more shoehorned rivals like in X/Y, so they basically have the design cut out for them.

One weird graphical thing I want brought back is the little circular platform your Pokemon lands on in a battle. For some reason, I really liked that. It does make the battle feel more in tune with the overall environment without it, but sometimes the battle fields look really bland and flat without it. I’d at least want the floor to be designed in a way to look like there are devoted spots for each Pokemon to stand on, even if it’s not a separate thing like in X/Y. It just feels more satisfying. Not really a big deal though, since I’ve been able to ignore it for this long.

The big thing is animations. I am getting extremely tired of the X/Y models. That’s 3 generations so far that use them, and some of them aren’t even good. I’ll never hesitate to drive this point into the ground, but I really wish Pokemon like Xatu, Charizard, Dragonite, and Salamence are permanently floating/flying in air. If it isn’t obvious, this is the way it is because of Sky Battles in X/Y, since they didn’t want to do extra work for the Pokemon permanently suspended in air. The problem is that those four Pokemon (and probably many others) really don’t feel like they are supposed to be in the air 24/7. According to their official art and sprites, they’re all on the ground. Xatu especially was made to look super tall and stout with its geometric wings flatly put on his torso, like the totem pole it’s supposed to be. In the air, it basically just hovers with his wings out, and for some reason it looks like there’s a large gust of wind keeping it afloat. It looks really weird. Salamence is also in the same boat, since its wings are so weird and not wing-like that making it constantly fly just looks so unnatural. Mega Salamence was at least designed to look like it’s supposed to be flying, but normal Salamence really should just rest on the ground. He’s too fat to be permanently lifted by his weird wings. Charizard and Dragonite aren’t as severe, since both are clearly shown to be otherwise super capable of flight, but they do feel better on their feet. I remember watching TyranitarTube’s series on one of the Extreme Randomizer hacks of the game, and in there somehow they made a Dragonite use it’s Amie/Refresh animation of sitting still on its feet in battle. It seriously felt so much better to look at, instead of this giant, poofy dragon being carried by its comically small wings. Basically, the way you should tell whether to keep them on the ground is based on the official art/sprites. That is the way the designers intended them to be depicted, so that’s the way they should be. Some exceptions that I’m actually fine with are pretty much all the regional birds, except Unfezant. They all look pretty decent flying, since flying’s basically all they do… Even Swellow, who has the same strange gust of wind as Xatu, feels more fitting like that because it seems so much more aerodynamic.

Apart from that, I just wish they were at least a little different. I’m not super against the muted colors they have compared to the sprites, but I wouldn’t be against more saturation. Considering how much work was put into all the different animations of the battles, Refresh, and both walking AND running animations, I unfortunately don’t think they’re going to change any time soon unless they explicitly say they’re going to change them for quality improvement. I would say the Pokemon from Gen 6 up are still pretty fine, since they were more meant for 3D.

As for battles, one of my favorite Pokemon games is, in fact, Pokemon Battle Revolution on the Wii. Not only was it super Sinnoh-focused, but it had multiple body types (even if I still look like none of them) with character customization for all, and great graphics for the time. People always look to it after citing the lacking Double Kick animation from SwSh, saying how animated the models were and how they liked the Pokemon actually running up to their target when using a physical attack. I will say that the model quality for a lot of them were still kind of iffy, and that some of the animations were a little too much. Specifically Pidgeotto, who was on one of the rental cards, was super energetic so as to seem a bit crazy, and felt a bit low-poly for the otherwise high quality of the environments and humans. However, going back to such a formula would be extremely welcome. I’m totally fine with the Pokemon not running up to their targets, but I wouldn’t be mad to see it put in, especially since the walking and running animations are already in the game. They would need to be balanced in terms of speed, though, since some of the animations in PBR felt really, really slow with that animation in there. Plus, some moves just need speed, like Quick Attack.

In terms of the move animations themselves, I do think some of the water effects in PBR felt too realistic compared to the rest of everything. Also, people say Double Kick looked bad in SwSh (like it ever looked good), but a hell of a lot of Fighting type animations in PBR were literally just the Pokemon walking up to their target, smacking them with nondescript flashes, and that’s it. So many of them could hardly be pieced apart depending on whether they were kicks, punches, or whatever. It would’ve been better either way if they put the physical move attack animation in for Double Kick, but PBR has its fair share of shitty move animations too. Moves like Seismic Toss looked fucking insane though, and I loved it. Seismic Toss specifically is the true test of move animation quality.

Also, it’s kinda irrelevant to anything, but I could totally get down with the Announcer from PBR returning for major battles like Gym battles or League battles. He was so much fun, even if a bit repetitive. All you need for that is a setting to turn him off, and bam. He’s a true classic.

More generally, though, I think Sword and Shield is a seriously mixed bag of graphical quality. I give the SwSh haters a lot of flack, but the one thing I 100% agree with is the texture of the trees from the Wild Area. They are god awful, even if it was in a game a decade ago. I seriously don’t know how they messed that up, since you can download better bark textures for free on the internet. Surely someone at Gamefreak could’ve done better there. If this was just a random tree in the background of some random route, then who cares, right? But no, this is practically every single tree in the Wild Area, the biggest selling point for the region and the game, where you would always spend the most time. You see so many of these trees everywhere, and they look horrible. I also hate the look of the berry trees, since they don’t seem to use the same lighting effects as everything else (just a guess though), but even apart from that the batch of lighter leaves on top of the bottom ones just looks so artificial. It looks as if they dumped a sphere of leaves on top of another sphere of leaves, like it was ice cream. Maybe some trees in the real world look like that, but sometimes it’s an artist’s job to take what sucks about reality to make it better for fiction.

On the other hand, I think locations like Motostoke look genuinely amazing. The brick textures are pretty good (compared to the tree), and all the colors and shapes of the place look really good. Also, when they go into full-on cutscene mode, the models, scenery, and everything else really shine. Obviously I’m not the king of all visual media, but it’s just weird to see that. It’s hard to compare to past games, because everything else was either 2D or on the 3DS, which wasn’t as powerful. Even though the Wii is definitely less powerful than the Switch, it doesn’t really count since there’s infinitely less content to worry about in PBR. Much more of the work could’ve gone into the graphics. Really, there doesn’t feel like there’s any excuse unless crunching is involved on the business side of things, which I really hope isn’t an issue for their sake. I would honestly love to see them announce that they’re taking a year or two off to devote themselves fully to a new generation, instead of trying to keep a yearly schedule. Something something Miyamoto quote something something.

Stylistically, it’s also a mixed bag, but at least this time it’s all just subjective. It feels like a lot of the game is meant to be somewhat blobbed together in some ways, like its a painting meant to be looked at from afar. It feels like there aren’t major outlines for things. Specifically with the Pokemon, they don’t have that outline they’ve had for the 2 generations before. It’s never been a big deal, and I really hate how low quality the outline made the models feel, so I don’t really know which style I want. Even though it’s still decent, I feel like most 3D models made to have a super notable outline on them look a little funky sometimes with it, so I don’t know if I want that, but without it they just don’t feel as solid. I really just don’t know there.

Music:

It feels like, even if a franchise is kinda iffy, the music is still consistently top tier. Like, no one thinks Sonic games have objectively bad music, even if they don’t like it. If they do, they’re just wrong. Pokemon’s the same, so thankfully this isn’t a test of which past game had the highest quality music. I do think the Wild Battle theme in SwSh does feel like it has a weird melody, but that is super outclassed by universally acclaimed bangers like the Slumbering Weald, and the battle themes of Marnie, Bede, Oleana, and the Battle Tower. Those aren’t just the best the generation has to offer, they’re seriously amazing themes.

Back in Gen 7, we have the Kahuna Battle, all themes of Team Skull and the Aether Foundation, Lillie’s theme, the Ultra Beasts (which might be more contentious but I like it) and Hau’oli City at night. In Gen 6, I at least liked the themes of Laverre City, Team Flare, and ESPECIALLY the Xerneas/Yveltal battle theme. Don’t even get me started about Pokemon Battle Revolution. I could go on and on, but I at least want to spotlight ORAS here because they knocked it out of the park with Archie and Maxie’s battle theme. It was the perfect drop, because the intro felt super muted and boring, and I was afraid they completely snubbed it, but the drop completely blew me away, and absolutely perfected the theme with the crazy trumpets Hoenn is known for. Also, Zinnia’s theme is amazing, as well as many other themes that are just improvements over the originals. The one thing I’m semi-iffy on is the Regi theme, an amazing theme for my favorite trio, but I never think anyone really makes it feel as lumbering and deep as it should, considering what it’s supposed to represent. The beat is arranged as it should, but it never feels punchy enough for me.

I’m really just praising the music here. Frankly, I see no reason to think the music is getting any worse.

Difficulty/EXP Share:

They’re basically the same thing, at least according to Gamefreak.

I always keep the EXP share on, but I do think that making it a permanent addition to the game was a major mistake. As explained in Shaymay’s video, it actually increases the overall experience you gain in battle, at least before. That seems absurd to make a permanent addition (although they likely changed it in SwSh because of that). I honestly just use it because I’m not into a challenge in games, but it should definitely be optional, if for no other reason than to be a bootleg difficulty slider. However, What about the difference between the Gen 6+ version and previous versions?

I think it’s easy. Make it like pre-Gen 6, but give you multiple shares. So, if you want to train up two underleveled Pokemon, make it so you don’t have to swap it between them. That way, if you really want to just spread the EXP thin, you can give one to everyone you have, and that’s that. Also, I think it should perfectly split the EXP, not adding anything onto it. If everyone on your team has one and you get 120 EXP, that’s 20 EXP for everyone. Of course, I do actually love the mechanic of being able to switch the share holder in to give them a disproportionately larger amount of EXP compared to everyone else. It just doubles the effectiveness of switch training, and makes it better for when you want to train them up but specifically not the higher level Pokemon you’re using to fight.

Some part of me wants to keep my precious easy mode in, but then I realize… Just make actual difficulty differences. Just give us a choice. Even if it’s just a “How well do you know the Pokemon world?” with a “I know all about it/I’m a bit unsure” text box in the beginning. In the harder variant, tutorials will be skipped automatically, trainers will have higher AI, and better teams. However, I don’t think higher levels is a perfect foil, because that can just be beat with grinding, and grinding is boring. Also, I’d have to guess the main reason why Gamefreak didn’t do this in the first place is that trading Pokemon would differ a bit between difficulties with different level curves, although apart from it just sounding like a bad thing I’m struggling to think of a genuine reason why it is. But, for the sake of playing, grinding sucks. It’s not fun, and I honestly think you shouldn’t just bump up levels and call it difficulty, because you don’t actually need skill to beat a higher level, just a better level and maybe RNG. But, if you actually had to effectively train a team of more than six, with Pokemon you swap out depending on your opponent, you would actually need to think of how you play the game. I think the main reason Pokemon games are so easy is that you can basically choose whatever you want and do almost whatever and still win. Some fights, as far as my playstyle goes, are still decently challenging because I just choose what Pokemon I like and not as much what’s good (unless something genuinely just sucks), and those battles, even though I would probably get annoyed at losing over and over, feel so much more rewarding to beat. And, of course, that’s only like a few major fights. I’ve never had any real trouble with trainers. I only think I’ve had a bit of trouble with the elite trainers in Let’s Go because I always try to use my lowest level Pokemon first to level them up, and keep my team at completely even levels. If I always just switched in the foil to my opponent, which I inevitably had, I would almost never lose a single Pokemon, mostly because of the “switch” battle setting.

But of course that begs the question of Pokemon being balanced for children and inexperienced players. I know way too much about this game, so obviously it’s a piece of cake for me no matter what, and what I want is supposedly what would frustrate everyone else. But… again, just put in the choice. People can choose whether they want to be challenged, or if they just want to play Pokemon, and if they choose wrong that’s on them, not anyone else. They could just reset the game and try again on an easier difficulty. It’s crazy to have to vouch for this, since it’s a staple in pretty much every other game in existence. Even in my casual state, I want to play a harder Pokemon. I want to test myself. Online competition is a bit much for me, but the AI is too little. Even in me replaying Pearl right now, I’m trying to use weirder and weaker Pokemon than I usually use for difficulty, and even that game was mostly a cakewalk. I’m only stuck at the Elite Four because I was somehow super underleveled. In the generation where I experience the AI switching out the most, they still just do that at random and keep in certain Pokemon that get completely walled by what I have out, only for me to stall them to death. AI definitely should switch out (and I honestly can’t remember it happening once since Gen 5, if even then) so if anything, just give them a more solid switching ability. Considering we have the opportunity to switch in whatever we want when they are about to send out something, they really need to take advantage of the power of switching.

Gyms are a big piece of difficulty that falls apart 90% of the time. The gym puzzles are rarely hard, with only a few notable exceptions requiring major thought, like the Circhester, Snowbelle, Snowpoint, and Sootopolis gyms. See a pattern? Why the heck to Ice types/themes get the worst resistances yet the best gym puzzles? Otherwise, if you’re not just fighting trainers (which you were going to do anyway) you’re bashing your head against a wall until something sticks. The Trials of SM/USUM were universally a joke, and were it not for the Totem fight they would’ve actually made me mad by how easy they are, considering they had the opportunity to revamp the whole system and knock it out of the park.

As for the Gym Leader, assuming we have to stick with the idea that they can only use one type still, they really have to cover their bases. Like, a Water gym leader would really have to have Flying type moves or Pokemon to counteract the easy Grass weakness, or something. You can’t get to the top with just one single type and nothing else. I do kind of think a master with no specific type speciality should only be reserved for the Champion, since it makes them more special, and because it seems like any old trainer can become one if they beat the last one, meaning it’s illogical for too many of them to have one special type. I can appreciate the choice philosophies of the Gyms like Raihan and Volkner, and Flint of the Elite Four, where they do specialize in one type, but they have a lot of different Pokemon involved who only have moves of that type. It still feels consistent, but also more varied. Also, I love the 1v2 dynamic of Totem fight. Not only does it blatantly put you at a disadvantage, but since the battles aren’t explicitly type based, they can put together some seriously unique strategies, like the Sunny Day Castform partner to the Totem Lurantis. It’s literally the most basic plan you can formulate, but it sure as hell made that one of the hardest early boss fights in the series, at least for me. It was pretty good stuff. Too bad other bosses like the Ultra Necrozma fight was just kind of cheap, with a +1 to all stats and super high level… Better than nothing though.

Versions:

I get that it’s a staple of the franchise, but I really hate version exclusives/differences. They’re just dumb. Specifically the differences of Black 2 and White 2 pissed me off the most, because guess what? They did have difficulty options! But… they were version exclusive. Like White Kyurem more than Black Kyurem? Or, maybe Reuniclus is your favorite Pokemon? (not bitter) Well, too bad. You’re only allowed the expressly easier mode of the game, which you only unlock after beating it normally????? That’s just stupid. I’d sort of be okay with it if you unlocked easy mode after normal mode, then unlocking hard mode after beating easy mode (like how I thought it was before I looked it up), but limiting stuff like that is just ridiculous. I mean, it’s dumb to have to unlock an easy mode after beating the normal game to begin with. I’m honestly considering trying to beat easy mode without evolving any Pokemon though. Self-imposed difficulty is fun sometimes, but yeah…

Also, the differences of Sun and Moon also are dumb. Like playing in the day, but like Lunala more? Maybe Purple is your all-time favorite color and you want to wear it? Well, too bad. Go ahead and flip your 3DS’s internal clock around, messing up all other time based games you play. It’s a gimmick that transcends Mega Evolution, Z-Moves, and Dynamax.

Now, there’s a completely new problem: Some people bought the wrong expansion pass for their game. Because there were two versions, people literally just wasted money on absolutely nothing. To be fair, those people are blind idiots, but still. I really just want one version. Please.

The whole semi-in-grouping that happens when the version exclusive Pokemon are first revealed is kinda fun, but 90% of the time people have to settle for a few Pokemon they like and a few they don’t. For example, I bought Sword specifically because I like Zacian more, and the legendaries would be much harder to come by than other version exclusives. In the meanwhile, I preferred practically every other version exclusive over Sword’s, including but not limited to my boy Reuniclus. I don’t use old Pokemon in newer generations anyway, but it still sucks to have to choose like that.

It was obviously meant to give people much more to look for, since they physically can’t get some Pokemon, and have them interact with others to get them. The only problem is that we just have the Internet now. It doesn’t help to just ask someone online for a trade for a version exclusive. It’s just an extra stepping stone that really isn’t that fun to deal with.

I was originally going to say that the games/console cost more so less people would buy them, but considering SwSh absolutely knocked it out of the park, overselling even the highest selling games from the past, that’s clearly not an issue. My sister even bought Let’s Go Pikachu after buying Let’s Go Eevee for herself, since we both initially got Eevee. Thankfully she seems relatively into buying the games now, so we can coordinate and get different versions. That’s how I was able to complete my Pokedex for the first time in Sword (although obviously there’s less Pokemon to find). I think she even bought a separate Sword version for herself too… Is this what the average consumer is like?

Honestly all of this is just sort of subjective because really it’s not a big deal, but it would be so much less of a deal and make the games much more perfect and reasonable story wise if they just used one version. For example, Circhester is clearly an Ice-themed location, but in Sword you face a Rock gym leader, instead of the Ice one. And, the opposite is true in Stow-on-side, because Sword has the more logical gym with the boxing gloves punching you around and the tough city that feels as Fighting as Fighting could be without being a literal dojo. But, in Shield you face some Ghost kid. To be fair, I do like that version exclusivity is bleeding into some of the characters too, so if there is to be version exclusives at all let there be version exclusive characters, but it would just feel so much better to have it all sorted into one place. Also, to consider past installments, Ho-oh is clearly more important to the overall plot of the world than Lugia is, as shown by Ho-oh always being an important, mystical lore figure in the Anime and such, while Lugia is just like “Wow, there’s Lugia! So powerful!” Thankfully the plot didn’t entirely revolve around them, but it could’ve if they just focused on Ho-oh.

Story:

Pokemon has definitely had its fair share of dumb stories, which is excusable because it’s not actually the focus of the game, but it doesn’t hurt to have.

You obviously can’t talk story without talking about Black and White. Also, you really can’t talk a Pokemon story without talking about the evil Team in each game, because they’re basically the entire motor for plot. Still, though, Team Plasma is easily the best Team in the franchise for story purposes. The biggest thing is that they seem like the most reasonable team, making them seem like people who are just so into their ideals that it looks like a cult. Also, in B2W2, they actually split up into the friendly division of Plasma, where they actually carry out their goals of wanting Pokemon to be happy and free, while Neo-Plasma does all the Team Rocket-level shenanigans that mess everything up. Not only is it just reasonable, but it answers a question that comes with the overall concept of the franchise: How can Pokemon want to battle for the sake of humans, etc? It doesn’t make sense, and naturally someone in the world would take that to the extreme when they realized it. It also makes sense why the grunts are so hellbent on wreaking havoc around Unova, because they are each led to truly believe what they are doing is right for the world. Other villains like Archie and Cyrus are just like “humans are bad, let’s destroy them” which is like a lite version of this idea, but it feels almost too supervillain-y to take seriously, and the grunts just feel like henchmen. Plasma feels just real enough, with somewhat level-headed people like N making it seem like they’re almost not crazy.

People always say Team Rocket is the best, but even though their motives are so simple enough so as to seem real and good story-wise, they do feel like they don’t really add anything to the overall idea of Pokemon. At the time it was just “Pokemon are strong so bad people can use strong Pokemon for bad” which makes sense, but really doesn’t feel like it extends beyond that. Don’t get me wrong, I would say they’re objectively second best (because subjectively Galactic is my #1) but I do think Plasma is better.

Since they’re the most recent, Team Yell is the most nothing out of this list. That only makes them second worst, above Team Flare, who felt like they were trying to do something big but fell flat. Team Yell as the resident “evil Team” feels weird, because they do almost nothing. They are only similar to Skull on the surface, that being all rough-and-tumble teenager types, as underneath them being a toxic fanbase is somewhat interesting, but they, again… just felt like nothing. The plot wasn’t even close by to them, like with Skull was, being tied in with the Aether Foundation. They’re just there to be goons and go away. At least they did lead to the first Dark type gym leader, but again… their leader is a Gym leader. We would’ve seen him no matter what he did, so it feels less interesting. I do want the Team to actually do something.

The problem is that, since Plasma already did good, how do you do something that’s original but still good? To be honest, I want it to involve Foundations, like a morally good alternative archetype to the evil Team. Our first run-in with a Foundation was led astray by a crazy leader, but it seems like they’re still good overall, so I at least want to see more of them. Maybe instead of the Team searching for world domination by using the box legendary, maybe you and the Foundation have to search for the box legendary so they can help you defeat the Team, who may or may not have the third/another legendary on their side, and you have to prove yourself to it to get it to trust you. Sort of like Sword and Shield, but more involved. Zacian and Zamazenta just sort of appear when things go bad, and that’s it. You just hear stories about them before that. That’s at least better structure-wise, although the motives and themes would still have to be dealt with. There are so many possibilities there it’s hard to choose.

One thing, though: I definitely believe that Pokemon was never even close to an open world game, and people thinking the new games are too linear compared to the old ones just have rose tinted glasses on. Kanto had bad crossing over, where you’d sometimes find yourself severely overleveled when interacting with a story event, and beyond that all other games were pretty linear too, with only a few slight special, optional areas that aren’t involved with the plot. Of course, I still think the game would benefit from being open world. Some games don’t have to be open world, and that makes them feel sort of empty, but Pokemon as an idea is exactly perfect for that. They were toying with the idea a bit with the Wild Area, and I do think if they really went crazy with that idea it could be fun. Everyone always wants to compare it to Breath of the Wild, but I do love how seamless everything is in that game. Even with the enemies popping up out of the grass/flying down from the air/just romping in a set area like Pokemon would. Gym leaders could just use different teams based on how many badges you have, like how they imply it works in that Pokemon Origins series. Then, you might be able to scale up the Pokemon you can find too that way, like with the Wild Area. BotW’s story was very light, but if you just either use a quest system/map markers you can still manage a decent story in an open world. Plus, Pokemon has a ton of side quests anyways, like all the ghost quests they always seem to put in. You can literally “get” the quest, get distracted, and completely forget you were even doing any sort of quest because they don’t remind you in any way. Side quests could even get you extra doses of EXP for your team, giving them a use.

The Gimmick:

I don’t want every generation to have a gimmick. Ideas are severely limited in that front, and when everyone’s special, no one is.

Mega Evolution was kinda cool, as it improved on old Pokemon without making them another part of an evolutionary chain. Also, it lets some Pokemon get different forms with entirely different strategies to them (even if they’re version exclusive…) But, as someone who plays Pokemon for the monster designs themselves, I actually kinda don’t like it. No, not because Mega designs are bad, but because they completely trump the designs they evolve from. For example, Mawile isn’t just “Mawile” anymore. It’s more of a “Not-mega Mawile.” It feels so much less complete now that it has a form on top of it that isn’t permanent. Same goes for starters like Sceptile, who feels kind of boring compared to its Mega. It always sucks when a Pokemon you like evolves into something you don’t like (Popplio for me) and you have to deal with the fact that, even if you like a Pokemon, you aren’t supposed to keep it like that, and it’s brought down because of it. I mean, I guess this is all just personal. Obviously it’s easy to like an early evolution, but it feels so much better to like a final evolution. Since Megas are both temporary in battle, not available outside of battle, and limited to the very late game usually, liking a Mega feels kinda pointless for in-game purposes, where you interact with your Pokemon the most. Plus, for Pokemon like Mawile, you’re using an “incomplete” Pokemon for as long as you don’t have the right Mega stone. It’s obviously fine when all your other Pokemon are incomplete as well, but yeah… Just kinda sucks sometimes. Plus, anything achieved by Mega Evolutions could just as easily be achieved by normal evolutions. The only issue is Pokemon like Beedrill not being able to evolve again, and Pokemon like the starters or legendaries who are already too good to get another stage. I feel like weak, 3rd stage Pokemon like Beedrill deserve that kind of treatment the most, but no one else. If they can evolve normally, evolve them normally, and if they’re already too good, just let them be.

Then there’s Z-moves, which solves one problem of Mega-Evolution: All Pokemon can get involved. No matter what, your Pokemon can unleash super cool but sometimes questionably named moves. And, apart from new animations, the special Z-moves aren’t so insanely preferable to the normal ones. It’s cool, but if every Pokemon gets to use them, it kinda gets old after a while. Also, it’s a one-time use, so if you fuck it up it’s wasted. It’s definitely not perfect, but I will say I love the special Z-move animations, mainly because it’s not just Pokemon doing stock animations for a quick little attack. They animated that Pokemon specifically for this attack, which is basically a cutscene, and it always looks better. It is a bit strange, though, that even though Z-moves are seemingly named after Zygarde, it doesn’t even get a special Z-move of its own. That dude really got the shaft when it comes to 3rd legend attention...

Now we have Dynamax and Gigantamax. I just want to say that, when it first was revealed that you can turn your Pokemon into Kaiju I was extremely hyped. More hyped than I had any right to be. Considering nothing else, Dynamax definitely is the winner in terms of visual concept. Not only does it just look cool, but I love how Gym stadiums are designed specifically to accommodate them. It’s a nice touch of worldbuilding (even though it’s basically necessary). Unfortunately… It’s easily the Jack of all trades, master of none in terms of gameplay. It’s like Mega Evolution in how you change the appearance and power of your Pokemon, and it’s like Z-moves because they have super powerful moves with special effects. Sounds alright I guess, but I really just wish they kept the previous two gimmicks instead of just making a new one that checks them both off. Also, Gigantamax actually annoys me. They try to make it seem like your Pokemon changes, but the vast majority of them either look worse or hardly change at all. Specifically, Copperaja looks like an absolute joke, even though normal Copperaja is one of my favorites of the region. But, ones like Hatterene, Corviknight, Garbodor, and Grimmsnarl hardly look any different at all. Even Appultun and Flapple have the exact same Gigantamax. Who cares? Even their moves have almost exactly the same animations as their type’s counterparts, with a slightly different particle effect. It’s so much less interesting than they make it seem, and it has all the problems of liking Megas over their base, but worse, since they’re more temporary and only allowed in certain areas. Plus, Gigantamax isn’t even a thing possible with all members of a single species. Obviously now they’re introducing a way to change that, but at that point why not just do it Mega style? It’s not even that much better, but there’s so much more work in it. It’s like less rare shinies. It did bring about a decent event in the games, those being the Max Raid Battles, which both have good rewards and good challenge to them. I don’t have friends so they suck for me, but with friends it looks awesome.

I feel like the worst part is that they probably are just going to retcon these gimmicks in the future, like they did with the Pokedex. It makes sense, but each thing was made to be such a massive deal in their respective regions, it feels lame that they’re just gone now.

But, oh my god. You have no idea. Regional Variants are the best thing to happen to Pokemon since, I dunno, whatever. They’re amazing, and something that should never leave the franchise ever. Like a Kantonian form more than an Alolan form? Sure. It’s still there with all its power, it just has a different style in this region. That is not only biologically logical, but it brings back interest in a Pokemon without outclassing the classics. Plus, now it feels like every single Pokemon has a possibility to shine that is both permanent and preserving of the original. I just can’t get enough of it. Then Sword and Shield introduced the idea of Regional Evolutions, which can be both plain evolutions and split evolutions from the normal form like with Cofagrigus and Runerigus, meaning the possibilities are endless. Then, even further, regional LEGENDARIES. It doesn’t make sense lore-wise but who cares, the new birds look awesome as all hell and I actually like them now. It’s so perfect, I don’t want anything more than this in future games. I would kill for some Sinnoh variants of post-gen 4 Pokemon in the remakes. Hell, I hope Sinnoh gets revamped with a ton of different options across the later generations so it feels significantly different from the originals.

As for things like Primal Reversion, I honestly don’t even know. It’s even less significant than Gigantamax, but since it has more interesting lore I’m sort of fine with it. I do hope they use it for other legends too, especially since Palkia and Dialga are just asking for it, with their respective orbs, and Dialga already having the “Primal” title elsewhere. And yes, I know he’s called “Dark Dialga” in Japanese.

If I may be so bold, I think a neat gimmick that can be both unique, interesting, and completely alter the strategies of battle, would be some sort of temporary type inversion. That is, everything going out of and coming into the inverted Pokemon will have reverse effectiveness. It’s like the fringe little Inverse battle you can go through in X/Y, but turned into a mechanic that’s inserted into normal battles. Visually, it would give the Pokemon a negative look, as in inverting their colors and shading. I don’t see how this could single out certain Pokemon in a special way, like with a form change or anything, but maybe there could be one specific Pokemon that has an ability that does something special when it inverts. Maybe items could be made for a special use too. I was sort of half-using it for a fan region I’m half-devoted to that will likely not be a full fledged idea, but I do like it.

Roadblocks/HMs:

I’m entirely fine with the way things are now, where you just get the HMs as key items you use whenever you want, but I can sympathize with the small contingent of people who like using their Pokemon to traverse the world, instead of anything else. I definitely think anyone who prefers HMs beyond that reason is an absolute lunatic, but I think there is some sort of a point to be made, and I think a combo of Let's Go and Sun and Moon have the answer. It is so much more fun to ride your Pokemon around than it is to get a bike (and put on some seriously ugly clothing, mind you), and I think Let's Go with giving you the option to ride your Pokemon instead of using a bike is seriously fun. I used a Rapidash almost exclusively for that purpose in my run of that game. Who the hell wouldn’t want to ride a Rapidash, assuming you weren’t going to catch fire? Plus, it’s YOUR Rapidash. Ride Pokemon in Sun and Moon were still pretty good, because they served functions you wouldn’t normally expect from HMs, like Tauros being both your bike replacement and Rock Smash, while Stoutland is a dowsing rod. It does get a bit weird when you “ride” a Machamp just so it can push rocks for you, but it’s better than forcing you to teach one of your team members a normal type move at the very end of the game since you absolutely need it to move on, and having to keep it until you can fly back to the move deleter. Honestly, if you could just delete HMs on the fly, they would be so much more acceptable. Still would be worse than what we have now tho.

Basically, I think Pokemon should have inherent HM abilities in them. That is, every single Tauros you catch can smash rocks, and every single Machamp you catch can push rocks. Each Pokemon would either be capable or incapable of a task, and you only need that species to go through it. That way, you’re both using your own Pokemon, while also not limiting their moves. It also makes it easy to tell why birds like Starly shouldn’t be able to carry you and fly you around, while birds like Staraptor can. I also think any road blocks using Rock Smash or Cut should be entirely optional, and for secrets only. In order to make Fly a limited option, maybe only fully evolved Fly-logical Pokemon can use it, so you can’t just fly somewhere in the early game. But, another thing: if you can fly early, so what? It’s not like you get extra options, you only can go back to places you’ve already been to. Even though it doesn’t make sense logically, it’s a very fair piece of game design that really doesn’t have a super obvious reason why it’s limited to the middle few gyms. If you have a strong bird that can pick you up, you obviously worked enough to get some convenience.

But then, what would be a roadblock to keep you from going too far? A horde of dancing men? Honestly, that’s just one of those things fixed by my open world idea. Maybe some areas can be super strong so as to tell you that you shouldn’t be there, and maybe implement the idea of the Wild Area where you can’t catch the strong-looking Pokemon, but apart from that make most of the world scale up with you. Surely some areas would be slightly higher leveled then the rest, though, for the sake of variety. The Wild area does get a bit stale when literally everything you encounter is exactly lvl 60. Obviously there could be some pointless story-focused roadblocks that only clear when you progress, because that is how it is in real life. You can’t just walk into some business’ office unless you have business there. Of course, you can’t exactly walk into random strangers’ houses either, but still.

I do want to praise ORAS again because the Soar feature with the Latis was extremely cool. It was like Ride Pokemon but using the objectively coolest possible HM to control. If they sort of nerfed the Fly mechanic and made it so you did have to ride your Pokemon and fly them there like the Latis I wouldn't mind that at all. Although, surely some other people would...

Other Bits:

- I still think that, even though having every Pokemon in the game would be great, I think if it can improve the game elsewhere I wouldn’t mind them saving some space. The problem is that Sword and Shield really wasn’t the best way to suggest it would vastly improve anything. I’ve gone on ad nauseam elsewhere about that so bleh

- I love seeing Pokemon in the overworld. I do think it would benefit from the Let’s Go treatment, where you can at least see if a Pokemon is shiny or not. Either way, it gives them so much more personality, like how some charge head-first at you while some walk up and casually examine you.

- I don’t really care too much about Pokemon following you to be honest. It would obviously be preferred over the alternative, but I’m not gonna riot if it doesn’t happen. It did give a lot of personality I didn’t expect in Lets Go, like Bellsprout being so darn speedy.

- I could probably make a whole nother giant rant about the overall designs of Pokemon but needless to say I’m fine with it overall. I do sort of wish they’d do something else with the starters though, since I haven’t genuinely loved a starter since Gen 4. Honestly Chesnaught was pretty close, but I still get the urge to replace him with something more interesting. Outside of them, though, I think things are going good. Some are duds, but some are bangers like Corvinight, Grimmsnarl, Hatterene, Frosmoth, and a bunch of others which I could easily list but this is supposed to be succinct comments so

- There definitely has to be some sort of endgame content, but everyone already knows that. Seriously though, what if the colosseums from PBR become the replacement Battle Frontier? That would be dope. Although the normal Battle Frontier would be fine too, I guess…

- PBR PBR PBR. PBR is great for it’s realistic sizes of Pokemon. If you’re going to use full-size models of humans, the Pokemon should match. Or, at least make it a little more true to reality. Yes, Wailord is too damn small.

#Pokemon #sword #shield #rant #rambling #dlc #isle of armor #opinions #it seriously took me 5 hours straight to write all this #ideas

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davidmann95 · 5 years ago

Note

Velvet's battle is a great choice, though I'll always have a special place in my heart for the fight against the Grimm Deathstalker and the Nevermore in Episode 8. That said, what do you think of the individual members of Team RWBY?

I decided to wait on this until I caught up on the series thus far, which I just finished doing the night before last in pretty much the only time in my life I’ve ever really properly binged anything other than comics, and…wow. I knew RWBY was a thing just as a matter of course from being on this site and Youtube, and from watching Death Battle, so I picked up some major beats by osmosis. But my main impression was that it was a charming pseudo-anime online thing of decent quality that unsurprisingly got heavier as it went along as such things tend to do, with extremely rad fights and music along the way; figured it’d be more than serviceable to watch while I was on the treadmill as a disposable distraction from the agony of propelling my wheezing, sweating, loathsome meat-scaffolding forward.

I did *not* expect it to eventually end up after growing pains a - while far from flawless - intensely engrossing story of all-consuming personal and generational pain and people who choose to love and do the right thing in defiance of that trauma and loss and hopelessness, where also occasionally a corgi gets fastball specialed at mechas. Though once it became clear that’s what it is, it pretty clearly sat at an intersection of a hell of a lot of my favorite things, especially when characters copped in-universe in both the main series and spinoff material that this is basically a superhero thing. My initial impressions re: the fights and music were on-point though.

I actually have quite a few thoughts on pretty much all the protagonists of note at this point (other than I suppose Oscar and Maria. Like them both though, and I do hope that nice boy’s brain somehow doesn’t dissolve into the blender of Ozpin’s subconscious), but I’ll just stick with the core four here as requested for now unless someone asks otherwise. Weiss is the simplest to get at the core of, I’d say: her arc is learning that fuck rich people, actually. She’s a seriously difficult character to get onboard for at first - especially if you’re watching those first episodes for the first time in 2019 - as the mean unconsciously racist rich girl who learns to be less mean and racist but still kinda mean. But after you’ve extensively seen the hideously toxic environment she grew up in, and fully understand her efforts to grow past the empty values it inculcated in her in favor of everything she was raised to think of herself as above, she becomes a hell of a figure to root for. Assuming RWBY is gonna go, say, a respectable 10 seasons given it was just renewed through 9, I could easily see the upcoming 7th be the climax of her arc with her return to Atlas and likely further reckoning with the consequences of her families’ actions beyond how they’ve hurt her personally.

Yang is also, in a certain abstract narrative sense, simple, in that she’s built around the very oldest trick in the book for characters whose main deal is ‘can punch better than absolutely anyone’: give them problems that cannot be solved by punching. Except in her case it’s less a material “well, this person is invulnerable to punching!” or “well, actually this other person can punch most best of all” issue blocking her path than “punching cannot solve depression, abandonment issues, questioning whether what she considers her purpose in life is one she’s truly pursuing for noble reasons or if she even has the resolve for it anymore after what’s happened to her, or PTSD”. Yet, while it may not be the kind that manifests in the form of punching people with a smirk and a bad pun anymore (much as she still definitely does that all the time) what ultimately drives her and defines her is still her strength: to move forward, to forgive, to let go, to do the right thing in spite of the risks. Which could easily come off as some unpleasant “you just have to get over your moping!” dismissal - there’s a bit with her dad that means it saddles riiiiight up to the edge of that - but there’s a weight to how her traumas remain a consistent factor in her life and have shaped her outlook even as her circumstances and day-to-day disposition improve that makes it feel thematically like it’s coming from a place of acknowledgment and endurance rather than denial, even if it’s not handled perfectly. Great to see her apparently recapturing some more of her joie de vivre based on the trailer for Volume 7, and how that’ll interact with how she’s grown should be interesting.

Blake is…tough, because you fundamentally cannot talk about Blake without getting into the Faunus, which is maybe the biggest aspect of RWBY that leaves it in the realm of Problematic Fave. It really, really wants to have something substantial to say about the proper response to racism, and every now and then it pumps out a “capitalism greases the wheels of systemic oppression and vice-versa” or “it’s perfectly reasonable for the oppressed to seek to fight back directly against their oppressors, and even the pacifist in the room can recognize that’s a defensible approach that deserves its place”. But then Abusive Boyfriend Magneto literally murders nuance in Vol. 5 episode 2, and it descends into some borderline “but what about black on black violence” respectability politics shit. It’s the classic X-Men setup - this persecuted race of often superpowered folks torn between pacifism and efforts to prove themselves to their oppressors, and those who think they should rise up and annihilate the flatscans - with most of the same pitfalls, but also we haven’t had over 50 years to get used to that just being how it works here, and it doesn’t have the excuse of having to expand as best it can on a metaphor that was originally devised before most of the people currently handling it were born. All of which would be rough enough, but given I watched this right as Jonathan Hickman’s been completely refining the entire X-Men paradigm outside that outdated binary, it especially grates. I’d love to be directed to any solid counterarguments - I’ve heard it might actually be an analogue, and a well-done one, for The Troubles, which I am one million percent unqualified to evaluate - especially since apparently one of the writers grew up in a mixed-race household, and at the end of the day I’m a white guy who may well be talking completely out his ass. But it sure comes off at a glance as some well-intentioned dudes stumbling through stuff that’s not their business, and that’s inextricable from Blake’s character when so much of her story is her navigating through that metaphor. Hopefully with new writers coming onboard this is something that can be navigated more insightfully in the future.

On a purely personal basis however, Blake’s a standout in terms of relatability when her story comes down to a pretty universal shared horror: how to climb back from having fucked up. She tried really hard to do the right thing, was taken advantage of and led into doing things she eventually realized were wrong, was so shaken that she couldn’t tell who to trust, and then the situation spiraled out of control on every possible front just as things finally seemed to be stabilizing. The way a single mistake - enabled and exacerbated by an abusive past relationship in her case - expands into a self-loathing far beyond the bounds of anything she could possibly be responsible for is brutal and completely understandable, and seeing her start put her self-esteem back together with the help of those closest to her and the power of her original convictions is arguably the single strongest, most clearly conveyed individual character arc in the series. I’m very curious where it goes from here: Adam’s finish represents a logical climax and the setup for a happily-ever-after with Yang (or Sun if they end up going that way after all) for her to coast through the remainder of the series on, but the way emotional consequences have played out in the series thus far I doubt her demons are going to be put to bed that simply.

Finally there’s Ruby, and I am contractually obligated to note up front: she is clearly not a Superman analogue. There is precisely zero percent chance that she was conceived as such or was ever deliberately executed in such a way that mirroring him was kept in mind. Though she IS a super-powered idealist raised in the middle of nowhere with a significant deceased parent who wears a red cape, flies, gives inspiring rallying speeches, has black-ish but primary color-tinted hair, and has a mysterious birthright that involves being able to shoot lasers from her eyes, plus she has a dog who also essentially has superpowers, plus she tells someone they’re stronger than they think they are, plus Yang basically quotes a bit from Kingdom Come regarding her in Rest and Resolutions. But it probably goes a ways in explaining why she works so well for me.

There’s more to it than that of course, though it does bring up the closest way in which she relates to the superhero paradigm: she doesn’t go through an arc in quite the same way as the others, instead being an already solidly-defined character who is simply illustrated by how she interacts with the people and situations around her. She learns and grows and matures, but her most basic motivations and goals and outlook haven’t really changed since the day she enrolled at Beacon. She’s a good, caring person, a leader archetype who still has more than enough personality to spare to keep from falling into the genericism that can often plague that role. A big part of the key I believe is that she’s the audience surrogate in a profound way beyond the obvious touchstones of her frequent awkwardness and self-doubt: the reason she does this is because she was inspired by stories. She’s a fan, ultimately, but one who learned all the right lessons, whether recognizing from day one the way reality falls short of the tales she was raised on but still believing in the ideals they represent, or openly holding up Qrow as a role model while being willing to call him on his shit when push comes to shove. It’s a romantic, hopeful perspective that stands out sharply from even our other heroes even as it mirrors their struggles, but as of yet there’s little to suggest it comes from a place of naivete so much as a belief that it’s the only way to bear the pain of the world and continue to believe in it. Bit by bit it’s clear she’s heading for a breaking point, but all signs point to that being a matter of her ability to withstand what she’s been through, rather than any doubt that it’s necessary, and should that time come she’s inspired plenty who’ll be able to help her back onto her feet the way she has for so many others. So while I understand her speeches apparently grate on some, as far as I’m concerned keep them coming, they’re the beating caring heart of the series and often the sole respite in the eye in the storm.

#RWBY #Ruby Rose #Weiss Schnee #Blake Belladonna #Yang Xiao Long #Mental Health #Racism #Superman #Analysis #Opinion

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crystalelemental · 5 years ago

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Character Analysis - Micaiah

Apparently, even in 2019, I’m still never going to escape the whole “Micaiah is such a Mary Sue argument.” Foolish to think that would completely die off ever, I suppose. I’ve never really agreed with it, personally. I think Micaiah’s great. In fact, she’s my favorite character in Fire Emblem. This is in part to express why I like Micaiah, and also a desperate attempt to showcase that no, all the unique benefits she has in the story do not inherently make her a poorly written “Mary Sue” character. Will I succeed? Probably not! But I want to write a thing emphasizing the positives of my favorite, so that’s what I’m doing.

Micaiah as a character

Let’s talk about what Micaiah is like first, because I like Micaiah and am attempting to sell you on her character. Prior to the events of this game, she basically kept to herself. Sothe was about the only person she interacted with at all. As a Branded - someone with a mix of beorc and laguz blood - she’s an outcast in both societies, and keeps to herself all her life. It isn’t until after Daein’s loss in the Mad King’s War that she starts to interact. Despite her desire to be left alone, she witnesses how the communities within Daein banded together after the loss to help rebuild. These people she’s been distrustful of are working together and building each other up in times of difficulty. She comes to appreciate that aspect of the people of the kingdom, and so begins to use her abilities to benefit them. With Begnion’s occupation, she builds the Dawn Brigade as a resistance force, and applies her future sight and healing abilities to kepe them ahead of their enemies.

This brings us to point 1 about Micaiah: she’s driven by personal attachments, and her thinking extends well beyond her own desires. Left to her own devices, Micaiah wants nothing more than to live quietly. But she’s come to love the people of Daein, and resolves to work in their favor, even if it means she has to take the spotlight to do it. She becomes something of a local celebrity, something she never wanted, because she felt that there was something only she could do, and it absolutely needed doing.

But, this isn’t her favorite thing to do, and when word gets out that Ashnard had a son, and a true inheritor to the throne, Micaiah is all too willing to pass off leadership. Almost without hesitation, she’s willing to accept Pelleas as a good leader and the one they should follow, even in spite of Sothe’s very reasonable apprehension. Pelleas presents as kind and forthright, and so Micaiah believes he is someone worth following, even when all evidence points to the contrary.

Which is point 2 for Micaiah: she’s pretty naive. She’s led her life completely separated from society, and kinda functions like someone who’s smart, but has no discernment ability at all. Pelleas acts nice so he is nice, and nice people should be in charge. Pelleas later says we have to fight the Laguz Alliance and help Begnion, and Micaiah, despite hating the idea of fighting a pointless war, believes unquestioningly that Pelleas must have a good reason. She is someone who is swayed heavily by the good in others, and even when that good is misguided or not what’s primarily in play, she’s willing to believe in it, much to her own detriment.

Specifically, this all comes back to bite her pretty much immediately. Pelleas is crowned the next king, and almost immediately signs off all sovereignty to Begnion with the blood contract. Dude is very clearly a putz that was put in charge as a puppet, so they could be more easily controlled after believing they won something. Sothe sees right past this, but Micaiah doesn’t. She’s too wrapped up in the idea that Pelleas is a good person, and that he wouldn’t let bad things happen, but it doesn’t exactly occur to her that his good intentions may not be what’s guiding the course of events.

Which leads to their involvement in the war and point 3 for Micaiah: she is ruthless. When given the choice between protecting her country by fighting an unjust war, or letting her people suffer for the right cause, she chooses her people and is willing to get her hands dirty. Really dirty. She initiates a sneak attack as the laguz cross the river in retreat. She’s willing to use boulders to crush enemies at the bottom of a ravine, and is even willing to use oil and fire to commit a massacre to gain the advantage. When it comes to furthering her own cause, Micaiah goes harder than any lord, up untli Edelgard arrives, and even then I’d argue they’re pretty even in their extremes.

And these are just major points for her character. On smaller notes, she’s incredibly sassy (”Father of Sothe’s children” indeed), selfless (constantly doing things for her people even when she wants to be left alone), empathetic (understands Pelleas’ plight even when everyone else has given up on the doofus), and strong-willed.

All of this creates, what I feel, is a very unique and compelling lord character. She’s someone who, like most lords, wants to do what’s right, and is driven primarily by that sense of protecting others. But at the same time, it’s mixed with qualities and circumstances that push her to her limits, and give us a main character who, functionally, is distinct from nearly every other lord in the series.

Micaiah’s Abilities Let’s face it, Micaiah got a lot of unique abilities. However, I don’t think Micaiah’s powers inherently make her poorly written or a “Mary Sue” at all. Yes, a lot of these on their own are pretty “child of destiny” heavy, but that’s...kinda how the series is? All the time? Fire Emblem loves that shit. So what is it about her that gets her this label while others don’t? First, let’s talk her abilities and gifts. Within Radiant Dawn, Micaiah gets:

The ability to see the future. It’s a bit more short-term, but shows up a lot, especially in Part 1.

Secret inheritance as the true apostle, and all the abilities that come with, including:

Hearing the voice of the goddess

Knowing the Galdr of Release that can free the dark god within the medallion

Later, after the revival of the goddesses, she becomes the direct vessel for Yune, the goddess of chaos.

Potent healing abilities, allowing her to heal any injury no matter how life threatening, at a personal, physical cost.

As a spread, it’s pretty extensive for one character, which is probably a main reason she gets this label. But on a point by point basis, it’s not like any of these abilities are unique.

Future Sight happens for several characters, not all of them even being main lords. Julia performs such a divination, and Sophia is apparently just as capable, as was Archsage Athos. Future Sight is absolutely a thing in the series, and tends to be associated with magical characters with an edge of mystery to them. Which is what Micaiah is. We’re meant to have no idea what her deal is, and having these kinds of abilities is meant to raise the question of what exactly she is. I think this one gets more shit because it’s considered a form of plot armor, especially in Part 1. But as I’ll get to later, its applications later in the game are far more compelling, and the reliance on it in part 1 sets up the later conflicts really well.

Abilities such as the galdr and the direct link with the goddess are part and parcel to being the inheritor of the apostle’s line. Which is really just an offshoot of the whole “Child of destiny” thing that most lords get. Alm gets it, Seliph gets it, it’s a pretty common trope. Its application to Micaiah is nothing new, but it is used in a unique and interesting way, which I’ll get to later. I’d also argue that none of the apostle abilities do much of anything aside from set up the mystery surrounding her history, and the reveal that she is the apostle. The galdr is important, sure, but hearing the voice of the goddess is pretty useless. They’re just quirks of her class.

As for the healing abilities...okay, yeah, that’s purely hers. It’s just a unique quirk of Micaiah. Arguably, this is no different from any other “only this person can wield the sacred blade,” which...I don’t think I need to explain how often that happens in the series. We’d be here all day. Suffice to say, it’s literally all the time, and even within the same game, Ike gets that treatment with Ragnell.

Basically, nothing Micaiah has in her toolkit is unique in the series. She gets a particularly high amount of unique abilities and effects, but that alone does not a case against her make. Largely because of how they’re utilized.

Application of her talents Talents on their own are a big deal, but their application can make all the difference. For instance, if seeing the future was always in play and always solved every problem, that’s boring. But having a character who can see the future, but having something complicate things, either a demonstration that the future isn’t set in stone or some other outcome to throw them off their game, can make such a character compelling. Application is key, and I think the application of Micaiah’s abilities makes all the difference.

Her healing ability similarly plays very little role. It exists initially to set up her gameplay mechanic with the Sacrifice command, but otherwise that’s it. That’s all it does. It’s really little more than a story setup to the gameplay mechanic. There’s really nothing else to say here.

Her secretly being the apostle has a lot more story impact. When you get down to it, Micaiah has the right to lead Begnion after the war. She hears the voice of the goddess, is the missing eldest child of the previous apostle, can sing the galdr of release, has all of these talents that were meant for the empress to display. It’s so obvious, Sanaki offers her the job outright. Micaiah refuses. Again, Micaiah is not someone who lives for fame and leadership. She took up arms for Daein, solely because she came to love the people. She rose up because she had to, not because she wanted to. Which I think makes her very unique among lords.

Plenty of lords are given their rise to prominence out of necessity as well, typically through a foreign invasion. That’s not uncommon. What is uncommon is that, for most lords, they’re all in with this role. They take to leadership and rise up willingly. Micaiah...never wanted that, and at every opportunity, is presented with something she could have but doesn’t want in the slightest. Sometimes, this comes back to bite her, like with Pelleas. She’s someone who is given that call of destiny, that sense of “This is absolutely what you’re supposed to do,” and goes “absolutely not.” I love that. Like, imagine if Alm had decided to return to Ram village after beating Duma after all. Imagine if Seliph had decided to let Julia inherit the throne instead, and just fucked off back to Isaach, or Roy refusing to lead the Lycian League and leaving it to Lilina. That’s what Micaiah does. She has all these makings of being destined for greatness and prominence and her only thought is “Fuck that.” She does wind up leading Daein, but I’d argue that’s more in line with her character. She leads out of obligation and compassion for those she cares directly about, and Daein is the home she’s attached to. More than anywhere else, this is where she was the most of human kindness, and has strengthened her bonds. They need a leader, and despite not wanting to lead, she’ll accept that mantle. But the idea of accepting the higher calling of assuming leadership of Begnion is not anywhere near her interests, and so she rejects destiny’s call. Which, I think, is really interesting.

Then there’s the future sight. Micaiah’s ability to see the future could be considered the worst offender. It comes into play a lot in Part 1, and it seems like that’s what’s carrying Micaiah. Soren even echoes the player’s thoughts, commenting that he thinks her abilities are a fabrication and that she’s not nearly as talented as others believe. But in Part 3, the chaos of war is engulfing the continent, and suddenly her future sight turns off. She states outright she can’t see the future anymore, and has no sense for what’s to come. She had one serious advantage in Part 1, and now it’s gone. She’s on her own, and facing a stronger threat than before, as a throw-away piece under Begnion’s control, fighting for a cause she doesn’t believe in. She should be completely outclassed here.

But she’s not. When push comes to shove, Micaiah’s willing to use every dirty trick in the book to gain any possible advantage, and she plays her cards well. Her opening strike is when their guard is down during a retreat. Her next fight is guarding a small pass along the water. Her major fights the player controls involve her taking very sensible positions over her opponents; at the top of the cliffside, and defending a heavily-guarded fortress. Despite weaker numbers, weaker morale, and honestly weaker fighters overall, Micaiah pulls out everything she can to pull of what resistance she can. She winds up losing most battles, and continuously gets pushed back because of how severely out-gunned they are, but the fight she puts up is impressive. Her future vision, I feel like, helps set the stage for this. It presents itself initially as the main thing protecting her; it’s the reason she wins. But then, she’s able to prove that even without it, she’s capable of figuring out her way through these battles. And keep in mind, in this battle of strategy and wits, her opponent is Soren. She’s keeping up with that guy. That’s no small feat. Micaiah’s clever in her own right, able to turn clear losses into...well, less clear losses, with surprising reliability. The removal of her primary tool should set players to believe this will be a curbstomp, and instead it’s when Micaiah gets to shine in ways that extend beyond just her natural talents.

Her talents are many, but their applications are stellar, and the course of events for her make sense. She’s never treated as if she’s untouchable or always in the right, or even immune to consequences of dumb decisions, like handing leadership to Pelleas. When the rug’s pulled out from under her and she’s faced with being trapped in a losing situation, we get to see a character who’s willing to make harsh decisions and respond in ways that most lords wouldn’t. She’s a great demonstration of a well-meaning character who’s placed in the wrong, and until Edelgard, was frankly one of a kind for a lord.

Conclusions Micaiah’s fantastic. I don’t really have anything else to say on the point, she’s just great. Everything about her character is simultaneously familiar and distinct, offering a lot of traits and qualities similar to most lords in the series, but presented with circumstances that paint her as far more complex than just the desire to do good and the capacity to carry through. She’s someone who has to push through awful circumstances and make the best choices she can, and is someone who puts the higher needs of her people and her desires above what may be the “moral” choice.

I can only hope that, if you’ve read this far, it comes with a greater appreciation for Micaiah as a character. I honestly think she’s one of the most compelling protagonists the series has.

#fire emblem #micaiah #radiant dawn #character analysis

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rhnuzlocke · 5 years ago

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Chapter Seven: If You Can’t Rock Me

Ren and Tāraki stood in the immaculate hallway on the top floor of the Devon building. Despite donning the most businesslike outfit she had in her vapor box, Ren was feeling rather underdressed for the occasion, especially when a woman in a custom tailored suit emerged from the office across from them.

“Mr. Stone will see you now.”

She held the door open for them, and Ren thanked her as they went in.

The walls of the generous office were covered in cases of specimens from glittering crystals to polished granite. The floor was beautifully striated, pink marble that was somehow still less impressive than the lobby, which had them walking over an incredible array of intricately arranged fossils.

Mr. Stone stood from his large desk on the far end of the room to greet them. He was an older gentleman with silver hair and a perfectly trimmed beard.

“Lovely to meet you, Miss Kosugi,” he said as he shook her hand. He then he gestured to the chair in front of his desk. “Please have a seat.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Nonsense, it is I who must thank you,” he said as Ren sat down, and Tāraki jumped to the arm of the chair. “The package you recovered was an extremely important prototype. My company and I are indebted to you.”

“You are welcome, sir. I just didn’t want anyone to get hurt.”

He gave a warm smile—warmer than she had been expecting. “That is very admirable of you, Ms. Kosugi, but I did not invite you here just to thank you personally.”

“You really don’t have to do anything,” Ren said firmly. She had hoped to avoid a reward after purposefully letting the thief go… twice.

“Please allow me to anyway. It is only fair,” he insisted. “I’d like to offer you full access to all of our nav apps, free of charge, and of course upgrade your nav to any model you choose. We also have an extensive line of accessories for trainers that may be of use to you. Ms. Ikeda will assist you as soon as we’re done.”

Ren weighed whatever was happening in her conscience against the risk of exposing herself and Josh for a moment before realizing it was moot. Despite Mr. Stone’s jovial bearing, she could feel that he wasn’t going to budge.

“That is very generous, sir. Thank you.”

“Very good.” He regarded her for a moment, hands knit together and thumbs wandering back and forth. “There is one more thing. This in no way effects anything I have already offered, and you are under no obligation to accept, but I was hoping you might run an errand for me—paid, of course.”

Now that she wasn’t expecting. “What sort of errand?” She asked carefully. She saw Tāraki cock his head in her periphery.

“Delivery. Specifically taking the parts you returned to me twice to my son in Dewford. It would be a great personal favor.”

The odd feeling that had prodded her back in Petalburg Woods reared up stronger than ever, and she gripped the arms of her chair. She had let go of the idea of asking questions before she even entered the building. Now there was no way not to.

“Before I decide, I have a few things I would like to ask.”

“About the incidents?” he asked, and she confirmed with a nod. He was sharp. “By all means. You and your pokemon were, albeit unintentionally, put in jeopardy. You are perhaps owed some manner of explanation.”

“Thank you, sir. Can I ask why you sent your top fossil scientist to deliver this prototype and not a courier? It seems like, as the head of the department, he might have other things to do.”

The corner of his mouth turned up just slightly before he leaned back a bit. “Ah, yes, under normal circumstances I certainly wouldn’t have, but since this was sensitive material, I needed someone I trusted. Devon may make most of its money nowadays from navtech, but I founded this company as a fossil revival center, and that has always remained my passion. Graeme has been here since the very beginning, and I’ve worked with him for much of my life. He is a close friend.”

In that moment, Ren resented her gut just a little for being right again because now she had to follow it. “Please excuse me—I don’t mean to sound rude or accusatory—but it seems as though Dr. Arden, and by extension yourself, may have expected an attempted theft?”

“To be perfectly frank, yes. Yes, I did.”

“So, do you know who is trying to steal this prototype and why?”

“Yes, I believe I do.” For the first time, Mr. Stone’s flawless posture wilted ever so slightly, and he paused for a moment, as if reluctant to elaborate. “This may sound strange, and I hope you will forgive me—I do not mean to cast aspersions—but I am fairly certain Magma is behind the attempted thefts.”

Ren had no idea what that meant or why he should feel uncomfortable saying it. Tāraki tilted his head all the way in the opposite direction, brow furrowing. He was doubtless even more lost than she was. “Is that… a criminal group?”

“Heavens no!” Mr. Stone exclaimed, raising his hands as if to push that idea away from him. “I forgot you are new to the region. No, Magma is a humanitarian organization. Their focus is infrastructure and affordable housing. I collaborated with them recently on the Rusturf Tunnel project.”

Mention of the tunnel made Ren’s chest tighten. “I’m sorry about the collapse.”

“It is unfortunate,” he said with a sigh, “but not your doing. Problems with the Whismur plagued it from the beginning. I suppose Captain Seaborne was right after all…” His eyes drifted out the window as he fell silent.

Ren felt a pang of sympathy. Continuing to pry didn’t seem kind anymore. Mr. Stone was under a lot of stress, and this wasn’t just business to him. But she looked over at Tāraki, saw the confusion on his face, but when their eyes met he smiled and nodded encouragingly. Her resolve hardened. He couldn’t understand much of what was being said, but he trusted her to make the right choice. They were all relying on her.

She didn’t mince her next words. “Do you think the project may have just been a way for them to get inside information about your company?”

“I admit to briefly considering the possibility.” He rearranged some items on his already orderly desk. “However, taking into account the organization’s history and having met with their leaders personally, I find it unlikely that their work up until this point has been some kind of smokescreen for criminal activity. That is to say, I do not believe this was motivated by greed. It seems more likely to me that they have found some way other than public appeal to further their agenda and that the technology they are attempting to steal will help them in some way.”

Now that was an interesting wrinkle. “And what exactly are they trying to steal?”

“A new type of energy converter,” he answered easily. Ren had half-expected him not to disclose anything at all. And that made her feel better even though things had become more complicated.

“So with all of that going on, why ask me to take the package?”

“Firstly, you have already proven yourself trustworthy. You had ample opportunity to take the parts yourself, knowing full well that they must be very valuable, but instead returned them twice. Secondly, since you are not a Devon employee or affiliate, Magma is unlikely to suspect you are carrying anything for us. And thirdly, if they do find out, you have already demonstrated you are a competent enough trainer to fend them off.”

“Oh.” That was all very well reasoned. “Thank you, I guess.”

“That being said, I very much doubt they will come after you. I wouldn’t have asked you if I thought they might. However, I completely understand if you don’t want to take any more risks. It is your choice.”

“He had such a reassuring way about him, that in that moment I really did believe everything would be fine. And I think he did too.” If he is anything like Steven, I’m sure he would never have sent you willingly into harm’s way. “No. He wouldn’t have.”

“I’ll do it. I’d like to visit Dewford anyway.”

“Thank you very much, Ms. Kosugi.” His relief was even more gratifying than the genuine gratitude in his expression. “Once again, you are really getting us out of a bind. Will you need travel accommodations?”

“Ah, no sir, or I don’t think so anyway. Captain Briney offered me a ride.”

Mr. Stone smiled broadly. “Jim? Well, that works out very well then. He has a lovely boat, and his cottage is quite close. Do send him my regards. I haven’t seen the old rascal in quite some time.”

Tāraki climbed up her shoulder and wrapped his tail around her neck. “Will do, sir.”

...

Ren walked out of the Devon building with the prototype in her vapor box and her bag full of new tech. Mr. Stone had not been kidding about the trainer equipment; Ren had to admit she was pretty excited to try out her collapsible screen and use her new solar generator the next time she camped out. But the shine wore off quickly as her mind wandered, and she soon found herself watching her boots tromp down the sidewalk. Without Mr. Stone there to reassure her, doubt was creeping back in.

“That went well!” Tāraki piped up by her side.

“Yeah, he told us a lot more than I thought he would,” Ren admitted distantly.

Tāraki cocked his head, trying to look up at her face for a moment or two before giving up. “Though I guess I still don't understand all of it.”

“We should tell the others. Come on, I think there's a park nearby.”

It was small, like most things in Rustboro, but there was a pond with blooming lily pads and a pretty little gazebo. Ren let out the rest of her pokemon, and they listened as she and Tāraki explained the situation.

Ren expected them to say something when she was done—opinions, comments, at least one question—but none of them did.

“Are you really okay with this? I mean, I’m not even entirely sure what I’m getting us into.” She looked from one to the next and was met with nothing but mild confusion.

“You’re the leader,” said Akahana at length—deliberately, like she was explaining something obvious. “It’s your call, trainer.”

Iki nodded in agreement, and none of the others raised any objection.

“Wait, hang on, that’s not the way I want to run this team.” Ren swallowed, a little shocked at her own dismay, but it did nothing to keep the anxiety out of her voice. “It—it isn’t right. You’re my partners. I want your input.”

Hakeka grumbled, and Panahi nodded along. “Maybe not how I would have put it, but you have a point.” Ren gave her a questioning look, and Panahi elaborated. “It’s just that you’ve already accepted.”

“I would go give it back right now if it mattered to you!”

“I’m sure you would,” Panahi said delicately, obviously still at a loss for what exactly the issue was. “Do you not want to do it anymore?”

“No, I do.” Ren looked at them, hoping one of them would understand, give her something so she could stop sliding helplessly downwards.

They looked at each other, and Akahana’s tail twitched. Finally Hakeka grunted.

“What do you want from us?” Akahana translated.

“I just want to know what you think! I know I already explained things, and you all seemed okay with it, but maybe I didn’t really give you all a choice. I want to give you a choice. Besides, you’re all smart. I just thought—well, maybe we shouldn’t be relying on only my judgement all the time. Please just tell me what you think. Should we do this?”

There was another silence and a few more glances between the pokemon before Māia piped up. “Why not? Even if another one of those Magma trainers comes after us, we can totally take them. We’re strong!”

“That’s right!” said Tāraki. “We’re all getting to be pretty good battlers.”

“He said they probably wouldn’t know it was us anyway, r-right?” Iki asked. “It doesn’t seem too dangerous.”

“And we could use the money,” Akahana concluded.

The last two weren’t as forthcoming, so Ren prompted them. “Hakeka, what do you think?”

Hakeka snorted, followed by some gurgling.

“She thinks you worry too much,” said Tāraki. “Seems like a low risk with a high reward.”

“Ahi?”

“I agree with everyone else, Honey. But listen: it’s great that you want to know what we’re thinking and all, really it is, but it doesn’t change the fact that you have the final say in the end. You are the leader. You need to own your decisions and take responsibility.”

“I didn’t know why that made me so uncomfortable, so I didn’t say anything. And she was right: I am responsible.” Perhaps, but not for everything you think you are. “And what is that supposed to mean?” If you wouldn’t hear it from Steven, you will not listen to me. Not that he has any authority on the subject. “Then why are we talking about it?” My hope is that you will see it yourself. That is why we are doing this exercise. But it won’t work if you are so defensive. “Alright, I’ll try not to be.”

“I—thank you, Ahi.” Ren took a deep breath and nodded, face set. “Okay. We are going to do this, and I’ll take full responsibility for what happens. But I just want all of you to know that I never want to make you do anything you don’t want to do. You should be able to make your own decisions too.”

“Awesome! So when are we challenging the Gym?”

...

The Rustboro Gym stood out boldly from every other building in the city, not just in size but in architecture—if it could be called that. The exterior looked more like a jagged, natural rock formation than a human structure, yet it was still regular and purposeful. Ren wondered if it was pokemon-built. Kai confirmed for her that is was, more specifically, a team of Lunatone, Solrock, and Probopass.

The lobby doubled as a gallery of the Leader’s personal rock and fossil collection, much like Mr. Stone’s office. This one turned out to be more like a museum, albeit a small one, with informative plaques next to each case. The glass roof, which had been invisible from the outside, flooded the space with natural light. Beyond the desk at the back of the room was a thick glass wall that opened onto the arena. Kai hung back while Ren and Tāraki approached the receptionist.

“Hello miss,” the receptionist greeted her. “Ready to take the Gym Challenge?”

“Hell yeah!” Tāraki cheered, bouncing up and down on Ren’s shoulder.

“That’s right!” Ren echoed.

“And what badge will you be aiming for today?”

“My first.”

“Oh! I would have guessed second or third with a full team like yours.”

“I may have over-prepared a bit,” Ren admitted with a shrug.

“No such thing,” the receptionist responded with a smile. “I’ll just scan your trainer ID and get you started. Would you like to battle the Gym trainers at your badge level before the leader?”

“Absolutely.”

“Alright then. I’ll put you on the roster. You can enter the arena as soon as the other trainers are ready.” She fixed Ren with a knowing grin. “I don’t think you’ll need it, but good luck, Ms. Kosugi.”

Ren’s face began to twist into discomfort, but she covered it with a smile.

What did she say that upset you? “Living in a new region, surrounded by strangers, I kept forgetting that most of the League employees would already know me or at least recognize my name. The expectation would be enough, but I… I know Otōsan and I have a lot in common, but I like to think some things are different.” Is this another point we must revisit later? “Yeah. Won’t be able to avoid it.”

Kai went to look at one of the cases, and Ren and Tāraki to look out at the arena while the Gym staff and students prepared. Tāraki climbed the glass with his amazing toe pads to get a better view. It was significantly larger than standard and contained uneven terrain and rocky outcroppings rather than being packed flat. Massive fossilized skeletons loomed over the defending side, and the recessed viewing stands were almost hidden in the towering rock of the adjacent walls.

“It really is your kind of battlefield, no?” Ren asked Tāraki. He snickered gleefully back, wiggling in place while his face stayed glued to the glass. “We’re gonna crush this.”

Kai offered her a good luck handshake when it was time and went to sit in the stands with the Gym’s more experienced trainers and other spectators.

Ren sent out the rest of her team to watch, and the first trainer sent out a Binacle.

Ren nodded to Hakeka, and she trundled forward. The starting whistle sounded, and the Binacle fired off a Sand Attack, but Hakeka turned and received it with her cap, saving her eyes. Knowing the Binacle wouldn't move, Ren didn't have her wait for the dust cloud to clear before launching a Mega Drain that took it down.

The rest of the trainers went by nearly as fast. Tāraki faced a Dwebble and easily defeated it with his superior speed while Hakeka downed a Rolycoly, Roggenrola, and finally a Carbink with a combination of Leech Seed and Mega Drain.

When that was done, the Gym leader herself finally appeared. She looked younger than Ren knew her to be, though that may have been the twin buns on her head or short, stylish dress and colorful stockings. She walked out to the center of the arena to greet Ren.

“You’ve battled all of the badgeless trainers who are in at the moment. Very thorough.”

“It’s such a great opportunity for experience. I didn’t want to miss it.”

Roxanne smiled broadly. “Excellent. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Ren.” She extended a hand, and they shook.

“Likewise.”

“So are you and Stripes ready for your lesson?”

“Yep!” Ren chirped and then something hit her. “Wait, how did you know his nickname means stripes?”

“Oops! Uhhh…” Roxanne floundered, and Ren’s face pinched in pain.

“Oh Arceus, there’s not some kind of League chat that he talks about me in, is there?”

Roxanne chuckled sheepishly. “Yes, but you didn’t hear that from me.” Ren grabbed her head, posture shrinking with mortification. “Don’t worry about it! It’s not nearly as bad as when Wattson spams us with pictures of his grandkids. And Phoebe and Sidney are real shitposters… Come to think of it, Steven and I have been kicked off a few times for talking about fossils. Apparently we’re supposed to ‘keep that rock shit to ourselves’ and ‘not freak everyone out by blowing up the chat with eight-hundred-and-sixty-three messages.’”

That pulled a chuckle out of Ren. She had to wonder who was the admin if not the Champion, and who was reprimanding?

Roxanne smiled before leaning in, face suddenly stony, and she gripped Ren’s shoulder firmly. “But seriously, this conversation never took place.”

Ren snapped to attention. “Hai, sensei!”

Roxanne straightened up and smiled again. “I like you, Ren. Let’s get started.”

They paced back to their squares, and Roxanne sent out a Geodude.

“Alright, Shima, Knock ’em dead!”

Tāraki ran into the ring and tensed, whole body quivering with excitement.

“Celestine, Rock Throw!”

“Dodge and Mega Drain, Tāraki!”

The Geodude started hurling rocks, but Tāraki skittered out of the way and dove behind the nearest rock. He climbed it and leapt from one to the next, zig-zagging but drawing ever closer to his opponent. The next projectile flew over his head as he ducked and danced away from three more, grin broadening. He used the last as a stepping stone to reach the top of a high boulder and launched a Mega Drain at the spent Geodude.

“Nice one, Shima!”

“Tackle, Celestine!”

“Quick Attack!”

The Geodude lunged forward and leapt up, but Tāraki slammed its arm on his way down and knocked it off balance. It crashed into the side of the boulder and rolled to the floor.

“Tackle!”

“Mega drain!”

The Geodude charged, but Tāraki flipped over it, bouncing off its head with his hands. Before the Geodude could come around, Tāraki sapped its remaining strength, and it rolled to a stop. Roxanne withdrew it.

“Well done.” She sent out a Nosepass. “Akivi, let’s hem in this acrobat: Rock Tomb!”

The Nosepass’s palms glowed, and rocks began to hail down around Tāraki on all sides. He hopped around trying to avoid them but had nowhere to run and disappeared beneath them. His head popped out as a stone fell away, and he strained to free himself as the Nosepass prepared to hit him again.

“You can still hit her from there!” Ren called to him. “Use Mega Drain!”

Tāraki stopped struggling, charged, and fired. The Nosepass remained impassive, but Tāraki glowed as its energy flowed into him, and he burst out of the rock pile.

“Rock throw!”

Tāraki dashed from one piece of cover to the next as projectiles fired at him and shattered.

“Mega Drain!”

“Tackle!”

Tāraki stopped moving to charge up his attack, and the Nosepass ran at him. Tāraki’s Mega Drain landed, but the Nosepass was undeterred and crashed into him. He went flying back but landed on his feet on a bit of high ground.

“One more Mega Drain!”

“Rock Tomb!”

The Nosepass readied her attack, but Tāraki was faster. The rocks she was lifting fell to the floor before she could fire them. Tāraki puffed out his chest as the last of her energy flowed into him. The Nosepass drooped ever so slightly and was still. Roxanne withdrew her.

“Congratulations you two!” Roxanne called, withdrawing her pokemon. She walked down into the arena to meet Ren in the middle. Tāraki leapt down, and Ren caught him in her arms, holding him to her chest as he squeezed her neck.

“You’ve certainly demonstrated you know the basics.” Roxanne continued. “Plenty of trainers can win their first badge with a simple type advantage, but the way you countered my attacks shows dedicated practice and solid strategy.” She pulled a small box out of her pocket and offered it to them. “I’ve rarely been so happy to hand over a badge.”

“Thank you,” said Ren, and the strain in her tone took her by surprise. She should be happy about this. She had been a moment ago, but now a familiar dread clawed at the back of her throat, squeezed her ribs. She remembered the heat coursing through her veins as she directed Tāraki, and her arm gave a throb.

“And Ren.” She wrenched herself back out of her head to look Roxanne in the eyes. “Good luck with whatever you decide. Don’t let anyone tell you what to do.”

The pressure in her chest lifted and sighed back into position. A smaller smile returned as Tāraki wriggled up around her neck to get back to his usual spot on her shoulder. “I won't.”

Ren thanked her again as they parted and walked slowly back to the rest of her team waiting in the challenger’s square. Even after all that strain, Tāraki’s tail waggled with frenetic energy behind her head.

“Well, Tāraki, is it everything you hoped and dreamed?”

“Hell yeah it was!” he crowed, and Māia whooped, pale underwings flashing. “That was so much fun!” Ren couldn’t help but smile, and Tāraki grinned back at her. “Although, I wouldn’t have minded evolving super dramatically in the middle of the match like Jay.”

Ren laughed. “Maybe next time.” She held up the badge to him. “Should I put this away or do you want to wear it?”

“I don’t care about that thing. No offense. I mean it’s shiny and whatever, but I don’t need it. I just want to battle like that again! Really push myself, you know? That was seriously awesome!”

“You were seriously awesome. I’ll take it into consideration.”

“I’m taking the next Gym!” Māia reminded them, shoving Tāraki’s tail aside to claim Ren’s other shoulder.

Kai came bounding out of the stands. “You did so well! That was such a cool battle! Using the terrain like that—all those awesome flips Tāraki was doing—we have to battle again!”

“Alright,” said Ren, stifling a giggle.

“But you probably have to get going…” He stared down at his feet.

“We’ll see each other in a week, just north of Slateport, right?” He glanced at her as he nodded, and she flashed him a big smile. She wasn’t sure which of them needed the reassurance. “Train hard between all the science or we’re gonna beat you into the ground!”

“We will!”

This time, when she hugged him, it wasn't stiff.

“Um, could you maybe do me a favor though?”

“Sure! What's up?”

“Could you get me Steven Stone’s autograph?”

#ORAS #nuzlocke #storylocke #Mr. Stone #Roxanne #Ren #Kai #Taraki #Akahana #Iki #Panahi #Maia #Hakeka #lgbtq #chapter

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taww · 6 years ago

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Review: Wells Audio Commander Preamplifier & Innamorata II Amplifier

With everyone and their extended families wanting to be audio reviewers, we have been inundated with volumes of positive commentary. As a reviewer, you are dependent upon manufacturers to provide you with equipment to audition and write about. If a writer wants to be around after that initial written review, the pressure is great to submit something popular to the publisher, specifically, coverage that will keep the review sample spigot flowing. After all, what manufacturer seeking to gain a foothold in the industry is going to send their precious product to someone they think may disseminate component coverage less than favorable about them? That’s a question I need not answer on your behalf…

The days of writers like Pearson, Holt and Aczel are, unfortunately, gone. And while I may long to once again profit from their pearls of audio wisdom, only their memories exist. From my first published review in January of 1989, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wondered how Harry would describe a particular sonic quality, how Gordon might compare one component to another or in what manner, like Peter, I may employ my use of words so efficiently as say what others could not, but in half the space. What those great writers of the past had, which we see none of today, was the self-assuredness not to fear penning the critical review…after all, they were known as critics.

Wells Audio

Jeff Wells is a kindly gentleman that has been in the business of audio retailing for better than 16 years. Not a classically trained electrical engineer, Jeff has obviously picked up considerably knowledge during his years in the trade, either directly, or by osmosis. He also knows where to go for good advice as he has chosen Scott Franklin as a mentor. Scott is considered a bit of a tube guru, having credited to his name any number of well known and respected tube designs. I expect that the basic tube circuits in the Commander have the Franklin touch, with Jeff choosing the parts list and the overall appearance of the preamp and amp. One thing is for sure, you are not going to mistake the Wells Audio gear for anything else made today, or yesterday for that matter. Warranty for both products is three years, including parts and labor.

Commander Preamplifier (USD $3,999)

The first thing one observes when seeing the Commander for the first time is the large round viewing window smack dab in the middle of the face plate. Behind it is what many call “a magic eye” vacuum tube. It glows green and changes with the adjustment of the volume control (which I did via remote). I could not discern what value the magic eye might be of, but it looked pretty enough.

The young ones, persons not old enough to remember the turn of the century, call it “steampunk.” That’s exactly how I viewed the appearance and operation of the Commander preamp. At a time when smooth operation and silky feel to controls are the key descriptive terms being used with todays’ high-end audio electronics, along comes the Wells Commander preamp that seems to have no end to its unique appearance and odd noises that emanate from it. With every change of volume comes a “clickity” sound that I’ve never heard before as part of a high-end component. Initially I thought that I might have broken it, but everything seemed to continue working, so I didn’t worry about it. Furthermore, @miy-taww assured me that some units simply work that way. (Yup, this is the sound of an attenuator based on conventional mechanical relays. The exact nature of the clicking depends on how the control logic is implemented. @miy-taww)

As far as I know, the acrylic exterior of the Commander is a first. The black reflective surface shines like a polished black mirror, making picture taking a real task. I like the fact that acrylic resonates much less than the standard metal exterior plates found with most amps and preamps. On the other hand, acrylic affords the component no effective RFI/EMI shielding.

Commander Pros: Setting the preamp up was cake, basically plug and play…the remote even came with batteries in it. Another positive was the ability to use a set of balanced inputs in addition to the standard RCA inputs. The unit also had balanced output jacks, coming in handy for use with my balanced Pass XA30.5 power amplifier.

The Commander is a solid imager with good depth of image, all placed upon a wide and panoramic stage. Tone quality, especially in the mids, is true and natural. And while this is a preamp utilizing tubes, tubes it does not sound like. The softish, melodramatic approach promoted by some tube products is completely missing here, as the Commander, instead of being soft, has an ability to capture, as well as anything I’ve heard, the transient speed of a plucked steel stringed guitar. This leading edge quality is also apparent in percussive strikes and snare hits, yes it can be an exciting experience listening with this preamp. Listening to rock and roll as well as jazz, on more than one occasion the transient speed of this unit compelled me to query if perhaps Wells alone had gotten this aspect to reproduction correct.

Lastly, when one looks under the hood of the Commander, and then considers the price of it, in light of the unconventional use of parts and construction layout, the obvious question becomes, “How did they do this for the price charged?”

Commander Cons: I enjoy using remote volume controls, however, this unit’s clunky nature and lack of responsiveness was a turn off to me. Sometimes, when moving the volume up, the actual output would first go down and them up.

Musically, the frequency extremes were rather odd and not wholly to my liking. These two things, I think, are related: The speed and attack heard in the midrange also resulted in an upper octave that was in many cases more forward than I am attracted to while striking me as grainy. I described the highs with the Commander to one friend as “crunchy.” The bass, it seemed to me, was similarly flawed, but in different ways. Listening to recordings with a healthy amount of bass in them, it was all there, i.e., I felt that I could hear all of the bottom three octaves frequency wise. At the same time, however, the bass lacked deep down energy.

Initially, I wondered if my choice of power cords was pushing the preamp in the directions just described. I tried cords from Audience, JPS, DH Labs and Twirling Gerbil. Though I heard changes in the performance, none of those cords locked in with the Commander. Finally, I went with the factory supplied cord, which performed as well as any of the above; forming the basis for the comments here and above.

Lastly, while I had great success using the balanced jacks on the back of the preamp, the standard RCAs didn’t always work consistently. This needs to be looked into by Jeff and in my opinion, simplified internally. The some days the jacks would work, some days, not, drove me crazy.

Conclusion. In my opinion, the Commander preamplifier from Wells Audio is not a finished product, bugs need to be addressed. The potential to be a stunning performer is all there, particularly when the Scott Franklin influence is considered. I consider it a diamond in the rough. I look forward to observing the progress Wells Audio makes with this product. Presently, I cannot recommend it.

Innamorata II Power amplifier (USD $7,000)

Taking the same visual cues as the Commander preamplifier, the Innamorata II is a large, heavy power amp. Rated at 150 wpc into 8 Ohms, the amp is said to put out 210 wpc into 4 Ohms. The amp is a beautiful gloss black, with a single round meter located dead center on the faceplate. Centering the meter is a large gold bezel that you will love or hate, all depending on your fashion sense. Jeff told me of his plans to make the amps’ exterior parts completely out of acrylic materials, everything save the heatsinks. I think Wells may be on to something here as fabricating may be less expensive that way, the product will weight less and the appearance can be pretty stunning in any color you desire. Finally, even though the sibling preamplifier has balanced outputs, the power amplifier cannot accommodate balanced connectors (which struck me as odd).

Innamorata Pros: Lots of power delivered effortlessly. Power cords were not an issue with the amp. Regardless of what I used, this amp forged a straight line forward sounding good under all conditions. I ended up using the Twirling Gerbil amp cord, the combo performing in a positive manner that was in every instance musical.

What I generally like about a well designed solid state power amp is its unflappable performance with a variety of loudspeaker loads. And so I can report that I listened to this amp with a variety of speaker loads, all the way from 4 Ohms, to a small monitor with a wandering load of 8 to 16 Ohms. As you know, all speakers present an amp with a variety of impedances depending on frequency. With many speakers, things can get a little hairy at resonance, the Innamorata stayed tight and fast in the bass, while never sounding washed out. Pace and bloom were actually strong parts of this design. You know an amp has something going for it when during listening sessions you keep asking yourself. “What’s it going to do with this album? I’ve got to hear it with this other album.” This amp had me anticipating what new positive twist it might put on a recording heard many, many times before.

Another positive aspect of this amps’ performance was the natural and organic way it handled vocals. Voices at the front of the stage did not jump forward; instead they sounded real, and usually within an aura of natural ambiance. Backup as well as background vocals were similarly tangible and pleasant to listen to.

Innamorata Cons: My biggest complaint with amp is the fact that it quit working after the first listening session. I had been listening to it in one system and enjoyed the results obtained. I then wanted to insert the Wells amp in a second system. I have a tall four wheeled cart that allows me to pick up the amp, put it on the cart and then wheel it off without having to bend over. I moved the amp one day to see how it would perform in a new listening environment. When I sat it down in the new system the right channel refused to come up. I sent it back to Jeff. He told me that an internal cable had come loose and he merely had to put it right and all was well. Solder the connection and the problem does not arise.

Musically, there’s not a lot to complain about. For more money there are better sounding solid state power amps. I take that position not because the Wells does much wrong, but because some amps are simply exceptional in one regard or another. Those exceptional amps may have slightly more air then the Wells, or a little more bloom upon the stage, but for the money, this is a good amplifier, though not in the same sonic class as the Pass XA30.5 that I compared it to.

Conclusion. I enjoyed using this power amplifier. A no-surprise design, it is quiet when you turn it on, and when you turn it off there are no driver threatening burps or releases of DC. In other words, don’t worry if the power is, for any reason, discontinued. It does concern me that the right channel went down during my auditioning period. A consumer electronics device that retails for $7,000.00 has an obligation to operate in a worry free manner. Audio components are meant to be enjoyed, as they are necessary to the playback of music in the home. A power amplifier situated in the home of an audiophile is not a tool in the manner of a tone generator or scope, it is something more, very much more. And, as the price of a component increases, the obligation of a manufacturer to produce a glitch free product increases in a linear fashion. That said, no one is perfect, making mistakes is human, and the error which lead to the failure of the right channel in this case was nothing other than a contact coming apart – nothing blew, no sparks, no fried resistors, and I have no doubt that that Jeff Wells remedied the situation so as to never have this happen again.

I, therefore, must conclude that when a person lays down their hard earned dollars for a new Innamorata II, he or she will have an amplifier well worth the outlay, and one capable of bringing home the heart and soul of the music in a way that will bring years and years of musical satisfaction and pride. A power amplifier done well.

#review #amplifier #preamplifier #tube #solid state #wells audio

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phpscriptfree · 6 years ago

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theinvinciblenoob · 6 years ago

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Want to join a conference call to discuss more about these thoughts? Email Arman at [email protected] to secure an invite.

Hello! We are experimenting with new content forms at TechCrunch. This is a rough draft of something new. Provide your feedback directly to the authors: Danny at [email protected] or Arman at [email protected] if you like or hate something here.

Harari on technology and tyranny

Yuval Noah Harari, the noted author and historian famed for his work Sapiens, wrote a lengthy piece in The Atlantic entitled “Why Technology Favors Tyranny” that is quite interesting. I don’t want to address the whole piece (today), but I do want to discuss his views that humans are increasingly eliminating their agency in favor of algorithms who make decisions for them.

Harari writes in his last section:

Even if some societies remain ostensibly democratic, the increasing efficiency of algorithms will still shift more and more authority from individual humans to networked machines. We might willingly give up more and more authority over our lives because we will learn from experience to trust the algorithms more than our own feelings, eventually losing our ability to make many decisions for ourselves. Just think of the way that, within a mere two decades, billions of people have come to entrust Google’s search algorithm with one of the most important tasks of all: finding relevant and trustworthy information. As we rely more on Google for answers , our ability to locate information independently diminishes. Already today, “truth” is defined by the top results of a Google search. This process has likewise affected our physical abilities, such as navigating space. People ask Google not just to find information but also to guide them around. Self-driving cars and AI physicians would represent further erosion: While these innovations would put truckers and human doctors out of work, their larger import lies in the continuing transfer of authority and responsibility to machines.

I am not going to lie: I completely dislike this entire viewpoint and direction of thinking about technology. Giving others authority over us is the basis of civilized society, whether that third-party is human or machine. It’s how that authority is executed that determines whether it is pernicious or not.

Harari brings up a number of points here though that I think deserve a critical look. First, there is this belief in an information monolith, that Google is the only lens by which we can see the world. To me, that is a remarkably rose-colored view of printing and publishing up until the internet age, when gatekeepers had the power (and the politics) to block public access to all kinds of information. Banned Books Week is in some ways quaint today in the Amazon Kindle era, but the fight to have books in public libraries was (and sometimes today is) real. Without a copy, no one had access.

That disintegration of gatekeeping is one reason among many why extremism in our politics is intensifying: there is now a much more diverse media landscape, and that landscape doesn’t push people back toward the center anymore, but rather pushes them further to the fringes.

Second, we don’t give up agency when we allow algorithms to submit their judgments on us. Quite the opposite in fact: we are using our agency to give a third-party independent authority. That’s fundamentally our choice. What is the difference between an algorithm making a credit card application decision, and a (human) judge adjudicating a contract dispute? In both cases, we have tendered at least some of our agency to another party to independently make decisions over us because we have collectively decided to make that choice as part of our society.

Third, Google, including Search and Maps, has empowered me to explore the world in ways that I wouldn’t have dreamed before. When I visited Paris the first time in 2006, I didn’t have a smartphone, and calling home was a $1/minute. I saw parts of the city, and wandered, but I was mostly taken in by fear — fear of going to the wrong neighborhood (the massive riots in the banlieues had only happened a few months prior) and fear of completely getting lost and never making it back. Compare that to today, where access to the internet means that I can actually get off the main tourist stretches peddled by guidebooks and explore neighborhoods that I never would have dreamed of doing before. The smartphone doesn’t have to be distracting — it can be an amazing tool to explore the real world.

I bring these different perspectives up because I think the “black box society” as Frank Pasquale calls it by his eponymous book is under unfair attack. Yes, there are problems with algorithms that need addressing, but are they worse or better than human substitutes? When eating times can vastly affect the outcome of a prisoner’s parole decisions, don’t we want algorithms to do at least some of the work for us?

Lying to ourselves

Photo: Getty Images / Siegfried Kaiser / EyeEm

Talking about humans acting badly, I wrote a review over the weekend of Elephant in the Brain, a book about how we use self-deception to ascribe better motives to our actions than our true intentions. As I wrote about the book’s thesis:

Humans care deeply about being perceived as prosocial, but we are also locked into constant competition, over status attainment, careers, and spouses. We want to signal our community spirit, but we also want to selfishly benefit from our work. We solve for this dichotomy by creating rationalizations and excuses to do both simultaneously. We give to charity for the status as well as the altruism, much as we get a college degree to learn, but also to earn a degree which signals to employers that we will be hard workers.

It’s a depressing perspective, but one that’s ultimately correct. Why do people wear Stanford or Berkeley sweatshirts if not to signal things about their fitness and career prospects? (Even pride in school is a signal to others that you are part of a particular tribe). One of the biggest challenges of operating in Silicon Valley is simply understanding the specific language of signals that workers there send.

Ultimately, though, I was nonplussed with the book, because I felt that it didn’t end up leading to a broader sense of enlightenment, nor could I see how to change either my behavior or my perception’s of others’ behaviors as a result of the book. That earned a swift rebuke from one of the author’s last night on Twitter:

"Worse, even after reading the book, I am left completely unaware of what exactly to do with the thesis now that I have read it." Come on, I'll bet you can think of more uses for our book than 90% of books out there. https://t.co/xUkRLRxvZu

— Robin Hanson (@robinhanson) November 4, 2018

Okay, but here is the thing: of course we lie to ourselves. Of course we lie to each other. Of course PR people lie to make their clients look good, and try to come off as forthright as possible. The best salesperson is going to be the person that truly believes in the product they are selling, rather than the person who knows its weaknesses and scurries away when they are brought up. This book makes a claim — that I think is reasonable — that self-deception is the key ingredient – we can’t handle the cognitive load of lying all the time, so evolution has adapted us to handle lying with greater facility by not allowing us to realize that we are doing it.

No where is this more obvious than in my previous career as a venture capitalist. Very few founders truly believe in their products and companies. I’m quite serious. You can hear the hesitation in their voices about the story, and you can hear the stress in their throats when they hit a key slide that doesn’t exactly align with the hockey stick they are selling. That’s okay, ultimately, because these companies were young, but if the founder of the company doesn’t truly believe, why should I join the bandwagon?

Confidence is ambiguous — are you confident because the startup truly is good, or is it because you are carefully masking your lack of enthusiasm? That’s what due diligence is all about, but what I do know is that a founder without confidence isn’t going to make it very far. Lying is wrong, but confidence is required — and the line between the two is very, very blurry.

Spotify may repurchase up to $1b in stock

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Before the market opened this morning, Spotify announced plans to buy back stock starting in the fourth quarter of 2018. The company has been authorized to repurchase up to $1 billion worth of shares, and up to 10 million shares total. The exact cadence of the buybacks will depend on various market conditions, and will likely occur gradually until the repurchase program’s expiration date in April of 2021.

The announcement comes on the back of Spotify’s quarterly earnings report last week, which led to weakness in the company’s stock price behind concerns over its outlook for subscriber, revenue and ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) growth, despite the company reporting stronger profitability than Wall Street’s expectations.

After its direct-offering IPO in April, Spotify saw its stock price shoot to over $192 a share in August. However, the stock has since lost close to $10 billion in market cap, driven in part by broader weakness in public tech stocks, as well as by fears about subscription pricing pressure and ARPU growth as more of Spotify’s users opt for discounted family or student subscription plans.

Per TechCrunch’s Sarah Perez:

…The company faces heavy competition these days – especially in the key U.S. market from Apple Music, as well as from underdog Amazon Music, which is leveraging Amazon’s base of Prime subscribers to grow. It also has a new challenge in light of the Sirius XM / Pandora deal.

The larger part of Spotify’s business is free users – 109 million monthly actives on the ad-supported tier. But its programmatic ad platform is currently only live in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia. That leaves Spotify room to grow ad revenues in the months ahead.

The strategic rationale for Spotify is clear despite early reports painting the announcement as a way to buoy a flailing stock price. With over $1 billion in cash sitting on its balance sheet and the depressed stock price, the company clearly views this as an affordable opportunity to return cash to shareholders at an attractive entry point when the stock is undervalued.

As for Spotify’s longer-term outlook from an investor standpoint, the company’s ARPU growth should not be viewed in isolation. In the past, Spotify has highlighted discounted or specialized subscriptions, like family and student subscriptions, as having a much stickier user base. And the company has seen its retention rates improving, with churn consistently falling since the company’s IPO.

The stock is up around 1.5% on the news on top of a small pre-market boost.

What’s next

We are still spending more time on Chinese biotech investments in the United States (Arman previously wrote a deep dive on this a week or two ago).

We are exploring the changing culture of Form D filings (startups seem to be increasingly foregoing disclosures of Form Ds on the advice of their lawyers)

India tax reform and how startups have taken advantage of it

Reading docket

Bloomberg piece called “The $6 Trillion Barrier Holding Electric Cars Back”

New Yorker piece called “Why Doctors Hate Their Computers ”

Eliot Peper’s new science fiction novel Borderless.

A new report about China’s military and its deep connections into American academic research

“LA Is Trying to Fix its Prostitution Problem by Banning Right Turns at Night—and it Might be Working” – intriguing headline, let’s see if it follows through

The Information’s deep dive into white collar crime and lack of prosecution thereof in Silicon Valley

via TechCrunch

#IFTTT #TechCrunch

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