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kuzuhinasecretexchange · 4 years ago

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Work Title: cryptic shells, orange juice, and candid talks

Author: @fieldofsunflowers8

For: @serpenteaus

Pairings/Characters: Kuzuryu Fuyuhiko/Hinata Hajime, No Additional Characters

Rating/Warnings: Teen Rated, No Content Warnings Apply

Prompt used: “postgame mundane shenanigans”

Author’s notes: hi! i apologize for this leaning towards the shorter side, but this was a lot of fun to write! i really hope you like it :D

Hinata swings around his cabin at the same time he always does, knocking and waiting patiently as Kuzuryuu heaves his ass out of bed.

It’s a really minor routine, in truth. There’s nothing super interesting about that repetitiveness– coming around at 8 AM, walking with him to the dining hall, bantering with him over some toast while they talk to their other friends, and spending the rest of their day working on the island or just relaxing. It’s the same shit every day, the same shit they do unless it’s like, someone’s birthday or something, and it should probably bore Kuzuryuu at some point.

It kind of doesn’t, though. In a sense that Kuzuryuu isn’t going to complain about seeing his boyfriend in the morning, or getting to vibe around the island with him, even if it’s similar to what they’ve always done. All of them find ways to keep things interesting– accidentally, like Komaeda, or on purpose, like Imposter– and the island always feels dynamic.

They’ve been through a lot. Having a kind of stability, yet one that shifts according to what they want Jabberwock to be, is sort of relieving. Kuzuryuu rarely got that relief in the past, and he sure as hell isn’t going to pass it up now.

Kuzuryuu makes his way over to the door, unlocking it. Hinata looks a bit more disheveled than usual, dark brown hair messy and growing a bit long, shirt half buttoned and his hands in his pockets, but he still gives Kuzuryuu a smile. “Hey,” Hinata says tiredly, “woke up late. How are you?”

Well, that explains it. Hinata likes routine, too, on most days (and sometimes he hates the tedium of it, but hey, Kuzuryuu can accommodate that too). “I’m fine. Just got up ‘nd shit. Let me brush my teeth and, like, get dressed. Is it hot outside?”

“Well, we’re on a tropical island,” Hinata deadpans, “so I would assume so. Bit cooler, since it’s November, but that’s how it always goes.”

Kuzuryuu nods, throwing open a dresser and changing into some shirt Hinata gave him a while back. Everyone on Jabberwock has a bad tendency to not remember who owns what clothes, so sometimes Komaeda shows up to lunch in Mioda’s skirt, or Koizumi ends up with Owari’s jacket, or Sonia nestles into Tanaka’s scarf. Nobody really minds, though– they’re all sort of a family, after all.

And, y’know. Kuzuryuu likes wearing Hinata’s clothes. Not that he would, like, outright admit that to him, but. Hinata has a nice scent of sandalwood and citrus, and Kuzuryuu thinks, as his boyfriend, he has the right to indulge in it.

‘Course, Hinata still has to point it out smugly. “That’s my shirt, isn’t it?”

Kuzuryuu gestures to the pattern on it– sunflowers, or something. Bit flashy, but Kuzuryuu can cut him some slack for it. It looks really nice on Hinata, either way, so. “Who else would have this shit?”

“Maybe Komaeda,” Hinata suggests while Kuzuryuu opens the bathroom door, pulling out the green toothbrush (there’s a spare blue one, for Hinata, in case he stays over) and putting on some mint toothpaste. “He’s picked up gardening, hasn’t he?”

“Him and Owari, yeah.” There’s a lull in the conversation, as he can’t exactly talk with toothpaste in his mouth, but he picks it up where he left off after he finishes. “Not sure how Owari got into it, actually, ‘cuz gardening never seemed to be her gig.”

Hinata leans against the wall. “The food, probably. Even though Komaeda’s luck keeps fucking up the strawberries, according to Hanamura. I wouldn’t really know, I don’t swing by there much, y’know, but. Probably for that.” Kuzuryuu nods, sliding on some pants and picking up his phone. Hinata straightens, already moving to nudge the door open. “Ready to head out?”

“Don’t know what else I’d be doing.” Hinata just snorts in lieu of a response, gesturing for Kuzuryuu to walk out first before closing the door behind them.

Hinata’s right, it is a bit cooler. It’s a subtle kind of difference, one that comes from knowing the island like the back of his hand, being able to tell when a storm’s about to hit and give them a shit ton of rain, or when it’s about to be super fucking arid, enough to give at least one dumbass heatstroke (fucking Souda and his stupid ass machine work, in the middle of the sun, with metal, and no water, for hours, in the fucking sun). It comes with time, basically.

And it’s sort of a neat thing. It should be boring, once again, but, eh. He likes it.

He thinks about that, sometimes.

Then Hinata makes an awkward gesture in an attempt to subtly ask to hold Kuzuryuu’s hand, and he stops focusing on the weather and all that bullshit, and more on his stupidly endearing boyfriend.

Kuzuryuu intertwines their fingers and mumbles, “You can just ask to hold my hand, dipshit.”

“You looked like you were thinking about something,” Hinata defends mildly. “So I didn’t want to, uh, just. Jar you straight out of that?”

It’s pretty considerate of him, Kuzuryuu considers, even though it’s kind of just inefficient, like the weird waffling they did when they first got together. Which is always really funny to think about in retrospect, because, like, the two of them have always been close. Back in the simulation, they got along decently well, and in the miserable months after waking up, the two of them would stay the night with each other all the time, doing scattered things across the island to distract themself, hugging each other when the days got shitty.

It only really made sense, then, that they had some kind of charisma between them back then. It only took everyone waking up and shit calming down, managing to get some kind of therapy across the shitty telephone lines that the Future Foundation got them, for them to even think about that shit. But, hey, they got there in the fucking end, with the help of the others, like, trying to get them past the yearning into an actual confession.

(Kuzuryuu still remembers the humiliation of Souda and Komaeda– fucking Souda and Komaeda– being the ones that helped him talk to Hinata about it. Souda, who is the definition of running himself in circles, romantically speaking, and Komaeda, who wouldn’t know how to confess to someone normally if a walk-through manual slapped him in the fucking face.

… Not that Hinata’s help was much better. Sonia and Tanaka were pushing for him to confess to Kuzuryuu with a fucking shell. Like, just a cool looking shell, that they thought would appeal to Kuzuryuu’s fiery energies, or something.

Hinata still ended up giving Kuzuryuu the shell, for the record. But Kuzuryuu was a lot more invested in kissing his new boyfriend, at the time. It’s still… somewhere in his room. Just, as a little memory. Or something like that.)

Hinata squeezes his hand again, and Kuzuryuu jolts back to reality. He laughs at himself a bit. “Sorry, I was just, like, thinking about the shitshow that was us trying to get together, all that time back.”

He tilts his head, olive green eyes softening. “How come?”

“Because you trying to hold my hand was awkward as hell.”

The soft eyes are immediately hidden with an eye roll. “Fuck off.”

Kuzuryuu snorts, nudging him with his shoulder before they continue walking to the dining hall. “Seriously, though. That was such a fuckin’ week, wasn’t it? Hell, I still think about Komaeda looking me straight in the eyes and calling me an idiot.”

“I’m still not entirely sure that one happened,” Hinata jokes. “Like. I know Komaeda is kind of… a lot, but the fact that he just called your ass out, then and there, is so much. Then again, Sonia called me a dense motherfucker, so.”

“You are a dense motherfucker.”

“I am not a dense motherfucker.” Kuzuryuu shoots him a look, and Hinata sighs. “Okay. Sometimes, I am a dense motherfucker. But I did know you liked me! I just can’t, uh, interpret half my emotions at any hour of the day.”

The Kamukura effect, Kuzuryuu calls it in his head, but he doesn’t, like, verbally say that. Not that it would be an issue– Kuzuryuu is kind of adjusted to Kamukura suddenly fronting, and the two of them get along decently well, but. Y’know. It’s just kind of a weird thing to say, he thinks. “Yeah, I mean, that’s fair. We were still pretty fresh out of everything, I can imagine you had more going on.”

“Yeah.”

Kuzuryuu shoots Hinata a look, taking in the slightly pensive expression, before impulsively standing on his toes to kiss his cheek. His face erupts in a blush, because Hinata isn’t the most accustomed to physical touch, still, and Kuzuryuu takes the chance to say, “You aren’t stupid, though. You’re, like, really fuckin’ smart. And I get it. We all do.”

Hinata glances away in some failed attempt to hide his expression. “Thanks,” he mumbles, but he squeezes Kuzuryuu’s hand, so. He knows that the other gets what he’s getting at. He’s just flustered, sort of adorably, but Kuzuryuu would never admit that. He is not a sap.

(Well. Hinata’s eyes sometimes remind him of the times long ago, back at home, where it was sunny and he felt sort of okay, actually. And he has nice hair, y’know, falling into his eyes but nice to touch. And he’s nice, like, a real sweet guy with a closed off heart that you can still sort of trust. And he reminds Kuzuryuu of the sunshine, just, entirely.

… So maybe a little bit, but, hey. One of them has to maintain the romantic coherency around here, and if they have to pass the baton of sentiment, so be it.)

“You’re contemplative today,” Hinata remarks.

“You spend half your time brooding and getting lost in thought, and you’re getting on my ass?”

Hinata laughs, which makes Kuzuryuu’s scowl soften. “Fair enough. Sorry.”

“You’re fine.” Kuzuryuu sighs. “Just. Thinking about us, again.”

“That’s, uh, pretty sweet of you. Or just really, really sappy, I guess.”

“Shut the literal fuck up.”

“It wasn’t an insult.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” They’re at the dining hall, now. As Hinata opens the door for them, the sound of the others becomes pretty apparent. Hanamura in the kitchen as usual, Tanaka and Souda’s voices distinct amidst the sound of everyone eating. There’s probably a few people missing– Komaeda and Owari come to mind, since Owari eats food unreasonably early sometimes, and Komaeda tends to show up when fewer people are there– but, since Hinata and Kuzuryuu got up sort of late, the rest are probably there.

It’s… nice. Another one of those expected things, mundane as all hell and probably boring to literally anybody else, but Kuzuryuu likes it. Likes the way things flow, likes the routine, likes it all. Even when it’s, yeah, sometimes decently repetitive.

Hinata gets the door for them again– chivalrous dumbass– and Sonia immediately issues them a, “Good morning, Hinata-san, Kuzuryuu-san.”

“What’s up.” Kuzuryuu lets go of Hinata’s hand to go and grab some food, his boyfriend engaging in an actual conversation with Sonia and Nidai. Kuzuryuu would like to later, no shit, but he’s hungry and Hanamura’s food calls to him. He gets himself some orange juice (that Hinata will probably steal from him, prompting an aghast orange juice and coffee, at once, are you fuckin’ serious? but, eh. Better than grabbing, like, milk or something). He also grabs some food, toast with some kind of spread Hanamura would give them the details of, before taking a seat.

Souda slides across him, leaving whatever conversation he had been having with Tanaka to the wind. “Hey there, soul bro! How we vibing?”

“Fine.” Kuzuryuu says with a shrug, instinctually scooting over as Hinata sits next to him.

Souda gets out another, “Soul bro number two! How are you?”

“Doing fine, Souda,” Hinata steals Kuzuryuu’s juice from the get go, so he kicks him under the table. Hinata stifles a laugh. “Tanaka’s giving you a death stare, though.”

“Ugh, dammit. Prick’s been getting on me over crystals, or some shit.�� Souda gets out of the chair, already walking back over to probably start another argument with no other pretense. It’s early enough in the morning that Kuzuryuu doesn’t second guess the weird interaction, though Souda has a tendency to start and end conversations in the worst, most abrupt way.

He’s off, watching Souda and Tanaka go at each other while Koizumi sits tiredly near them, looking as if she’s debating whether to interfere or leave before Tanaka throws out an archaic insult, when Hinata moves to grab his hand and squeeze it. Kuzuryuu turns to look back at him, eyebrow raised. “What’s up?”

“Uh, nothing, really,” Hinata replies, and Kuzuryuu almost looks away again before he blurts out, “I love you.”

Kuzuryuu flushes, trying to roll his eyes to counteract it, but the awkwardly fond expression on Hinata’s face gives the impression that his plan didn’t work. Still, he keeps his voice casual (if not a bit softer, dammit Hinata, fucking contagious sentimental hours) as he replies, “Love you too, dipshit. Give me back my fuckin’ juice.”

“Of course.” Hinata takes one more swig before giving it back, and it’s almost a quarter empty, so maybe Kuzuryuu should have let the bastard keep it, but, eh. He’s too busy focusing on the I love you thing, which they’ve said fairly often throughout their relationship, but, still. He used to think– and Hinata must have, too– that it needed to be saved for big occasions, like birthdays or anniversaries or the days that come particularly rough. But, Kuzuryuu thinks that they’re worth hearing any day, even the particular slow ones, like these.

Later, they’ll probably go off to work around the island, separate for a bit to apply their talents wherever needed. Kuzuryuu will talk to his friends, hang out with Pekoyama a bit as she trains, and probably spend too much time contemplating to be productive.

But, it’s still a nice day. Slow, and a bit chilly comparatively, but a nice day.

And, hey. He can roll with that, he thinks. That they’ve earned their share of peaceful days after everything.

He shoots a glance over at Hinata while he’s eating. His face is neutral as he fiddles with his sleeve and thinks about something, either entirely random (like the light fixtures, or something), or a topic a bit more serious that he might bring up to Kuzuryuu later. He’s come a long way, in being open with that, but also with just… everything. Both of them have. Hell, the reason they could get together was that growth, getting through it all, that bullshit. All of that shit, to get here.

And, to be honest? Despite all the shit they went through, the shit that Kuzuryuu wished they didn’t have to go through, wouldn’t have gone through again no matter what…

… he’s pretty fucking happy that the two of them are here.

Together.

#kuzuhina #kuzuhina secret santa 2020 #serpenteaus #fieldofsunflowers8 #submission

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commentaryvorg · 5 years ago

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Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Bonus 4.1 - Ultimate Talent Development Plan (Mostly Kaito Edition)

This is postgame content, so people shouldn’t be reading this without having already finished the main game anyway. But just to be safe: while this is non-canon character stuff, I will sometimes be mentioning events that happened in the main story, so there will be spoilers for the main game.

First off, some of the usual preamble about how this mode even works. Functionally, it’s, of all things, a board game that serves as a companion for another bonus mode which is a dungeon crawler RPG. Characters don’t gain experience from battles in the RPG; instead, you level up characters in this mode, by playing through the board game as them. I could go on at great length about all the mechanics of this, because I got rather addicted to it at one point. (Apparently all you need to do to make me invested in the mechanics of an RPG is to put characters I already love into it, and then I will do everything in my power to figure out how to turn them into the awesomest fighters they can be. Kaito is the best tank and will take all of the hits to protect his glass-cannon sidekicks!) But we’re here for the story aspect, so I shall restrain myself.

Flavour-wise, each playthrough of the board game follows your chosen character as they live out three years at Hope’s Peak, in a non-despair AU in which the casts from DR1, DR2 and DRV3 are all in the same school year. (Well, it’s mostly non-despair – at the end of the three years, an army of Monokuma robots is unleashed under the school, and that’s the dungeon crawling part. But your heroes ultimately deal with that threat before it can cause any chaos outside.)

The board game is only a very abstract representation of this story. Each turn supposedly represents one month, but really most of the spaces on the board are just various ways to level up your various attributes and don’t have any real narrative. The only spaces that matter for our purposes here are Friendly Spaces, which will show you one of five scenes featuring your character, that I’ll refer to as “friendly events”, in which they interact with one or two other students. If you land on enough Friendly Spaces, which is easy enough to do if you’re aiming for it, you’ll see all five scenes with your character.

The other source of story here is seasonal events, which trigger automatically on a specific month in each of the three years. The character you’re playing as gets a choice of three possible things they can do for the event, each of which results in a scene with one or two other characters. Unfortunately, these choices are mutually exclusive, so to see all of a character’s scenes, you need to play as them through almost the entirety of the board game (because the last seasonal event is near the end of year 3) three times.

…But actually, that’s not all, not if you want to really see all the scenes for a single character. Friendly Space scenes are easy to see all of because they’ll appear when you’re playing as any of the characters featured in them. (Well, usually; one of Kaito’s doesn’t appear for him, but that seems to be just a programming oversight.) But the seasonal event scenes don’t work this way and only appear for the character who is given the choice of what to do. So any given character is also going to appear in a bunch of other characters’ seasonal events, and you’re only going to see those scenes by playing as those other characters. Worse, if you’re interested in a specific character’s scenes, there’s no way to even know which other characters’ seasonal events they appear in. So the only way to be sure that you’ve seen every single scene for a given character is to play through the board game three times each as *every single one of over fifty characters*. (Actually, the exact number is fifty-three, which… I think is genuinely just a coincidence. Heh.)

In short, thank god for the wiki. I do not envy but am immensely grateful to the people who went and did exactly that and got transcripts – with sprites, even – of every single one of these scenes. Thankfully, each character’s page for this mode on the wiki contains all of their own seasonal events and all of their appearances in other characters’ seasonal events, so you can see absolutely all of their scenes in one place. I am not using my Vita for this one. (I wouldn’t have wanted to anyway because the backlog function doesn’t work in this mode, but.)

While it makes things way more inconvenient in terms of actually seeing every scene, I do prefer the board game as a framing device for this AU’s story far more than the framing device for the Salmon Team AU. Salmon Team used the same interface of Shuichi walking around and talking to people that the main story had, which resulted in an impression that, in-story, everyone was just robotically standing in the same spot every day doing nothing until Shuichi came to talk to them. But this board game is abstract enough that we know none of the rolling dice and landing on spaces is really what’s happening in-story. The scenes we see give us a glimpse of the students’ school lives, but there’s clearly so much more happening offscreen that we don’t get to see. It feels like an organic and fully-realised story that the board game just happens to only give us a series of brief windows into.

Before beginning into the board game itself and seeing any of the actual scenes, you also get a single textbox from the character you’ve chosen to play as, as they get ready to enrol in Hope’s Peak.

Kaito: “Alright! I’ll keep training while I’m here and after I graduate, I’ll go straight to space!”

Kaito’s words here raise a few questions, honestly. If he’s already started astronaut training, he should be focusing entirely on that and really should not also be attending high school. He questioned in the demo why he’d have bothered enrolling in some academy when he should just be working on getting to space as soon as possible; you’d think he’d feel the same even if it was Hope’s Peak! It seems like the writing is just desperately trying to have it be the case that Kaito is both already an astronaut trainee in order to justify his Ultimate status, and yet is also attending Hope’s Peak, even though dividing his focus like that really doesn’t seem like the right way for Hope’s Peak to nurture his talent.

However, we could get this to work by imagining that Kaito is exaggerating here about having already started his training. Perhaps what’s really going on is this: Kaito managed to impress the space program despite being way too young, so they made him a deal. They recommended him to Hope’s Peak as the Ultimate Astronaut, having acknowledged his incredible potential to be one, and if he graduates from there, then he gets to jump straight into astronaut training without also needing a college degree. After all, part of Hope’s Peak’s deal is supposed to be that you’re “set for life” if you graduate, which I can imagine would equate to getting privileges like that.

I wonder if these privileges also mean that Maki doesn’t have to be an assassin any more after she graduates. This is the one universe in which Maki has actually killed people and her assassin cult actually exists and she’s going to have to go back to killing people again once this is over, which makes me very sad. Unfortunately I really doubt the canon Hope’s Peak would have given a fuck about helping Maki out like that, and all of the scenes we see here remain very vague about what’s going to happen to Maki once she leaves. Buuuut maybe we can pretend that this AU version of Hope’s Peak is nicer and is going to abolish her assassin cult as its way of making her “set for life”? I just don’t want to imagine Maki having to go back to killing once she leaves here. I can’t imagine Kaito or Shuichi would stand for it either.

Meanwhile, in Shuichi’s little intro line, he isn’t wearing his hat, when he really should be if you think about it. Until he meets Kaito and Kaede and starts trying to be braver, he’s not going to take that thing off.

…So, if this introduction didn’t already make it obvious, I’m going to be focusing on scenes featuring at least one of our adorable training trio, with a particular focus on Kaito because what did you expect, it’s me.

Shuichi (featuring Kyoko)

Obviously one of the friendly events I’m here to talk about is one between Shuichi and Kaito!

Shuichi is already Kaito’s sidekick in this event, which is something we don’t really need to be shown coming about, not when we can easily fill in the gaps and imagine that it went roughly like it did in canon. Kaito saw Shuichi’s weakness and made it his business to help, just like Kaito always does.

…It is a little different from canon, because there isn’t the context of Shuichi needing to have his act together in case there’s another class trial, nor is there the subtle Kaito’s-issues context of him feeling like Shuichi has already been more of a hero than him and wanting to make himself a part of that in order to feel useful and not inferior. But this just goes to show that those reasons were never necessary and Kaito would have reached out to Shuichi regardless, because that’s genuinely just who he is.

Kaito: “Why’re you looking so down now? I thought you’d been looking better than when you first got to this academy. If there’s something going on, then spit it out! It’s a hero’s job to help out his sidekick!”

Shuichi: “It’s nothing, I just… I feel as though I haven’t used my detective skills lately.”

Kaito noticing Shuichi looking down and encouraging him to talk about whatever’s wrong is still so good. It seems Shuichi would normally have felt this wasn’t important enough to mention, but thanks to Kaito’s prodding, he’s been starting to learn that it’s okay to talk about even small-seeming problems, because Kaito will help him with anything.

(And Kaito is indeed actually right in his judgement that something was wrong, because this isn’t chapter 4 in which he’d become desperate enough to forcefully insist Shuichi needed his help when he really didn’t. No I am not going to stop mentioning the time Kaito did that in his chapter 4 FTE; it was delightful.)

Shuichi: “I feel like… I should be doing something. I got my Ultimate talent by chance, so…”

Props to Shuichi for wanting to do something about this. Even though he feels he got his Ultimate title by chance, he’s not just going to wallow in the feeling that he doesn’t deserve it – he wants to work until he can feel like he does deserve it and can be proud of it! It’s definitely Kaito (and probably also Kaede; she’s his friend in this AU too, of course) who helped Shuichi feel this way, because this was very much not his outlook at the beginning.

Shuichi: “But… a detective can’t work unless there’s a case to solve, or a request to fulfil.”

Kaito: “No! Your talents are more than just that!”

Shuichi: “Huh?”

Kaito: “Hey, Shuichi… I’m an astronaut. Do you think I’m useless when I’m not in space?”

Shuichi: “You’re not useless! You have good teamwork, and you always help people in need. Everyone really depends on you, Kaito.”

I really like Kaito’s approach to this. Of course he’s not useless when he’s not in space, because all of the skills he has that gave him his astronaut talent can also be applied in so many other ways! In terms of current achievements, Kaito is a far worse astronaut than Shuichi is a detective, because Shuichi has at least solved a good few cases, while Kaito’s never even been to space. But Kaito doesn’t let that get him down! There’s so much else he can do with his skills before he gets there!

Kaito: “Then what about detectives? Are they useless without cases or requests?”

Shuichi: “Well…”

So the same should go for Shuichi, right? Obviously!

Kaito: “So I’ll be the hero and you be my sidekick!”

Shuichi: “…Isn’t that what we’ve been doing?”

It’s… a little hard to translate the Kaito-ese here, and I don’t blame Shuichi for getting confused. But I think what he’s trying to get at is that he’ll cheer Shuichi on while Shuichi goes out there and lives up to his potential, because that’s what the hero-and-sidekick thing is really about.

Kaito: “And when someone’s in trouble, you help ‘em out! Like, by giving them advice or something! It might be different from your usual detective work, but… Instead of rotting away like that, it’ll make you feel alive by helping out those around us.”

It’s adorable that Kaito’s basically encouraging Shuichi to be more like him, in the sense of trying to help people. After all, he knows that Shuichi’s a naturally compassionate person who does instinctively want to help others a lot. Their respective talents lend themselves to helping others in quite different ways – Shuichi isn’t necessarily going to be as great at giving advice as Kaito is – but that just means that there’s things that Shuichi can do for people that even Kaito can’t.

There actually is something of a running theme of Shuichi doing this kind of thing in some of his other scenes in this AU! The types of cases he took on at his uncle’s office were often about finding lost pets or missing people, so he’s really good at tracking things down, which can come in very handy when others have more practical problems than the kind Kaito helps people with. Just like in canon, Kaito is good at helping people with his words, while Shuichi is good at helping people with his actions.

This also comes up a little in another one of Shuichi’s friendly events, with Kyoko. Because, yes, she’s here too, meaning there’s just awkwardly two different Ultimate Detectives in the same school year somehow.

Shuichi: “An apprentice like me doesn’t deserve to share the title of Ultimate Detective with you…”

Which, predictably, makes Shuichi feel rather inferior when comparing himself to Kyoko and her accomplishments.

Kyoko: “Others accept that you are a detective, and have also come to rely on you, too. The other day, I saw you running all over the place with Ryoma and Peko… No doubt because they needed your insights as a detective, right?”

Shuichi: “Ah, I was just looking for a missing cat around the academy… I’ve handled plenty of missing pet cases before, so I was able to help, but…”

This is indeed a thing that happened – there’s a scene between Ryoma and Peko (the former of whom is a big cat person and the latter of whom loves fluffy animals in general) in which they discuss a lost cat they’ve seen around school and ultimately decide to get Shuichi’s help to track it down and find its owner. That scene doesn’t actually get as far as featuring Shuichi in it, but this scene here with Kyoko confirms that he did indeed manage to help solve that “case”! It’s neat how there’s various events that are referred to in multiple scenes, to help things really feel like a cohesive story.

Kyoko: “Do you think it’s meaningless for people to rely on you?”

Shuichi: “…No, that’s wrong. It makes me… so happy to be helpful.”

Kyoko: “Then I see no reason for you to compare yourself to me. Every detective is shaped by their motives, methodologies, and case histories.”

Kyoko has such a good point! She and Shuichi are very, very different types of detective and shouldn’t really be compared to each other. Kyoko is a homicide detective and takes a very objective, impersonal approach to things, whereas Shuichi handles more domestic cases that are about solving people’s problems and generally has more of a focus on helping people in the process. It’s possible that Kyoko brings up people relying on Shuichi because she actually kind of looks up to him for that, since that’s very much not something that her own type of detective work makes her suited for.

This idea gets explored a little more in another scene Shuichi has with Kyoko, as one of his seasonal events for the final year. (I’ll mostly be trying to do the seasonal events in chronological order as we go along, but there’s some final-year events, such as this one, that exist as kind of a follow-up to an earlier friendly event between two characters. So I’ll be doing those in conjunction with the relevant friendly event, even if it means we have to temporarily skip ahead to the end of the three years now and then.)

Shuichi bumps into Kyoko about to leave for some urgent business in such a hurry that she won’t even have time to tell her classmates she’s going to miss the closing ceremony, so Shuichi offers to let Makoto know for her.

Kyoko: “If that’s the case… I’m sorry, but would you mind doing it?”

Shuichi: “Ah, don’t worry about it! It’s alright to depend on others when you need to. I’ll give you advice someone gave me. Don’t try to do everything by yourself. Sometimes, asking for help is exactly what you need. Even if it’s something small.”

The way Kyoko apologises before asking Shuichi for something this small does suggest that she’s very much not used to relying on others at all. Kyoko is of course naturally very capable and independent and doesn’t often need help in the first place, but she can also be reluctant to rely on others even when it would benefit her to do so. Good thing Shuichi can help her a little with that, in part thanks to all of the advice Kaito’s given him!

Shuichi: “Ah, but… I might be getting a little *too* much help from everyone…”

Kyoko is a detective who maybe doesn’t rely on others enough, while Shuichi is a detective who relies on others maybe a little too much. It’s a neat contrast.

Kyoko: “I never meant to hold it in… That was never my intention. When you involve yourself in someone else’s business, you can easily misjudge them.”

Shuichi: “I’m sure you’re right. There are certainly situations like that. But aren’t there times that make you think… you want to really trust someone? Even if you might get hurt?”

Kyoko at least tells herself that she tries to refrain from personal ties and relying on others in order to remain detached and impartial for her detective work. That is perhaps more important for a homicide detective than it would be for a domestic detective like Shuichi. Then again, in canon, Shuichi had to solve a bunch of murders, and he managed to do that despite also having an emotional side that willingly formed bonds and wanted to believe in people. You don’t have to throw away Kyoko Kirigiri in order to be the Ultimate Detective, Kyoko!

Also, Shuichi’s words about wanting to trust someone even if you might get hurt are definitely paraphrasing Kaito’s principles on that topic here and I love it. He’s had much less of an issue with that notion in this AU when there haven’t been any murders, but maybe instead it was the beginnings of their friendship with Maki that prompted Shuichi to ask Kaito how he could believe in people so easily.

Maki Roll (featuring Chihiro)

…And than brings us rather conveniently onto the next friendly event I wanted to cover, because of course Kaito also has a scene with Maki.

Maki is also already Kaito’s sidekick in this scene, but unlike with Shuichi, we can’t just assume this went basically how it did in canon. See, Kaito (and implicitly also Shuichi, though he’s not in this scene) knows about Maki’s talent, but nobody else does. Which is in fact a huge difference from canon that warrants some lengthy speculation about how Maki even ended up as Kaito’s sidekick in this universe at all.

In canon, it only happened because Kokichi found out Maki’s talent and told everyone. Kaito started properly reaching out to her and trying to make her his sidekick after that, and since she had nothing to lose because the worst had already happened and her secret was already out, she didn’t put up that much resistance. Kaito’s continued belief in her despite knowing her true talent let Maki realise that people knowing wasn’t the absolute end of the world like she’d been terrified it would be.

Here, though, without a class-wide bombshell revealing Maki’s identity, it’s very remarkable that Kaito even knows at all. Throughout chapter 2, Maki was so terrified of anyone finding out her secret, because she was absolutely convinced that it’d make everyone hate and fear and try to kill her and she’d end up forced to kill them in self-defence, which she did not remotely want to do. That fear might not be quite as intense outside of a killing game, nor without a whole room full of proof of her talent readily available for anyone to wander into, but it’d still be there. She’d still be reluctant to get close to anyone even under the guise of being the Ultimate Child Caregiver, not only out of a belief that she doesn’t deserve to have friends, but also out of a fear that letting someone get too close will increase the risk of them finding out her secret somehow even if she’s trying to hide it.

So obviously Kaito’s persistence and stubbornness would still have been a huge and necessary factor here. Although he didn’t know Maki’s talent and therefore just how weak she was and how badly she needed it, he must have seen her as a potential sidekick anyway. She was still cutting herself off from the rest of the class for reasons that Kaito’s instincts could tell weren’t malicious, meaning he probably figured that she was running away from something and needed help. So he’d have kept trying to talk to her and include her in things and invite her to train with him and Shuichi and generally be his incredibly stubborn self at her.

But… because Maki’s secret wasn’t already out, it must have taken way more stubbornness from Kaito here than it did in canon to finally get through to her. She’d have realised that he’s trying to figure out why she’s so closed off and get her to open up, but she would be utterly convinced that telling him the truth would only make him fear her and give up on her, and probably also warn everyone else about her talent and ruin everything.

There’s two possibilities I can think of for how Maki eventually gave in and opened up. One is that Kaito and Shuichi managed to figure it out themselves after enough attempts to talk to her, through a combination of Shuichi’s detective skills and Kaito’s intuition for people. Then they gently confronted her about it, with a very clear message of “we know this is why you’re scared, but it’s okay, we trust you, and you can trust us not to tell anyone, we only want to help you”. I’m not totally sold on this idea, though, because it would still leave Maki with the fear that she couldn’t actually trust them, not after they figured out her worst secret without her consent. (Also, hello Shuichi’s issues about accidentally figuring out truths that the subject of them hates having exposed.)

The more likely possibility, then, is that Maki did eventually tell Kaito herself, not out of openly trusting him and being comfortable with him knowing (because she would never believe that anyone could be okay with her being a killer until she’s already seen it happen), but more out of just trying to get him to finally leave her alone already. Surely knowing that she’s a killer will make even a stubborn idiot like him give up on her and realise she’s not worth getting close to, right? But that’s still remarkable, because people finding out her talent is still the worst and most terrifying scenario imaginable to Maki. So while she’d be telling herself on the surface that this is just to get rid of him, she would still have had to genuinely trust somewhere deep down that Kaito would at least respect her secret and not tell anyone else, even if he’d also totally never want to speak to her again.

I’m pretty sure that’s roughly how this must have gone down, and that’s really incredible. Maki would have had no obvious, undeniable way to realise she could trust Kaito, not like she had in canon from the simple fact that he continued to believe in her despite knowing that she’s an assassin. Imagine the absolute persistent supportiveness Kaito would have needed to display in order for Maki to start to instinctively feel that way anyway. And consider how huge it is for Maki that she did end up coming to trust Kaito enough, even if she wasn’t admitting it to herself, that she was able to briefly lift her otherwise-unbreakable barrier of no-one must ever know, if only in what she was telling herself was an attempt to push him away. Kaito is so good, and Maki absolutely needed someone as stubbornly, recklessly kind as him to begin to get through to her.

Kaito: “Hey, Maki Roll! You better remember our promise for tonight!”

Maki: “Are you talking about training? You made that promise, not me. And stop calling me Maki Roll.”

These opening lines put this scene very early on in Maki’s sidekickhood. Kaito has started calling her Maki Roll, which it only took him a few days to do in canon after she’d become his sidekick (and after he knew she was an assassin and therefore that giving her the most un-assassin-like nickname would be a good way to help her). But Maki has not yet given up telling him not to, which also only took a few days.

Plus, Maki is still acting like the only reason she’s going to training is because Kaito is nagging her to and is not yet openly accepting that she’s choosing to go for her own sake. In fact, the way they talk about the promise like it’s not already a regular arrangement suggests that tonight may be the first time Maki will ever come to training, or at most the second, if it happened for the first time last night and Kaito told her to come again tomorrow.

That moment in which Maki finally gave in and told Kaito about her talent must have been no more than a few days ago, then. Kaito would of course have responded by reassuring her that he still believes in her, and that rather than pushing him away, she should be accepting his help in growing stronger, for which she should obviously start coming to training with him and Shuichi.

Kaito: “Alright, you remember! I’ll see you there!”

Despite Maki acting like she’s only doing this because he’s nagging her, and not even explicitly promising she’ll be there, of course Kaito knows that she will definitely be there. He called it a promise in the first place because he knows that she has already made the choice to try and get stronger. And he can tell that she must already trust him on some level to have even told him her secret in the first place.

Maki: “…Is that why you came to talk to me?”

Kaito: “Nah, I’ve got a message from Kaede. She wants to talk about the promise you made with her. I dunno what kind of promise it is, but… since when were you guys so close?”

Maki: “We’re not close, and I wouldn’t call my arrangement with Kaede a promise, either. She offered to play piano for the kids at my orphanage. That’s all.”

This is actually a promise Kaede makes if you do Maki’s FTEs with Kaede in the main game! It’s lovely that they also put it into this AU and made it an actual thing that happens, because man was that never going to actually be able to happen in canon for multiple reasons.

Maki is probably right to say that she and Kaede aren’t that close. If she’s this early on in being Kaito’s sidekick, she definitely hasn’t really started to open up much with other people either. But it seems that despite that, Kaede has tried approaching Maki anyway and had similar conversations with her as she has in her canon FTEs, because Kaede is lovely and always trying to make friends even with more guarded people like Maki.

Maki: “But… I left that orphanage years ago. Kaede thinks I was the Ultimate Child Caregiver at that orphanage before I came here, but…”

This is of course the assumption Kaede was running under in her FTEs with Maki when she offered to play piano for the kids then. (Not that Kaede hypothetically learning Maki’s real identity would change anything, once she learned Maki’s reasons for it – if anything, it’d only make Kaede even more determined to do something nice for Maki and those kids. Kaede is just as good as Kaito is.)

Kaito: “Hey, there’s no reason you can’t go to the orphanage, right, Maki Roll? So just take Kaede there with you. For the kids living peacefully there you worked so hard for… Let them hear Kaede’s music.”

It’s lovely what Kaito’s doing here. Maki is telling herself that she barely deserves to be going back near that happy life at the orphanage any more now that she’s a horrible murderer, but Kaito’s trying to reassure her that hey, none of that means she can’t at least visit and do something nice for the kids she cares about so much!

…And, okay, so apparently we’re also at a point after Maki has opened up about exactly why she became an assassin, which took several days longer than her initial decision to try and change (and happened after she’d given up protesting the Maki Roll). It’s a little surprising that she reached that point so quickly, because subconsciously trusting Kaito not to betray her talent to everyone is a lot different from actually telling him why she’s an assassin and more or less admitting that she never wanted it. So… I am starting to get the sense that the writers here maaaay not have fully thought through what they were implying with this scene’s opening lines, because those definitely gave the sense that Maki had barely started training if she was reluctant to even admit she was coming.

Unless maybe things happened in a different order in this universe, such that Maki had already begrudgingly told Kaito a few stories about her orphanage during his persistent pestering for her to open up (just like she does with Kaede’s attempts to reach out to her). Which might mean that when she finally threw up her hands and told him she’s a goddamn assassin so leave her alone, it wouldn’t be as much of a leap for her to then admit, with some more questioning from Kaito, that the orphanage stories were still true and are actually quite related to her being an assassin. Maybe.

Kaito: “Oh! I just had a great idea too! How about me and Shuichi tag along? Yeah! Let’s do it! If Shuichi’s with us, I bet Kaede will get all psyched up!”

Aww, Kaito. It is making me very happy imagining this gathering of these four being friends at Maki’s orphanage and making the kids smile. (I bet Kaito is also very good with kids. Especially if they’re aware he’s the Ultimate Astronaut, letting him jump right into his inspiring hero role and tell them all sorts of exciting things about SPACE.)

…Kaito’s comment about how Shuichi’s presence will psyche Kaede up does imply that he might have figured those two have a bit of an unspoken romantic thing for each other. But even if that’s the case, I like to imagine that Kaito wouldn’t make any overt moves to act on this and try and set them up together without one of them directly asking him for help. After all, Kaito’s only working on a hunch here, and if his hunch happens to be wrong, then trying to push his friends into a romance they don’t actually want would be a dick move. (More on a similar concept regarding Kaito’s hunches in another scene next post.)

Maki: “You want to tag along… and bring Shuichi?”

Kaito: “Yeah! If there are any problems, Shuichi and I will help out!”

This is the real reason Kaito invited himself and Shuichi along, though. He can sense that Maki is uneasy doing something that comes so close to her personal life and the truth about herself when she’s including someone who doesn’t know her secret. As such, Kaito’s offering to go along with Shuichi to be there for her and help her feel safer. Since it doesn’t make much sense for there to be logistical problems with Kaede playing the piano to the kids, Kaito is really talking about the possibility of there being problems with Maki’s talent remaining secret. He’s saying that he and Shuichi will be there to cover for her, and, if worst comes to worst and her talent ends up coming out anyway, talk Kaede through the revelation and assure her that Maki still deserves to be treated like a person. (Kaede would definitely understand, of course, but she’d need some explanations, and Maki might not be comfortable giving those on her own.)

Kaito: “Do you not want Kaede and the others to find out about your real talent? But… I know you don’t wanna distance yourself from them like when you first got here, yeah?”

Maki: “…Don’t make assumptions about me.”

He’s right, though, isn’t he, Maki? However, she’s still not quite willing to admit that yet herself, so this is still quite early days, one way or another.

Maki: “But… I guess I’ll give the orphanage a call.”

Kaito: “Alright! Then it’s decided!”

Maki’s going to do it! I really, really get the sense that without Kaito’s reassurance, she wouldn’t have actually acted upon this and would have left Kaede hanging. Kaede might well have been trying to prod Maki about it herself and getting only vague uncertainty since Maki wasn’t truly comfortable doing it. That could be why Kaede asked Kaito to talk to her about it, having noticed that he seems to be closer to Maki than she is.

Maki does have a friendly event with Kaede, too, but it turns out to be more about Chihiro, who’s also in the scene. Maki and Kaede happen across Chihiro crying, and he explains that he found an injured bird that died before he could take it to Gundham to maybe save it.

Maki points out that that’s not Chihiro’s fault and Gundham might not have been able to save it anyway.

Chihiro: “You’re… right… But when I thought about how it probably wanted to fly more, I just started crying…”

Chihiro is projecting his weakness issues onto this poor little injured bird that probably wished it was stronger, but then it didn’t manage to get any stronger and died because it was too weak! Aww, Chihiro.

Maki: “I don’t think you should be crying over that, though… But… I do think it’s fortunate it had someone to cry for it.”

Maki looks distant during that second part, because apparently she’s also somewhat projecting her issues onto this bird. She’s acknowledging that it’s sad when someone suffers alone without anyone knowing and being able to care about it. In a very, very indirect way, she’s saying that her past suffering matters, and that she deserves to have others know and feel sorry for her about what she’s been through. That’s a big deal coming from Maki! (And I’m sure others do know about her suffering; if she’s admitting this, then she’s probably already told Kaito and Shuichi about some of the more awful parts of her assassin training by now.)

Chihiro wants to bury the bird, so both Kaede and Maki suggest they should take it to Gundham, who’d know about how best to do this sort of thing. Maki offers to come along, which Chihiro seems surprised about.

Kaede: “You know, Chihiro… Maki may seem edgy on the outside, but she’s actually very sincere.”

Maki: [pouting] “…You don’t need to come with us, Kaede.”

Kaede: “Why!? I only said the truth!”

Maki is a good caregiver! And also embarrassed at Kaede earnestly telling near-strangers how caring she is. Kaede is good and I hope she and Maki continue to be friends; she’d be able to help Maki out a lot too, even without necessarily having to know her secret.

Maki: “I can’t just leave a crybaby like you alone. That would leave a bad taste in my mouth…”

Maki mentioned during her FTEs that her best friend from the orphanage (who is no longer alive) was something of a crybaby who tried her best to be strong. Is Chihiro reminding Maki of her friend here? Because that’s adorable.

There’s a little more Maki and Chihiro in one of Maki’s third year winter events, not precisely as a follow-up to this but I might as well cover it here anyway. Maki happens across Chihiro in the dining hall, and after some conversation about Chihiro not having the strength to open a jar (but wanting to keep trying rather than having Maki do it for him), Chihiro comments that Maki must be like a reliable big sister to the kids she looks after.

Maki: “I don’t think… I’m that reliable.”

Chihiro: “Huh, why?”

Maki: “I’m not good at taking care of people and I keep secrets. You can’t rely on someone like that.”

Makiiii, you are very good at taking care of people. And you only keep your secret to protect both yourself and other people, not out of any kind of malice or intent to deceive, so that doesn’t inherently make you unreliable. I guess in this universe Kaito never got the chance to give his speech about how having secrets is just human and doesn’t necessarily make someone a bad person.

Chihiro: “You keep secrets?”

Maki: “Nothing. Forget it.”

Chihiro: “Um… Uhhh… Keeping secrets might be bad… But I don’t think it’s strange… Even I… have secrets.”

Turns out this is something Maki and Chihiro have in common! Chihiro isn’t keeping his secret for a malicious reason either, nor does it make him any less worth relying on because of it!

Chihiro: “Maki… is there anyone you talked to about your secret? Or have you not told anyone?”

Maki: “Well… I have told someone.”

The fact that Maki says that she told Kaito and Shuichi her secret makes it all the more likely that the reason they found out really is because she slowly grew to trust them enough to tell them. I don’t think she’d word it that way if they’d been the ones to figure it out first.

Chihiro: “Okay, then you’re fine. It’s a bit of a relief to have someone to talk to.”

Maki: “That’s true… I actually do feel a bit relieved.”

Chihiro is saying this because, in this AU, he’s entrusted Mondo with his secret and Mondo has been training him to get stronger, a lot like Kaito has with Maki! This is a big thing they have in common, and it’s lovely to have that brought up here and see them both agreeing that it’s nice not to have to bear their secret alone.

Honestly, if Chihiro had happened to be in Kaito’s class instead, he’d probably have admired Kaito’s strength and gone to him instead with his secret to ask for help getting stronger, and damn right Kaito would have immediately taken him on as a sidekick and it would have been adorable. But instead, Chihiro has Mondo, which in some ways is essentially the same thing and in some ways is rather different, as we’ll get into later in this post.

Year 1 seasonal events

The first year’s seasonal event is the summer sports festival. There aren’t too many here I want to cover, but I might as well group them together for it anyway.

Show ‘em what you got in the three-legged race! Maybe you should talk to someone before the race. But who?

- My sidekick, of course!

One fun thing about the way the game does these seasonal events is that the narration and the choices are written in the POV of the character you’re playing as. Kaito is so into this and so eager to talk to his sidekick – obviously he wouldn’t pick anyone else! (He did keep saying back in Salmon Team that the sidekick totally wouldn’t pick anyone besides the hero – and that at least is something that goes both ways!)

Kaito: “Alright, bro! It’s finally time to show off the results of all our training! Don’t hesitate! There’s no way we can lose after training through blood, sweat and tears!”

Shuichi: “Blood, sweat and tears sounds like a little too much… But it’s true that this training will give us an edge in the festival. I feel like we can win!”

Of course their training will help! Not just in the sense that it’s made Shuichi physically fitter, but also just because it means Kaito and Shuichi are so very in-sync with each other. The three-legged race is an event that relies less on physical prowess and more just on extremely good teamwork, so it’s perfect for Kaito in general, and especially for him and Shuichi since they’re such close friends. I bet Kaito signed them both up the moment he heard there was going to be a three-legged race, probably before even asking if Shuichi was up for it (because he already knew he would be).

Kaito: “I’ve already decided I’m gonna win at everything today. So as my sidekick, you better support me!”

Kaito is still pretending like the sidekick thing is even remotely about Shuichi making him look good when really it’s literally the opposite of that. Though I suppose events like this give him an excuse to actually make things seem this way for once, so that he can set a super-awesome example for his sidekick to strive for.

Despite acting like he definitely wouldn’t have chosen to talk to anyone but Shuichi, Kaito can also talk to his opponents, one of whom happens to be Fuyuhiko. (Another event implies that Fuyuhiko’s partner in this race is Kazuichi, which means we were so close to seeing Kaito and Kazuichi interact! They do not have a single interaction in this mode and I feel incredibly robbed.)

Kaito: “Oh hey, Fuyuhiko. Never thought I’d be going up against you!”

Kaito starts with this, so it seems he’s aware of what Fuyuhiko’s like and knows that it appears to be unlike him to be at events like this. (This is, after all, a Fuyuhiko before his canon character development in which he warmed up to everyone.)

Fuyuhiko: “What, am I not allowed to be here or something? Did you think I’d just ditch school events?”

Kaito: “Nah, man! I’m glad you’re here! I always thought you were the type that’d show up to this stuff!”

Fuyuhiko: “Geez… don’t act like you’ve got me figured out. I never wanted to do any of this lame shit.”

But Kaito does have Fuyuhiko figured out, doesn’t he! Despite what he said at first, which was based on how Fuyuhiko appears on the surface, Kaito can also see past that and tell that really Fuyuhiko does want to join in with this kind of thing with his schoolmates and is just very prickly about it. And by being so forward with the “Yeah, of course you’d do this!”, he’s also trying to get Fuyuhiko to realise that it’s really not so embarrassing to want this and he should be more open with it. Kaito is so good.

Kaito’s other opponents, and last options to talk to for this event, are Hiro and Hifumi. There’s nothing of substance in that conversation other than pointing out how hilariously ill-equipped they are for a three-legged race. And since Fuyuhiko and Kazuichi are not super in-sync with each other and liable to bicker, Kaito and Shuichi definitely destroyed the competition and showed everyone what an awesome team they are.

Kaito appears in a few other people’s sports festival events, but none of them are that noteworthy. He suggests Gonta should play more aggressively at basketball, protests that his face is not dumb-looking when Mahiru decides to take photos of the three-legged race, and encourages Peko to be enthusiastic in cheering on her friends.

Kaito: “Shout whatever you think will help. That’ll become their strength out there!”

Words becoming other people’s strength is so very luminary of him and it’s lovely to see him passing that idea onto others.

Maki has a brief noteworthy bit during the sports festival, in an event you get as Kyoko, who is one of Maki’s opponents in the girls’ three-legged race.

Maki: “Even though sports festivals are a pain… I don’t intend to hold back. There’s someone in my class who would nag me if I don’t do my best.”

Guess who she’s talking about! Sports festivals may be just for bragging rights and not really Maki’s thing, but Kaito has managed to instil her with at least a little of his philosophy that anything and everything is worth getting passionate about and giving your all.

The sports festival happens in June, while Japanese school years start in April. Which means that, man, Kaito really got to work fast on his prolonged stubborn pestering to get through to Maki if he’s already done so in the space of only a few months. …Or, since she only says “someone in my class” and not “a friend”, maybe this is before Maki has actually told him her secret (though she’d still be reluctant to admit he’s her friend for a little while after that). But even if she’s not his sidekick yet, clearly he’s still been pestering her plenty about doing her best and getting involved in things, because of course he has.

Meanwhile, Shuichi’s events for the sports festival involve him tracking down and apprehending Monokuma, who was causing chaos for the hell of it (yes, Monokuma is here in this non-despair AU as a separate autonomous character, somehow, just go with it). Shuichi’s using his detective skills to help people, just like Kaito was encouraging him to!

Mondo (featuring heroes and sidekicks)

Another of Kaito’s friendly events, and one which is followed up on with a third year seasonal event, is with Mondo. While I am endlessly sad that there are no interactions between Kaito and Kazuichi… perhaps that’s understandable, because Kaito would have full-on sidekicked the hell out of Kazuichi and it would have been a whole thing that this mode wouldn’t have room to do justice. But I do also like Mondo a lot, so maybe Kaito’s interactions with him here are the next best thing.

Mondo: “…”

Kaito: “What’s up? Is something bothering you?”

Given Kaito’s intuition, he’s probably right to assume that something’s bothering Mondo here. After all, Mondo definitely has a lot of issues that he hasn’t remotely sorted out yet.

Kaito: “Alright, then I’ll tell you about the universe! It’ll make your problems look insignificant!”

While this could read as such, Kaito is not saying this in any kind of self-centred sense of “my space stuff is more important than your issues”. Rather, he’s trying to help Mondo realise his problems maybe aren’t quite as big and as scary as he’s making them out to be. “The universe is impossibly vast” isn’t necessarily just something Kaito says to geek out about space. Perhaps it’s also a way he’s found to help put his problems in perspective (you know, when he has them, which is definitely never and why are you asking where his parents are), so he’s trying to do that for Mondo, too.

Mondo: “You talk about space and shit all the time, but… you ain’t even been there yet, right? And even so, you’ve still got such a confident look on your face.”

Kaito: “Of course. I’m Kaito Momota, Luminary of the Stars! It’s already been decided that I’m gonna go to space! Right now is just before that happens!”

This is such a straightforwardly Kaito outlook. It doesn’t matter that he hasn’t been to space yet, he’s definitely going to, so he might as well carry himself like somebody who already has! He’s so good at having confidence in himself and what his future holds.

Mondo: “It pisses me off, but… hearing you say something like that makes it sound possible. Space, huh? To have a dream like that, you gotta have some real balls, man.”

…And maybe that sort of outlook is the kind of thing that could help Mondo. Kaito presents himself the way he does not just to make himself look good, but more importantly to try and inspire others to have that same incredible confidence in themselves.

Kaito: “Right!? I knew you’d get me, Mondo! Space is huge! It’s filled with the unknown! It’s a man’s passion to explore it, right!?”

Mondo: “A man’s passion… Like the wind on ya when you’re riding your motorcycle at top speed? …Is it something like that?”

Kaito: “That’s right! Just like that! It’s somewhere you’ll never reach if you live normally!”

Look at these manly dorks. Even though exploring space and riding a motorbike are two very different things, I like that Kaito agrees they basically both fall under the same principle – it’s about pushing the limits and doing whatever you’re most passionate about, no matter how out-there it is. Kaito’s concept of “a man’s passion” is somewhat different and more specific than just his general concept of manliness, and in his case, it’s all about that passion for SPACE. Still not inherently gendered, I might add.

(Mondo also has his own general concept of manliness, of course, and his is definitely very gendered, although there’s still a decent overlap with Kaito’s in terms of things like integrity and honour.)

Kaito: “Hey, what’s your dream, Mondo? I bet yours is filled with fire and passion!”

Mondo: “Nah, I… ain’t got something like that.”

Mondo does in fact have a dream – he wants to quit his bike gang and become a carpenter when he graduates. But it seems he’s embarrassed to admit that, perhaps because it doesn’t sound “fiery and passionate” enough next to Kaito’s dream of space.

Kaito: “Really? Are you only looking at the past or something? You can’t move forward in life if you’re looking backwards, y’know?”

Some good advice and definitely something Mondo needs to hear! He is very stuck on the past and what happened to his brother, when he should be looking to the future and trying his best to move on from that.

(Also remember that Kaito lost his parents, and while that presumably wasn’t at all his fault like Daiya’s death kind of was Mondo’s fault, Kaito is still very much using his past pain to push him forwards rather than hold him back.)

Mondo: “…”

Kaito: “What? You don’t wanna tell me? Don’t compare your dream to mine, y’know? You’ll get scared by the size of the universe…”

Again, this is not Kaito doing a self-centred “my dream is better than yours”. In fact, it’s the opposite – he’s telling Mondo that he shouldn’t worry about comparing himself to others. Just because most people don’t have dreams as ridiculously huge and over-the-top as Kaito’s dream of space, that doesn’t make their own dream any less important if it’s something they’re equally passionate about! The example Kaito is trying to set as a luminary isn’t about inspiring everyone to literally share his goal of going to space, but rather to just be as passionate about their own goals as Kaito is about his!

Kaito: “Then chase your dream with confidence! Don’t think your dream is too small or you’ll become small yourself!”

Mondo: “Like hell I’d do something like that! I’m gonna be the best in the universe at my dream!”

Kaito: “Heh, that’s what I like to hear!”

Exactly! Being a carpenter may be an ordinary job, but that doesn’t make it small and insignificant, not if it’s what Mondo’s really passionate about! And Kaito succeeded in getting Mondo to feel that way! He’s going to be the best carpenter ever!

Kaito is so good. Mondo has a lot of issues he needs to work out, and while Kaito didn’t really begin to get into any of them, he still managed to encourage Mondo to be more positive about his future. I always say that Kaito presents himself with so much overblown confidence to try and set an example for others to do the same, and here’s an instance of that very tangibly working on someone and helping them out.

As a brief interlude between the two Kaito and Mondo scenes, Mondo can end up serving Shuichi from the yakisoba stand he’s working at for the school festival in a second-year seasonal event.

Mondo: “Thanks for coming, it’s on me!”

Shuichi: “Hm? That’s… Are you sure?”

Mondo: “Hey, don’t worry about it. Any buddy of that spaceman is a buddy of mine.”

Aww, Mondo really does appreciate Kaito’s encouragement! He didn’t need to make a thing of it in front of Shuichi at all – Kaito would never know or care that he hadn’t – but he did anyway. Mondo is a good guy. This kind of suggests that maybe he and Kaito have been hanging out offscreen a bit more than the one scene we saw – evidently not to full-on sidekick levels, but at least a little.

Mondo: “He’s like a younger brother to me. Seriously, it’s on me, man.”

Shuichi: “…So that’s what he is to you, huh? You’re both the same age, though.”

Yes, Mondo, that is definitely what he is to you. While he’s happy to show his appreciation for Kaito, Mondo doesn’t want to tarnish his tough-guy image (nobody must know how weak he really is!!!) enough to admit that really Kaito’s the one who’s helped him. Mondo is totally a born big brother figure, it’s definitely not like he was actually the little brother who adored and looked up to his big bro or anything.

Shuichi is right to be sceptical, not only because Kaito and Mondo are the same age, but also because he knows that Kaito is always the supportive figure and is highly unlikely to end up being treated like a younger brother by anyone.

Shuichi ends up insisting that he repays Mondo’s free yakisoba sometime and that he’ll bring Kaito along. The three of them hanging out would be adorable! It’s a shame we don’t get to see it.

Then, in one of Mondo’s third year winter events, he ends up bumping into Kaito on a nighttime walk. Most of the scene is just Kaito being very enthusiastic about space and confident about getting there one day.

Mondo: “With that kinda confidence, I think you might actually make it up there…”

Kaito: “Well of course! I’m the Ultimate Astronaut, y’know!? Everyone told me it was impossible… But the impossible is possible, all you gotta do is make it so!”

Ayyyy! Of course this is still a thing in this AU. Plus a very rare instance of Kaito referring to himself as the Ultimate Astronaut rather than the Luminary of the Stars, perhaps only because he’s literally talking about being an astronaut and going to space.

Kaito: “You can always change your present and your future, as long as you don’t give up!”

Mondo: “You’re right. I can’t change the past, but I can do something for the future.”

But Kaito also reiterates this advice from before, and it really does seem to have got through to Mondo and helped him move on from his brother’s death. This scene doesn’t add much, but it’s nice to underline what Kaito did for Mondo and show that it really did stick.

Kaito: “Yeah, that’s the spirit! Do your best, even after you graduate, Mondo!”

Mondo: “Don’t talk to me like that, I’m not one of your sidekicks…”

Heh, I like how this implies that they’ve had enough conversations for Kaito to have told Mondo plenty about his sidekicks, allowing Mondo to have figured out roughly what he really means by the word. Mondo isn’t exactly one of Kaito’s sidekicks, no, since Kaito hasn’t quite made it his personal business to help Mondo out in every single way he can… but since Kaito has helped Mondo out a little anyway, it’s not too far off from that.

It’s almost a shame we don’t get more insight into these conversations they had about Kaito’s sidekicks, because the sidekick thing is rather similar to what Mondo has been doing with Chihiro in this AU, in that Mondo’s been guiding Chihiro through physical training to help him get stronger. Mondo wouldn’t call it this, but Chihiro is effectively his sidekick in Kaito’s definition of the word!

So, even though scenes featuring only DR1 characters would otherwise not really belong in this V3 commentary, I am going to talk a little about the Mondo and Chihiro scenes here for the purposes of comparing their relationship to the one Kaito has with his sidekicks. When I say that, I mean specifically Kaito’s relationship with his sidekicks in canon, since in this AU he’s genuinely fine, but in canon he was not as strong as he was pretending to be, a lot like Mondo. And by “sidekicks” I of course mean particularly Shuichi, since he’s the one Kaito secretly looked up to and saw as already greater than himself, much like Mondo does with Chihiro. See? Similarities! But there are quite a few differences, too.

Mondo and Chihiro have two scenes together, the first a regular friendly event and the second as one of Mondo’s third year seasonal events. The first scene presumably happens not especially long after Chihiro has begun training, because it features him struggling to do even half the push-ups expected of him, while Mondo reassures him that he’s just got to keep working at it. The second scene has Chihiro remark that the exercise makes him feel refreshed, which Mondo points out is great progress when it used to make him feel sore all the time. Chihiro agrees that maybe he really has got at least a little stronger over the past three years, to the point that he’s starting to feel brave enough to tell everyone the truth about himself before they graduate.

Chihiro: “Even though I can never be as strong as you, I’ve been doing my best… I feel like… I can tell everyone. And it’s all thanks to you, Mondo.”

Mondo: “Hey, come on. I didn’t do anything special.”

Look at how Chihiro looks up Mondo as the perfect ideal of strength that he’ll never quite be able to reach and has no idea that Mondo has any kind of weakness. That sure is familiar.

Similarly familiar is the way Mondo feels like he barely did anything to help (because it was really all Chihiro’s own strength and hard work, right?). And yet, simply having Mondo there both as an example to strive for and as a friend so that he wasn’t doing this alone made a huge difference from Chihiro’s point of view. It only takes a nudge, but that nudge is vital! You did help him, Mondo!

Mondo: “Besides, from the very beginning, you…”

Chihiro: “Huh?”

Mondo: “…Nah, nothing.”

Obviously, Mondo was about to say that he feels Chihiro has always been strong – stronger than him – but then backed out of admitting it. This is reminiscent of the part in chapter 3’s first training session in which Kaito almost admitted that Shuichi wasn’t weak like Maki was, but then caught himself and changed the subject. In Kaito’s case, though, I think he was only just starting to realise that he saw Shuichi this way and wouldn’t have known how to properly articulate it even if he’d actually tried to (because wouldn’t that mean that Shuichi was never really his sidekick and didn’t really need him at all? and NOPE nope abort let’s just not even think about that). But here with Mondo, I get the sense that he’s already been very consciously aware the whole time that Chihiro is much stronger than him and is simply unwilling to admit it to anyone but himself.

Both our pairs of training buddies have a delightful thing going on where they each look up to their friend for having a kind of strength that they lack and assume that the other is stronger than them because of it. In Kaito and Shuichi’s case, they’re both types of emotional strength: Shuichi’s ability to focus on finding the truth no matter how much it hurts, and Kaito’s ability to keep being positive and upbeat no matter how bad things get. Ultimately, they’re still basically both as strong as each other, just in different ways. But with Mondo and Chihiro, Mondo’s strength is entirely physical, while Chihiro’s strength is entirely emotional, so they’re not really comparable at all. Which means that when it comes to the more meaningful kind of strength, the emotional kind, Chihiro is just stronger than Mondo.

The problem is that Chihiro doesn’t seem to realise that emotional strength is equally if not more important than physical strength. Yet Mondo clearly does, since he knows Chihiro is stronger than him – so if only he’d tell Chihiro that! That’d have helped Chihiro realise what he really needed to be striving for, and that getting physically stronger, even if it’d help him feel more confident in himself, was not really the main point. (If Chihiro had been Kaito’s sidekick, Kaito would absolutely have made that point clear and let Chihiro know that simply by trying to change he’s already grown stronger than he was before.)

Mondo wouldn’t even have needed to mention his own emotional weakness while hypothetically telling Chihiro that emotional strength is more important, so he shouldn’t have had an inherent reason not to do so. Perhaps the issue could be that Mondo was afraid that talking to Chihiro about emotional strength would lead Chihiro to probe about Mondo’s emotional strength too and realise the truth about him.

It could also just be that Mondo wasn’t at all used to this whole having-a-“sidekick” thing. Therefore he felt that the only way he could really help was by helping Chihiro with the thing he is good at, aka physical strength, and he didn’t feel like he was qualified to talk about emotional strength at all. …Essentially what I’m trying to say here is that maybe Mondo didn’t want to talk through Chihiro’s emotional weaknesses while still refusing to admit to his own because he didn’t want to be a giant hypocrite. That’s very possible. After all, he doesn’t have Kaito’s double-standard of “but I’m the hero so it’s different for me because they need me to be strong already” that caused Kaito to not even realise his hypocrisy.

See, Mondo is hiding his weakness here simply out of weakness, that same kind of cowardice that Kaito pointed out in Maki before he convinced her to face her issues and try and change. Mondo’s just too scared to bring his weakness out into the open and have everyone know that he’s not the tough guy he claims to be and that his brother’s death was his fault.

Kaito also didn’t want to admit to his weakness out of fear of shattering the image others have of him, but that was for other people’s sake and not his own, because he was convinced that he wouldn’t be able to support Shuichi or Maki or the others any more if they knew the truth. Mondo also evidently doesn’t want Chihiro to know that he’s weak, but I feel like that’s more for his own sake, because Chihiro looking up to him so much lets him feel strong and helps him continue to hide from the weakness that he’s too scared to admit to. He seems relatively willing to admit to himself that really Chihiro would be fine without him, so it’s not that Mondo thinks revealing his weakness would cause Chihiro any problems.

Although, there is some level of selflessness in Mondo hiding his weakness – not in terms of Chihiro, but in terms of the members of his gang. They all look up to Mondo as their awesome leader who bested his big bro in a bike race (even if that ended tragically, that was Daiya’s fault for getting reckless because he was about to lose, wasn’t it?). So Mondo’s afraid that if they learn the truth and how weak he really is, the whole gang will fall apart. I’d like to believe that’s not actually the case and that his gang members are good enough bros that they’d understand and be supportive of him and still look up to him anyway even if they knew. But it’s hard to be sure of that without knowing much about what they’re like, so it’s possible that Mondo actually does have a more legitimate reason to be afraid of this than Kaito ever did.

Once Mondo and Chihiro are done training in their winter scene and Chihiro has left, Mondo has one last line to himself…

Mondo: “I wonder… if I can change too. I don’t know if I’ll ever be as strong as you, Chihiro.”

Just admitting to that desire to change is the first step, Mondo! And with that alone, in some ways, Mondo has immediately got further than Kaito ever did in canon.

Admitting it to Chihiro would be a bigger help, though. After all, even Chihiro himself needed someone else to share his problems with in order to be able to change in the way that Mondo is admiring so much. It’s a shame that Mondo can’t even use that as inspiration to find the courage to do that himself, in order to start working on his weaknesses like he so clearly wants to do. You’d only need to tell one person to begin with, Mondo! And Chihiro would keep looking up to you for your physical strength anyway, because that’s a separate thing that you still undeniably have!

(Which was totally a different thing for Kaito, since Shuichi looked up to him for his emotional strength, so surely Kaito admitting that he’s emotionally weak would have ruined that entirely! It couldn’t possibly be that he’s still emotionally strong in some ways even if he’s weak in others and Shuichi would still have every reason to admire him – if he’s weak at all then that instantly means he’s a failure as a hero, right?)

If only Chihiro had ever learned about Mondo’s weakness one way or another, he would definitely have been able to help. Even if he wouldn’t have exactly known how to, he’s an absolute sweetheart who’d have done his best anyway to try and reassure and encourage Mondo that if even Chihiro can work to get stronger and admit his secret to everyone, surely Mondo can too!

It does seem like Mondo made some decent progress over his time at Hope’s Peak, based on this winter scene with Kaito and another one with Taka in which he openly talks about his plans to quit the gang and become a carpenter (Taka is adorably proud that he wants to put in the effort and contribute to society). That’s a little bit thanks to Kaito, but also a lot thanks to simply having friends like Chihiro and Taka and having had time to reflect on things. But if only he’d been brave enough to confess his weakness and what happened to his brother to at least just Chihiro, they could have talked about it more and Mondo could have made a lot more progress on the real root of his issues. Alas.

#danganronpa #danganronpa v3 #drv3 #ndrv3 #bonus content #ultimate talent development plan #commentary

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cupofsorrows · 6 years ago

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A Conceptual Post About Pokémon as D&D Monsters

I know, I know, it’s been done before, but I’ve been having a lot of ideas about D&D lately and it occurred to me that it might be fun to try to adapt Pokemon to the standard dnd setting(s) - that is, not just copying them wholesale as in, “you open the dungeon door and see a pikachu” but taking the concept of the creature and placing it in your world as something that genuinely belonged there. Like, say, You confront your party with a large turtle-monster that sprays high-powered water jets as its primary mode of attack. It’s essentially a blastoise, but that isn’t what it’s called and it doesn’t necessarily have to follow the rules that an actual blastoise would in the pokemon games. I’ve seen pokemon stat block writeups before, but they’re usually pretty straightforward “this is a psyduck” type deals, and what I’m interested in is retooling the monster to fit in a different world (while keeping the core of it intact). What’s it called (if it has a different name)? Where does it come from in your world, and where does it live? If the original had evolutions, does this version? Lots of potential there. To that end, here are a few pokemon that I think have particularly interesting concepts:

Phantump: Honestly all of the ghost pokemon have interesting concepts but I didn’t want to have a disproportionate number of ghost-types so I chose this one. Core concept is a furtive little forest spirit that uses old tree stumps (or perhaps fallen logs) as surrogate bodies/protective shells. Canon lore says they’re supposedly the spirits of children who died in the forest, so take or leave that as you please. Now, none of these suggestions have to look exactly like their inspirations as long as they convey the idea - for instance I sort of imagine these guys as little humanoid figures made of gnarled wood, which also gives me distinct skull-kid-from-LoZ vibes (but maybe that should be a separate post...)

Heliolisk: I don’t really know what drew me to this critter in particular, except that ‘solar-powered lizard that can shoot electricity and stuff’ is just a good creature to put in a made-up world (probably in a desert region). It even has “-lisk” in its name, like the more infamous basilisk, so it already sounds like it SHOULD be a mythical creature. As I’m writing this I realize that it strongly resembles the already-in-dnd shocker lizard, but come on, this thing is way more badass. Also I was just reading about it on Bulbapedia and apparently it can run super-fast? so... that’s in there, too.

Snorlax or Slaking: Look I just like the concept of a big hairy beast that’s super strong but spends almost all of its time asleep. Not even sure that would affect its stats but it’s great flavor.

Zygarde: A host of tiny organisms - maybe even single-celled - which can come together to form larger gestalt creatures (most famously a massive serpent/worm, but even more powerful forms may be possible). Should be a very powerful, possibly unique, individual, since it is a legendary pokemon.

Dhelmise: Sentient algae that uses marine detritus as a ‘skeleton’? The ghost type delivers again! I imagine that before humans were responsible for so much stuff being in the ocean these must have used a lot of animal bones (and maybe some driftwood) instead.

Seismitoad: I think there are already frog monsters with sonic attacks, but that was only half of the appeal for me here, the other half being ‘large bipedal frog’. I hold this as being very different from bullywugs, grippli, or any other amphibian-based humanoids: While froglike, those are all still fundamentally types of people, whereas this beast is first and foremost a frog. A frog that walks upright and has opposable thumbs. This also works with poliwhirl/poliwrath and croagunk/toxicroak, but then the sonic/vibration stuff won this one out for me by a slim margin. (Addendum: I have come to the realization that seismitoad and croagunk don’t actually have opposable thumbs according to their artwork. Whatever, just fudge it.)

Tropius: This one’s just plain weird. Like, almost exeggcutor-level weird (dang, maybe I should have chosen exeggcutor instead. But tropius is less famously weird. Side note: what’s up with pokemon based on palmlike plants?) It’s part small sauropod dinosaur, part banana tree, and while I’m not sure whether it should be classified as a plant or not, I do know that it can definitely fly. Also, it produces delicious fruit you can eat!

Parasect: You probably figured I was going to mention this one. Everyone thinks of paras and parasect when they think of pokemon with weird but cool concepts. MY take is that the fungus could infest different types of giant vermin, perhaps making it the basis for a template. Or not; these are just suggestions. Do whatever.

Larvesta and Volcarona: Maybe I’m just on a kick from all the GKOTM fanart I’ve been seeing, but giant fire-spitting caterpillar + giant fiery moth adult seems like a creature idea worth exploring. Larvesta also takes longer to evolve than any other stage-one pokemon, which I see as representing a long time spent in larval form (or pupated), which in turn resembles kaiju’s long periods of ‘dormancy’, bringing us back to Mothra (as all things must). Also, I think larvesta/volcarona are the only bug/fire types in the whole series so far? That’s nuts to me but it just makes them even more special.

Abra: Honestly the way this guy looks is like 90% of the appeal for me here. Abra looks like an armadillo tried to evolve into a monkey and somehow ended up with psychic powers in the process. It levitates and teleports, and according to the lore it’s usually asleep but thanks to its psychic powers is still aware of its surroundings. That’s right, its eyes aren’t really narrow, they’re just closed all the time. Do any images of abra with its eyes open exist? If they do, are we prepared to see them? As always, don’t feel like you have to give any of these guys evolved forms just because they evolve in the games. I’m definitely not saying this here specifically because I like abra’s design more than its evolutions, no sir.

Pinsir or Heracross: Pretty much the same as with the toads a few entries above. Clearly not people, but just vaguely reminiscent enough to maybe be just a little unsettling. C’mon, I know they’re cute in the games and the show but tell me you wouldn’t be at least slightly perturbed if you saw a real-life beetle the size of a 10-year-old trundling around on two legs. Even if you thought it was rad as hell you’d still get out of there pretty quick if it started trundling towards you.

Slowpoke: Listen if you don’t get the appeal of a semi-aquatic, ambiguously mammalian quadruped that has psychic capabilities but is also comically oblivious to external stimuli then I just don’t know what to tell you.

Barbaracle: Colonial organism sort of like Zygarde, except the individual parts are bigger. It could even be modular, with the various ‘limbs’ combining in different ways, although that could also complicate the stat block.

Gothitelle: Conceptually I suppose this is just another humanoid psychic creature, but a while ago I saw someone point out how its frills and whatnot are sort of reminiscent of a sea slug, and damned if ‘anthropomorphic nudibranch’ doesn’t get my blood flowing.

Rapidash: Pretty simple, a unicorn variant/non-evil fire horse. Who wouldn’t want one of those?

Necrozma: I never actually played Sun and Moon 2, nor did I get too deep into the postgame ultra beast stuff in SuMo 1, so regrettably I missed out on a lot of the wonderful interdimensional weirdness. While each ultra beast is appealing in its own way, Necrozma is practically a Lovecraftian Great Old One already what with how it was once an interstellar being of heat and light but was somehow injured or depleted and has now become a completely different creature that travels from world to world absorbing all light. That’s a pretty raw concept for any story, let alone a cute kid’s game. And it’s always a plus when something can be cool and threatening while still being safe for a G rating! You could also do what SuMo2 did and take your heroes to a world that’s already had its light stolen by the beast, to explore how the inhabitants of that world have been affected as well as show what awaits the heroes’ world... or just as a nice change of scenery. Lastly there’s the possibility that Necrozma must ultimately be defeated not through violence, but by figuring out how to restore it to its original form. It isn’t too often that the cosmic monstrosity could actually use your help, and it might leave the PCs feeling like they really accomplished something epic. Alternately, it returning to its original form also makes a great homage to the multiple forms of every JRPG final boss ever, a trope that has been under-represented in D&D for TOO LONG.

...and that’s it, at least for now. Naturally, there are about a thousand other possibilities, including different ways of interpreting the examples I’ve provided here. I suppose they could also be used for purposes besides D&D, although if you’re going to put any of this in the fantasy novel you’ve been working on I suggest you be extra diligent in obfuscating the creatures’ actual origins so as to avoid a visit from any lawyers. I don’t know if anybody is actually even going to see this post at all, but if it does end up getting around, then I fully encourage all of you to put your own spins on this if you’re inspired to do so! I’d love to see what other people might come up with.

#pokemon #dnd #d&d #creature design #monsters

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themattress · 5 years ago

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I Grade: Charon

Spoiler alert: this is the franchise’s absolute lamest Big Bad type of villain.

Games: Team Galactic’s Charon debuted in Platinum, as he was not a character in the original Diamond/Pearl games. I’m of two minds when it comes to his presence in the story: on the one hand it’s nice for Team Galactic to have a head scientist to be a figurehead for the Red Chain project, he’s an amusingly egomaniacal character, and he’s pretty refreshing in that he’s an unabashed greedy jerk who exploits Pokemon for money ala Team Rocket, which helps to break up the monotony of self-righteous terrorist foes we’d been getting. But on the other hand, was he really necessary? The two scenes he was added to in the main story worked just fine without him back in D/P, and the Stark Mountain quest in the postgame where he serves as the main antagonist doesn’t really accomplish anything either...we could have gotten closure for Mars and Jupiter and had an encounter with Heatran through other means, an entirely new character didn’t have to be created to provide those elements.

In the end, I can’t say Charon is terrible as a villain, but I can’t say he’s all that great either.

Score = 2.5

Anime: In the Diamond & Pearl anime series, Charon is definitely pointless. The Team Galactic subplot is entering its last stretch, and he just pops in out of nowhere and doesn’t do much of anything except be a smug, laid-back asshole who makes no secret that he’s only following Team Galactic for his own purposes. He is so unnecessary that he literally vanishes into thin air during the arc’s finale and we never see him again. He’s not ever seen getting arrested, he’s ever not seen escaping, it’s just poof! He’s gone. Literally the only thing this version of Charon has going for him is Mike Pollock’s perfect voice for him in the English dub.

Score = 1.5

Manga: Charon is a fleeting, shadowy presence as Team Galactic’s head scientist in the Diamond/Pearl Chapter, being in charge not only of the Red Chain project but also of the program that brainwashes the Team Galactic Grunts into an efficient, emotionless hive mind. As the Big Bad of the Platinum Chapter, we get to see his true ambitions as he seeks to gain control over all of Sinnoh’s Legendary Pokemon in order to use them to conquer the world. This has got to be the best depiction of Charon, being both comical and threatening in equal turns. Sometimes you laugh at him, other times you just want to punch him, especially when he thinks that Giratina has killed Dia and laughs about it in front of a grieving Pearl. In the end, he gets what he deserves, being the only of the Galactic commanders left unredeemed.

Score = 3

TCG: Charon shows up the Rising Rivals expansion as part of the Rotom sub-set with the card “Charon’s Choice”, which shows him preparing to lock Rotom away after getting all he need from it to form his research document. In essence, Charon is a “filler villain”, stuck between two sets where Cyrus plays a major role, so it’s easy to forget he’s in the game.

Score = 2

Other: In the Diamond & Pearl Adventure! manga, Charon takes the Big Bad position from Cyrus in the last three volumes. They got his basic character down in that he’s an arrogant, morally reprehensible cretin who will hurt people and Pokemon in order to make money, but not only did they get the look wrong by making him larger and stockier than how he’s supposed to be, but good lord is his role ridiculous: he comes out of nowhere after never being mentioned or seen before and yet several characters act like they know him, which is a textbook case of Remember the New Guy at work. Then we see that he’s captured Cyrus and Hareta’s deadbeat dad in order to get information on how to obtain Giratina for himself. And as time goes on, he keeps getting retconned into having involvement with almost everything that has gone wrong in the story. This transparent attempt to make him the source of all evil and a greater Big Bad than Cyrus is ridiculous and hamfisted, only making Charon lamer.

Pokemon Generations featured Charon in episode 12, and not only is he also large and stocky as opposed to dwarfish and hunched over, but they didn’t even seem to get his character right, as he’s talking about doing things for the glory of Team Galactic. The whole point of Charon was that he didn’t actually care about Team Galactic and its goals, and was only on board to profit from it. And was his Stark Mountain scenario really worth an episode?

Score = 2.5

TOTAL FRANCHISE SCORE = 2.5 out of 5

With the exception of Pokemon Adventures, there seems to be a pattern with Charon in this franchise, a certain word just keeps coming into my mind. And that word is “unnecessary”. Team Galactic already had a great boss and sub-commanders, a great theme and goal going for them, and a great evil plan to pull it off. This greedy old scientist being added doesn’t ruin any of that, but it doesn’t add to it that much either, and as a major villain, he’s pathetic. Still, there are several highly enjoyable factors to him, and when at his best, I’m glad he’s around.

BONUS: Which version is my personal favorite?

Not much more to say here than what I said already. Charon being changed from some jerk who only wants money and whose efforts on behalf of Team Galactic are put off-screen to a budding megalomaniac actually making use of Sinnoh’s copious amount of Legendaries and whose affect on Team Galactic is very visible really made him a much stronger antagonist.

#Pokemon #I Grade #Charon #Team Galactic #Evil #Opinion #Analysis

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evilisk-played · 5 years ago

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DQH2 Speedrun Commentary Part 02: Dunisia Part 1

(Covered in this part: completing the first trip to Accordia, upgrading Desdemona and Torneko, the Grand Dunes, the Oasis fight, upgrading Lazarel, Maribel and Ruff recruitment, Dunisia Skirmish 1)

Accordia:

Twin Swords Teresa? (00:10)

In my later runs, I started to switch Teresa over to the Twin Swords. But honestly? I'm not sure it's necessary at all. The whole "extra DPS" advantage is lost on your party members being dumb.

= = =

Torneko and Desdemona In A Speedrun?

I'll say it now, Torneko and Desdemona aren't getting much use in this speedrun.

Torneko gets a bit of use as he’s technically your first healer (just make sure you unlock his healing ability, since it’s not one of his defaults). In regular play he’s... okay. He’s not my favorite honestly.

Desdemona is a perfectly fine character in regular play, but in a speedrun? She's not so good. Without a full unlocked arsenal, she's just not that powerful, and she has the "early joiner" disadvantage.

The early joiner disadvantage is that the earlier a character is unlocked, the less potent they are for speedrunning. There are number of reasons why earlier characters aren’t so good: characters that join later often join with a higher starting level, and for speedrunning (where you don’t get to grind at all) this is a significant advantage over the other characters. Late joiners also get up to date weapon when they appear (while you need to purchase equipment for early joiners, and this can be quite annoying).

The most important difference is related to the “proficiency” system in this game. Proficiency is basically a second skill tree that is only unlocked by: actively using a character; and talking to the Martial Artist in town. Contrary to what the game says, proficiency is not acquired purely through damage; it’s acquired through killing enemies, and enemies give a set amount of it (anyone whose played DQH2′ lousy postgame knows you hunt Roseguardins for fast proficiency).

It’s a really stupid system in regular play and in a speedrun it’s even worse, as a bunch of characters have key abilities walled behind proficiency like Terry. Desdemona has it really bad off in speedruns, which is a shame as she’s a beast with a fully unlocked moveset. (Maybe one day I’ll try a New Game+ speedrun...)

= = =

Upgrades:

Desdemona only gets used in two battles, and she doesn't get even close to using High Tension in either one, so I recommend upping her damage (so she does more damage, doi) and upping her MP (so she can whip out more Scrap Mettles)

Torneko actually sees a few more battles before being benched. Here I unlock Sage's Stone and up his MP. It should be obvious what this means tbh.

= = =

Getting Zap So here's something that didn't happen in the video but is something I totally missed; if you talk to the Martial Artist at this point, you can totally unlock Zap now. Zap is a very, very important skill to have. While you don't necessarily need it *now*, it's very, very important to pick up as soon as you've unlocked Maribel and Ruff.

= = =

The Grand Dunes

Optional Golem Fight (01:52)

At this point, you can totally skip the Golem with the Twin Swords' C1 Dodge Loop. It's worth noting that this Golem encounter always appears here the first time (and it never appears when you return here).

= = =

Out In The Wild (02:19) Okay, so this bit is about a potential random event that occurs in the open world. I walk past it in the video, but these events involve random NPC's needing rescuing from mobs. Completing these gives a lot of EXP, though I have personally never done any of these events, because I like consistency and outisde of this section of the game (this event will always spawn either before or after the Golem), these things are 100% random.

= = =

Oasis Chest (03:40)

You can get a Mini Medal in that chest either before or after the fight with the Knight Errant. I actually use a few Mini Medals in my runs, but I'm not so sure I'd call this one a necessary one by any means.

= = =

Oasis Fight (03:50) So this is basically a tutorial with the Monster Medal Mechanic. In this encounter, you fight against 2 Mummies, 2 Rocks, 2 Golems and a Knight Errant. The pairs of enemies will all drop a Monster Medal and you'll at least need the Rocks and Golems' Monster Medals to run through this section quickly.

The overall strategy is to kill the small fry and then focus on the bigger enemies. The Mummies will distract the bigger enemies when summoned, the Rocks will unleash a powerful attack and the Golem Medals will let you transform into one for a short amount of time.

To get the most out of this section, make sure that you have Desdemona use Scrap Mettle on the bigger enemies. Then switch to Lazarel and make sure he activates the Rock and Golem medals (remember: to get proficiency, you need to be using the character you want). Make sure to reapply Scrap Mettle in between uses, and also to go Sucker Punch > Cratermaker > Sucker Punch with the Golem to get a high DPS.

This section can be quite random, mostly because you're fighting three big bodies at once and since you're still technically level 2, it's pretty easy to accidentally die. While it doesn't matter if the other members die, you'll want Lazarel alive by the end so he can at least get some proficiency and EXP.

= = =

What Do These Idiots Want With Us?! (07:22)

Okay so I'm gonna say it now: this run of this section was *awful*. The battle goes: starting wave in the middle, then single Golem, then wave with Fires, then the Final Wave with the 2 Golems and the one Hunter Mech.

Typically, what you want to do is, aside from clearing the Waves, you'll also want to pick up a Golem Medal, a Rock medal and a Fire medal. In this run, I almost forgot about the third one, because I got extremely distracted by a Cloud at 08:11

The ideal way this goes is: final wave appears, Desdemona uses Scrap Mettle on all three, switch to Lazarel, use Fire medal, use Rock medal, then use Golem Medal. Doing this properly kills the boss really damn quickly. Here, I start it at 09:15 and I kill it in fifteen seconds which is fast for regular play, but is slow for a speedrun (I can usually cut off an extra five seconds).

The ending of the fight is also really bad. What's supposed to happen in regular play is that as the Final Wave occurs, you're supposed to be next to Maribel and Ruff and a dialogue is supposed to activate with them. I usually don't do this (so that I can clear the Mech and Goelms really fast), but what I forgot at the time was that after killing the Golem, you still need to talk to those two.

I forgot about that, and ended up wasting a bunch of time killing all the enemies (doing this forced the next scripted section, where the Dunisian sounds the retreat). You can see this stretch from about 09:34 to 10:17. While I haven't timed Maribel's dialogue, I'm pretty sure that a 53 second gap between finishing off the final wave, and actually ending the mission is probably what's not supposed to happen.

= = =

Detour to Accordia With that mission done, you finally unlock Maribel and Ruff, who you both want to switch out Desdemona and Teresa for. You also want to upgrade Maribel, Ruff and Torneko, and also buy Lazarel a stronger set of Twin Swords.

Ruff's Upgrades (11:06) Yes, you do want Call of the Wild AND Flame Breath. Flame Breath is basically CotW, but weaker, but also with an element (Fire) and a cheaper MP cost. You'll actually be using it to build up Tension crazy good. Call of the Wild is so that when you get into High Tension, you have a better damaging option.

The only thing worth mentioning is that I'm really not sure about my decision to increase his Critical Rate over simply upping his MP and Strength stats. I think it's way too early-game for his critical stat to be useful.

Maribel's Upgrades (11:17) Make sure you pick up that Kasap skill. Oh, and I guess I'll mention the strangeness of the Wisdom stat. From what I can tell, Wisdom affects two types of attacks: "magical attacks" for magical weapons, and spells (like Zap, Woosh, Frizz etc. though not Whack. Whack doesn't count as a spell. Trust me, I've tested out Ring of Ruin with Whack; it doesn't get buffed)

In Maribel's case, the Wisdom stat only affects her Frizz spell, though some weapons and movesets (like any of the Heroes with the Wands, or Cesar) seem to get boosted by increasing Wisdom. I think. Maybe. It's been a hot while since I looked into the stat.

= = =

Maribel and Ruff In A Speedrun? Both characters are also cursed with the early joiners disadvantage, though Ruff has marginally more use compared to the other characters (and both characters are still incredibly helpful for the upcoming sections).

Maribel is one of those characters that really suffers from proficiency having her best abilities. In this run, she's effectively like having Desdemona "but with a far ranged defence drain skill"

Ruff is luckier, as his two best skills (Flame Breath, Call of the Wild) are easily accessible as soon as he's unlocked. Ruff's specialty is that he's probably the most mobile fighter in the game. I actually reuse him a few times later in the game, specifically because his combat-mobility is better than even Lazarel's C1 Dodge Loop, and it gets him through some of the more annoying open world segments (like the Frozen Foothills)

= = =

March of the Harbans (12:53) This fight is one of those battles with loose scripting that leads to a lot of inconsistent runs of this stage and it honestly sucks. It seems like eradicating all Mawkeepers, then all boss type enemies like the Golem, Clouds, Hunter Mechs, and then killing a certain amount of goons, will lead to Donk spawning at *some point*.

It's worth mentioning that the Clouds (that spawn from the left) are very fast and annoying for the purposes of the getting the stage's scripting to work (you can sometimes have a Cloud reach the King of Harba without you noticing).

So there are these tar pits at 13:16. While I haven't fully tested it, I am like 90% sure that if you kill enemies on those parts of special terrain, enemies will not spawn Monster Medals. Like I'm pretty sure that's what's happening here because the Monster Medal rate of dropping in that area of the level is so consistently bad.

This stage continues straight into the next video.

#dragon quest heroes 2 #dragon quest heroes 2 speedrun #dragon quest heroes 2 commentary

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itsya1upboy-blog · 6 years ago

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If Havardr’s baggage comes out on the RP blog I am going to be SO excited. Especially because I’ve changed a little bit of Havardr’s character arc for the actual story of The Crow Calls compared to some of the early oneshots I wrote~ So some things will be a surprise to everyone, even the ones who read my fics religiously as they debuted.

I can put it under a Read More for those who want to be informed for the RP stuff, but keep in mind it has spoilers for LATE TCC, like endgame and postgame stuff. If you simply enjoy reading The Crow Calls, and have no intent of RPing with me, then you don’t need to read this post.

TWs: Alcoholism, suicide.

1) Changed the name of the skyship to the Bifrost. Not a huge change but one I want to note nonetheless.

2) I got the idea to have Havardr defect to the Empire with Logre and thus shuffled a few things around for his character arc. Havardr and Logre defect together, and when Baldur’s real plan comes out at the South Sanctuary, Havardr returns to Tharsis, but Logre does not. This shatters Havardr, and he basically enters an emotionless autopilot until they face him in the Echoing Library, where he breaks down and begs Logre to come back to Tharsis. Eventually, Logre does give in, and returns with them.

3) You may be wondering, then, if Havardr is a crippling alcoholic then how did he get alcohol while he was with Baldur? Well, you see, Logre could tell there was an issue, but didn’t realize how bad it was until he and Havardr returned to the Empire. There, he made Havardr quit cold, which of course is not a great idea... He passed off Havardr’s withdrawals as illness to Baldur, and swore the doctor treating him to secrecy. When Logre finally returns to Tharsis and joins Muninn, Havardr is at peace, knowing he can leave the guild behind. He relapses, drinks himself into a stupor, and goes down to the river around Tharsis to drown himself. Logre finds him, thankfully, and drags him back to town and has him committed to a hospital for safety’s sake. He’s in there until Mia tries to kill Logre-- a time period extending to even after normally he would have been discharged as the guild was not in town to stay with him when he would have been discharged --and when they pick him up, Marianne has him join the party to take down Baldur. Logre is begging her to hire a mercenary instead of dragging Havardr into it, but between the sensitivity of the mission and none of them wanting to leave Havardr alone, Marianne determined this was the best course of action.

4) Logre is ABSOLUTELY bitter at Marianne for not trying to help Havardr more, both before and after the suicide attempt. The two managed to hide their seething resentment towards the other from Havardr, and reconciled somewhat in the postgame, but Logre still nurses a grudge towards her, and will act as much that way if you ask him about her on the RP blog.

5) In postgame, Havardr trains with Kibagami to be able to control his Blood Surge. Nonetheless, he still has to use it seldomly since it puts a lot more stress on a human body than it does on a Sentinel’s. He also...has a tendency to push himself too far during Blood Surge, on purpose, as a way of punishing himself, because he believes that’s what he deserves... Same with how he denies himself simple things like sleep and food-- he thinks he doesn’t deserve them.

6) Since Logre and Havardr are in Maginia now, I can extend the development of their relationship, so they’re not a thing YET~ But they could be, someday...

7) Havardr’s family still makes it to Tharsis with Logre’s aid. In fact, they’re why Logre and Havardr came to Maginia-- they didn’t want to stay in Tharsis with the sentiments towards Imperial immigrants seething under the surface, and so Logre and Havardr used their cut of the funds split from Muninn’s split to help them get a place in Maginia. They decided to join Phoenix as explorers because, in their words, “fighting is the only thing [they]’re good at.”

#etrian odyssey #eo #etrian odyssey iv #eoiv #etrian odyssey nexus #eox #eon #logre #ocs #havardr #infodump #lore dump #chara dump #tw suicide #tw alcoholism #tcc #tcc spoilers #infodump for rp

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metalempire · 6 years ago

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A case against the world design of Pokemon Generations 5-7

So one thing that’s been bugging me is that ever since Gen 5 happened, something has felt off about the regions you traverse. Pokemon has always been a very competent RPG series, and part of that was due to how the regions were designed, and how organic exploration was in those games. The rest of this is going under the cut cos it’ll be a bit long but the short version is Gen1-4 had good world design and didn’t necessitate the use of Fly whereas Gen5-7 have relatively poor world design and are built around being more linear experiences and relying heavily on the player using Fly for any backtracking needed.

So, to explain what good map design is, in short, it’s an interconnected design that allows areas to connect into each other with a wide variety of routes and paths that expand as the game goes on. The idea behind this is if you want to go back to other places to try out new HMs or catch a Pokemon you wanted, you don’t need to teach Fly to a Pokemon. An example of this I’ll use is the Kanto region, since Gamefreak loves it so much. Kanto’s world design is actually a very strong start for the series, as alot of locations connect into and around each other, and while the initial adventure proceeds fairly linearly, areas still end up connecting nicely and serve more than one purpose. A good example is Cerulean City. You initially use it to access Nugget Bridge to get to Bill, and later in the postgame, Mewtwo’s cave, then you use it to do down and into Vermillion City. From there, you get blocked by Snorlax, and so once again, you pass through Cerulean on your way to Rock Tunnel to get to Lavender Town. And later on in the game, it connects to Saffron City once unlocked. The point here is that Cerulean City feels like an organic, real place, because you don’t just pass through and never come back again, it has alot of uses and places it connects to, it’s a present part of your journey and always accessible thanks to where it links to. Other places are like this too, Saffron connects to alot of places, making the world easier to go back to and traverse, and Vermillion already allows you to go back where you started if you want to, since Diglett’s Tunnel connects to both Pewter and Viridian, letting you use Cut to get the Old Amber very early on without needing to use Fly to go back. There’s even multiple routes to Fuchsia city, and having the path loop back around from Cinnabar to Pallet town not only adds to the feeling of how far your adventure has taken you, but organically puts you on the path to the last gym battle in Viridian, and then the Pokemon League is next door to that. It’s a solid world design that allows locations to connect into and around each other, making Fly a convenience rather than a necessity.

Generations 2, 3 and 4 all do this too. Ekruteak City eventually connects back into Violet city, as well as leading down to Goldenrod, across to Olivine and Mahogany, and Blackthorn leads back right down to where you started outside of New Bark town, so you don’t have to backtrack through the world or use Fly, and then New Bark town leads over to Victory Road. Similarly, in Gen 3 Mauville leads up into Lavaridge and Fallabor, as well as across to Verdanturf which leads back to Rustboro so you can easily go down into Petalburg when it’s time to rematch Norman, and then Mauville is revisted again to go to the route to Fortree. In Gen 4 Mt Coronet connects to a wide variety of areas, as does Hearthome city, so when you loop back around and through it, the pathways and shortcuts from down Eternia lead back towards Canalave when you need to go there, and then back around to the various lakes when it’s time to do that.

Meanwhile, Gen 5 does the exact opposite of this and throws good game design out of the window to make an ultra linear region that’s literally an oval that you explore clockwise. Each area leads into the next, nothing is interconnected, one half of the region is locked till the postgame for some reason, and when you need to backtrack to Nacrene and then to the Relic Castle, with no natural connecting points forcing you to walk all the way back from Iccirus city on a linear path, or use Fly. Instead of world design that allows for backtracking to be natural, instead it chooses painfully dull linearity that makes backtracking a chore and more or less necessitates you use Fly, which isn’t great for Nuzlocke players who might not have any Pokemon left who can use it, or players in general who didn’t build their team with it in mind. And then once you’ve finished backtracking, walk all the way back to Iccirus to go to Opelucid. Black 2 and White 2 tried to fix this by having you warp and go around different areas, but still proceeded linearly from there and cut off other areas till the postgame and just made the map disjointed and even less connected somehow.

Gen 6 isn’t much better, the positive is Lumiose city connects the two halves of the map, but outside of that one location, Coastal Kalos is one big oval, and Mountain Kalos, while a bit more connected, is still largely linear. The story of the game doesn’t necessitate as much backtracking, mostly focusing on Lumiose itself which is conveniently the only really interconnected location in the game, but nowhere really interconnects to Geosenge making that trek annoying, as well as going back to where you left off all the way in Couriway on the road to Snowbelle. It’s mostly linear and still not exploration and backtrack friendly.

Gen 7 is effectively this design spread out. The first island is one big loop, which is nice, but really only makes Route 1 the only interconnected point on the island, with the rest of it accessed by looping around the same path. It’s stronger design that Gen 5 and 6, but still not grand. The second island has the much better Heahea city, which connects to a wider variety of points on the map, and is a wonderful example of convenient interconnected world design. Sadly, the third island at most has it that Malie connects to two points on the map, but the rest is just a linear path to the end at Po town. The fourth island isn’t much better, and is effectively the same as the third island, you go one way till you reach the Battle Tree. The game even gives you the Charizard Poke Rider which is Fly but permanently available, which is only really used when you need to go back to the third island once Mount Lanikila is unlocked after the fourth island is sorted. In fact the game’s so linear as to force you off the third island and onto the Aether paradise once you’re done with Po town, and then once that’s done it takes you off to the fourth island. Each island is mostly a one and done affair that rarely utilises good map design.

The overall point is that after Gen4, the world design of the regions in Pokemon has greatly suffered, the world is no longer interconnected and feels less like a real, tangible place compared to the previous four generations, and the backtracking that the story usually forces isn’t organic anymore, but instead mostly a chore and necessitates the use of Fly, due to the world not offering its own proper paths that link back to these locations from others more relevant to where you are. Unova undoubtedly did it the worst and it’s effect on the series has ultimately had a lasting effect of poorer game design.

(not to mention that triple battles weren’t as fleshed out or complex or interesting or well executed as double battles were, didn’t have as many moves made for the mode, had no game based around it like colosseum, and rotation battles were gimmicky, poorly executed, and did not catch on. it absolutely shows that since these battle modes werent in gen 7 that they were a failure and considering gen 5 made no actual mechanical changes it was ultimately a generation that didn’t do any good for the series in the long term and only provided a good story, which is still just a reusing of the ruby and sapphire basic core plot) of bad team needs the legendary pokemon for their plan)

#Pokemon #long postt

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pokemonheroine · 7 years ago

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(This post will focus on the plot and the characters)

When I think about USUM, there is one question in my mind: is USUM better than SUMO? I ask myself this because USUM it’s really an alternate version of SUMO. It’s really a different story, much more different than Emerlad and Platinum in regard of the games that came before them. The Alola of USUM is way more beautiful and rich than the Alola of SUMO, but the story is so different it’s difficult to me to see USUM as an “upgrade” of the previous Alola… because it’ another Alola.

Some people complained that the plot is the same until the very end of the game, but I think we are misunderstanding a lot of details:

- the Island Challenge is almost the same only because it has to be: it’s the social structure of Alola, it can’t change:

- the player believes that the plot is basically the same until the very end only because he/she doesn’t know the real plans of Lusamine in this alternate version of Alola’s story, but when you arrives at the end of the game and look back… you realize how much different the new plot is.

The changes in the plot are due to the Ultra Recon Squad. They change everything even being pretty passive characters. In USUM the Ultra Recon Squad arrives at Alola to prevent Necrozma from stealing the light of Alola, and starts working with the Aether Foundation. So what happens?? Lusamine doesn’t concentrate all her desires on Ultra Beasts and on Nihilego but concentrates on the upcoming menace of Necrozma. The base of the plot is the same, but there are these new “alien” characters that make events going differently in Lusamine’s family. And this changes the plot, also because Alola’s story is purposely built around the concept of family and around human problems.

Let’s see what characters we have in front of us in USUM:

LUSAMINE

Is Lusamine good in USUM? Absolutely not. She only has a different development, but if we look closer, she’s even worse than before. In SUMO Lusamine was a victim of the loss of her husband and of Nihilego’s toxines. In USUM the base of her story is the same: she was a kind person before the disappearence of Mohn but after that she becomes possessive with her beloved ones and becomes obsessionate with Ultra Beasts in an attempt to find her husband. In SUMO she becomes more and more infected with Nihilego’s toxines until she totally loses her mind and becomes “Mother Beast”. In USUM we understand her researches on Nihilego were very much less important to her, and she focus on Necrozma because the Ultra Recon Squad tell her that the beast must be stopped. So, in USUM Lusamine is not controlled by Nihilego, she’s herself, and yet, her fear to lose her beloved ones and her desire to be loved back at all costs by them makes her behave like a real villain. She’s coscious of what she’s doing, she’s conscious that she wants to kill Nebby to reach her goal. She’s consciously ready to sacrifice Nebby “for a greater good”. In USUM Lusamine is more “evil” than before. In SUMO Lusamine was a victim just like Gladion, Lillie, Nebby, Silvally… in USUM she’s still a bit of a victim because she still becomes so emotionally instable and possessive because of Mohn’s loss, because of her emotions, because of love, but at the same time she’s a conscious person, more or less, she’s a real villain this time. This is a good thing, because now we really have our first female Pokemon villain, but I am not entirely satisfyied with that simply because the games focus more on Necrozma’s story and less about Lusamine. So, in USUM, this better version of Lusamine as a villain is a bit wasted. Why there isn’t the scene with Lillie in the cave on Exeggutor Island?? Because that scene was meant to explain us something more about Lusamine and about the relationship once existed between mother and daughter, but in USUM this relationship is less important, so, the scene was removed. I liked both version of Lusamine’s story, becuse the SUMO’s one was more tragic and I liked that a lot, but as a character, the Lusamine of USUM was objectively a more worthy villain to defeat. But, unluckily, USUM wasted the potential the “alternate” Lusamine had not focusing o her anymore.

GUZMA

Guzma is still the same at the beginning of the game: he’s a guy who has always felt rejected and “not enaugh”: his father has always thought he had to make him better, a better boy, a better trainer, and even if his mother has always spoiled him, Guzma never felt appreciated in his family. Guzma felt not appreciated even by Alolan society because he wasn’t allowed to become a captain. He’s always beeen the second or the third one. Becuse of all of this, Guzma has revived Team Skull and transformed Poh Town into his own “illegal” Island Trial, and forces the protagonist to challenge it. He steals the bug type Z crystals because he wants to be the strongest bug type trainer in Alola. Team Skull is a team where people who feel inadequate to Alolan society and to the challenges of the Island Trials find a different self made “society” and protection. This solution allows them to find new friends but is a very sad situation the same, because as Nanu implies in the game, separating from society the Team Skull members have trapped themselves into a squallid decaying world represented by Poh Town (and that’s why in the end they decide to put an end to Team Skull and go back in society, without losing the bonds they created while they were together in the team). This need of acceptance, this need to find a “new family” even in the creepy Poh Town (Plumeria considers the grunts her little brothers and sisters) is mirrored by an event in particular: Guzma meets Lusamine and become her right hand. Lusamine gives Guzma the mission to retrieve her Lillie and Cosmog. Lusamine chooses Guzma. For the first time in his life “an adult has recognized his strength”. In the figure of Lusamine, Guzma finds that acceptance and recognition he has always wanted from the “adults”, from the Alolan society, from his parents. Guzma becomes really attached to Lusamine, even if she’s ony using him. In USUM Guzma is the same he is in SUMO, but USUM’s plot shows more clearly the traits of his character and starts to have a character development even before the end of the main game, and he has several interesting scenes with Hau. In the postgame, in USUM, we discover that when Plumeria told us “see, Guzma… he really likes the president” she was probably really implying Guzma “loves” Lusamine, sort of. The behavior of Guzma in the Castle of Team Rainbow Rocket seems much more the behavior of someone who is trying to save the woman he loves, not a parental figure. This is a very mature element in the plot of USUM and a bit sad one, because we know that probably Lusamine does not love him back: she has only used him for her purposes all the time… but Guzma doesn’t care, probably. Maybe that’s why Plumeria repeats and repeats that Guzma is “stupid” apparently for no specific reason: she disapproves the kind of attachment Guzma has towards Lusamine and she subtly expresses this feeling this way. Anyway, whatever Guzma feels for Lusamine, she’s very important for him, he cares for her. The need to have someone who can appreciate him, even if it’s all a bit of a farce, even if the “adult” woman is using him, even if she put him in danger (in a different way, both in SUMO and in USUM), is too strong to prevent Guzma from “loving” Lusamine. Guzma looks for love and acceptance in the wrong places because feels like he has never received them before. In the post game we finally and clearly understand that Guzma has always felt useless and without a meaning until he met Lusamine. Lusamine was the first to showing him some consideration, and that was enaugh to make Guzma lose his mind for her and jump into an Ultra Whormole to follow her. This is so realistic and interesting! And I’m happy they explained all of this situation better in USUM: now even people who don’t like to read dialogues and find clues about the plot all around the map of the game can understand what kind of character is Guzma: a not plain and “stupid” or simply “comical” character at all.

HAU

Hau doesn’t like to fight seriously and he’s always happy and joyful. He’s the same in both SUMO and USUM, the only difference is that his character developmant proceed faster in USUM: he understands he has to try to fight seriously and take the curage to battle with his grandfather early in the game. In USUM Hau is more “bold” right from the start and decides he really wants to become the future Kahuna of Mele Mele earlier in the story. But who exactly is Hau? In SUMO we could understand his story way better than in USUM. I don’t particularly like the more bold Hau of USUM becuse it’ a bit pointless in my opinion: he did changed in SUMO too but thanks to SUMO’s postgame we could understand why he was so insecure before the events of the games… so all his character made more sense. Hau is so joyful and not interested in serious battles because of his sad background: when he was little he assisted at his father’s personal “tragedy”. His father was an insecure man who couldn’t bare the situation of being the son of the Kahuna (Hala). Hau’s father had a very serious battle with Hala when Hau was very little and he lost. Hau was shocked by that fight and cried a lot. Hau’s father decided tp leave Alola to go training in Kanto because he couldn’t live in Hala’s shadow. When all of this happened, Hala became very kind and permissive with his little grandson Hau. After the battle with his son, Hala decided to make his grandson Hau a happier child. And Hau grew up forcing himself to not care about fighting seriously because he probably didn’t want to ends up like his father: Hau is afraid to be interested in fighting seriously, because he’s afraid to care too much about Pokemon battles and still not becoming stronger than Hala. Hau developed a joyful, playful and not “serious” personality to protect himself from the delusions of life. I don’t like Hau as a rival because I don’t like friendly rivals (I prefer Silver) but I appreciate Hau as a character because he’s not so simplicistic and stupid as it seems at a first sight. Unfortunately, USUM’s different plot doesn’t allow the player to discover all the details of Hau’s past.

LILLIE AND GLADION

Lillie and Gladion are the same in both SUMO and USUM, they still are great characters, especially Lillie. The only real difference is that in SUMO Gladion run away from home only to save a Silvally while in USUM there’s an addictional motivation: he wants to train Silvally to defeat Ultra Beasts and protect his family. He wants to prevent Lusamine from going in the Ultra Space, because he doesn’t want to lose her as he lost his father. I like this addictional motivation for Gladion, but… I didn’t like how he was treated in USUM. I didn’t like how both Lillie and Gladion were treated in USUM. USUM has less focus on Lillie’s story and her relationship with her mother…. and with Nebby! The focus of SUMO shifted from Lusamine’s family (and Nebby) to Necrozma… but this is a shame, becuase Lillie is still important in the story but… but they “mutilated” her character a bit. And the ending: I preferred the verions of SUMO where Lillie goes to Kanto and Gladion comes back to Aether Paradise and becomes the new president: that was a total character development. Both Lillie and Gladion have a great character development in USUM like in SUMO (it’s the same) but it was more significant that Lillie ends up becoming responsible of her mother and decides to travel so far way, to Kanto: in SUMO Lillie becomes even more indipendent than the person she becomes in USUM. Gladion changes during USUM plot’s but… but he ends up running away from home… again. He goes to Kanto because he wants to become stronger than Hau and the protagonist. So I liked more the SUMO version where he basically becomes a responsible new president for the Foundation and stays at home becuse Lillie and Lusamine had to go away. USUM’s plot isn’t bad but I personally like the SUMO’s version regarding Lillie and Gladion. In SUMO the growth of both of them was simply more visible, in my opinion.

THE ULTRA RECON SQUAD

Pycho, Zossie, Soliera and Dulse are very cool characters for a Pokemon game: ultra humans living in other world are canon, and their story is very cool. They all have their own characterization and they are simpathetic and fun, Unfortunately their are pretty passive in the game, even if they show up a lot, and you cannot explore much of Ultra Megalopolis. They are not used to Pokemon battles and so, they really don’t know how to fight. Ok. I understand that and I appreciate this trait of their characterization but if this is their situation don’t make them challenge you so many times: it’s pointless. Two fights are enaugh to understand they can’t fight properly: stop making them torturing that poor Poipole for no reasons.

In conclusion, I liked USUM very much because the region is full of new cool places to see, is richer, there are beautiful new sidequests, there are new funny scenes with all the great characters of Alola, there is the Mantine surf and there are lots of new good elements I really appreciated. I liked Necrozma’s story because is a very cool legendary with an epic background, even if his story in the games is a bit confused and not very well explained. Necrozma and the Ultra Recon Squad’s story could have been made better. Anyway Necrozma it’s that epic element, the apocaliptic side of the plot, that lacked a bit in SUMO. My only “problem” with USUM is that the story is really an alternate version, and I didn’t like all the changes. The new story has good elements but bad elements too, just like SUMO’s plot had. Just don’t come to me saying the plot of USUM is the same as SUMO because it’s not true.

I liked the Rainbow Rocket episode much more than SUMO’s postgame.

However, one of the things I really appreciated about the seventh generation in general, is that all the plot revolves around human problems and not about evil criminals that want to expand the sea and things like that. (USUM added a bit of the old “apocaliptic feel” thanks to Necrozma’s story, the “blinding one”). Another thing I really liked about Alola is the Islands Challenge. Game Freak managed to make an original region without making us feel “strangers” to it. We become used to Alola’s culture pretty soon in the game and we really wanted to become part of it. We wanted to “integrate” in Alola and it’s so satisfying to finally become the Alola’s first ever Champion. Having our very own throne at the top of Mount Lanakila is awesome.

#usum spoilers #usum #sumo #lusamine #guzma #hau #lillie #gladion #team rainbow rocket #ultra recon squad #necrozma #review #analysis #plot #lore

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annsparksthegmr · 4 years ago

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Pokemon Black Nuzlocke - Part 5.5

Hello everyone, a little weird title for this part since it is kind of shorter than the others - at least in things I managed to accomplish. But there is a good reason which you’ll have to read up. But fair warning: next update might not be for awhile considering what transpires. Read more below if interested.

I thought I feared nothing, until I got into Drayden’s Gym. With a heavy heart, I switched up half of my original team in order to take down his Gym. I relied on two primary Pokemon for this Gym: Snowball the Beartic and BananSplit the Vanillish. Geartown hung in the back with the EXP Share in case I needed to switch him in. Expecting for her to be a sacrifice in case either of my main two needed to be switched out/healed. The only three remaining members of my team had a purpose. Pebbles had Stealth Rocks, which I would set up upon facing Drayden. Zigzagzop would be strictly for Thunder Wave uses and Captain was the tankiest Pokemon I had which I wouldn't mind losing. So I took a deep breath and entered the Dragon’s Den.

It was as challenging as I thought. Because even with having two Ice-Types, I was already struggling with their strength. Snowball and BananSplit were already in some pretty close calls already. I healed up everyone before finally reaching Drayden. And… our battle began.

I started with Pebbles setting up Stealth Rock as Frazure began to set up Dragon Dances. Which started to worry me as Snowball was obviously slower. But one Icicle Crash took it out without issue. Druddigon was next, but barely survived only to hit me back with a powerful Revenge. One which almost knocked Snowball out completely. She barely managed to hang on and thankfully on the turn I healed, Drayden did as well. So the very least, I wouldn’t have to worry about him healing his true ace.

But when Haxorus came out, my already weakened Snowball faced a tough choice. One which had him setting up the Dragon Dances and using Dragon Tail to switch out team members. And in his Gym, both Snowball and BananSplit were taken out… both dead as Geartown was the next to be sent out. And somehow, against all odds after I lost both my Ice-Type Pokemon, Geartown clutched the victory and prevented any more deaths by using Gear Grind. His Haxorus falling as I managed to preserve my original party members.

I dutifully put both Snowball and BananSplit to rest. After what they did in the Gym, I couldn’t be more proud of them. Even if seeing them made me teary-eyed for the sacrifices they made. But it only became worse when a Fraxure from an Ace Trainer on Route 10 took out Ramona without any issues. He nearly took down half of my team which was a huge problem. But I managed to skirt by with only losing one additional Pokemon. Making the death count three for this single part. Two I had planned and the third I thought since it was weakened I could manage but did not.

And then I accidentally clicked Sludge Bomb instead of switching and lost him to a Maractus. That actually hurt a little bit more than Ramona’s death. But down two Pokemon down in the beginning of Route 10 without finding an encounter was terrifying. Vowing to not let my death count go even higher, I decided to add Geartown back to the team and headed off once more.

Having Bianca and Cheren decide to ambush me on the bridge did not help my confidence at all. While I was aware that karma may come to bite me, I was already knocked down and missing two Pokemon who had stuck around since the early game. Though I struggled a little bit, I took down Cheren by paying more attention to the type match ups even though his Liepard gave me a scare. Nearly taking out Pebbles with a critical hit Night Slash out of Sturdy range.

But after defending myself from Cheren, his dialogue along Bianca reminded me to not just give up after losing them both. I needed to prepare as best I could for the upcoming battles. Even my encounter being a Sawk was giving me a hard time and nearly taking out both Odette and Zigzagzop. I really didn’t have much use for him on the team, but it would be nice to have in the PC. I named him Paul because it was generic. Though with the losses I have, some time had to be put aside for grinding. As I needed to find potential replacements. Because even though I do plan for Gracey to stick around, Geartown is just filler.

Though I did decide to head to at least grind up levels throughout Victory Road. And what was luck itself was finding a Dieno as my first encounter. A female as well - continuing my weird streak or getting mostly female Pokemon but I knew immediately I wanted to have a potential Hydreigon on my team. Because it would not only be good for type coverage but I really liked the pseudo-legendary line. So I struggled to keep my Pokemon alive while tossing a bunch of Ultra Balls at it. She was a troublesome Dieno to wraggle but I managed to snag her; even with being in red health and parazled it took some time. Then I decided to name her the most appropriate name: Grima.

I’ll cut the massive grinding session I decided to have to level up practically everyone in. And some extra routes I did not go to until now for reasons. Which may or may not involve a certain gifted Pokemon Egg found on Route 18. But while this is going on, I’m going back to revisit previous routes, get some new encounters and whatnot if and when possible. And locating any hidden items I can. Driftveil City encounter was a female Frillish I named Aqua. Mistralton Cave encounter… I decided to risk it and use most of my Super Repels to take a catch to catch Cobalion for my team. As for the other Swords of Justice, I do plan to catch them eventually. Though Cobalion is the only one I can actually use in my playthrough instead of an Axew. (And I don’t know if I can shiny hunt the Swords of Justice in this game but I rather not bother. I do like only certain Shiny Pokemon.) Though one small note I had with Cobalion: GET IN THE BALL! I WANT YOU!!

I secured Cobalion and nicknamed him the only appropriate name for the trouble he put me through: Nebby. And I’ll only catch the other swords of Justice either postgame or if I’m in dire need. But I do want to keep Nuzlocke Rules until the end of the main story at the very least. Though after that minor clean-up session I returned to level grinding. I even got some nifty TMs for my troubles. Next major update will be once I have a final team and I arrive at the Elite 4. Though right before I challenge them.

I still don’t have an exact final team - or at least for a final member. I’ll reveal what my ideal final team is going to be. Queen - my Serperior and starter who I don’t want to lose yet I feel like she deserves to stay on the team. Odette - the Swanna who has already showcased how useful she is now without Captain and one of the few Flying-Types I have. Grima - the newly caught Dieno who will most likely evolve into a Zweilous because I need a Pokemon who can use Dark-Type moves and is overall a pretty neat Pokemon. Plus, the other possible candidates for Dark-Type users aren’t ideal. Nebby - Cobalion who can easily help out with its Fighting/Steel Typing. Or at least I hope it can but I don’t have many other options. Lastly is the Egg found in Relic Castle but given on Route 18. I do plan to use Larvesta and I might just try to overlevel it a bit to evolve into a Volcarona. No name for it quite yet but might name it Hope.

That leaves one spot open and while I love Zigzagzop and Pebbles, I don’t think they can assist me well in terms of the Elite 4. Especially Pebbles as I can’t trade to evolve her and she’s not as useful late game. Zigzagzop is most likely going to be the last member because using Thunder Wave is useful enough. But at the same time, I don't know if bringing a Zebstrika is useful for the last game. So I’m going to try and strategize a plan for tackling the Elite 4 and everything that comes after.

Don’t expect an update anytime soon because I’ll be on a massive training session to get Pokemon up to Level 50. And I do think i’ll try to do the same with some of my Boxed Pokemon for replacements if things get tough. All I hope is to not lose anymore Pokemon and maintain a decent Type Coverage overall. I hope that by next update, the team is ready to go and at the very least have defeated the Elite 4. Because for those of you unfamiliar with Pokemon Black/White, the game doesn’t quite end with a traditional battle. At least one many might expect.

I’ll smell you all later!

Team Recap:

Queen - Female Serperior (Lvl 50)

Pebbles - Female Boldore (Lvl 42)

Zigzagzop - Male Zebstrika (Lvl 50)

Odette - Female Swanna (Lvl 49)

Nebby - Cobalion (Lvl 42)

Egg

In Box/Reserve:

Ghost Girl - Female Liepard (Lvl 20)

Cassandra - Female Sandile (Lvl 21)

Trashie - Female Trubbish (Lvl 22)

Lowen - Male Cottonee (Lvl 20)

Lady - Female Minccino (Lvl 23)

Voltorb - Male Foongus (Lvl 23)

Rouge - Female Woobat (Lvl 29)

BFG - Golett (Lvl 30)

Tim Burton - Male Gothorita (Lvl 31)

Aqua - Female Frillish (Lvl 10)

Gracey - Male Litwick (Lvl 37)

Geartown - Klang (Lvl 39)

Deaths: 6

Fountain - Male Sampour (Lvl 15)

Puppy - Female Herdier (Lvl 25)

Snowball - Female Beartic (Lv 41)

BananSplit - Female Vanillish (Lvl 40)

Ramona - Female Darmanitan (Lvl 43)

Captain - Male Seismitoad (Lvl 45)

#pokemon black #pokemon black nuzlocke #text post #went from two deaths to six #it actually really hurt #almost to the final endgame of main story #drayden kicked my butt #if anyone has advice i would love to hear it

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seriesfoundation · 5 years ago

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John C. Maxwell: 5 Tips to Unlock Your Potential

By John C. Maxwell | January 7, 2015 | 0

How would your life change if you suddenly had $100 million? What would you do with the money?

Stumped? You’re not the only one.

In September J.J. Watt, a 25-year-old lineman for the Houston Texans, became the highest-paid defensive player in National Football League history when he signed a $100 million contract extension. Afterward, a friend suggested he buy something to celebrate. But Watt had no idea what to purchase.

Get this: He actually Googled “What do rich people buy?”

When that story leaked out, it went viral faster than you can say “tweet.” The young millionaire found himself fielding questions about his now-famous search. “I don’t feel like a rich person, and I don’t really try to act like a rich person, so I don’t know what they buy,” Watt told Fox News reporter Laura Okmin. “I didn’t really like the stuff I saw, so I think I’m going to stick to my humble lifestyle.”

Watt wasn’t always on the superstar track. Early in his college career, he took a season off and worked as a pizza delivery guy in his hometown of Pewaukee, Wis. (population 13,600), while attending junior college. When he put his cleats back on, he paid his own way at the University of Wisconsin, put in more work, and within two years was named an All-American. In 2011 he became the No. 11 overall pick in the NFL draft.

“I’d like to know where you get this kind of character,” mused talk-radio host Glenn Beck. “Because if $100 million doesn’t change you, that’s remarkable.”

Watt didn’t know what to do with the money. Would the money do something with him?

It sure did—and probably the opposite of what you would expect. It made Watt want to work even harder. “The way I look at it is that somebody in the world, no matter what your field is—teacher, violinist, football player—has to be the best,” Watt told Grantland.com writer Robert Mays. “Why not me?”

What a line! Someone has to be the best—why not me?

I can relate to the young man. My biggest passion in life has been pursuing my potential. I may not be able to become the best in the world, but I can become my best. That’s what keeps me going strong, even at the age of 67. I regularly take on tasks that cause me to grow and stretch. I like being in over my head because it keeps me sharp and pushes me to give my full effort.

Becoming your best self is part attitude and part strategy. I can’t help you with attitude, because that comes from within. But I can offer tips on how to unlock your potential and reach your goals.

Focus on your strengths. This is really simple: You’re good at some stuff. You are not-so-good at other stuff. Focus on the stuff you’re good at. Where you are naturally good, you have the potential to become great if you put time into developing those talents. Conversely, if you get too wrapped up in worrying about your weaknesses, you’re probably wasting time and energy.

Focus on today. One of my favorite sayings is, “Yesterday ended last night.” It doesn’t matter whether yesterday was good or bad. It’s over. Don’t get stuck there. For that matter, don’t think too much about the future, either. You can’t change the past; you can’t mold the future. But you can influence what happens right now. Give the present day your full attention and best effort.

Focus on your priorities. Protect your calendar! Your daily agenda can be turned upside down by others and the many requests they send your way. Be selective about what you do because you can’t do it all. As the late motivational speaker Zig Ziglar said, “Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have 24-hour days.” Choose your priorities and use your time to accomplish them.

Focus on your results. It’s easy to become tired or frustrated when the work is hard and the journey long. If you start feeling aimless, make like a 4-year-old and pester yourself with questions. What am I working toward? Why am I trying to achieve it? Why does it matter? Reminding yourself of your purpose will keep you focused on the big picture, and your drive to succeed will triumph over adversity.

Focus on your contribution. The best version of you will emerge when you decide to use your potential to make the world a better place. As author Steve Maraboli says, “You were put on this earth to achieve your greatest self…. Do it courageously.” Be bold and be you. Improve yourself and improve your world.

Watt is still young, and his contribution to football still emerging. But his aspirations are entirely clear. Just consider this play from the second game of the 2014 season:

On the team’s opening drive, Watt lined up as a tight end and slipped past the Oakland Raiders’ defense, into the end zone where he caught quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick’s pass for a 1-yard touchdown. Watt is a defensive player by trade; it was his first touchdown since high school.

In a postgame interview, Watt said, “My goal in the offseason is to create the best athlete I can create and give it to the coaches and say, ‘Here, use it how you want it.’ Today they used it a little bit on offense.”

Watt’s efforts match his personal motto: Dream Big, Work Hard.

What about you? Are you dreaming big and working hard? Are you working every day to reach your potential? After all, someone has to be the best. Why not you?

So, are you working hard toward your goals, or are you just coasting? Check out 5 tips to help you stay committed and push hard to the finish line.

John C. Maxwell

+ posts

John C. Maxwell, an internationally respected leadership expert, speaker, and author who has sold more than 18 million books, has been named an inaugural SUCCESS Ambassador. Dr. Maxwell is the founder of EQUIP, a non-profit organization that has trained more than 5 million leaders in 126 countries worldwide. A New York Times, Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek; best-selling author, Maxwell has written three books that have sold more than a million copies.

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mitchbeck · 5 years ago

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CANTLON: (WED) PACK TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS WITH FOURTH STRAIGHT WIN

BY: Gerry Cantlon, Howlings HARTFORD, CT - The Hartford Wolf Pack (15-4-2-5) extended their winning streak to four games with a strong defensive effort, timely goal-scoring, and another strong performance in net from Igor Shesterkin all adding up to a 3-1 win over the Binghamton Devils before an announced crowd of 1,285, the second-lowest in franchise history by just ten fans. With the win, the Pack jumped back into first place in the Atlantic Division with 37 points, two ahead of the idle Providence Bruins. The game-winning goal came late in the third period after Tim Gettinger snared a long rebound, waited a few seconds for an open lane, and snapped home a 35-foot wrist shot over the glove hand of the Devils' goalie, Gilles Senn at 14:58. The goal was Gettinger's fifth of the season. “We got it down low and had a good forecheck going. (We) got it up to E (Nick Ebert). He got a good shot on net and it just popped out to me in the slot there, and I just fired it, and it went in." Gettinger said. Gettinger has been slowed recently with a slight groin injury but was back to his flying around self. “Coming back from a little injury, I felt good playing with Boo (Nieves) and Patrick (Newell). It’s been going very well. We’re learning about each other out there. For me personally, they're good players and are going to find me in spots and were able to do that tonight." The Devils (7-14-4-0) didn’t go quietly. They ruined Shesterkin's shutout bid at 17:49 with Kelly Summer coming off the right point and wiring his first of the season over his left shoulder. After that, the Pack's resilience kicked in. Nick Jones restored a two-goal lead with an empty-netter after stripping the puck from Devils defenseman, Dakota Mermis, with 38.3 seconds left in the game, icing it for Hartford. The game wasn’t exactly a barn-burner, racetrack-style hockey game. “The chances were not a lot in quantity for either team,” remarked Pack head coach Kris Knoblauch. “On both of ours (five-on-five goals), we made them count.” The Pack’s overall effort though was very pleasing for Knoblauch. “We got off to a good start and played in the offensive zone. We didn’t capitalize on some of them and passed-up a few good shots. In each game (of the current winning streak), we have found different ways to win, and tonight was one of those games.” The Wolf Pack scored the game's first goal early in the second period. Defenseman Vince LoVerde was operating on the point on his natural right side. He put a low shot on net that was double deflected. The first was from Gettinger and then Nieves, who was credited with just his second of the season at 4:55. “We were in hard on the forecheck there,” Gettinger said. “Patrick (Newell) was working hard along the boards and got it up top. I just tried to get to the front of the net, and Vince just got the shot on net. I was able to get the top and it went right to Boo’s stick. It was a big goal for us in the second.” It was, in fact, the only goal of the period and for the game, until Gettinger scored late in the third period. Shesterkin gave his usual solid play using an economy of movement on every save of the nine he faced. “He made the saves, but his work with the puck was very important tonight. In the second period, he makes the save and he isn’t looking for a whistle, he’s looking to make a play, so we don’t have a defensive zone draw. He also was moving the puck out of the zone on several other plays. He’s a very smart hockey player,” Knoblauch said of his goalie, who picked up his 10th win of the season. The first period was a tight-checking affair with just 13 shots between the two teams. The Packs' two best chances came on their only powerplay. Nick Ebert had a shot off the left point, and Joey Keane came in off the right point. Binghamton's best chance came on an open Chris Conner in front. His backhander was stopped cold by Shesterkin. LINES: Andersson-Fogarty-Beleskey Nieves-Gettinger-Newell O’Regan-Lettieri--DiGiuseppe Jones-Dmowsk-Zerter-Gossage Raddysh-LoVerde Keane-Geersten Rykov-Ebert SCRATCHES: Jeff Taylor (healthy) Ville Meskannen (see below) Gabriel Fontaine (season-ending - shoulder surgery). NOTES: Nieves was unavailable for a post-game interview due to his undergoing postgame medical. Steven Fogarty suffered a hand injury of some sort, dropping his glove after blocking a shot and headed immediately to the locker room. For a team on a four-game winning streak, and sitting fourth overall in the AHL, the Wolf Pack has moved several players over the last 36 hours. As expected, center Shawn McBride was reassigned to Norfolk (ECHL), while the other two were a surprise with the first, a complete shock. Hard-working veteran, Ville Meskanen, who was coming off a strong game against Binghamton last weekend, was placed on unconditional waivers for the purpose of releasing him from his contract. He is likely headed back to Finland to play in the Finnish Elite League or somewhere in Europe. He worked hard when he was a healthy scratch early in the season, and played fourth-line minutes optimizing his limited ice time. He has seen regular ice shifts recently and was effective, but had just two points, both assists, in the last ten games and four overall in his 20 games. The lanky winger had a strong freshmen campaign with 12 goals in 70 games. “I’ve been pleased with him all year. He really played well for us. A hard worker, a good teammate. I can’t say enough good things about him. I really enjoyed coaching him," Knoblauch said. "It was sad to hear that he was leaving. He felt the chances for him here in Hartford weren’t the best for him. He is likely to pursue options in Europe.” Out goes Meskanen and back comes Ryan Gropp from Maine where he tallied seven points in ten games. He initially refused to report and sat at home for three weeks before joining the Mariners. Gropp walked through the XL Center doors at 6:20 pm with his sticks and equipment bag in tow. The prep for Team USA's big game with Canada on Saturday is in full swing all throughout the building. They had an intra-squad scrimmage earlier this afternoon. Canada is practicing over in Cromwell. That practice is not open to the public according to several reliable hockey sources. Congrats to ex-Wolf Pack players Derek Armstrong, and goalie Robb Stauber for being named honorary captains for 2020 AHL All-Star Classic in Ontario, CA in January. The loquacious Armstrong was one of the founding pillars of the Wolf Pack franchise and the only 100 point scorer in the franchise history. He was the Jack Butterfield Playoff MVP during the Wolf Pack’s Calder Cup championship season in 2000. Stauber started his AHL career with the New Haven Nighthawks and ended it with the Wolf Pack. Wolf Pack fan jersey of the night: #14 Johan Witehall and #23 Tomas Kloucek. Read the full article

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junker-town · 5 years ago

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Why Memphis vs. Tennessee is college basketball’s best new rivalry

Penny Hardaway and Rick Barnes are at the center of Memphis and Tennessee’s heated rivalry.

Saturday’s rivalry game between No. 13 Memphis and No. 19 Tennessee is interesting for about a hundred reasons. Only a few of them actually involve basketball.

With final exams happening and then students subsequently heading home for the holidays, it isn’t hard to understand why December is the most quiet month on the college basketball calendar. What the period of time between Feast Week and the start of conference play does give us is some of the sport’s best out-of-conference rivalry games.

One of the most anticipated tilts from this group of scorching animosity is Saturday’s matchup between Memphis and Tennessee in Knoxville. The fact that these are two top 20 teams with legitimate chances to win their respective conferences and do damage in the NCAA tournament is only a sidenote here. The primary draw for the Tigers vs. the Volunteers is the nearly unmatched vitriol between the two programs that has been exacerbated exponentially over the past year.

Before you can fully embrace the madness that is going to be Saturday afternoon’s game inside Thompson-Boling Arena, you need a full understanding of how we got to this point.

March 28, 2018

Tennessee and Memphis agree to a three-year deal that will feature a game in Memphis in 2018, a game in Knoxville in 2019, and a neutral court clash in Nashville in 2020. It’ll mark the first time since Jan. 4, 2013 that the two Volunteer State powers will meet on the hardwood.

At the time, the contract is celebrated by Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes, who had been wanting to revive the series for some time.

“It’s something we’ve been working on with (former Memphis coach) Tubby Smith since we’ve gotten here,” Barnes said. “I think the way the contract sets up, we go there first, they come here, then I think we have a meeting in Nashville. Even though we like the home and home, we’d like to make it a big day of basketball in Nashville. Not just us, but bring in other teams within the state and just make it a day to really promote basketball. That’s the reason we’re going there that third year.

“I’d like to have some kind of jamboree or extravaganza, something that will really promote basketball in the state of Tennessee.”

Dec. 15, 2018

Game one of the new series between Tennessee, once-beaten and ranked No. 3 at the time, and Memphis goes down inside the FedExForum.

Before we get into anything that actually happened on the court and how the end of the game set the stage for the war of words that would come in the month to follow, we have to first address the most important occurrence in the Memphis-Tennessee rivalry to date: In the middle of the game, a man was arrested for taking a shit behind a concession stand on the concourse of the FedEx Forum. When he was confronted and eventually arrested, he gave the only explanation he could.

A security guard was making her way from a stairwell and saw the man, later identified as 46-year-old Royce Thomos Lodholz, squatting behind a concession stand. She went over to Lodholz and found that he had his pants off his body, exposing himself to several people walking nearby, and was defecating on the floor.

The security guard called for her partner, who saw the same thing.

Lodholz told police officers that people in the restrooms were taking too long to clear out, so “he had to do what he had to do,” according to a police affidavit.

We’re not even into the real juicy stuff and you can already see why this rivalry must be protected at all costs.

As for the game itself, Tennessee controls a high-scoring affair from virtually start to finish, and owns a 102-92 advantage when the final buzzer sounds. What’s more important, at least for our purposes, is what happens with about 47 seconds left.

After a meaningless Memphis basket, Tennessee’s Jordan Bone and the Tigers’ Alex Lomax start doing a little bit of talking. The players are quickly separated and hit with double technicals. UT players help escort Bone back to the Volunteers bench without any further issue. The whole thing seems like a forgettable moment to cap off a fairly forgettable rivalry game.

You can see for yourself here:

youtube

After the game, Bone served up his side of the seemingly innocuous back-and-forth.

“I heard (Lomax) say something and I retaliated,” Bone said. “I shouldn’t have. We were winning the game. We were supposed to walk out of here with class. I kind of allowed them to get to me because I know a couple of those guys, I played AAU with them back in the day. So I kind of lost my focus. But I got back level-headed and we walked out of here the way we were supposed to.”

The other reason Bone was frustrated at the end of the game? In his eyes, Memphis players were being rewarded for flopping throughout the game.

“It was definitely frustrating,” Bone said. “We have a rule. When you have two fouls you have to sit down, especially in the first half. It was frustrating knowing I had to sit down on the bench. That was the scouting report. We knew they were going to come out and flop and that’s what they did. The calls went their way early in the game.”

There is some video evidence to back up Bone’s belief.

Have another look at the Memphis flop-fest. My favorite part is the double-flop at the end. (Also, note the ref on the baseline called the last foul on the other side of the court) pic.twitter.com/6pQJrxTXII

— Ryan Moses (@RMoses10) December 15, 2018

When Memphis head coach Penny Hardaway was asked after the game about the kerfuffle between Bone and Lomax, he painted a very different picture than Bone and the video did.

“Alex is a kid that’s not gonna talk trash, so obviously Jordan Bone said something to his disrespectfully,” Hardaway said. “He said something back to him to protect himself. Then (Memphis player Jeremiah Martin) jumped in and said something to Jordan Bone and he got a technical.

“The entire Tennessee team ran over to fight. Their entire team emptied the bench to come over. They weren’t coming over because it was a timeout. You could visibly see guys with their fists balled, talking trash to our guys. It was almost like a standoff.”

Those comments would instantly become the source of much scrutiny.

Dec. 17, 2018

Two days after Tennessee’s 10-point triumph over Memphis, Rick Barnes held his weekly coaches radio show and seemed to echo Bone’s comments about Tiger players being rewarded for flopping early in the game.

“It was a very difficult game to call when guys are trying to pick up fouls and every time there’s contact jumping back and this and that,” Barnes said.

Barnes also took a moment to make light of Hardaway’s assertion that his players ran over to the Memphis bench with their “fists balled” looking for a fight.

“Here’s what I want to ask, too,” Barnes said to Kesling during the show on Sports Radio WNML in Knoxville, “at any Saturday did you ball your fist up and get ready to fight the other commentator?”

Kesling did his part to laugh off the light-hearted response from Barnes.

“If he would’ve taken about three steps toward me,” Kesling responded, “(Dave) Woloshin and I would’ve thrown down.”

“Who would win that?” Barnes asked.

“I’ve got the size on him,” Kesling responded. “I could take him. I could take Woloshin.”

“Yeah, but it would take you 10 minutes to get up from behind the table,” Barnes jabbed back.

Barnes added later that he didn’t “think anybody did anything that was overly aggressive.”

“I will say this, no one showed me any tape where any of our guys had their fists balled up,” he said.

All of these words would quickly make their way from Knoxville to Memphis.

Dec. 18, 2018

Rick Barnes has his weekly meeting with the media and only makes one comment of note about the Memphis game, stating his displeasure with Penny Hardaway calling out Jordan Bone by name during his postgame comments.

“I didn’t like that,” Barnes said. “Obviously because I don’t think you do that, but the fact is you guys know I kid with Bob and I’ll always do that, but that game’s over with, done with. We’ve got to get on down the road. We’ve got a really tough opponent (Samford) in here (Wednesday) night and we’ve got to get ready for that.”

During his weekly meeting with the press, Hardaway had much more to say. He wasted little time getting directly into the subject of Barnes and some words that he believed to be extremely disrespectful to him and his program.

“I don’t know who Rick Barnes thinks I am, but I’m not a dude who likes to mess around about anything,” Hardaway said. “I just call it how I see it, no matter how he’s trying to make things seem. I think it’s kind of low class, how he’s trying to downgrade my guys for flopping and all that. Come on, give me a break.

“As far as flopping, that’s not something that we teach. We don’t even understand that term.”

The war of words continues between Penny Hardaway and Vols coach Rick Barnes. Today—it was Penny’s turn at the mic. pic.twitter.com/H8D9rLYgBd

— Mike Ceide (@MCeide_WREG3) December 18, 2018

Hardaway wasn’t finished.

“He’s blessed to have the No. 3 team in the country and he should be happy with that. And we will see each other again, for sure. He can do whatever he wants to do, but we’ll see each other out on the road somewhere or in another game.”

And then, the coup de grâce. Hardaway’s parting words as he left the press conference?

“Rick Barnes, get the fuck out of here.”

Penny Hardaway ended his chat with reporters like this ... "Rick Barnes ... Get the &*$% out of here." I've never heard a coach talk like Penny just did about Rick Barnes.

— Mark Giannotto (@mgiannotto) December 18, 2018

Things die down at least temporarily after this three day flurry of comments.

Jan. 16, 2019

The subject of Barnes and the Tennessee game comes up again during a Hardaway appearance with Jalen Rose on the ESPN show “Get Up.” This time, the head coach describes the game as “heated” with “high tempers and a lot of competitiveness,” but is less scorched earth with his overall response.

“You know I’ve always had respect for coach Rick Barnes,” Hardaway said. “We had a situation here in Memphis with a rivalry game, you know it’s going to be heated, you’ve had those kind of rivalry games with Michigan State before, I’m sure.

“So you know that when you get into that game it’s going to be hot tempers and, you know, a lot of competitiveness. And after the game, I don’t feel like he gave my team a fair understanding of what we were trying to do. Kind of mocking the NBA and our coaching staff and I really didn’t like that. I have the utmost respect for him, but I couldn’t let him do my team like that.”

Jan. 22, 2019

Tennessee is now the No. 1 team on the country for just the second time in program history, which means some face time for Barnes on SportsCenter. During his interview on the program, naturally, the subject of Memphis and his ever-bourgeoning rivalry with Hardaway is brought up.

Barnes isn’t interested in throwing any more fuel on the fire.

“I have unbelievable respect for Penny Hardaway,” Barnes said. “I got to meet him long before he started becoming a head coach. I’ve never mocked any team, ever. There’s nowhere out there that I’ve said one thing about Memphis basketball from an NBA standpoint or anything of that.

”I’ve got great respect for what he’s doing there and the program he’s trying to build. I’m not on record ever saying anything (negative) about Memphis basketball.”

Tennessee will eventually earn a No. 2 seed in the NCAA tournament and drop a heartbreaker to Purdue in the Sweet 16. Memphis will see its season end in the NIT, but Hardaway will sign the No. 1 ranked recruiting class in the country, headlined by top-ranked prospect James Wiseman.

Aug. 17, 2019

Memphis takes an exhibition tour to the Bahamas, and a mini-scuffle breaks out during one of its first games. Nothing serious actually happens in the back-and-forth, but former Tennessee star Grant Williams can’t help but make a not-so-subtle reference to Penny Hardaway’s “fists balled” comment from the year before.

https://t.co/VDgPiN89bR pic.twitter.com/hnBjITF3Lk

— Grant Williams (@Grant2Will) August 17, 2019

Fellow graduated star Admiral Schofield then reminds everyone how that game the December before turned out.

We really spanked them tho

— Admiral Schofield (@admiralelite15) August 18, 2019

Incoming Memphis freshman Lester Quinones — aka, the guy with the really short shorts — doesn’t let the fact that he hasn’t even suited up for his first college game stop him from interjecting himself directly into the middle of his team’s hottest rivalry.

Come to Knoxville for the game this year if the Go-Go’s don’t have a game that night https://t.co/zEIKErs6IZ

— Lester Quinones (@Effort_les) August 19, 2019

Schofield is currently playing for the Capital City Go-Gos, the G-League affiliate of the Washington Wizards.

Sophomore point guard Tyler Harris also joins the fun.

Treated Em #DEC14

— Tyler Harris®️ (@iamyoungty1) August 19, 2019

Sept. 25, 2019

Williams, now a member of the Boston Celtics, notices that the Memphis basketball team is now posting videos of the “one player dunks, everyone else jumps with him” thing that the Volunteers had been doing before games. He has thoughts on this.

Energy is there n i love it but come on guys jumps have to be better.. my guy jumped after james dunked . little bros always got room for improvement n im glad they’re using our handmedowns. @admiralelite15 @KyleJamal4 https://t.co/xYDokgujXq

— Grant Williams (@Grant2Will) September 25, 2019

Quinones has some thoughts on Williams’ thoughts. He doesn’t let the fact that Williams is in the NBA and he has yet to suit up for his first game keep him from sharing those thoughts.

Jump during dunk ✍ noted. But let’s talk about something more important, that drastically needs improvement, GRANT WILLIAM’S JUMPSHOT https://t.co/jmYeGQI94s

— Lester Quinones (@Effort_les) September 26, 2019

Quinones, for what it’s worth, is currently dealing with a broken hand and is not expected to play in Saturday’s rivalry game.

Nov. 18, 2019

After initially seeming like the biggest fan of the series, Barnes now says that he “doesn’t think” that the Memphis-Tennessee series won’t be renewed after the third game is played in 2020.

“We’ll see. I think our deal — and I don’t think it’s any question it’s their situation too — you’re going to build the schedule based on where your program is and the opportunities that are out there. I’ve said before, I don’t know where it goes from here. I know this, we’re playing them now.”

Nov. 19, 2019

Hardaway is asked about his thoughts on the future of the rivalry past 2020 and states in no uncertain terms that he believes it should continue.

“I think it’d be good for the state, for sure,” said Hardaway. ”Obviously what happened last year kind of put a spoiler on it for a minute but I’m way past that right now because, I think, the state is so competitive that I think it should carry on.”

Dec. 10, 2019

The arrival of game week for the 2019 installment of Tennessee vs. Memphis is here, and both head coaches are doing their best to de-escalate the tensions that have dominated the headlines for the last 12 months.

“I think Penny Hardaway has done a great job coaching these young guys,” Barnes said of his rival. “He’s got a lot of young guys and that’s not the easiest thing to do, when you have five, six new guys. Trying to get them to understand what they have to do. And he’s done a terrific job.”

And is he looking forward to the actual game after everything that has gone down over the last year?

“I think (the players) should look forward to it,” Barnes said of Saturday’s game. “It’s two good teams that are playing each other. We’re a long way apart, six hours is a long way, but the fact is, again I’ve said it, Penny has done a terrific job with his program.

“Terrific players in his program and he’s playing with a lot of young players. They’ve played a good schedule themselves and had some good, quality wins.”

And as for Hardaway?

“Well, last year’s game was last year’s game. I’ve always had a lot of respect for Coach Barnes. I was just protecting my team last year. And it was unfortunate that it got taken out of hand last year, with what happened. They had a great team. No. 1 team in the nation. And we were fighting to try to get some respect. And it’s a rivalry game. So we’ll just leave it there. I kind of added to that last year with all the headlines. But it was really just trying to protect my team. But yes, it’s easy to go with those headlines after what happened last year.

“It’s really not me against Rick. But, honestly, it’s going to be a great game. It’s going to be chess, to be honest with you, because we don’t know how the refs are going to call it.”

Dec. 14, 2019

No. 19 Tennessee will host No. 13 Memphis at 3 p.m. on ESPN. A win for the Volunteers would give Barnes his 700th career victory.

For the first time in nearly a full year of this rivalry making headlines, all eyes will be on the court. That, of course, opens the door for some serious concourse pooping.

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evilisk-played · 5 years ago

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Labyrinthine December Part 7: We Recruit Kanako

Yay! A new character! I can’t wait to- oh my god is that 164 unused bonus points? Why do new characters have to work like this? Why?

I finally began my trek into Floor 21. There’s not much to talk about honestly; the floor is pretty simple “explore and survive” fare (no confusing progression puzzles involving switches or teleporters).

The enemies aren’t really worth talking about tbh. After completing the game, I immediately tested the new floor’s enemies and the enemies are harder than Floor 20, while offering worse / similar amounts of EXP (which is weird). This was immediately after completing the game; now that I’ve cleared some of the early postgame stuff, these ‘hard’ mooks are mostly a cakewalk. Only two enemy types are worth mentioning; the fast butterfly that can inflict PSN and PAR, and the grim reaper type that can inflict DTH. But they’re hardly the only enemy types in the game capable of PAR’ing and then DTH’ing your party so just make sure you have protection.

As for events, I finally recruited my first postgame character and... could it be? I think it is...! It is the fabled CLD nuke only heard of in legend! (Seriously, why was there no CLD nuke in the base game anyway???)

More seriously, we picked up Kanako without a hassle, then explored the rest of the dungeon. There was some boss that wasn’t worth fighting (they were a white recolour of the generic knight enemy) so I didn’t fight it. Then I moved up to Floor 22... Only to discover I hadn’t saved when I defeated Maribel V1 again. Whoops!

Anyway, at this point I finally decided it was time to actually allocate those remaining bonus points.

Here’s how it went:

Rumia: After giving her a long hard look, I finally realized what bugged me about this character... her SPD stat makes zero sense. I compared her SPD and her contemporaries in this area were characters like Tenshi and Yuugi, characters who are *powerhouses* in terms of stats. Except for her excellent MYS resistance, Rumia has zero reason to be as fast as Tenshi (while not being nearly as tanky as her) so I figured SPD is what she needs. I’ve also decided that Rumia is permanently gonna be using some items (like Holy Win) so that her survivability isn’t godawful.

I still hate how this character works, but at least Rumia can be a character type that makes sense (mediocre attacker with average SPD) instead of being this bizarro character who is as slow as Tenshi yet not nearly as survivable as her.

Sanae: This character was probably the second hardest to figure out. I’ll admit to not using most of the characters in this list (it’s *the* reason why statting them is so hard for me in the first place), but Sanae is the hardest because she’s the character I’ve used the lease in all of LoT. I’ve tried all the early game characters (since I’ve replayed / attempted to complete this game so many times) and I’ve caught on to how busted the later comers are, but Sanae? Sanae was always in that awkward section of the game that I always ended up dropping out of. By the time I’d gotten far enough to actually reach her, I was set on not using her because my mindset was stuck as “okay, we’re going to actually push through to the end of this game, this time”. This is how became “most unused character in all of LoT for me”.

In the end, I ended up boosting her HP and her MND. This was purely to give her parity to the other healers (Reimu, Eirin and Minoriko all have *way* more HP than her... and that’s with the better MND too). I’m gonna try to build her up to be more of an MND tank (because I’m unoriginal and every single character I can use for defensive buffs WILL be used for that role only).

Yuyuko: I upped her MND. I was considering turning her into the SPI nuke but I realized her SPD is a serious hindrance to this goal. I think, since she is so damn slow, and since I’m going to be using her for her high DTH rate and ATB drain rather than her raw MAG stat, making her tanky makes more sense. Also helps that I’m still lacking in MND tanks (aside from Patchy).

Kaguya: The real SPI nuke is right here. Kaguya might not be *as* nukey as Yuyuko is, but given how much more versatile she is *and* how much faster she is, she is far more practical to my purposes as one. Anyway, I bumped up both her MAG and MND; I’m basically allotting her bonus points like how I used to do for Patchouli (before I realized she was too slow / she was much better off as an MND tank rather than an attacker)

Mokou: After worrying about her forever, I finally gave up and just dumped her bonus points into MAG. While I love Mokou normally, she seems like trash in this game. There is almost nothing unique about her; oh so she’s one of those tanky MAG attackers? You mean like Alice, Eirin and Kanako? She’s got a strong FIR spell? Great for you, now get in line behind Yuugi, Alice, Flandre and Patchy. Oh she can debuff? ...Actually I won’t even mention the debuff. That debuff is terrible. Debuffer characters in general are made obsolete by Komachi, but Mokou’s debuff is terribad even by those standards.

I’ve given up on trying to make her viable and have instead delegated Mokou to “dungeon sweeping” duties

Iku: I dumped all her points into MND. For most of the game, I built her as a MAG / MND attacker but after actually reading up how to use her on the Touhou Wiki, it seems like she’d be better as a pure MND tank. It’s not like she’s a bad attacker; she can do crazy damage when she’s self-buffed herself. But it’s kind of weird I’ve had this double standard where I’ll up Iku’s damage for no reason, while with Ran I’ll only boost her defensive stats and SP (even though she’s arguably the better attacker). So yeah, I’m gonna build them up similarly now since my usage of both characters is literally “bring onto field, buff other characters”.

Reisen: I just dumped all her points into MAG. I still have no idea what I’m doing with this character, I’m hoping that we run into a fight where the Grand Patriots Elixir + Discarder combo is actually useful though.

Alice: I’m bumping her MAG and SPD. I don’t have enough “pure” MAG attackers anyway. Like Reisen, I’m also not sure how to use her, though with Alice it’s a matter of “the formulas on all her attacks confuse me”.

Kanako: I had to do a lot of research on this and... I actually couldn’t decide on what her role should be yet. The wiki is saying she can be a good nuke, a good tank or a good ‘dungeon janitor’ though trying for all three at once is probably not a good idea. Yet all I can think at this point is “how the heck can I decide without trying this character out?”

I ended up comparing the other 6 nuke characters. The other nukes are: Nitori (Non-Elemental) Marisa (MYS), Kaguya (SPI), Suika (WND), Suwako (NTR) and Yuugi (FIR). I could typically categorize these as either “offense” and “support”.

Marisa and Suwako are glass cannons / pure offense, while Kaguya, Suika and Yuugi all offer some support potential. Nitori sits in the middle ground, where she can be a nuke (with her cannon) or she can play decent support (with her camouflage. So with this all in mind...

- Support - - - - - - - - - - Offense -

- - - - - - - - - - Nitori - - - - - - - - - -

- Suika - - - - - - - - - - - - Suwako -

- Kaguya - - - - - - - - - - - Marisa -

- Yuugi - - - - - - - - - - - - - ? ? ? -

Kanako would be a pretty easy fit on to the offense scale wouldn’t it?

...Still, I couldn’t exactly commit to a role for a character I hadn’t even tested yet. All I could do for now is dump all her points into MAG so that her MAG stat (the stat she relies on most for damage) was at least on parity with the other nukes. She went from 14k to 21k MAG which is pretty nice. As far as the nukes go, Yuugi is the leader (at 25k), everyone else is around the 20k, and Nitori trails behind at 18k (though this isn’t as bad as it sounds; her non-elemental nuke means she gets way better damage than you’d expect).

Anyway, with Kanako done, I *finally* statted all my characters (this is something I haven’t been able to make up my mind on for months now). I’m pretty hype to try out Kanako and her fabled CLD nuke.

#labyrinthine december #labyrinth of touhou

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tumblunni · 7 years ago

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“SO WHY DO U WANT 2 HUG THIS TRASH GRANDPA, BUNNI” post

Okay, i figured since, well, that one goddamn wifi event is That One Goddamn Wifi Event, I may as well make a short post about it so people who weren’t able to see it can understand how it fuckin Blew My Mind when I was a teenager and plunged me into the fandom hell for the most obscure unloved jerkass grandpa who may or may not even be the guy this vague tantalizing mystery plot point is even about, and AAAA

So yeah here we go, transcript of the event text (thanks, Bulbapedia!) and some general summary of the context of who da fuk dis Charon is, and hopefully maybe at least one more person shall now understand this tiny fandom for a tiny gremp!

~The Context Of Charon~

(skip all this if you just wanna get to the wifi event transcipt)

If you haven’t played DPPT and don’t plan to: The villain team of Sinnoh is Team Galactic, a bunch of silly guys in space costumes with a rad jazz theme tune and a surprising level of competance in a terrifying plan to erase the universe and replace all emotion with infinate silence. Also, interesting moral ambiguity cos most of them are either oblivious or outright good, just being manipulated by the team’s super scary badass leader Cyrus who’s led them to believe they’re going to ‘fix’ the world to end all sadness for everyone. This weird complexity behind goofy nonsense hair people is what got me hooked on them as my faves!

So who is Charon in particular? Diamond and Pearl got a third version called Platinum that fixed a bunch of glitches and unfinished graphics and expanded upon the rushed endgame, etc. It also (for some reason) added one single extra member to Team Galactic, as seen here on the second furthest from the right. Charon is a grumpy grandpa and he literally does nothing in the plot. Its really confusing why he was actually added, he only gets more than two lines of dialogue if you pursue a secret sidequest waaaaay in the postgame, and he still gets like.. SIX lines of dialogue and not even a boss fight. Poor dude barely exists in this game! So what’s weird is that this wifi event kinda contains more dialogue for him than he ever got in the main game, and it at least gives him a purpose for being here- to introduce the new transformations for Rotom that were added in this wifi event. But it just seems pretty badly handled cos he never even appears in the event and there’s a lot of fan debate that it isnt even meant to be him, blablabla. And he still doesn’t do anything UNLESS you get this wifi event, which is really unfair and probably contributes a lot to his unpopularity, okay sorry I’m starting to ramble...

Basically, all you need to know is that Charon is a grumpy grandpa who does literally nothing in the plot.

The Establishing Of The Grump Gramp This is... kinda necessary to know why this thing hit me so hard in the emotions? This is why I don’t think it would work as well if Mystery Wifi Event Flashback Person actually ISNT Charon. All we see of Charon in his VERY FEW non-optional dialogues is that he is vain, cynical, pompous, greedy and for some reason obsessed with talking like a complete tool. And he’s SO MUCH this that he doesn’t even have any loyalty to his fellow villains, he exists to be like.. The More. Everyone else is some degree of honorable dude doing what they do cos they believe in a good cause, Charon is that one teammate that’s too evil even for the rest of them. Or, like, at least too petty? He’s an eternally incompetant comic relief dumbass who never even has enough imagination to do anything genuinely evil, he’s somehow less dangerous than his morally ambiguous teammates! He’s just sitting here like ‘fuq yeh i luv bein evil cos i can swipe the pocket change outta dis vending machine’, then somehow it falls on him and shatters his old man spine. Meanwhile his boss is being all ‘I want to make a world of smiles!’ *collapses the universe into a black hole and literally summons poke-satan* So ANYWAY the relevant point is that you can see why he’s THE SINGLE MOST UNEXPECTED person to suddenly get a sympathetic backstory!

Some transcript of his tiny non-wifi-event dialogues for comparison of how much of an absolute prick this man be:

” It seems quite obvious to me, Charon, the genius even the boss recognizes.” "Humph. Saturn and even Cyrus fall to a mere child... Perhaps another option needs to be considered. One befitting the genius of Charon!" [This is basically his only dialogue in a normal game run, aside from expositioning a few things that were said by other people in the previous version.]

Postgame optional dungeon text:

“What do they see in Cyrus? Immature, overthinking buffoon. He goes through the trouble of assembling Team Galactic for what? Ultimately, he destroys his own creation for his ludicrous vision. It's no thanks to him that I have to struggle with the pieces." “The young can live with their dreams. I prefer to remain firmly in reality. And for that, money is paramount.” “ With this Magma Stone, I will awaken the legendary Heatran! I will control the volcano's eruptions to extort money by the millions! Fear me! “ [cue him being defeated offscreen in a cutscene by someone else] "...Uh, what are you saying? I know nothing! Extorting with Heatran? Merely the blathering of this harmless old man! All said in jest! Besides, among Team Galactic's Commanders, I was the most junior..." [Seriously, you don’t even get to see what Heatran even is! its just an optional scene to go back after he’s gone and catch the thing.]

So yeah he does literally nothing and all we know is that he’s a jerk and he betrays his evil team only to fail horribly at being his own villain also that he has a Rather Specific Speaking Pattern, which will come up later in linking him to that wifi event BUT ANYWAY literally the rest of the team walks away and leaves him to his fate cos he’s such a jerk literally Jupiter says he’s ‘not fun anymore’ literally a man dressed in a boulder costume bitchslaps him with a giant frog its like the biggest fuckin smackdown and the player didn’t even need to participate, he just self-destructed mid cutscene farewell two paragraphs of dialogue granddad, we will probably never remember you ever

B U T

~ The Transcipt Of The Fabled Wifi Event ~

Extra context: this was probably the worst handled of all the horribly handled wifi events. Makes sense at least, sinnoh was like the beta test for whether such a thing could actually be possible in this series. i’m glad they’re more accessable nowadays, but what sucks is that now we don’t seem to even get as many Actual Events, instead they’re just a plain gift of a pokemon via trade without a fun cutscene :( But yeah it was only accessable for a one month period when the game first released, and the item you got in the vent didnt have enough clues about where and how you were meant to use it in order to find the secret room, unless you already knew it was connected to Charon.

The item for the event is the Secret Key, which is somehow charmingly the least secret secret of all time

You take this to one random spot on a random wall in one of two separate Team Galactic HQs in this game, and the whole damn wall vanishes to reveal Charon’s Secret Lab/The Rotom Room

Here, you can turn Rotom into any of its new transformations. And then, completely optional, is a hidden backstory for this one terrible granddad! The notebook on the bottom desk explains how the transformations work, gameplay-wise, and also ‘hey this secret lab belongs to me specifically, Charon’ The notebook up to the top right on top of the box which you might not have noticed, and might have assumed would just contain more boring tutorials? Hoo boy dude, 99% OF THE EVENT DIALOGUE is in that thing! And you’d think a second hand flashback entirely through longwinded narration would be terrible but man somehow it really just worked for me. RIP my soul, cause of death: this

SO LETS GET GOING TO THE MEAT OF THIS POST, MY FRIEND

If you don’t feel like scrolling thru this textdump, I’d reccommend Chuggaaconroy’s excellent lets play of platinum, where he read out the journal here. (16:25, talks about the various wifi event failures first.) Or if you watch this earlier episode (17:15) you can see the whole mini-dungeon where you can catch Rotom in the first place, which isn’t necessary to understand all this but its still super cool. If you do feel like scrolling, here have the appropriate music, or the appropriate music: anime orchestrated version

+++

"It's an old notebook. There's no telling how old it is."

Our encounter was a sudden one. It was when I found my toy robot, one that I had earlier misplaced. At that instant, a Pokémon startlingly emerged from the lawn mower's motor! Clutching my robot, I stared, transfixed by the peculiar Pokémon.

The Pokémon hovered in the air, held aloft by a power unseen. As if curious and unafraid of my presence, it floated toward me. Crackling sounds accompanied it, as if from static electricity in the air. Remarkably, it seemed the Pokémon was the source of this power! In alarm, I flinched, certain that my face would be subjected to a shock. Much to my surprise, the Pokémon seemed to favor me with a smile.

Finally, I came to realize that the Pokémon only wished to be friends. I have decided to name this most wondrous Pokémon 'Rotom.' Simple though it may be, Rotom emerged to me from the motor of a lawn mower. Motor and Rotom... Surely the link is obvious?

Rotom is a Pokémon that is simply sensational. The fact that it can turn invisible is simply the beginning. What makes Rotom unique is its ability to enter and operate machinery!

Rotom and I became fast friends. We were perpetual companions. The electricity from its body forbade contact, however. We could not touch, let alone hug or hold hands, but we cared not. For we were bonded on a much deeper, incorporeal level.

A feeling of mischief got the better of me one day. Seeing Rotom hovering, I decided to startle it--normally I would not. Perhaps frightened, Rotom discharged power beyond its usual range. I fell, stunned, into the arms of unconsciousness...

When I came to, to my horror I realized that Rotom had disappeared. I searched high and low for my friend in dismay and desperation. 'Don't chastise yourself. The fault is mine. No harm done. Let us play as we always have.' Though my words poured out, my friend could not be found to hear them...

My search for Rotom carried me far from home. It was in the town's rubbish heap that I again found my old toy robot. Curiously, our eyes met, then the robot waved a hand as if in greeting. I knew then that I had found my lost friend. I ran to it and hugged Rotom tight, talking on and on.

The robot's eyes lit up happily as I held it. I'm certain that, within it, Rotom was emitting lots of electricity. Somehow, I felt I could understand Rotom's thoughts better than before. Also, I realized that we would remain friends throughout our lives...

"The notebook ends with this page..."

+++

And this is his one and only trading card, and the biggest canon confirmation that he was indeed intended to be the mysterious author of Eighteen Pages Of How Much I Love To Hug My Friend Don’t tell me he doesn’t become INFINATELY more interesting with this knowledge!

Fuckin hell I would give my left foot to see an expanded plot upon this man’s secret good side seriously HOLY SHIT would you ever have imagined he cared about anyone, let alone THIS MUCH? Just sorry seriously i could talk for hours about this aaa dear god...

Oh and another minor transcript, you can get some dialogue from Rowan the first time you transform Rotom into one of its new forms. Its kinda interesting cos it gives some more Vague Potential Lore that inspires a cool headcanon that him and Charon might have known each other in the past? Cos he seems to know at least some details of that hidden journal...

"A Pokémon that slips into electric appliances, you say... Hmm... That is somewhat off from what I've heard about it. Hmm... This is what I've heard. Long ago, there was a Pokémon that merged with a toy robot. Should that Pokémon be recognized as a new species or not... Debates over the issue were about to start when they were rendered moot. The very topic of discussion--the Pokémon-infused robot--disappeared..."

Also that leads into another possible less-heartwarming interpretation of the whole thing that is actually EQUALLY interesting and ALSO makes Charon way more deep as a character! The idea that maybe this heartwarming thing is completely in the past, and nowadays he actually is 100% a horrible prick. Cos I mean, the one rotom you can find in the game is in that mysterious abandoned fancy old house, which is pretty heavily implied to be the notebook-writer’s childhood home where they met it. You can find a fragmented extra notebook page which seems to be the day before the start of the entries you can read in Charon’s lab. It says "Som...hing so pecu...r shou... make off ...ith the mot..." , which was confirmed to be "Something so peculiar should make off with the motor..." aaaaaallll these years later in an episode of Pokemon Generations. So there’s the interpretation that maybe this rotom you can catch is the same one described in the journal, which makes you wonder why its all alone here if Charon supposedly cared about his friend so much. Perhaps he really was a decent guy once, but when he grew up to be such an evil prick he abandoned his pokemon? or maybe it saw what he became, and ran away? or maybe some other sort of mysterious thing happened to cause them to become separated? There’s so many potential interpretations of this whole thing, aaaa!! Why was such a tantalizing plot point wasted on a super hidden wifi!!!

But of course I like the version where trash gramp has one shred of redeemability in his soul and then hypothetically you could have a sidequest to reunite him with his tiny tangerine friend and convince him of the error of his ways and then EVERYONE CAN HUGS AGAIN

AAAAAAAAAAAAAA

srsly its got the power to make me never stop thinking about this damn wifi event for all these fuckin years giv grandpa justice, dammit

#commander charon #edit cos i linked the wrong video #im sorry i talkd a forever again #i know ive blabbered this repetitive stuff in other posts but this is like a masterpost introduction for newbs to grandpa fandom i guess #plz join our fandom it is like three people #also i wanna see more cute gijinka designs for rotom seriously i never get sick of those #semi unrelated thought lol #i wanna find more rotom fanart in general i think ive reblogged it all lol #i can reccommend Ray from @daily-haunted-tv

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