#probably original so they can give link more characters to interact with on his quest

[athetos]

Btw yes I saw the live action zelda news and yes I am pretending I didn’t

[vickyvicarious]

Leverage Redemption Pros/Cons List

Okay! Now that I've finally finished watching the first half of Leverage: Redemption, I thought I'd kind of sum up my overall impression. Sort of a pro/con list, except a little more just loosely structured rambles on each bullet point rather than a simple list.

This got way out of hand from what I expected so I'm going to put it all under a cut. If you want the actual bulletpoint list, here it is:

PROS

References

Continuity

Nate

Representation

Themes

New Characters

General Vibe

CONS

'Maker and Fixer'

Episode Twins

Sophie's Stagefright

Thiefsome

You might notice the pros list is longer, and that's because I do love the show! I really like most of what it does, and my gripes are fewer in number and mostly smaller in size. But they do exist and I felt like talking about them as well as the stuff I loved.

PROS

References

There is clearly so much love and respect for the original show here. Quite aside from the general situation, there's a lot of references to individual episodes or character traits from the first show. For example, Parker's comments on disliking clowns, liking puppets, disliking horses, stabbing vs. tasing people. The tasing was an ongoing thing in the original, the stabbing happened once (S1) but was referenced later in the original show, the clown thing only had a few mentions scattered across the entire original show. The puppet thing was mentioned once in S5, and the horses thing in particular was only brought up in S1 once. But they didn't miss the chance to put the nod to it in there; in fact with those alone we see a good mix of common/ongoing jokes and smaller details.

We got "dammit Hardison" and "it's a very distinctive..." but also Eliot and Parker arguing about him catering a mob wedding, and Eliot being delighted by lemon as a secret ingredient in a dish in that same episode (another reference to the mob episode). Hardison and Eliot banter about "plan M", an ongoing joke starting from the very first episode of the original show. We see Sophie bring up Hardison's accent in the Ice Job, Parker also makes reference to an early episode when describing "backlash effect" to Breanna, in an episode that also references her brother slightly if you look for it.

Heck, the last episode of these first eight makes a big deal out of nearly reproducing the iconic opening lines of the original show with Fake Nate's "we provide... an advantage." And I mean, all the "let's go steal a ___" with Harry being confused about how to use them.

Some of the lines are more obviously references to the original show, but they strike a decent balance with smaller or unspoken stuff as well, and also mix in some references between the team to events we the audience have never seen. If someone was coming into this show for the first time, they wouldn't get all the easter egg joy but most of the references would stand on their own as dialogue anyway. In general, I think they struck a good balance of restating needed context for new viewers while still having enough standalone good lines and more-fun-if-you-get-it callbacks.

Continuity

Similar to the last point, but slightly different. The characters' development from the original to now is shown so well. I'm not going to go on about this too long, but the writers clearly didn't want to let the original characters stagnate during the offscreen years. There was a lot of real thought put into how they would change or not.

It's really written well. We can see just how cohesive a team Parker, Hardison, and Eliot became. We get a sense of how they've spent their time, and there's plenty of evidence that they remained incredibly close with Sophie and Nate until this past year. The way everyone defers to Parker is different from the original show and clearly demonstrates how she's been well established as the leader for years now - they show this well even as Parker is stepping back to let Sophie take point in these episodes. Eventually that is actually called out by Sophie in the eighth episode, so we might see more mastermind Parker in the back half of the show, maybe. But even with her leading, it's clear how collaborative the team has become, with everyone bouncing ideas off one another and adding their input freely. Sometimes they even get so caught up they leave the newbies completely in the dust. But for the most part we get a good sense of how the Parker/Hardison/Eliot team worked with her having final say on plans but the others discussing everything together. A little bit more collaborative than it was with Nate at the helm.

Meanwhile Sophie has built a home and is deeply attached to it. She and Nate really did retire, at least for the most part, and she was living her happy ending until he died. She's out of practice but still as skilled as ever, and we're shown how much her grief has changed her and how concerned the others are for her.

There's a lot of emphasis on how they all look after one another and the found family is clearer than ever. Sophie even calls Hardison "his father's son" - clearly referring to Nate.

Nate

Speaking of Nate! They handled his loss so, so well. His story was the most complete at the end of the last show, and just from a narrative point, losing him makes the most sense of all the characters. But the way he dies and his impact on the show and the characters continues. It's very respectful to who he was - who he truly was.

Nate was someone they all loved, but he was a deeply flawed individual. Sophie talks about how he burned too hot, but at least he burned - possibly implying to me that his drinking was related to his death. In any case, there's no mystery to it. We don't know how he died but that's not what's most important about his death. This isn't a quest for revenge or anything... it's just a study of grief and trying to heal.

Back to who he really was real quick - the show doesn't eulogize him as better than he was. They're honest about him. From the first episode's toast they raise in his memory, to the final episode where Sophie and Eliot are deeply confused by Fake Nate singing his praises, the team knows who he was. They don't erase his flaws... but at the same time he was so clearly theirs. He was family, he was the man they trusted and loved and followed into incredibly dangerous situations, and whose loss they all still feel deeply.

That said, the show doesn't harp on this point. They reference him, but they don't overwhelm new viewers with a constant barrage of Nate talk. It always serves a purpose, primarily for Sophie's storyline of moving through her grief. Anyway, @robinasnyder said all of this way better than me here, so go read that as well.

Representation

Or should I say, Jewish Hardison, Autistic Parker, Queer Breanna!

Granted, Hardison's religion isn't quite explicitly stated to be Jewish so much as he mentions that his "Nana runs a multi-denominational household", but nonetheless. He gets the shows big thesis statement moment, he gets a beautiful speech about redemption that is the emotional cornerstone of that episode and probably Harry's entire arc throughout the show. And while I'm not Jewish myself, most of what I've seen from Jewish fans is saying that Hardison's words here were excellent representation of their beliefs. (@featherquillpen does a great job in that meta of contextualizing this with his depiction in the original show as well.)

Autistic Parker, however, is shown pretty dang blatantly. She already was very much coded as autistic in the original show, but the reboot has if anything gone further. She sees a child psychologist because she likes using puppets to represent emotions, she stims, she uses cue cards and pre-written scripts for social interactions, there's mention of possible texture sensitivity and her clothes are generally more loose and comfortable. She's gotten better at performing empathy and understanding how people typically work, but it's specifically described as something she learned how to do and she views her brain as being different from ones that work that way (same link). Again, not autistic myself but from what I've seen autistic fans find a lot to relate to in her portrayal. And best of all, this well-rounded and respectful depiction does not show any of these qualities as a lack on her part. There's no more of those kinda ableist comments or "what's wrong with you" jokes that were in the original show. Parker is the way she is, and that allows her to do things differently. She's loved for who she is, and any effort made to fit in is more just to know how so that she can use it to her advantage when she wants to on the job - for her convenience, not others' comfort.

Speaking of loved for who you are.... okay, again, queer Breanna isn't confirmed onscreen yet, and I don't count Word of God as true canon. But I can definitely believe we're building there. Breanna dresses in a very GNC way, and just her dialogue and, I dunno, vibes seem very queer to me. She has a beautiful speech in the Card Game Job about not belonging or being accepted and specifically mentions "the way they love" as one of those things that made her feel like she didn't belong. And that scene is given so much weight and respect. (Not to mention other hints throughout the episode about how much finding her own space meant to her.) Also, the whole theme of feeling rejected and the key for her to begin really flourishing is acceptance for who she is, not any desire for her to be anyone else, is made into another big moment. Yeah, textually that moment is about her feeling like she has to fill Hardison's shoes and worrying about her past, but the themes are there, man.

Themes

I talked a bit about this yesterday, so I'm mostly just going to link to that post, but... this series so far is doing a really good job in my opinion of giving people arcs and having some good themes. Namely the redemption one, from Hardison's speech (which I'm gonna talk a little more about in the next point), and this overall theme of growing up and looking to the future (from above the linked post).

New Characters

Harry and Breanna are fantastic characters. I was kind of worried about Harry being a replacement Nate, but... he really isn't. Sure, he's the older white guy who has an angsty past but it's in a very different way and his personality and relationships with the rest of the crew are correspondingly different. I think the dynamic of a very friendly, cheerful, kind, but still bad guy (as @soundsfaebutokay points out) is a great one to show, and he's got a really cool arc I think of learning to be a better person, and truly understanding Hardison's point about redemption being a process not a goal. His role on the team also has some interesting applications and drawbacks, as @allegorymetaphor talked about. I've kind of grown to think that the show is gradually building up to an eventual Sophie/Harry romance a ways down the line, and I'm actually here for it. Regardless, his relationships with everyone are really interesting.

As for Breanna, first of all and most importantly I love her. Secondly, I think she's got a really interesting story. She's a link to Hardison's past, and provides a really interesting perspective for us as someone younger who has grown up a) looking up to Leverage and b) in a bleaker and more hopeless world. Breanna's not an optimist, and she's not someone who was self-sufficient and unconcerned with the rest of the world at the start, like everyone else. She believes that the world sucks and she wants it to be better, but she doesn't know how to make that happen. She outright says she's desperate and that's why she's working with Leverage. At the same time, Breanna is pretty down on herself and wants to prove herself but gets easily shaken by mistakes or being scolded, which is a stark contrast to Hardison's general self-confidence. There are several times when she starts to have an idea then hesitates to share it, or expects her emotions to be dismissed, or gets really disheartened when she's corrected or rejected, or dwells on her mistakes, or when she is accepted or praised she usually takes a surprised beat and is shy about it (she almost always looks down and away from the person, and her smile is often small or startled). Breanna looks up to the team so much (Parker especially, then probably Eliot) and she wants to prove herself. It's going to be so good to see her grow.

General Vibe

A brief note, but it seems a fitting one to end on. The show keeps it's overall tone and feeling from the original show. The fun, the competency porn, the bad guys and clever plans and happy endings. It's got differences for sure, but the characters are recognizably themselves and the show as a whole is recognizably still Leverage. For the most part they just got the feeling right, and it's really nice.

CONS (no, not that kind)

'Maker and Fixer'

So when I started writing this meta earlier today, I was actually a lot more annoyed by the lack of unique 'maker' skills being shown by Breanna. Basically the only time she tries to use a drone, the very thing she introduced herself as being good at, it breaks instantly. I was concerned about her being relegated into just doing what Hardison did, instead of bringing her own stuff to the table. But the seventh episode eased some of those fears, and the meta I just wrote for someone else asking about Breanna's 'maker' skills as shown this season made me realize there's more nuance than that. I'd still like to have seen more of that from her, but for now the fact that we don't see a lot of 'maker' from her so far seems more like a character decision based in Breanna's insecurities.

Harry definitely gets more 'inside man' usage. His knowledge as a 'fixer' comes in handy several times. Nonetheless, I'm really curious if there are any bigger ways to use it, aside from him just adding in some exposition/insight from time to time. I'm not even entirely sure how much more they can pull from this premise in terms of relevant skills, but I hope there's more and I'd like to see it. Maybe a con built more around him playing a longer role playing his old self, like they tried in the Tower Job? Maybe it's more a matter of him needed distance from that part of his past, being unable to face it without lashing out - in that case it could be a good character growth moment possibly for him to succeed in being Scummy Lawyer again down the line? I dunno.

Episode Twins

This was something small that kind of bothered me a little earlier in the season. It's kind of the negative side to the references, I guess? And I'm not even sure how much it annoys me really, but I just kinda noticed and felt sort of weird about it.

Rollin' on the River has a lot of references/callbacks to the The Wedding Job.

The Tower Job has a lot of references/callbacks to The White Rabbit Job.

The Paranormal Hacktivity Job has a lot of references/callbacks to the Future Job.

I guess I was getting a little concerned that there would be a 'match this episode' situation where almost every new Redemption episode is very reminiscent of an old one. I love the callbacks, but I don't want to see a lack of creativity in this new show, and this worried me for a minute. Especially when it was combined with all three of those episodes dealing with housing issues of some kind. Now, that's a huge concern for a lot of people, and each episode has its own take on a different problem within that huge umbrella, but it still got me worried about a lack of variety in topics/cases.

The rest of the episodes failing to line up so neatly in my head with older episodes helped a lot to ease this one, though. Still, this is my complaining section so I figured I'd express my concerns as they were at the time. Even if I no longer really worry about it much.

Sophie's Stagefright

Yeah, I know this is just a small moment in a single episode, but it annoyed me! Eliot made a bit of a face at Sophie going onstage, but I thought it was just him being annoyed at the general situation. However, they started out with her being awful up there until she realized the poem was relevant to the con - at which point her reading got so much better.

This felt like a complete betrayal of Sophie's beautiful moment at the end of the original show where she got over her trouble with regular acting and played Lady Macbeth beautifully in front of a full theater of audience members. This was part of the con, but only in the sense that it gave her an alibi/place to hide, and I always interpreted it as her genuinely getting over her stagefright problems. It felt like such a beautiful place to end her arc for that show, especially after all her time spent directing.

Now, her difficulty onstage in the Card Game Job was brief and at the very beginning of being up on stage. @rinahale suggested to me that maybe it was a deliberate tactic to draw the guy's attention, and the later skill was simply her shifting focus to make the sonnet easier for Breanna to listen to and interpret, but he seemed more enraptured when she was doing well than otherwise in my opinion and it just doesn't quite sit well with me. My other theory was that maybe she just hasn't been up on stage in a long time, and much like she complaining about being rusty at grifting before the team pushed her into trying, she got nervous for a moment at the very beginning. The problem there is that I think she'd definitely still get involved in theater even when she and Nate were retired. I guess she could've quit after he died, and a year might be long enough to make her doubt herself again, but... still.

I just resent that they even left it ambiguous at all. Sophie's skills should be solid on stage at this point in my opinion.

Thiefsome

...And now we come to my main complaint. This is, by far, the biggest issue I have with the show.

I feel like I should put a disclaimer here that I had my doubts from the beginning about the thiefsome becoming canon onscreen. I thought the famous "the OT3 is safe" tweet could easily just mean that they are all still alive and well, or all still working together, without giving us confirmation of a romantic relationship. Despite this, the general fandom expectations/hopes really got to me, especially with the whole "lock/pick/key" thing. I tried to temper my expectations again when the character descriptions came out and only mentioned Hardison loving Parker, not Eliot, but I still got my hopes up.

The thing is, I was disappointed pretty quickly.

The very first episode told me that in all likelihood we would never see Hardison and Parker and Eliot together in a romantic sense. Oh, there was so much coding. So much hinting. So much in the way of conversations that were about Parker/Hardison's relationship but then Eliot kept getting brought into them. They were portrayed as a unit of three.

But then there was this.

I love all of those scenes of Parker and Hardison being intimate and loving and comfortable with one another and their relationship. I really do. But it didn't escape my notice that there's nothing of the sort with Eliot. If they wanted a canon onscreen thiefsome, it would by far make the most sense to just have it established from the start. But there aren't any scenes where Eliot shares the same kind of physical closeness with either of them like they do each other. Parker and Hardison kiss; he doesn't kiss anyone. They have several clearly romantic conversations when alone; he gets important conversations with both but the sense of it being romantic isn't there.

Establishing Eliot as part of the relationship after Hardison is gone just... doesn't make any sense. It would be more likely to confuse new viewers, to make them wonder if Parker is cheating on Hardison with Eliot, or if they have a Y shaped relationship rather that a triangle. It would be so much clumsier.

Still, up until the Double-Edged-Sword Job I believed the writers might keep it at this level of 'plausible hinting but not quite saying'. There's a lot of great stuff with all of them, and I never expecting making out or whatever anyway; a cheek-kiss was about the height of my hopes to be honest. I mostly just hoped for outright confirmation and, failing that, I was happy enough to have the many hints and implications.

But then Marshal Maria Shipp came along. And I don't really have anything against her as a character - in fact, I think she has interesting story potential and will definitely come back. But the episode framed her fight with Eliot as a sexyfight TM, much like his fight with Mikel back in the day. And then his flirting with her rode the line a little of "he's playing her for the con" and "he's genuinely flirting." The scene where he tells her his real name is particularly iffy, but actually was the one that convinced me he was playing her. Because he seems to be watching her really closely, and to be very concerned about her figuring out who he really is. I am very aware though that I'm doing a lot of work to interpret it the way I want. On surface appearance, Eliot's just flirting with an attractive woman, like he did on the last show. And that's probably the intention, too.

But the real nail in the coffin for me was when Sophie compared herself and Nate to Eliot and Maria. That was a genuine scene, not the continuation of the teasing from before. And Sophie is the one whose insight into people is always, always trustworthy. She is family to the thiefsome. For this to make any sense, either Eliot/Parker/Hardison isn't a thing, or they are and Sophie doesn't know - and I can't imagine why in the hell she wouldn't know.

Any argument to make them still canon leaves me unsatisfied. If she knows and they haven't admitted it to her - why wouldn't they, after all this time? Why would she not have picked up on it even without an outright announcement? Some people suggested they wouldn't admit it because they thought Nate would be weird about it, but that doesn't seem any more in character to me than the other possibilities. In fact, the only option that doesn't go against my understanding of these people and their observational abilities/the close relationship they share.... is that the thiefsome is not a thing.

And furthermore, the implication of this conversation - especially the way it ended, with Eliot stomping off looking embarrassed while Sophie smiled knowingly - is that Eliot will get into another relationship onscreen. Maybe not a full-blown romantic relationship. But the Maria Shipp tension is going to be resolved somehow, and at this point I'm half-expecting a hook-up simply because of Sophie's reaction and how much I trust her judgement of such things. Even if she's letting her grief cloud her usual perceptiveness... it feels iffy.

It just kinda feels like I wasn't even allowed to keep my "interpret these hints/maybe they are" thiefsome that I expected after the first couple episodes convinced me we wouldn't get outright confirmation. (I mean, I will anyway, and I love the hints and allusions regardless.) And while I'm definitely not the kind of fan who is dependent on canon for my ships, and still enjoy all their interactions/will keep right on headcanoning them all in a relationship, it's just.... a bummer.

Feels like a real cop-out. Like the hints of Breanna being queer are enough to meet their quota and they won't try anything 'risky' like a poly relationship. I dunno. It's annoying.

.

That's the end of the list! Again, overall I love the new show a lot and have few complaints.

[the-ghost-king]

love seeing ur tags on my posts it means i get to think 🥰🥰 anyway mostly agree but at least to me nico’s constant need to prove himself is a sign of feeling like he’s not worth other people’s time and effort and he has to MAKE himself worth it. he does all he can in the hopes that people will notice him and tell him that he’s good enough because he relies on the approval of people he loves. he thinks love is something conditional for him and that he always has to be earning it because he doesn’t have enough worth to have it just granted to him. again this is more my own interpretation of his character and possibly a bit of projection

(Post)

I will not fail to acknowledge that I might also be projecting somewhat onto Nico, what is media but self reflection? I think there's a couple ways you can see Nico that are canonically "correct"

What I personally think happened with Nico is that he was aware he was worth more than the treatment he was receiving, but because so much rejection occurred he eventually just assumed he was the problem. There's things on this I would rewrite now but it holds up okay in what I'm about to try and explain.

The thing about being rejected is that the first time you argue it's the other person. And the second time you'll argue it's still them. If you're still arguing it's other people the third time, maybe but it's thin ice... But eventually you just have to accept that you're at fault.

I think this is something that really describes Nico. He is never able to nestle himself in the comfort of sameness after a certain point. He is not given authority in his own story in the beginning, he is thrust into solitude, he is told he is a monster already and if not then he has no choice but to become one.

And he takes this blame upon himself, believing that it's him who has to prove himself. He doesn't acknowledge that maybe other people have their own biases against him, he says "I have to prove them wrong," and then does his best.

It's important to note that Nico is definitely grappling with Childhood Emotional Neglect, he's in a broken situation- and he recognizes that nobody wants him around, and that he's just more stress for an already stressed group of people, so he just backs down and starts to figure stuff out for himself. We see him accept some help and friendship from The Stolls in TTC but eventually he stops doing this at some point.

His leave from camp and time with Minos is when he is used:

you unknowingly wear your heart on your sleeve and people will see this and take advantage of your trusting nature and unconditional love and they’ll never really love you they’ll just see you as an easy tool to be manipulated and used how they see fit and you won’t recognize that this is a bad thing because you don’t believe you’re worth anything more than this

This is something I would say is very true about this time period of Nico's life. Minos emotionally exploits Nico, emotional neglect and abuse (possibly physical abuse, who knows) are defining characteristics of their interactions. Nico talks about how Minos will just randomly leave him for extremely long periods with no assistance, and about how when he's around he's always telling Nico to try harder, to do better, do more. Note the time he tells Nico "you have no power over me", he's definitely holding things over Nico's head. I don't think it's wrong to assume comfort is a part of that, Nico is alone all the time at this point, and I'm sure he's starved for touch, and support, and connection- and he will take whatever he can get whether or not it is good or right.

At first he doesn't do anything against this, and it might be because he was so starved for attention that he was willing to endure abuse to receive somewhat a consistent form of it. I also think there's some evidence that points to the idea Nico was getting something from Minos, training and similar stuff, it's possible he was willing to form and upkeep a toxic relationship with him in order to gain experience.

However, I do disagree with "and you won’t recognize that this is a bad thing because you don’t believe you’re worth anything more than this" because Nico does realize eventually that his situation isn't sustainable and that he has to do something- so he takes his narrative back into his own hands:

“Minos laughed. "You have no power over me. I am the god of spirits! The ghost king!" "No." Nico drew his sword. "I am.” (X)

So Nico, if he ever thought he was worth the treatment of being used for someone elses personal gain, he definitely overcomes some of it here, if not all of it. Nico is manipulated and used for Minos's personal gain, but he recognizes that it's not sustainable and makes a stand for himself. And this is the first time in the series where Nico truly is able to take control of his own narrative, everything before this moment is Nico being forced, or Nico with something looming over him, Nico crowning himself is him claiming his story.

So let's consider Hades in all of this, I don't think Hades manipulated Nico to the extent Minos did- but nonetheless, he did manipulate and abuse him, and this hurt Nico more than when Minos did it. Again, in the situation with Hades this is also true, "you unknowingly wear your heart on your sleeve and people will see this and take advantage of your trusting nature and unconditional love and they’ll never really love you they’ll just see you as an easy tool to be manipulated and used how they see fit and you won’t recognize that this is a bad thing". By the time Nico and Hades truly start interacting, we see that Nico's heart hasn't been fully removed from his sleeve, but it may have been lightened.

Here's the thing about the way Nico approached Hades, it's not naïve to trust family. The text in multiple places implies that Hades was around for at least a handful of years when Nico was a kid, it's not unlikely that Nico may have taken naps on his shoulder, held his hand to cross the street, maybe called him "Papa", "Dad", or "Tata" (Italian, English, old Greek). It makes sense that Nico goes to him, what doesn't make sense to Nico at first is that Hades would manipulate him. Unlike many of the other demigods, Nico knows he was a choice, and that at some point he was something wanted, so he expects some level of okay treatment from Hades. Hades loved his mother, and Hades if not wanting of Nico would have wanted Maria's wishes fulfilled, and Nico probably remembers Hades treating him warmly- or at least not harshly. The way Nico went to Hades makes sense, he wasn't expecting open arms surely, but he also wasn't expecting abuse.

Hades emotionally exploits Nico by using information about Maria, what would a little boy want more than the safety of his mother? He's so starved for human contact, who ever held him more than his mother? Who ever loved him more than her? Once Nico delivers Percy to Hades, his father crushes him, not only by harming Percy but by exploiting Nico's trust through Nico's mother- one of the things he's most desperate for.

We see Nico's heart come off his sleeve at this point, maybe not fully, but enough to where a stranger couldn't recognize it at first glance, and in a way where he has the means to hide it from most.

Except we don't see much of this, because the series is narrated by Percy- and Nico can't hide his heart from Percy.

Almost everything Nico does, everything he tries to do, is for Percy. Nico is so desperate for contact that he is pliant, but in Percy's hands Nico actually wants that contact, he's not interested in imitations of love or substitutes- he's looking for the real thing.

And Mr. Oblivious does-Annabeth-like-me Jackson isn't in any headspace to realize that a boy might like him, let alone Nico. This concern that Nico will join Luke, isn't entirely because Percy is misreading signals, but it's definitely part of it. Nico likes Percy so much that at one point he is willing to go to Tartarus if not entirely for him, then partially for him.

If Percy had realized, and rejected Nico- maybe he would have joined Luke, or at least he definitely would have been more likely to. The perception of Nico we get in PJO from Percy is unreliable, because Percy looks at Nico through the lenses of a concerned older brother, and Percy feels guilty in some way for the situation Nico is in. This gives not only a skewed, but slightly falsified narrative of who Nico is.

The original post of mine I linked, although yes, I would like to rewrite aspects of it now it holds up in the sense that Nico is always trying to prove himself, and this is a bit different than being a puppet. Nico is so starved that it is present in everything, @/arabnico gets it right:

nico’s longing is just so raw it consumes him whole and he cannot hide it at all because it reflects in absolutely everything he does and is nico’s just the means of the way for them and he settles for being it because he doesn’t think he can be much better or even deserves to it is sometting so twisted because nico has this innate utalitarian desire to be useful and to do something and to do the right thing but in the game of things he’s reduced to that puppet in the hands of fate and deities millennia older than him that see a wounded wandering soul doomed to be forever alone by a destiny so cruel it keeps him on his knees

Nico, in PJO especially, has little control over his own narrative. His mother is killed in punishment for his father's "wrongs", Nico is forced to endure this. Bianca grows tired of caring for Nico and leaves him behind, this is not Nico's fault but Nico is forced to endure the consequences of her actions. Bianca's fate is decided on a quest Nico isn't even able to go on, he is forced to endure the results. Nico then breaks the cycle, declaring himself The Ghost King, and dethroning Minos. Nico is forced to endure Hades's manipulation only because he did not see it coming, this wasn't an aspect in which Nico didn't have his narrative (he had already taken ownership of his narrative) but a blind spot in his rational.

The place where we vary is why Nico behaves this way, we can agree that it's because he's starving for human connection- but you believe it's because he has no confidence he is willing to submit himself, while I see his submission as an act of desperation.

Personally, I think to argue that Nico is like this as a result of lack of confidence does a disservice to his narrative (obviously it's fine to view him however you wish, and I wish you all the fun in doing so!). To boil this down to starvation and lack of confidence removes some level of Nico's autonomy in his own life, but also strips him of one of his strongest characteristics- those qualities of him which are like Orpheus.

Nico willing to go to the ends of the earth for love is not a weakness but a strength, his ability to carry on beyond the point in which he needs a rest is not a weakness but a sign of strength. His ability to go to the ends of the earth to right wrongs, and to show his love:

"... Cupid struck, slapping Nico sideways into a granite pedestal. Love is no game! It is no flowery softness! It is hard work- a quest that never ends. It demands everything from you- especially the truth. Only then does it yield rewards."

Cupid is explaining Nico's idea of love in this scene, we see Jason say he prefers Piper's idea of love- but Nico only knows love in the way cupid describes, working desperately for a few moments with Bianca, working just to hear any scrap of information about his mother, always trying to prove himself to Percy- to overcome the way he feels about Percy (and boys in general).

Nico has only known love as something you walk to the ends of the Earth for, but he never stops fighting to be loved and acknowledged. Lesser men would give up and lay down, accept they are unworthy, but Nico keeps pushing to be acknowledged and accepted- to be recognized and loved without having to walk to the end of the Earth, but Nico knows he has to walk to that edge and face it before unconditional love will come to him.

To imply that Nico seeks love the way he does because he's unconfident in his ability to receive love ignores the idea that he's had his life forced into this position because of the fates. It loses acknowledgment to the strength it takes to pick yourself up and walk to the end of the Earth time and time again, because if he was unconfident then he would eventually lay down and accept he shouldn't be loved ever again.

I don't think confidence doesn't play into this at all though, it definitely has some impact on Nico, he does view himself as inherently less (he is overly self sacrificial- think Tartarus :/), and he does try to remove himself from others:

You yourself said: you blame yourself for the way people have hurt you, taken advantage of you, and abandoned you. they exploit your love and your naïveté time and time again. you tell yourself, surely, there must be something wrong with you. because—you are convinced—that people are good. “if they hurt me, it is because i am flawed. it is because i am weak. people will always hurt me—even people i love. it’s an inevitable truth for me.” (X)

And this connects to what I said: "The thing about being rejected is that the first time you argue it's the other person. And the second time you'll argue it's still them. If you're still arguing it's other people the third time, maybe but it's thin ice... But eventually you just have to accept that you're at fault."

I do think there's a reason Nico makes himself so "utilitarian", because he hasn't been handed unconditional love since Bianca. But again we disagree on the why, I see Nico's behavior in his utilitarian example of love as caring, the way more people should be in love. Too many people see love as something given without restraint, and yeah, love should be unconditional but in order for love to be unconditional you have to do the work to lay good foundation. To be utilitarian in loving is not an act of weakness, or a symbol of lack of confidence, it is a showcase of more care in love than most have to offer. We care for things, and place value on them determined by how much love and care goes into those things.

I also don't see Nico's self blaming for what happened as flawed, it's logical in his situation, and a common result of CEN. This self blame shows care and kindness, and this coincides with Nico's arcs, "If I am bad, how do I improve? If I have no choice but to be evil, how do I still be good?". Nico is always fighting not to be recognized for good or bad, but to be recognized for what he is.

Trust is not naivety either, the only reason Nico is regarded as naïve is because of the extreme circumstances of his life. People shouldn't have to expect abuse from people who are supposed to love them, people should have to accept abuse in order to receive love. If Nico's life had turned out different, his naivety wouldn't be viewed as a weakness but a strength- a kindness.

We're not actually viewing Nico all that different, there's this space where his character blurs together, and it becomes an individual duty to determine at what point a flaw becomes a strength, and a strength a flaw. Nico's stubbornness is a flaw if we're thinking about grudges, but it's a strength in his work ethic. Nico's ability to stand on his own is a strength in terms of questing, but it's a flaw when it prevents him from experiencing love in fullness.

[mybg3notebook]

Gale Summarised Analysis

Disclaimer Game Version: All these analyses were written up to the game version v4.1.104.3536 (Early access). As long as new content is added, and as long as I have free time for that, I will try to keep updating this information. Written in May 2021.

The majority of sources used for this article are in the game itself (this includes my Gale-solo playthroughs as well as a combination of the videos by munmomuu and selphie1999), and the few dev’s notes provided by pjenn. Gale as origin is not taken into account since it’s not finished and has little to none Gale-related content. There will be little datamining content as well since pjenn said the game contained almost no gale-related notes (only in the Weave and in the Revelation scene).

Additional disclaimers about meta-knowledge and interpretations in (post)

The number between brackets [] represents the topic-block related to (this post), which gathers as much evidence as I could get.

We can infer about Gale by analysing what he approves and disapproves of. Sometimes, we can even lightly infer some information from his neutral reactions, but let’s be honest: this way of analysing a char is pretty poor since it leaves everything to speculation. Neutral reactions can only be analysed, in very rare instances, by contrasting the same situation in other contexts, and seeing what other options Gale approves or disapproves of. With these considerations in mind, we can proceed to describe this character.

Disclaimer: this is a meta with my personal interpretation of the character, sticking as much as possible to the facts and leaving little to “desires” or “projections” of what I want him to be. If I do so, I will state it explicitly in the text for the sake of analysis honesty. I want to be clear about what is canon (facts shown in bg3 EA), from what’s personal interpretation with little proof.

Understanding Gale (integrated text)

We are none of us monsters. We are merely hatcheries for monstrous things. So we fight them

---Gale 

Collecting most of the information provided in-game, we know he has a cat, a Library, and writes poetry sometimes. One of the first things that Gale will reveal is that he is a private person. He easily and clearly sets boundaries from the first moment, showing Tav where they stand. The second aspect he makes us aware of is his pragmatic thinking and his preference for diplomatic approaches. A third aspect that stands out on its own: he is a very verbose person, maybe as a result of his academia background in combination with his poetry hobby. He also has a bad posture when talking, but I’m not sure if this is intentional or a bug.

We can assure that Gale certainly is a man of the city [13], and may have a decent social status. It's impossible to say for sure if it's noble or rich or both, or it is just a natural consequence of being a wizard scholar: he is frustrated by the harshness of the camping life, he misses the civilisation of the city which offers well cooked meals, soft beds, and scented baths. Not by chance he is the only companion in the group who would approve of giving Oskar 200 gold to fight “the discomforts of the road” [13]. However, he adapts. Despite the lack of luxuries, he managed to survive in the wilderness.

Gale and his link with magic is unquestionable. Magic is life for Gale, metaphorically and literally speaking since it's magic what allows him to stay alive despite the "orb" in his chest. If we talk about Magic, we have to talk about Mystra and the Weave. The Weave is not only the embodiment of Mystra, it's an extension of Mystra herself. It extends across many planes of existence and is in almost all parts of Faerûn. By dragging power from it, Magic can be performed. 

Mystra, for lore reasons and conjectures that I will discuss in the post "Mystra and her Chosen ones", turned teenager/young adult Gale into one of her Chosen, making their relationship more intimate and granting Gale a deeper access to the Weave. This put Gale into the category of an archwizard. It's clear that Gale was and still is a devotee of Mystra, which could give us a hint of his alignment since she is a neutral good goddess and she expects for her Chosen to align around it.

Gale likes confidence, in others and in himself. He is confident in his looks (he has described himself as a “handsome devil” and answered during the romance/Revelation scene that he knew he was beautiful under the light as well as Tav). But beyond these two lines, qualifying him as a narcissist seems extreme. He is surely very confident about his knowledge, and we see he is not just mere words: his Mind Flayer knowledge is at the the same level of what githyankis know. If we compare how Astarion/Tav struggled with the book of Thay, and then we see how Gale manages it (sadly the scene is not complete yet in EA, and there is almost no datamining info of Gale), we can conclude once more that his knowledge and power of the mind are real (he is, so far, the main companion who allows us to explore the lore of the game in a deeper way during his conversations). We also know it's a bit more complicated to intrude into his mind using the tadpole because he has knowledge and mental tools to protect himself (check the post about the Tadpole inside Gale). He is certainly a very verbose and confident scholar, who knows his limits, and in occasions he seems to dabble into an ego-teasing play as an attempt of levity, displaying his “insufferable side”, as he has described himself (his self-awareness of these traits is remarkable, and it is the reason why I avoid qualifying him as arrogant. Arrogant chars are hardly self-aware of their own bad manners or insufferable traits). But we can see it's usually done as a joke or, with an evil Tav, as an aggressive reaction. For a deep analysis of this aspect, check the post about "Gale Hypotheses- Part 2", section: "Narcissism". 

Based on his approvals and disapprovals, we can see that Gale has a strong preference in avoiding fights, violence, and bloodshed [1]. He will always prefer diplomatic and persuasive approaches [2]. Reasoning is his best weapon, but if the individual we are dealing with can hardly be persuaded, he would approve of a deception or an intimidation as long blood is not spilt. Here is where we see his pragmatism in action, all the time. His primary goal at every moment is to avoid bloodshed. His philosophy could be summed up in the line “the means [as long as they don’t kill gratuitously] hardly matter if the end is worthy”. And for Gale, nothing is more worthy than life [3]. This doesn't cover only the life of innocents he cares about, it includes the life of the most dubious characters as well, such as Rugan or Crusher. Gratuitous death is meaningless for him. During the scene of Nettie we can have a glimpse of his philosophy towards life: he viscerally hates treating life as if it were nothing: 

Gale: How dare she snuff out life with as much thought as snuffing out a bloody candle? […] It's not right to feel the cold breath of death in your neck, then move on as if it was nothing but a soothing breeze. One respects life by fighting for it, and one respects death by fearing it.

Gale: One should never be afraid to live life to the fullest.

Probably the limited amount of life he has due to the "orb" increased his sense of respect for life and its celebration. I personally understand Gale as a character who embodies the perspectives of a seriously ill person, knowing that their life may be short, but they will try to make the best out of it. 

He doesn't only respect life per se, he also cares about its dignity. This can be seen in his explicit rejection to undead existences such as Connor (he explains that it would be merciful to put an end to his undead nightmare), or in his disapprovals of humiliation and torture [9]

 We could suspect that this emphasis in protecting any life comes from the fact that only people who are alive can (sometimes) be forgiven or/and change. This is not explicit, but since he is a character who talks about being better and wiser than his previous self, about acknowledging mistakes, about forgiveness, this interpretation seems reasonable. 

These concepts of kindness and compassion combined with “the mistakes of the youth” are repetitive in his interactions and approvals [5,12]. Of course, they echo in his soul since they are reflections and desires of his own experience. This pattern covers forgiving children in particular [5], and disapproving hard judgements [16], especially on matters whose story is not fully understood by Tav. This means he doesn't like quick judgements when he doesn't know the whole story first. This scenario can be easily seen during Karlach's quest, he reserves his judgment until knowing Karlach's side: There are always two sides to each story.

Gale: I have to say I don't know if agreeing to this hunt was such a wise idea. Who's to say who's the real villain in this tale of devils and masquerades? [...]When we track Karlach down, let's chat before we chop.

Similar concept appears during his Revelation scene, when he encourages and keeps asking Tav to listen to him first before judging. This is also the reason why in his Loss scene he would disapprove if Tav quickly assumes that his loss of Mystra was due to arrogance. Tav judged him without knowing the whole story. However, once Tav knows the whole story, Gale will accept any judgement from them without approval penalties during the Revelation scene.

He approves all actions that imply helping others in hard times and disapproves of them if they were done out of greed [4]. He is an animal lover [6,7]. Being kind to animals and treating them good will increase his approval, while animal cruelty will earn his disapproval. Same goes for humanoids: any display of gratuitous violence that could have been prevented with a trick or a diplomatic approach, any humiliation forced upon others, any torture or situation of slavery, is disapproved [8, 9, 11]. 

In particular, Gale seems to advocate the philosophy of “give others their own medicine”[18] or in other words: poetic justice. We can see this during the Myconid colony; he approves of helping the Myconid to avenge the young killed by the Duergar, adding the comment: “Wicked killers deserve wicked ends”. He is implying to give them a similar, wicked medicine to the Duergars. Another less deadly situation of this kind is shown during the foot situation with Crusher: Gale is the one suggesting “pungent poetic justice” and telling Tav that they should force Crusher to kiss their feet. 

The most iconic scene, however, is during Nettie's, if Tav lies during her interrogation. As a hot-headed reaction, Gale states that he would have poisoned Nettie if this situation would have happened to him. Although, after calming down, he approves of and confirms Tav's actions [if Tav managed to persuade Nettie to give them the antidote]

Gale: A taste of her own medicine is what she deserves! […] But you handled it, and you handled it well. 

 In this scene we also see a pattern: Gale is shown as a fallible human; his most visceral reaction during the first moment is anger and indignation, giving us a hint that he is not so rational when it comes to emotional states. An extremely obvious, human concept. 

The scene of Nettie trying to kill a potential menace (the victim of a MF) reverberated in his consciousness, projecting immediately a fact in his mind: if he ever dares to reveal his "orb" problem, and anyone knows what a danger he represents—no matter how stable it looks—people will want to remove the menace by killing him. 

This is the reason behind his words “It's just that, had it been me... had it been...” Gale knows that this simplistic and common thinking in removing what's dangerous would end up turning into a more destructive tragedy in his case than in any infected victim of the tadpoles. So this combination makes us see, for the first time, an emotional Gale. After some seconds, he cools down and returns to his more rational, diplomatic, and moderate self. What we can read here is that Gale would be very prone to rush decisions or to make mistakes under emotional circumstances. We will learn later that the other mistake he made under emotional stress ended up with the "orb" stuck in his chest. A third mistake was done during the party, once more under the emotional stress of a potential abandonment by Tav due to the true nature of the orb. 

Everything related to the “orb”—which is his most traumatic experience—naturally makes him more emotional and prone to mistakes. To see how truly traumatic the "orb" is in his life we can notice the following patterns during the meeting scene: he speaks about the tadpole in a relaxed, rational way, despite the traumatising experience. He first asks for an archwizard instead of for a cleric, because his priority is the orb. Gale's main fear is not the tadpole, but the orb. If we remember his words after the consumption of the artefacts, we realise he lives in a permanent state of anxiety and raw fear, and probably pain too, given his facial gesticulation when anything interacts with the "orb" (whether artefacts or Tav's hand). His banter with Shadowheart reinforces the concept that he always has a knot in the stomach. When he accepts the deal with Raphael, it seems to be related to the orb, not to the tadpole. The effect of the "orb" has ceased, but the tadpole is still in Gale's head since we still need to roll against a high DC and not only against a 1DC during this scene, so we can assume he still has the tadpole despite Raphael's deal. See the post about "The Tadpole" in Gale for more details.

Gale is a character that represents human experiences deeply related to growing up: mistakes done in the past, and the acceptance of not being forgiven despite the desire of wanting to. This can be easily seen during the conversation of the second tadpole dream, where Gale's mood is foul and we learn that his deepest desire is for Mystra to forgive him, but he also knows it's impossible for that to happen. He detects the lie in this dream because he has accepted that Mystra will never forgive him. Gale is the story of mistakes done during youth with grave consequences, of acknowledging them and trying to make them right, of surviving those mistakes, and depending on the interpretation, he is also the story of an ill dying man, with a gentle vision and deep care for life. 

The great majority of his approvals are based on actions that show kindness and compassion, both reiterative concepts that are so important in his character that they come from his lips when we see the goblin party: 

Gale: The shadow within is spreading like poison, corrupting kindness and compassion. [Only after a tough DC of 15]

In combination with: Gale: I don't know myself anymore. All this... It's not who I am. Around you, I'm not who I want to be. I should leave. 

These lines show how, in a sudden change to an evil path, Gale would start doubting his own morality, explaining that the cause of it is the "orb" itself, corrupting the most core aspects of his personality. This corruption may or may not be lore-related. It's not completely clear what Gale's "orb" truly is. For more details, check the post of the "Orb".

 His constant critical thinking comes from his advocacy to non-conventionality [15]: a true scholar will always explore all the options and hypotheses before reaching a conclusion. Therefore, Gale would approve of any non-conventional way to fix a problem [15] as long as it doesn't potentially cause harm or bloodshed [1,2,3,8,9]. Due to his own background, Gale will always advise to be very careful of the consequences of one’s actions. This can be easily seen when, after encountering the caged goblin Sazza, Gale would advocate to explore the possibility of reaching Gut Priestess to cure the tadpole. However, when Tav helps Sazza to escape, Gale will comment briefly against this action.

Gale: I know I said it's not inconceivable a goblin priestess could help us. And yet... was it really wise to set another goblin free so she can arrange introductions? […] consider the consequences. What if she leads her entire tribe to the grove? Tav: I don't care, I owe this grove no allegiance. Gale: No allegiance, no. Though we don't need to sign its death warrant

Once more we see that Gale is up to using any (unharming) means to get a goal, but not at any cost. He has a clear line he doesn't like to cross: life [3]. Avoiding putting other people's lives in danger is very important for him. We see this concept over and over in most scenes.

He doesn't likerushed decisions, and in that same train of thoughts, he will disapprove any use of unknown magic or tricks when nobody in the group can truly understand how they work [17], for example the tadpoles or Raphael's deal (he is against accepting it quickly, but he will approve of having a more cautious attitude and carefully thinking about it). 

Since the moment we meet him, we can infer he is obsessed with the artefacts. It's obviously understandable: he doesn't want to die, but also, he doesn't want to kill all those that will be caught in the eruption of the orb. For this reason he will insist on the loot in the Temple Ruins despite knowing that grave robbery is not correct. 

Gale: Bad form, isn't it? Grave robbing? […] Let's have a look at the loot. It isn't for your pockets only. 

He keeps pondering life over death: although he respects the dead, he will always value more the living creatures in the present. This is also what pushes Gale to suggest Tav to open Rugan's chest. Stealing from the evil Zhentarins is not something that will weigh on his consciousness too much. Besides, he knows it belongs to a wizard: meaning that the chance for it to contain a powerful artefact is really high. Similar suggestions will be said about the Idol of Silvanus, but talking with him in the camp will show us that he won't approve of taking it, only as a last resort. He keeps pondering the living over a sacred piece of stone, since he knows the druids won't take the stealing very peacefully. Once more we see Gale's respect and care for life, trying to minimise damage as much as the circumstances allow him.

Gale is also a survivalist. He doesn't want to die, he loves celebrating life in its more mundane and small details. He is an emotional character for a wizard, a bit strange since they are usually portrayed as more rational and cold, losing their lives among dusty books. However, Gale has shown in many scenes that he prefers to survive without killing, but if he has to, he will do it, dealing with the weight of it in his consciousness because killing unprovoked affects him (scene in the camp after killing the druids, or the goblin party scene). 

His moral in preventing gratuitous death sometimes will conflict with his own survival, especially if he is by an evil Tav's side. He couldn't accept bloodshed when other peaceful options were available and possible to reach. This is clearly shown during the goblin party, where Gale's consciousness suffers and feels the corruption of the "orb" killing the kindness and the compassion inside him. He accepts that wanting to live is a powerful drive, but he doesn't support this massacre, questioning if all that blood was necessary. A Tav killing the tieflings seems to lose the possibility of pursuing Gale romantically, at least in EA so far. For Gale, survival is important, but the means to do it (when they can cause death) matter too. Life is worth preserving.

 The usual archetype of survivalist tends to be an individualist one who would survive at any cost without remorse because that's the “law of the jungle”, the strongest must survive. However, Gale seems to embody a different concept of survivalist that it's hard to put in words: a sort of communal survivalist, trying to survive in coexistence with his community: he wants his survival to imprint the least harm possible (even though sometimes it would not be possible), trying to help those around him as long as his condition allows it; for example, despite wanting Gut's potential cure for the tadpole, he would disagree in helping Sazza escape because she will lead the goblins to the Grove, no matter the fact that doing this will grant them their introduction to the priestess. 

His list of approval shows that his sense of survival is always pondered with the consequences that it can cause on others (check the post with the "Extensive list of Gale's approvals"). The whole concept of the "orb" has this motivation as well: he wants to live and survive, but he also can't give up because his body would kill many, so he needs to do as much as his moral allows him to keep it in check. If he cannot do it any longer, he promises to minimise the disaster as much as possible by erupting in the deep Underdark or in a desolated corner of Faerûn (and considering his ridiculous list of approvals and disapprovals, we know he is honest in not wanting to kill gratuitously). Gale acknowledges his own mistakes, trying—to the best of his ability—to deal with them without catching others in them. Although all his speeches keep emphasising that he is a mere human, and plans may fail. 

At some point, if he wants to survive “not at any cost”, he will be forced to ask Tav for help during the scene of the stew (available only for medium approval or higher). As a gesture of honesty, Gale will set a boundary before making this request, acknowledging its unfairness but giving Tav the decision to proceed or not. He is not denying to explain the details later, but at the moment he can't speak the “why” of his condition no matter how curious Tav is. Tav will decide whether they can keep their curiosity on the matter. 

We will understand later that this impediment comes as a precaution as well as consequence of his personal trauma with Mystra and the "orb" (See post about "Gale: Manipulation, Lies, and Trust"). So, he is very clear about setting the conditions in which this conversation will happen from the beginning. The easiest way for Gale to avoid this whole situation would have been by simply lying, but he opted for an honest approach with clear out-loud reservations, knowing he was asking for more trust than he was allowed to, but the intention behind is more than important. There is a clear, huge contextual detail that we can't miss: this scene doesn't happen because of Gale's whims, he is forced to ask for help since his condition “is not a patient one” and will endanger everyone if not kept at bay. 

This detail where Gale explicitly asks for an exchange of trust is not present if Gale's approval is neutral or lower. In this case, Gale would not care about giving a context to his strange request: he doesn't trust Tav and he doesn't expect to be trusted either, he only wants the artefacts to keep his condition in check for his sake and the sake of others. We can understand this change of attitude depending on the approval as he doesn't want to give any extra explanation to someone he is not interested in building a relationship with. For more details, check the post about "Gale: Manipulation, Lies, and Trust".

I personally support the idea that nobody in canon Faerûn is free of racial prejudices since Forgotten Realms lore has been created based strongly on fantasy racism. I've read that WotC wants to move forward and improve this aspect in 5e, but so far what they allowed Larian to do with the Tieflings in BG3 seems to show the contrary. So, since apparently we are going to face fantasy racism anyways, I will try to analyse racial prejudices from all chars. When it comes to Gale, it's a bit far-stretched to point out unjustified racial biases. He has a vague comment about Rashemi that some people may consider a faerunian saying. Personally, I think that line is a bias forced into him to have a particular dynamic with Minsc (the Rashemi “silly” companion -we all can see where Larian seems to go with this). Gale clearly sees tieflings, gnomes, and even goblins as people, and has a cautious attitude towards some githyanki (at least that's what we can infer with Lae'zel when we find her in the cage), but given the githyanki lore it's pretty reasonable to see them as dangerous creature that could kill people on the spot. So far, he seems to have no racial preference either [10]. 

As it was said before, he prefers to avoid killing people, but that doesn't mean he won't do it if his life depends on it. He will prefer persuasive and defusing approaches, but if he needs to kill to defend innocents or his own life, he won't hesitate. So therefore, stories about characters making mistakes or having violent excess in an effort to protect themselves or what they hold dear will be understood by him but hardly approved [19]. He tends more to approve a call out of that excess than approving an excuse for it.

Gale has deep abandonment issues that can be easily seen when he defends Astarion from being handed over to Gandrel. We need to put this in context before going on: for Gale, Astarion represents a danger as a vampire who attacked one of them during their sleep. By the display of meta-knowledge, we know with certainty that their approvals and disapprovals are mostly opposite: What one approves, the other will disapprove and vice versa. Getting rid of Astarion should be something that Gale would approve, however, he doesn't. If we explore his comments we will realise that what Gale disapproves from this situation is Tav's abandonment. After Mystra's abandonment, he knows very well that “Loyalty is such a very rare commodity”, and the few situations in EA in which Tav can display abandonment, resound strongly in Gale. 

Gale is a scholar with a strong balanced rational side. But unlike the trope, he also embraces an emotional side that, so far the info we received in EA, it's the side that makes him prone to mistakes. 

As an amateur poet, Gale loves words. We can obviously notice this in his verbose attitude, but also in the way he carefully uses words. One of his characteristic words is “spectacle”. He has also shown a reiterative—although not always—uneasy use of the word “fun”. Using “fun” as a way to describe the night spent with Gale gives him a slight uneasiness. “That’s a word for it.” He disapproves of using the word “Fun” after the Mayrina/Connor situation, in which scene Gale alludes that “your new company may be a proof of how depraved and twisted you are to see that tragedy as “fun”. Personally I think this is a direct allusion to Astarion, who considers Mayrina's situation as “entertainment”, in the same way he considered as “fun” the show of Arabella's death (two of several instances where he used that word). Gale also doesn’t use the word sex during EA, instead he uses romantic ones such as love-making, intimacy, art of the night/body. In the most technical case: coitus (used only when he is talking about “goblinoid intimacy” in the expression “post-coital snack”). These details are showing not only his poet/romantic side, but also his interpretation of sex from his perspective: sex can only be possible through a connection. We know he doesn’t engage in casual sex with Lae’zel if he is not romanced, and his romance can only potentially start if Tav shares that deep connection with him through the Weave. 

Another detail related to words is that Gale has always used an infection/disease-related vocabulary to explain the “orb” stuck in his chest: infested, taint, shadow spreading 

[…] I failed to control [this chaotic magic]. Instead it infested me. […] This Netherese taint... this orb, for lack of a better word [..] […] the shadow within is spreading like poison, corrupting kindness and compassion. [...]

Gale apparently has a particular way to sense magic. I have no way to check this in-game, but it seems very strange how he immediately identifies magical artifacts without casting Detect Magic. There are some extra scenes as well where he says to taste or smell the magic in some objects. Even his encounter with Shadowheart, besides being considered a flirt, could be also interpreted as him detecting the magic that we saw later in her hand or maybe the dark magic that blocks her memories, since Gale pointed out about a curtain covering her soul: “if the eyes are the mirror to the soul, yours have dark curtains across the mirror” (a very ominous flirting if it’s only a flirt)

This makes me suspect that, if the "orb" is not giving him this skill, it may be a consequence of having been Chosen of Mystra (for more details read the post about "Mystra and her Chosen ones"). If this is the case, he may have hindered remains of theirs powers when it comes to detect magic at will.

Gale has a perception of magic with all the senses: he sniffs and tastes magic. During the mirror scene you have an option related to [Arcana] tag where he “Sniff the mirror, trying to understand the nature of its magic”. A wizard Tav will just “Inspect the mirror”. He also said that he could “taste” the magic in the necromancy book and in the runes of teleportation. 

What we know of his family is little: when he was a kid there was a housekeeper in his life (mentioned only once during the scene of the harpies) and his mother that seemed to have personally raised and cared for him (mentioned twice: in the ruin temple scene, and in his banter with Wyll) 

Tav: Why care about decorum in a long-abandoned tomb? Gale: Because my mother raised a gentleman. Then again, to be alive is to be curious. 

Wyll: Between the orb and the bug you've got more than your fair share of unwelcome passengers. Gale: What can I say. Mother always taught me to be a gracious host.

This post was written in May 2021. → For more Gale: Analysis Series Index

[cosmicmoved]

FORMAL INTRODUCTION FOR KITAHARA KOJIRO

hi, for some bizarre reason unbeknownst to even me, this muse has been like half a year in the making (actually, it’s been 5 months but that’s close enough for to still feel shame), but he’s finally here. the ““ evil ”” witch oc! witch man who does murders! whatever you want to know him as! anyway, from now on you just know him as kojiro or koj bc that’s his name <3 please look under the read more link for more info! (WARNING: the following will touch on darker themes like death, murder and, to a lesser extent, abuse. this is a heavy character so please keep that in mind if you ever wish to interact!)

BASIC FACTS

firstly, this oc is mostly connected to tsukidate sho, my witch detective oc. the connection mostly lies in the fact they’re both witches who interact with crime/murder in some capacity but their families are also close.

his name is kitahara kojiro ( 北原浩二郎 ), known as either kojiro or koji by those around him. i haven’t decided his exact birthday yet but he was born in 1990 and is approx. 31 years old. (i understand this is ‘older’ by tumblr rp standards but, by normal people standards, early 30s is still relatively young so basically, if u make old ppl jokes, i will bite u)

technically speaking, kitahara is his father’s surname but he never really knew his father and was raised by a single mother. however, his mother made the choice of raising him with his father’s name in an attempt to distance the pair from her own family. i’ll explain why that is the case in the backstory section of this post.

kojiro is a witch. he’s not involved in any broader witching community nor does his being a witch have much bearing on his professional life but he is a talented witch, despite being trained only by his mother. what he DOES use his magic for, however, is to cause a lot of problems.

oh yeah, he’s also cursed. and he kills people. because he’s cursed. again, i’ll explain this in more detail further in the post but it’s kind of an important fact. he was cursed to die at twenty years old and he’s still alive eleven years later because the only way to hold off death is to kill other people <3 omg that’s awkward

in his normal everyday life, kojiro works as a cake decorator and does photography on the side too. he’s a creative person and tbh he developed a lot of stupid hobbies in his teens, thanks to the belief he was gonna die by the end of them, so he ended up making a living out of what he liked. he also didn’t go to uni because he didn’t see the point because, again, he thought he’d be dead by 20 and then, when he wasn’t, he stopped caring.

it’s also important to note that he, uh, doesn’t give off murderer vibes at all. he’s friendly and sociable (and not in the ‘this guy’s definitely a weirdo’ way). 

i kept calling him ‘evil witch oc’ while i was working on him but, as i’ve said before, i think that’s actually a little too simple and i wouldn’t actually call him evil. he’s NOT a good person but i don’t think evil is the right word for him either. he doesn’t believe he’s a good person either but he’s learned to justify his own actions as a means of survival. kojiro doesn’t enjoy killing people, he doesn’t take any pleasure from the act of murder, but he’s also relatively calm about it too. since he doesn’t have to do it on a super regular basis, he prefers to target shitty people and esp corrupt witches in positions of authority (not really in a self-righteous way, more just because they piss him off). he has specific personal reasons for this.

he has a pretty intense fear of death. you think he’d be over it, having spent his whole life knowing he was meant to die early, but the ability to push his death back sort of flipped some switch in his head and, over the years, he went from quiet apprehension to paranoid obsession.

why is this muse 30 years old? firstly, because i want him to be. that would probably be enough but also his age actually IS important. the vibe i’m going for with this muse is, as i’ve said like once before, is what happens to the hero of the story after they complete their quest? what if that quest doesn’t go as planned? kojiro’s quest was to hunt down the demon associated with his curse. that’s his original ‘story’. what i want to explore here is the aftermath of that, what happens after the weight of the quest comes crashing down on the hero and they return to normal, everyday life where they’re forced to shoulder it as though it’s nothing. a decade after his initial story, he’s worn out. he’s not the same person he was at the start.

BACKSTORY

this isn’t going to be written in a super formal or tidy way because i honestly just can’t be bothered turning this into a proper piece of decent writing. this is only going to be in paragraph form because i don’t like putting backstories into bullet points unless it’s super brief.

kojiro was born in 1990 as the first (and only) child of his unmarried mother (as yet unnamed) when she was just nineteen years old. she was raised in a strict and traditional witching family so the fact that she’d had this child out of wedlock AND that the father wasn’t a witch didn’t exactly land well. regardless, they let her stay in the family home but it would soon turn out that the child was cursed. according to a member of tsukidate family (i.e; sho’s family who, as i said before, are on good terms with kojiro’s family and who are also knowledgeable in the realm of curses), the curse determined that the child would die on the day of his twentieth birthday unless he was able to kill the demon associated with the curse.

as if the judgement from her own family wasn’t enough, the curse brought with it a lot of stigma from the witching community and so his mother made the decision to leave home by herself when kojiro was a year old. all she could afford was a small, one bedroom apartment but, so long as she and her son had a roof over their heads, anything was good enough. kojiro would live a relatively normal life, going to school with other children his age and away from other witches, but his mother would teach him what she knew. although she wanted to him to live as easily as possible, she felt she had to prepare him for his inevitable encounter with the demon. kojiro grew up knowing about the curse too. there was no way to keep it a secret --- even if weren’t cruel to hide it from him, the curse had left a visible mark on him (still working out the details of what this looks like and where on his body it is but it basically looks like a tattoo to most people).

when kojiro turns eighteen, he decides he’s old enough to face this demon and claim control of his own life (maybe i’ll write this as an actual drabble / piece of writing one day bc i’m reeeally brushing over it here). it had been trapped by his family and forced to lie dormant until kojiro would arrive to take it down. what the demon reveals to him, however, changes everything. there is no cure to this curse, the demon tells him, everything he was told is a lie. the curse, it turns out, has tied the demon to him and the only way to kill the demon is for kojiro to die along with it. the reveal is this: when kojiro born, they took him from his mother for a short time. i want to emphasise that her family are pretty shitty people because they decided this would be the perfect opportunity both to punish her and to solve a very specific problem -- getting rid of this demon. the same member of the tsukidate who ‘diagnosed’ the curse was the one who put it on kojiro. i’ll explain the actual curse and story behind it (and the demon) in more detail at a later date but the basic gist of it is that kojiro’s family lied to him and used him as a disposable means to an end. his mother, for the record, was entirely unaware of this. but what else does the demon tell him? although the curse cannot be lifted, it can be held off. this demon thrives off death and, through death, it can stay strong and continue to keep kojiro alive. if it grows weak and it is not sustained, kojiro will grow weak along with it and inevitably die. kojiro informs the demon that he will not kill anybody. that is out of the question.

a month before his twentieth birthday, kojiro kills a man. he had tried to forget about everything the demon had said, tried to forget that his own family had set him up for guaranteed destruction, but it hadn’t been easy. it had set him on edge and he’d become unstable. he’d fallen into a slump and his friends grew worried for him. yet, after a while, he came to accept it and tried to make peace with his life as it was. he put it to the back of his mind as best he could. but he’d discovered that the man his mother had been seeing over the past few years since he’d moved out to live on his own was abusive. so he killed him. everything the demon had told him risen to the surface and he’d asked himself does it matter if this guy dies instead of me? after all, kojiro was curious. he didn’t really want to die and he had wondered if the demon was telling the truth. to this day, kojiro doesn’t know what to believe but it’s much too late for all that now. he followed his mother’s boyfriend home and broke his neck in a dark alleyway. thanks to the magic he’d been taught growing up, he was able to ensure that nobody every traced him to the accident and, when the clock struck midnight on his twentieth birthday, kojiro broke down crying with relief.

he wasn’t dead. he still isn’t dead. he’d never wanted to die. over the years, the killing has gotten a lot easier. over the years, the answer to that question comes much quicker; if somebody has to die, why should it be me?

[ravnicaforgoblins]

Ravnica for Goblins

More Awesome NPCs of Ravnica

NPCs are one of the most important tools in a DM’s campaign. Your assorted guards, informants, bartenders, hench-persons, random civilians, and, of course, your quest-givers. Optimistically, you hope to have certain NPCs stick around for a while to have the party build a relationship with them, as opposed to getting murder-hobo-ed because your party doesn’t like their attitude. Which is why it’s so great that Ravnica is filled with cool NPCs who are definitely stronger than your party (for a while)!

A couple notes; I already did a list of Awesome NPCs, focusing on the Ladies of Ravnica, so this time I thought I’d try and give the boys (and Melek) some spotlight. Secondly, as I’ve by now made annoyingly apparent, I’m focusing on characters in the modern era of Ravnica, i.e. after the Decamillennial, because everything before the Decamillennial is a nightmare to figure out and you don’t need that headache.

Tajic, Blade of the Legion

You can’t have the Boros without Tajic. Well, you can, but you don’t want to. Tajic is the Legion’s Champion as well as their Mazerunner, and embodies all the ideals the Legion stands for. Unity, strength, passion; an unbreakable shield against all who would threaten Ravnica’s citizens. He is technically considered a Firefist, but special considerations should be made to give him the flavor he really deserves. Both of Tajic’s MTG cards have had some manner of protection against damage when involving other creatures. In addition, Firefists are actually primarily spellcasters, whereas Tajic is never seen without a blade in his hand or his name. So, to sum up, take a Firefist, add in some manner of damage resistance or even immunity contingent upon having allies present, throw in a weapon trick or two for his big wavy sword, and ta-da! You’ve got Tajic!

Momir Vig, Simic Visionary

I know I said no pre-Decamillennial, but Momir Vig is a special case. Technically, the former Guildmaster is dead, but the shadow of his reign still lingers over the Simic Combine. Momir Vig symbolizes everything Ravnica fears about the Combine; progress without restraint. Vig’s cytoplasts were oozes designed for personalized evolution in subjects to correct flaws and deficiencies (regrowing lost limbs, bolstering weakened immune systems, extra brain cells, etc). The only problem is that the project worked so well that Vig stopped seeing the need for consent, creating a new form of cytoplast that only needs to touch a host to bond with it. This raised some understandable concerns among Ravnican citizens, as well as the other Guilds. These concerns went to 11 when Vig’s Project Kraj, a gargantuan organism composed of thousands of cytoplasts, was activated to purge Ravnica and start over with a fresh slate. They went to a further 12 when Vig was killed, Project Kraj summoned every cytoplasm back to it (maiming, crippling, or killing a large number of hosts), and proceeded to go on a rampage that only ended after it ate Rakdos and went into a coma.

Momir Vig is exactly the kind of mad scientist to escape the grave, go underground, and continue his research unimpeded until it’s ready. A Rogue Guildmaster with no boundaries, or as we like to call it, a ready-made Big Bad.

Melek, Izzet Paragon

As with Vig, Melek is canonically dead, but that sort of “dead” that could conceivably be temporary if the story requires it. Melek is a Weird designed by Niv-Mizzet himself to be the Izzet Mazerunner. A certain sparkmage had other ideas however, so he absorbed the sentient being of pure elemental energy into himself at the start of the Maze and took its place, then tried to shock the other runners to death because, you know, winning. But following the physics principle that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only changed into a different form, it’s believable that Melek could return someday. Probably with a grudge against said sparkmage. Melek is a fascinating build, combining high-level spellcasting with complete elemental resistance or possibly even immunity. Basically, a wizard who can tank. Even more intriguing, any lab run by a being composed of pure energy would be calibrated to channel said energy, possibly allowing short-range teleportation within said lab. This is a brilliant exercise in lair mechanics, so don’t hold back. Lest we forget Melek is a personal project of the Firemind, aka, the single most brilliant, powerful, and egocentric fire-breathing ancient dragon wizard in Ravnican history.

Tomik Vrona, Distinguished Advokist

Given the Orzhov Syndicate’s seeming fascination with being a faceless hierarchy of priests, lawmages, ghosts, tax collectors, etc; it’s nice to have another face with a name. Tomik Vrona is a lawmage who apprenticed under Teysa Karlov herself, making him a master of Ravnican law. It also makes him uncharacteristically open to relationships with other Guilds, as he is effectively Teysa’s link to the outside world during her imprisonment. Tomik carries a strong respect for the law, but is a passionate lover of interesting & creative loopholes. In short, he’s not inherently evil/greedy like most of the Syndicate, but still has ambition in spades. He prefers to use gargoyles for transportation, treasures every book he owns, and is canonically dating/living with that hot-tempered sparkmage mentioned previously. Whether the relationship is public or not is up to you. I personally see it as a measure of trust between the NPCs and the party; it’s a pretty controversial pairing of Guilds. It could even be a Romeo & Juliet (Julio?) kind of affair, just putting that out there.

Vorel of Hull Clade

If Momir Vig represents the dark side of the Simic Combine’s experiments, Vorel represents the infinite possibility they can offer. A former Gruul shaman, he made the decision to give up a piece of his clan’s territory to a Boros Legion garrison to better fortify their home turf, and was nearly killed when they turned on him for perceived cowardice. Vorel escaped and joined the Combine, where he was given Merfolk traits and an environment that embraced his ideas & strategic thinking. Vorel is extremely grateful to his new Guild, and believes himself to be an example of how anything is possible through the Simic, no matter one’s origins. His strong passion & drive have led to great breakthroughs, but he’s definitely more emotionally-driven than most Simic researchers. Here is a Biomancer that isn’t afraid to get dirty or bloody in combat. This could be a fun experiment in crafting a Simic Melee Weapon.

Tolsimir Wolfblood, Ledev Guardian

You know that one leader elf in fantasy stories who everyone else takes orders from but never fights themselves? Yeah, this isn’t that elf. This is what you wish that elf was, a warrior archer who leads his soldiers into battle atop a giant dire wolf and kicks some serious ass. The Ledev are Selesnya’s elite mounted force, skilled fighters, archers, swordsmen, and even spellcasters. They are the cavalry, the breaking dawn on Hornburg, the “oh shit” in an enemy’s mouth. Please don’t make the mistakes of countless fantasy novels by being on bad terms with such badass warriors. Having any member of the Ledev behind you should be a boost to the party’s courage & resolve. Having Tolsimir fight alongside you should be one of the greatest honors of your life. The chance to finally recreate that “besties” relationship between Legolas & Gimli as you see who can kill the most enemies in battle.

Domri Rade, City Smasher

I hesitate to include Domri, I genuinely do. He’s a scraggly little punk who nearly brought about the destruction of the Gruul (and all of Ravnica) ultimately because he was too weak and too stupid. I include him here out of respect for the lore, but you can honestly do better. Domri Rade was considered too small & weak for any Gruul clan, so he instead bonded with the savage animals of the Rubblebelt, eventually discovering he could incite them into stampedes at will. This new power finally granted him admission into Borborygmos’ own Burning Tree Clan, but he panicked during the burial rite of passage and planeswalked away for the first time. Eventually he learned to control his powers, returned to the Rubblebelt, challenged Borborygmos for leadership of the Burning Tree clan, and won by sending wave after wave of stampeding boars to trample the cyclops Guildmaster. He was enlisted by Nicol Bolas to help destroy Ravnica, and failed to realize that meant him too as an eternal ripped out his Planeswalker Spark, killing him. Domri Rade is basically a cheap knockoff of Garruk Wildspeaker, only smaller and weaker and dumber and infinitely less dangerous. He is, however, considered by many to be an omen of the End-Raze, heralding the return of the Boar God Ilharg and the burning down of Ravnica by the Gruul who follow the Old Ways. So maybe play up that angle if you include him in your campaign.

Ral Zarek, Izzet Viceroy

If you only include one NPC from any of my lists in your Ravnica campaign, you must include Ral Zarek. Failing to do so is denying your players the opportunity to interact with the single coolest character in Ravnica. He beats out Vraska for the sole reason that he’s a much more public & accessible figure than the Gorgon Assassin, and an unexpected encounter with him is significantly less likely to end in your death/petrification. Between his good looks, cocky grin, brilliant mind, and lightning powers that put Thor to shame; Ral is certain to make any situation more interesting. He’s a great contact to have within the Izzet, a brilliant researcher, extremely talented with designing gadgets or magic items, an astonishingly powerful magic user, and a fun guy to hang around with. He can definitely have a temper on him, so understand when to back away. Hint: His hair turns from black to white when his electromancy powers are activating. You’ll also probably notice the sounds of static discharge building up around him, perhaps a faint smell of ozone, crackling energy coming from his gauntlet, and, oh yeah, his eyes glow and his smile turns into a growling grimace of death as he fills you with lightning. Whether by design or accident, Ral is basically the mascot for Ravnica, and it’s almost unthinkable for him to be absent from a campaign set there.

[bearpillowmonster]

FF6 Review (Overall)

I'm going to rate similar to the way I did FF7 Remake, but in only 2 parts, so there will be an overall review then a separate deep dive into the characters.

I played this game using an emulator and I'm not ashamed of it because I used the FF6 Relocalization project which I'll link

Basically nerd talk and explanation of what that means: It's basically a retranslation of the original SNES script using the GBA port as a base and mixing and matching some of the best parts so there you go. They have a way to mod the PC version to have the OG sprite work because sheesh is that thing ugly and they also have a way to resprite and resound the GBA version but this is the easiest and logical solution to get the best of all worlds. There's also "Anthology" which is the PS1 port that adds some CG custscenes which I just watched off of YouTube because it's only a few of the major scenes.

Anyways, yeah, I'm glad I emulated it especially because of the fast forward function. That first chunk would've been rough without it because you're left just waiting for one of your party's commands to be ready but it eases up as the game goes on because you get pretty busy with the combat.

I'm not a fan of turn-based RPGs which was the main reason I haven't touched a 2D FF game until now so this is my first and oh boy, what a first!

Could you just watch a playthrough or read the story then? I wouldn't recommend it. There are certain things that I feel are better experienced.

Gameplay actually wasn't all that gruesome, as I mentioned, it got better thoughout but I know for a fact that I didn't do everything it had to offer because I see other people doing it online and I just had no idea how. That's not to say it's not newcomer friendly though, I mean I beat the game, didn't I? I think it would've just gotten complicated and made me confused if I learned how to do everything in the game anyway.

I found myself liking some of the mechanics and recognizing some of the systems from games as late as today (I'm not sure if this is where they started but I wouldn't be surprised). The random encounters weren't all bad because of the emulator's speed up function but there were definitely times where it felt a little out of hand with the amount I was getting. (I'm looking at you Cave to the Sealed Gate!) So it's all pretty familiar, though there are "Relics" which are kind of like Materia but each member has 2 each where it gives you an ability, f.e. Reflect, every attack hits, extra power, auto cast protect, heal with every step, etc.

One of the drawbacks of using BSNES though was that there was no toggle for a L or R shoulder button, just turbo and while that's not a big problem, that is the button to Flee a battle, so I just never fled. There is an item that lets you escape any dungeon or battle but I didn't really use it, same with the permanent item that Mog has in the cave (pretty late in the game). I'd rather there be a repel than the warp stone, but I figured that if I just fought whenever the opp arrived then I wouldn't have to grind, which is another thing I hate about RPGs! Luckily, I didn't really feel the need to grind other than for the ending.

Difficulty wasn't really a grind but make sure once you get to the floating island, that you know what you're doing because that level was annoying and I felt a very stong spike in difficulty as soon as I landed on it. Another thing is that sometimes it'd glitch and an enemy would have infinite health so I'd just sit there on fast forward, watching and watching then finally use Libra and no damage was made, might be an emulator thing, might be a game thing and although rare, it still happened.

There are these sections called scenarios where the game branches off into multiple different paths and you can choose which order to follow the specific sets of characters. I really like that aspect and makes it seem less linear and interactive because it's letting you choose how to tell the story. I have a thing for games that let me interact with it (That opera scene is pretty interactive too).

For a 2D sprite game, it has quite a personality with its cutscenes. They can be very cinematic and defintely makes the characters just that more engaging with some of their mannerisms.

Ok, I get it now. The music is bomb. If anything, that would be worth doing a remake for, to get orchestral and updated versions of some of the themes. (I'd probably cry at that opera scene) But Celes' theme is probably my favorite. The PC port has pretty good remixes for the most part though.

Could this use a remake? It's a trivial matter because I think a good majority of fans want it to be remade and I understand why but at the same time I understand the other side of the argument as well. This was the last 2D FF game and that's special, in a way, the story kind of reflects that. And I think with all the personality comes a bit of caution because you might see something in these characters or scenes that may be misinterpreted or done differently in a remake, similar to how you read a book and just imagine how it's playing out. I think it lays enough ground so that you don't "have to interpret" like with most NES games (how the Super Mario Movie was born) from an outsider's point of view, it may first seem that way though. (myself included (yes, I know this was SNES era. Shut up!))

What would I want out of a remake? I would want the airship to return and be able to move around freely but keep the towns pretty faithful (which makes for more linear opportunities). I could see Edgar's tools being used similar to Barrett's but we have "First Soldier" now which is a 3PS Battle Royale, why not have his tools play similar to that? Then actually give him story opportunities to pick up his tools rather than "just because you bought them" It would be a nice natural progression. I would suggest the same with Sabin and Cyan, have them learn their Blitz and Bushido moves by being taught by Duncan, you do learn one move from Duncan in the vanilla game but I'd see it as more opportunity to build your characters and make it feel rewarded. So, in those aspects, I would like to see FF6 remade or improved but as for everything else, they should keep it a lot similar to the original than FF7R did. I think that's where a lot of the criticism with FF7R came from (as well as what I mentioned in the previous paragraph) While I'd prefer a gameplay overhaul similar to what they did with R, I'd rather keep the essence. There aren't sequels or spinoffs or anything of this game so this is all it has (unless you count the ports but that's minimal).

In the CHARACTERS section, I compliment the side-quest system but I would like there to be a better indication as to "what" you're doing, rather than just looking up the next steps or be left to travel around until the goal is clear. They have the quest completion menu as well as waypoints in FF7R, I could see that being put to good use in a game like this. It would also be cool to actually "visibly" wear the gear that you equip to your character but I understand why that isn't utilized in most of the games (probably makes for better character models) especially considering most of these characters' costumes could use an update. You didn't get to use the Magitek suits nearly as much as I thought you would from the marketing and even the dang cover and logo, so a remake could improve on that as well. Another small complaint is that it doesn't tell you what the items do WHILE you're in battle, only when you're in the menu, sorting them and while some are staples like Phoenix Down, I still don't remember what the heck a 'Gold Needle' does.

Overall I'd probably rate the FF games that I've played (but maybe not finished all of) as such: FF7 > FF13 > FF6 > CRISIS CORE > FF15 > FF12 but I think 6 and 13 are kind of interchangeable because if you said one over the other, I wouldn't really argue.

[casualotptrash]

Why the Persona 3 FES vs Portable Debate Makes Me Want to Fly Into the Sun Pt. 3

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Da da da daaa!

Part 3 of this lovely emotional rant is here, for anyone who wants to spend their time reading these. With the last two posts, I have mostly tried to be informative or just complain a bit about why this debate makes me want to fly into the sun, but for this post it’s going to go a little different. Perhaps a bit more subjective than the others.

In this post, I’m going to go over everyone's favorite clusterfuck...a definitive version of Persona 3.

Now, as we established in the previous post, we know that the argument of FES vs Portable is essentially pointless because everyone’s opinion on either game is subjective. However, I have neglected to bring up this topic that puts a huge ass nail into this dusty old coffin: the fact that there is objectively no definitive version of Persona 3.

Everyone can argue all day and night about which version of P3 is better, but no one can deny that either version are “definitive.” By definitive, I mean that the game has the most content that is offered, like Persona 4 Golden or Persona 5 Royal. The reason none of the P3 games are definitive is because base P3 lacks stuff from FES and Portable, FES lacks stuff fro Portable, and Portable lacks things from FES. It’s a gamble of whether you want to experience cutscenes, an overworld, and The Answer, or a whole new route with the FeMC and the brand new option of dating male party members and saving...you know who.

One might be able to say FES is definitive because it has The Answer, which I believe is considered canon according to the Arena games. Another could say Portable is the definitive version because it came out after FES, added the FeMC (who is technically canon as per the second Persona Q game), and removes The Answer (which a lot of people said The Answer messed with the core theme of P3). However, the definition of definitive in this case, and with all of the other games, is that the game offers the most content. Arguably, FES and Portable provide the same amount of content, just in different ways. This is why this whole conversation of which one is better, or which to play first, spawned in the first place.

The reason I am bringing this up in this post, about why this whole discussion physically pains me, is because having a real, definitive version of the game could finally put this discussion to rest. At least, it somewhat would. People would probably still argue that FES is the best for some reason.

Now, the argument becomes...well, what does a definitive version of Persona 3 look like?

I have seen quite a bit about this topic, and people seem to really miss some common sense points. For example, they get caught up in whether it would be considered a remake or a remaster. I know some use those terms interchangeably, but the “official” definition for each is that a remake is a game that is made from scratch, while a remaster is made by updating the existing assets and engine. For example, the upcoming Nocturne HD release is a remaster. Personally I find it difficult to neatly fit the typical persona definitive editions, like Golden and Royal, into either of these categories. It may just be me not fully grasping the differences between the two, but I believe they would fit into more of the “remaster” category. It is true that there are new assets and content being added to the game, but it’s so minor that I’m not sure it could be considered a remake. On the other hand, because new content is added it couldn’t just be defined as a remaster because typically the effects and such aren’t even changed that much. It’s just gameplay and story content that is tweaked.

When people get so caught up in what it would be considered, logic seems to...go out the window? For example, in a debate between a P3 remaster or remake, a person made a comment that if a remake was to happen then people would demand that all of the social links be available to anyone. Now, that just isn’t possible for a variety of reasons. There’s no way we could ever mix and match social links to get a preferred grouping. Another issue with this is that if just a remaster was made, then one of the two games would be left out.

This is why I don’t really think about whether a definitive edition is a remaster or remake, because using such strict labels make it harder to judge what could, or should, be in one. This is why I’m just referring to this process as making a definitive edition. That being said, I would consider a definitive P3 game to be more of a remake (not that it really matters) because my ideas would essentially combine FES and Portable, in a way?

So here we go, into my idea of what a definitive version of Persona 3 would look like. (Warning: This will contain spoilers for all of the P3 story and *gasp* may be a bit biased toward Portable because I like it more)

1. Presentation

In simple terms, I would want the game to essentially be Portable...but with updated graphics, cutscenes from FES, and an overworld. It’s easier to use Portable as a base because it’s already closer to the format of P4 and P5, so then adding in the good parts of FES with the cutscenes and overworld are par for the course. As far as graphics go, I would like the models and environment to look more like P3D (aka whatever engine they used for Persona 5?) because damn did the characters get a glow up.

2. Gameplay

Along with the format of Portable, I would also want the gameplay of Portable to be in this definitive version. That means no jealousy system, no fatigue until after you leave tartarus, the vision quest, and the other changes I mentioned in the first post. Sorry FES fans, but yes...I would still want the option of controllable party members. However, a new change that should be added is backup members earning exp. I don’t think baton passes or anything should be added, we don’t want a clone of P5, and the combo attacks in P3P kind of fill this role anyway. The idea of having social links give certain perks with ranks, like how confidants work in P5, is interesting but I don’t think it would be necessary. I would also say that the soundtrack should be exclusive for each side, like how it is in Portable, and that there should be an option to choose which skills are inherited.

3. Social Links

The stance I would take with social links would essentially be how Portable did it, but with a slight tweak. No matter how much it would be cool to date Rio or Saori as the Male MC, or vice versa with Kaz or Keisuke and FeMC, I don’t think any mixing of the two sides would really be feasible. However, I would love to see cameos of those characters in the opposing routes. For example, you see Yuko and Kaz in the female route, but in the male route you could see Saori and Rio at school. That being said, and this is probably one of the biggest issues, I would want the male protag to be able to have social links with the entire party, men included. This brings up the issue of what social links you would cut out because you can’t have two social links be the exact same arcana. Unless they want to add more arcanas to the game, which would probably not go over well either, the best option is probably to prioritize the male party members and then have who would usually be in their place just show up sometimes. For example, Kenji would show up in the social link with Junpei instead of the magician social link just being about one or the other.

I know this seems weird, but it does kind of avoid shafting one or the other. If it was too hard to fit the two together (such as Chihiro and Ken both being Justice), perhaps a few more school scenes could be added where the MC interacts with the school friends that are not seen as much (Kenji, Chihiro, etc.) However, and this might piss off 1% of people but whatever, but the moon arcana with Nozomi (Gourmet king dude) could just be completely taken over by Shinji. Nozomi is a meme, but he is not needed in any way. Also, I would prioritize Yuko in the male route over Koromaru since, although he is a very good boy, he is still a dog. Also, please get rid of the option that you’re forced to romance every girl in the male route, and personally I would say keep in the fact that you cannot date Junpei. In a headcanon sort of way, I totally dig the idea of the MC being able to help Junpei through his rough time after Chidori dies (if she dies?) and feelings grow from there, but from a story perspective I think it’s integral to his character that he friendzones the player if they try.

So TLDR; who the social link is about would mainly stay true to the original route (male route with Kaz, etc. and female route with Rio, etc.), however in the male route the party members would take priority (so Akihiko would take the star arcana place and Mamoru (track guy) would just be featured in the link sometimes), and in both routes Shinji would take Nozomi’s place as the moon. Important note that besides including the other character, the main substance of the social link shouldn’t be changed; aka they should not change the format of the social links to operate more like P5 social links where the MC is just solving all of their problems.

(Sidenote: This is imply my idea on how to include party members into the social links for the male route, however if they just decided to keep the social links the exact same as Portable with no male party member social links with the male route then I’d be fine with that too. It wouldn’t really take away from the game as a whole for me, personally.)

4. Romance Options

Riding off of the social link talk...and I know this is like the least likely option of happening, but please make some gay options Atlus? If we can romance every single girl in the male route, why not just add the romance option for the men too? Yes yes there’s the whole argument about the issue of “making everyone bi” (thanks for erasing sexuality that care more about connections rather than gender?), but I say look no further than how Dragon Age 2 did it. Every romanceable option in that game can be romanced be either the male or female main character (barring a DLC character who is only romanceable by females), and it works just fine. Turns out, no one really gives a shit if it’s “realistic” enough (aka only having one or no bi/gay people apparently?) because it’s a video game and people want to romance whoever they want...because it’s a video game. Even if you really, really don’t like this approach there is also the option of going the Dragon Age Inquisition route, where characters are able to be romanced by certain genders and not by others (race also plays a role in this in the game, since there are elves and other fantasy races and such, but this is not applicable to Persona obviously). This is simply a hypothetical example, but how this would work is that like Fuuka can only be romanced by the Male MC, Akihiko and Yukari could be romanced by either MC, and Mitsuru could only be romanced by the FeMC. Obviously social links specific to a run would be a romanceable option to the MC in their route (as in Yuko would only be romanceable by Male MC because she’s only in her run, and social links like Saori could be a romance for FeMC because she’s specific to her route). I have a gut feeling this would cause an even bigger uproar with the fandom, so having any romance option (barring route specific social links for the route they’re not in) be available for either male or female MC is the best option in my opinion.

Take out Ken’s romance option altogether though. I know some of the language is different, so it doesn’t say you “spend a long night together” or whatever, but that doesn’t really make it any better. I do think it’s fine if Ken has a crush on the MC, and maybe has a whole Kenji thing of thinking they are together cause he’s 10 and kids can be like that, but the MC wouldn’t actually act on this and the player could be given the choice to actively dissuade Ken. The only good thing that came out of Ken’s romance option was the fact that him and Akihiko can argue in Tartarus if you romance them both, and I don’t want to lose that hilarious dialogue.

5. Tartarus

Tartarus...uh...to be honest I’m not really sure what to do with this beast. It’s boring and tedious in the first place, probably by design for symbolism in the game, but I’m not sure how to make it interesting without copying the dungeon/palace format. Perhaps the blocks could be restructured to act more like a big puzzle that needs to be solved, like certain sections of palaces in P5, but also have bosses and shadows thrown in. For example, perhaps one block could be more reminiscent of hide-and-seek stealth tactics while another is formatted like a series of arena-esque gladiator fights. Also probably lower the number of floors you need to climb? It gets a bit ridiculous when you realize there are 264 floors of Tartarus and 99% of them are the same but just with more funky music and slightly different decorations. This job is suited for someone with actual video game making experience though, and not me.

6. Awakenings and Pacing

Let’s talk about some quick fixes to awakenings and pacing of the game. Now, since this is a definitive version and not a true remake, I wouldn’t want them to rewrite the entire story or something. Most of the party member’s original awakenings happen off screen, which can be kind of lackluster. The MC’s and Fuuka’s are the only two we really see, and those moments were really cool in my opinion. Obviously we wouldn’t see Mitsuru’s, Akihiko’s, or Shinji’s original awakenings, but that is fine. Yukari and Junpei also fall into this boat because Yukari awakens before the MC gets to the dorm, and it would be hard to show Junpei’s awakening while also having his whole “reveal” moment when he comes to the dorm to live there. I don’t know if it’s ever mentioned when Ken awakens to his persona, but making a scene to show both his and Koromaru’s would be helpful instead of just saying Ken has the potential and he’s joining, and hearing about Koromaru awakening but not actually seeing it. As for the pacing, I’m mainly talking about the summer time where you can’t hang out with a good number of social links. I would just change this so that you can hang out with school social links during this time more readily, like if they’re just hanging out somewhere in town if they’re not at school. Like I said, this isn’t a remake (and I’m not a video game designer) so I didn’t want to get into how to fix the overall pacing of the story, which can be pretty slow until October or so. My one suggestion is maybe adding in a few extra scenes with Strega before October so it’s not like we run into them a couple times and suddenly they’re a major villain.

7. Shinjiro

(Spoilers for after October) I know certain people will definitely not like this point, but I think the option to save Shinji should remain in the game (and Chidori too). I’ll go into this in another post, but my main reason for keeping this in is because some people really do like this option, so it would be kind of unfair just to get rid of it because other people don’t like it. However, I would suggest a change to his social link so that there is the option to save him or not while also being able to complete the social link. Perhaps after rank 10 would be when you could give him the pocket watch, so that people could get the rank 10 and not be forced to save him. 

8. Extra Content

(Spoilers for the ending of Persona 3 and The Answer) Each definitive version has extra content in the “third semester” (because Persona 4 and 5 both essentially end after December), but in Persona 3 the natural game ends in January. I am not sure if they would try to add another whole months or so on, but because The Answer already exists, but I assume they wouldn’t add extra content in February or something for the MC. For The Answer, I would keep this in the game as sort of the “extra content” but add a FeMC version of this. Obviously it would be largely the same, except with the FeMC and perhaps the male party members could get more of a focus since the female party members get a larger focus in the male route (ie. Yukari breaking down with the keys. Maybe Junpei or Akihiko could take on this role as the people who don’t want to let go). Also, as a possible new addition to The Answer, Shinji could be a part of it if he is saved during the main game. In the NG+ run of Portable FeMC route, if you romance Shinji he comes to the rooftop for that final scene, so in a way it could be possible for him to recover by the time The Answer happens in March.

Now, if Atlus decided to add a more typical “extra content” thing, I hope they wouldn’t try to cram The Answer in on top of that unless they were able to do it cohesively. It might be a lot to have the whole ending of the game in January, come up with a reason to have extra content in February (presumably with the MC still alive, but also combat would need to be a part so then the issue arises of Tartarus coming back or something?), and then have the answer take place right after near the end of March.

Well that’s the end of that I think. This will also be the last post in this little “series” because I pretty much went over everything about this debate that makes me want to fly into the sun. I know the things I talked about in these posts will probably never stop, but I really hope that if a definitive version comes out at least the discussion will change to saying what is good or bad about each game rather than FES supremacy or whatever. That being said, above all I really hope this debate doesn’t discourage new fans from Persona 3 or the series in general, because that would probably be the worst outcome from all of this. It’s a great game, and it’s a shame that the game itself is kind of held back by being split into two (I’m not counting base Persona 3) different forms.

[muffintonic]

Alright, I think i’m done BOTW 2 spamming for today. Anywho, time for some thoughts in general!

1) I hated how the shrines in BOTW were so cold and dark compared to the bright and lively nature outside (I wish they had all looked like the Master Trials challenge where there were trees and stuff incorporated inside), so I hope if we’re forced to have dungeons they’ll be more like the Wind Waker ones. 2) I hope they don’t make us use the grappling hook or anything like in Wind Waker to move around the sky islands (I hated that mechanic). 3) I’m probably one of the few people who wanted less Zelda and more of the Champions in HWAOC since i’m only really attached to BOTW (and we saw a fair amount of Tetra in Wind Waker)/apparently Zelda’s been sidelined in all the other games, so i’m hoping in vain that we get more Champions material in BOTW 2. Also, Link could stand to have some more cutscenes centered around him as well (the few we got in some of the sidequests in BOTW were great). 4) I only really somewhat care about Riju and Sidon, so I won’t mind if the new gang gets sidelined in BOTW 2 (I still think Nintendo wasted the found family/band of brothers aspect on the dead characters--I love them so much and they’re all I want!! The problem is, they’re dead and I don’t really care all that much about their replacements!!! I dunno, maybe i’m hampered by the fact that I can replay the original champions’ memories whenever I want/read their diaries, but I can’t rewatch the new gang’s cutscenes AKA i’ve forgotten their characterization since they don’t talk to me much now that the game’s over). It’d be great if they have some weaving storylines in BOTW 2 that will get me more invested in them, but currently i’m not that interested. 5) Speaking of which, I know it’s 100% not going to happen, but goddang if I don’t want the Champions to have been returned to life. Nintendo totally squandered HWAOC by not making it a true prequel/canon to BOTW (the Champions Ballad confirmed that the Divine Beasts had trials in order to be synced to the champs, so the new gen use of them wouldn’t have happened without that + Mipha thought Link had changed in BOTW yet says in HWAOC that he hasn’t changed + some scenes like “Champion Revali’s Song” never happened at all/got replaced with alternative scenes that really changed some dynamics + basically all of Revali’s time-relative characterization from his diary/pre-100 years of solitude got thrown out + I feel like Daruk got totally sidelined), so i’m still craving that Champions content. Also, I feel like it’s totally unfair that Zelda came out of 100 years totally unaged while everyone else died. Life seems to really suck for people in the LoZ universe who aren’t chosen by divine powers. 6) They’d better keep it open world and non-linear. I can’t go back to being forced to backtrack/trudge through things, I just can’t. BOTW was everything i’ve ever dreamed about in a game (truly open world + non-linear + interactive + meaningful story + lots of outfits + beautiful landscapes) with Skyrim previously being the only thing that came close to what I wanted, so I really hope BOTW 2 doesn’t deviate too much from that. 7) I really liked Kass in BOTW, but i’m not sure what direction they’d go with him in BOTW 2/i’d be fine if he sat BOTW 2 out. I worked so hard to complete all his quests in BOTW so he’d go back home to his family, GODDANGIT, KASS. 8) Someone mentioned that since the first trailer had underground aspects, we’re probably going to be playing as Zelda with the Slate there, and I agree. They didn’t make a playable model for her in HWAOC for nothing. 9) I want to be able to stable the deer and bears and stuff, but I know that won’t happen. Being able to ride the moose and rhino things from the Hebra area probably won’t happen either, but I want to ride them!!! 10) I hope there’ll be at least a few new buildings and stuff in the towns/they’ve started construction on some areas in Central Hyrule, but I guess that’ll depend on how long it’s been in-universe since BOTW. Or maybe not, considering how there’s still Karson and Hudson even though Bolson retired from Bolson Construction--insta-towns like Tarrey Town could totally be feasible if they wanted! 11) I have one foot in the camp that believes there’ll be time shenanigans in BOTW 2. HWAOC totally threw me off with it being an alternate timeline, so i’m not sure whether we’re going to be experiencing that again or time travel itself, but I definitely won’t be surprised this time around if Nintendo goes that route again (and it would be super interesting to see the Link from 10,000 years ago). I’m not entirely convinced that the Link we see exploring the sky in the second trailer isn’t our Link, mainly because he seems to still have on the blue boxers from BOTW. 12) I also heard that maybe this will be the last LoZ game ever since something something Demise something Skyward Sword something something lore from games i’ve only vaguely looked into (i’ve only ever played BOTW --> Wind Waker --> HWAOC)??? If so, it kind of sucks that I came in just when they started making games with playstyles palatable to me (I had to look up every single thing when playing Wind Waker, but BOTW let me solve things according to MY logic/I missed being able to explore in HWAOC), but at least it’ll end on a super high note/I won’t experience later disappointment, I guess. If BOTW 2 involves breaking the reincarnation cycle for the Triforcers, I would be really surprised. (On a related note, Nintendo making Ganondorf good would also be a 100% shock to me, but it would be great to end on that as a subversion. Yes, I want them to bring back the semi-complicated Ganondorf from Wind Waker.) 13) I hope they don’t rush releasing it. I heard they pushed back BOTW originally (I got it in 2019), but it came out fantastic for it! I know COVID’s been affecting things, so I really hope they’re treating their staff right and are mindful of crunch. 14) I want even more outfits (there seem to be at least two new ones, if the variant of the Hylian Tunic crossed with Link’s Champion’s Tunic counts). Give me all the outfits!!! Also, I hope we get even more hair variations in addition to the hair down option (which is all i’ve ever wanted since I saw the mod that altered the Ancient Helmet). 15) I wonder if we’re going to get a bonus for having both BOTW and HWAOC save data. 16) I wonder if we’re going to be keeping the Champions’ skills. I’m going to miss being super overpowered, if not. 17) I hope Nintendo doesn’t cave in and make surfaces climbable in the rain. Having that limiter is more realistic and Link would otherwise be too overpowered with a super climbing ability. 18) I liked BOTW’s scattered music that got more noticeable in populated areas because it was fitting for the post-apocalyptical/nature aspect. Hearing your footsteps in an open field and the buzzing of insects was super nice and prevented me from getting music fatigue (which i’d probably experience since whenever I play BOTW it’s for 5-10 hours at a time). I hope Nintendo either keeps that or makes audio options. 19) I heard that BOTW 2 is going to be super dark or something, and i’m okay with dark, but not GRIMdark, so I hope it doesn’t go that far. From what we’ve seen in the second trailer it still looks beautiful, but I hope it doesn’t do that thing that some games do where after the midpoint/a certain story point all the scenery permanently changes to be dark and scary (that’ll seriously hamper post-game playability for me if so). 20) If they expand on the Zonai, that would be super cool! Doubly cool if the time travel shenanigans involve them/ancient Link being one! 21) I kind of want windstorms to be a weather feature. We had lightning, heat, and cold, but no wind! No, I don’t count the wind geysers and the occasional breeze in Tabantha. 22) I want a chest in my house to hold more weapons than just the gear mounts. BOTW only had enough mounts for the champions’ gear, but it also had rare items like the Kite Shield and Forest Dweller’s Sword that you can’t get anymore once you use them up! 23) I want to be able to stable my horses at my house. What’s the point of that little area if you can’t stable your horse there! 24) Speaking of Link’s house: where is Zelda going to live? If the castle’s not reconstructed, it’d be neat if Link adds an extension to his house for her. 25) I hope they open up part-time jobs (think Mabinogi) as an option to earn rupees. Having to hunt for Luminous Stone deposits or feed Trott to make money can be such a chore. I think some of BOTW’s minigames/sidequests might count as those, but those minigames were either frustrating if your goal is to earn money (since most of them cost money to play in the first place and the mechanics weren’t always easy), or didn’t earn that much in general. 26) I wonder if Kilton is going to have updated items since the monsters seem to have changed. 27) I want to be able to dive underwater (mainly so I can explore the beautiful reefs over at Lurelin). A dive meter like the one from Super Mario Sunshine would be cool. Also, it’d doubly be neat if you had a separate stamina wheel for swimming and could permanently upgrade your swim/diving stamina (the speed+ swimming items just consumed your stamina faster, which was a pain)! 28) It’s definitely too late for this, but it’s a shame that the Hylians have so many face/body/hair and outfit variations, but the Zora, Rito, and Gorons don’t. The Gerudo were kind of okay with the hair and body variations, but the other races seemed to have a serious copy-paste problem. I guess technically some of the more important NPCs (ones with quests/cutscene triggers) had different coloring, but they were severely lacking in clothing variation. Also, the only old Rito was the elder??? At least the Gorons and Zora had some old folks besides their leader walking around. Very weird, but I don’t think BOTW 2 can fix any of this. 29) I wonder how they’re going to do the final boss battle, considering how epic/cinematic the BOTW 2x battle was. What can top fighting (on horseback, no less) a giant, flaming boar made out of malice? 30) I wonder what the Yiga are going to be up to, considering how Ganondorf seems to be somewhat kicking in BOTW 2.

[mysmashplaythroughs]

Super Mario Advance Playthrough

Fighter: Princess Peach Toadstool.

Game: Super Mario Advance, Wii U virtual console (GBA). First Released on March 21st 2001.

Fighter Bio.

Princess Peach Toadstool, known as Princess Peach more commonly now is the crown Princess of the Mushroom Kingdom. She is famous and well liked both within her Kingdom and in a lot of locations outside of it. Peach’s role in the Mario series varies with her most common role often being kidnapped by Bowser, but other villains have also captured her before. Based on my estimate, I believe she has been kidnapped roughly 31 times so far in the games including all spin-offs. Sometimes these kidnappings take place before the game starts meaning she only appears in the ending, other times she’ll have a role in the game before it happens and sometimes it will be a short part of the game like for a single chapter in one of the RPGs. Often in that last example it relates to another one of her roles, being a playable character who is either a party member or optional character to play as, with her sometimes becoming playable after being rescued. In the cases where Peach is not kidnapped immediately, she’ll often tell Mario and the others what they need to do when a crisis is taking place, advising them where to head to next or setting them off at the start of the game on their quest. Being captured so often, one skill Peach seems to have picked up over the years is her ability to often stealthily slip around her captors, sometimes simply working out a way to send Mario assistance such as items and advice, and other times managing to spy on her captor’s plans. Often due to the location she’s being held in she is unable to fully escape from her captors however, or in some cases her sense of duty to her also captured people will make her not try to leave without them.

The Mario series doesn’t have a solid timeline, so a lot of this is just my own personal ideas, but unless a game is explicitly taking place in the past with Baby versions of the characters, I tend to just go by the order in which the games are released regarding character’s histories in the franchise, something possibly evidenced by a scene in Super Mario Sunshine where F.L.U.D.D. searches its databank and has data on Mario’s adventures prior to that game as past events. I also personally like to consider the Paper Mario series broadly canon to the Mario series as a whole so I will be including aspects from that here. Peach first met the Mario Bros and Bowser back when they were babies, with her first meeting with them being during the events of Yoshi’s Island DS. In this game Peach was one of the babies who the Yoshis are trying to help get home, with her ability when riding a Yoshi being to use her parasol which allows them to ride on high winds. The next appearance of Baby Princess Peach was during the Shroob invasion where her older self went back in time and was kidnapped by the Shroobs. Baby Bowser planned to kidnap Baby Peach, however he was interrupted first by the Baby Mario Bros and then by the invading Shroobs. Baby Princess Peach actually manages to not be kidnapped throughout the game instead remaining in the future Castle with a young Toadsworth who is her caretaker. Following these two events (excluding spinoffs with Baby Peach where she appears but there’s no story such as Mario Kart) the Mario Bros seemingly left the Mushroom Kingdom possibly for New Donk City. Despite their absence, Bowser didn’t attempt any more kidnapping plots for some time, possibly not until the Mario Bros returned to the Mushroom Kingdom following the events of Donkey Kong and Mario Bros. Super Mario Bros seems to be the first time Bowser successfully kidnapped Princess Peach taking over her Kingdom entirely until the Mario Bros managed to defeat him and save her. In the backstory to this game, Bowser apparently used magic to transform the people of the Mushroom Kingdom into various objects and then kidnapped the Princess to stop her from turning them back. It’s due to this as well as Peach’s abilities in some games that it seems she is capable of certain forms of magic, often of the healing variety. It is only rarely however Peach is shown to use these abilities.

When it comes to her personality, Peach was probably the earliest character in the series to have dialogue, with her having lines in the very first game and most others after, whereas other characters like Bowser would more often only have dialogue in the instruction book at most. In the very first game it was fairly basic with her simply thanking Mario or Luigi for saving her and offering them the chance to take on a new quest, which was a harder version of the game. Super Mario Bros 3 however had her show a bit more personality, with her making a joke to her saviour at the end of the adventure based on the infamous line Toad would tell the player in the original game, “Thank you Mario but our Princess is in another castle.” Before telling them she was just kidding. Peach’s personality varies a little from game to game, but usually the main aspects of it are that she’s kind, generous and when not captured is good at advising the others what needs to be done. Despite being fairly reliable, she can sometimes be somewhat whimsical, especially in spin-off games with her often enjoying frolicking and singing, and she can when pushed show a fairly strong angry side, with her either aggressively convincing a character such as Luigi to go and save his brother or reacting angrily to those who mock her. Finally, despite her longstanding friendship with Mario, she’s willing to tell him off if he’s getting too carried away, almost abandoning him and Bowser at one point when they start squabbling and she just wants to go home.

Friends: Princess Peach is fairly popular throughout the Mushroom Kingdom and beyond and as such a lot of characters know of her even if they haven’t met her before. Peach’s subjects seem to all adore her a lot with them often being depressed when she’s absent. Of her closer relationships, her closest arguably is with Mario, with him often rescuing her and sometimes her returning the favour. Their relationship tends to be teased sometimes as possibly romantic, but there are times Peach will find Mario a bit too overbearing. What is clear is that they trust each other entirely and when possible will often work together. Peach is close with Luigi also although not to the same degree as Mario, however she will still in some games treat Luigi the same way she does Mario in the ending when Luigi is the character being played as, such as giving him a kiss on the cheek. Later games have shown she extends this to anyone who helps her as a sign of gratitude, including Yoshi, Toad and Toadette. The next closest relationship Peach has is with Toadsworth her elderly steward who has taken care of her since she was a baby. Toadsworth often worries for the Princess’s safety and tries to accompany her whenever he can. Toad is Peach’s attendant and often fulfils Toadsworth’s role in his absence sticking by her side when possible. Toad is fiercely loyal to Peach despite his cowardice and will often try to help her out however he can.

Toadette is someone Peach gets along with, however the two don’t interact that often with Toadette often doing other roles to help Mario. Peach has a connection to the Yoshis due to them saving her with the other Star Children when she was a baby, however besides this there is only one instance of her ever riding Yoshi, which is in the ending of Super Mario World where she rides Yoshi on the journey back to his house after Bowser is defeated. Of the rest of the cast Peach seems to get along fairly well with most of them, with possibly her best friend being Princess Daisy who she often partners with in various sports and other games and the two will also act as friendly rivals when in competition with each other.

Enemies/Rivals: The relationship between Bowser and Peach seems to have developed over the years. Initially Bowser seemed to aim to capture Peach simply because she was the princess of the Kingdom he was invading and then because she could undo the magic he used to transform her citizens. Eventually however, Bowser seemed to develop an affinity for Peach, one which she does not reciprocate at all. Due to this, Bowser’s aim is always to kidnap Peach and try to convince her to marry him rather than just destroy her as with his other enemies. Bowser also at one point told his son Bowser Jr that Peach was his Mother, which led to her being shocked when Bowser Jr claimed this. Despite Junior revealing later on he knew Peach wasn’t his real Mother, he still referred to her as Mama and seems to like the idea of it, kidnapping Peach sometimes so she can be with Bowser. Although Peach does not get along with Bowser or his troops, she will work with them when needed, and in cases where Bowser helps against another enemy she is willing to do things such as send him a cake as thanks. Beyond this, Peach has had a few other enemies, often them being villains who kidnap her as part of their plan such as Sir Grodus or Cackletta. Peach has fought against a couple of villains herself including Count Bleck’s minions, Smithy’s Gang and Wart, leader of the 8 bits who invaded Subcon.

Crossovers with other Smash characters: Being from the Mario series, Princess Peach has had a fair few crossovers, although not as many as the Mario Bros themselves. Super Mario RPG had Peach playable as part of the party, and therefore she was also present when Samus made a cameo in the game. Link’s cameo in the game appears before Princess Peach joins the party, however they are still technically in the same game so I feel it’s still worth mentioning. Princess Peach similarly to Mario appears in the crowd for both the Megaton Punch minigame and Kirby’s Battle in the Boxing arena with King Dedede in Kirby Super Star and the remake Super Star Ultra. Princess Peach is a racer in Mario Kart 8, where there was a Mii costume for Captain Falcon, along with the Blue Falcon as a kart and two F-Zero tracks. In Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, there is also Link in both his Skyward Sword and Breath of the Wild incarnations as well as both default Inklings, two human Animal Crossing Villagers and Isabelle who are playable. Princess Peach is a character in the Game & Watch Gallery games and as such has crossed over with Mr. Game & Watch. In the NES version of Tetris, Pit appeared playing a harp alongside characters such as Princess Peach, Samus, Link and Donkey Kong.  Princess Peach is a character in the Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games series therefore crossing over with Sonic. Pac-Man has crossed over with Princess Peach in the arcade Mario Kart GP series. Whilst Princess Peach has never directly crossed over with any of the Hero characters from Dragon Quest, many of the Fortune Street games have featured crossovers with the Dragon Quest and Mario series, with many other Dragon Quest characters interacting with her. Finally, and perhaps most notably is a game where Princess Peach has a direct cameo and Mario doesn’t. (There is however a character based on him) In all versions of Link’s Awakening a character named Catherine sends a photo of ‘herself’ to Mr. Write (a character who is a clear reference to Dr. Wright from the SNES SimCity game who is also an assist trophy in Super Smash Bros) with him showing Link the photo which is a picture of Princess Peach. In reality, Catherine is a goat living in Animal Village. Whilst normally I tend to not include pictures or outfits in other games as cameos (Peach’s dress and parasol appear in many other series such as Animal Crossing for example) I felt in this case it was justified as the photo is part of the actual sidequest regarding the character’s identity rather than just being a background cameo.

Why this game?

Princess Peach has been playable in a few games so I had quite a few to choose from, Super Mario 3D World was one contender with Peach playing somewhat similarly to how she does in Super Smash Bros, however she lacked something specific in this game that I went for with my final choice. The other two notable options, Super Paper Mario and Super Princess Peach which was her starring role both had her play in a somewhat more unique way to how she did in Super Smash Bros, with Perry the Parasol being a big part of her moveset in SPP, whilst in SPM Peach only had her Parasol lacking her floating jump. Super Mario Bros 2 was the first time Princess Peach was playable, and most of her moveset in Super Smash Bros originates from the game, with not only her being able to float for a short time when she jumps, but perhaps the most unique aspect from the game being her ability to pull out turnips to throw as weapons, something she only does in SMB2. It was for these reasons I decided to go with Super Mario Bros 2 in this case, especially as those other games will still be covered later down the line on my list. When it comes to the version of the game I chose, I went for the Super Mario Advance incarnation rather than the original NES or Allstars version, however I will detail that more in the next section overall.

My past with this game.

So this game is one of the select few specifically from my childhood. I had Super Mario Allstars on the SNES with this game on it, but also I had the NES version as well. With the NES version the main thing I remember is just having the box with the picture of Mario on the front. Similarly to other games then I never completed this one, however it was probably the Mario game I got the least far playing. I believe I would only ever get to 1-3 before usually not making it past the Phantos to face Mouser. For some time I mostly remembered the game but didn’t really revisit it, it wasn’t exactly in the same class as Super Mario Bros 3 or Super Mario World even if I did have some fond memories of it for being so different. Probably the most confusing thing with the game for me back then was related to the cartoon show. In the cartoon show, Bowser is depicted looking different to the games, with him being mostly green with a crown on his head as opposed to his look in the vast majority of other appearances with orange scales on his body and only his head green as well as lacking a crown. Wart, the antagonist of Super Mario Bros 2 however, was all green with a crown on his head. Due to this, I believed that the King Koopa on the cartoon show was actually Wart (which might not be that outlandish as the first version of the cartoon show was based on Super Mario Bros 2, so it was likely King Koopa was just an amalgamation of Bowser and Wart, although this is DIC so the possibility of them just screwing it up is always the most likely scenario) Another perhaps somewhat unique source of this was my Grandma when I’d visit her as a kid, who would have various games I could play with my Cousins, and one she had was a card game called Super Mario Bros Blockbusting Card Game. Of course, being a big fan of Mario then I would love getting this out, especially as the big cards had artwork of the various enemies, powerups and the Mario Bros. What was interesting was this also had artwork of Wart as well as Bowser, which therefore for me back then looked even more similar, so I just assumed Wart was the King Koopa from the cartoons and Bowser was from the games. What helped with this was there were a fair few of the bosses from Super Mario Bros 2 who were cards in the set.

It was only with magazines I believe that I gradually learnt that Wart was the antagonist of Super Mario Bros 2, and at first I believed this meant he was the villain from the cartoon show till I finally realised the cartoon show wasn’t really relevant to the games at all and King Koopa was meant to be Bowser. I also at this time learnt probably the other most notable aspect of this game, that it wasn’t the original Super Mario Bros 2. Despite having Super Mario Allstars, back then I didn’t exactly look at the Lost Levels as anything else other than a weird version of Super Mario Bros I couldn’t get anywhere on, and it was only later I learnt that that was the game in Japan that was SMB2 and the SMB2 I knew had been another game altogether, Doki Doki Panic. What’s interesting is I believe apparently Miyamoto was more involved in Doki Doki Panic than SMB2 (Lost Levels) overall, so it’s not as if the game becoming a Mario one was completely out of nowhere. It’s also very interesting that so many factors of this game, things like Peach’s movement, Luigi’s distinct character design, Toad being playable and perhaps the biggest one being various enemies such as Bob-ombs and Shy Guys became a huge part of the Super Mario Bros series, with Bob-ombs appearing in the following game SMB3 (Which meant in Japan these enemies somehow went from being in Doki Doki Panic to Super Mario Bros 3.) The reason for this apparently was that they believed the original SMB2 (Lost Levels) was too difficult really to sell outside of Japan, something that tends to be mocked now, but personally I think it makes for a more interesting and unique sequel so I’m kind of glad it happened. It’s also interesting to me that due to this, outside of Japan Super Mario Bros fits a slight pattern I noticed with a couple of franchises on NES, where the second game in the series would be quite different to the first, then the third would end up being more like the first game again but expanded. The Legend of Zelda had Zelda II Adventure of Link which had sidescrolling as a major gameplay element before A Link to the Past brought the series back to how it was in the original game, Castlevania 2 Simon’s Quest was a lot different to the first game, but Castlevania 3 Dracula’s Curse brought it back to the gameplay of the first game, and with SMB2 it was radically different to SMB, but then SMB3 brought it back to the style of the first game.

Another big part of my history with the game, as with a fair few franchises, goes back to my experiences on the early internet, specifically Newgrounds flash animations again. Back then, there was a flash animation at the time called Rise of the Mushroom Kingdom which I really enjoyed. It was bloody and involved Mario dying and Luigi setting out for revenge, fairly tame compared to a lot of stuff on Newgrounds then and with some really nice usage of sprites. It was the second flash movie in this series however that involved Mario setting off to face the real villain behind the events of the first movie (which turned out to have been a dream) Wart that really made me appreciate SMB2 more. At the time I was really getting into messing around with sprites and Games Factory, trying to make my own games, so this flash movie made me look a lot more into SMB2 and all the unique enemies in it, with the various bosses such as Mouser, Tryclyde and of course Birdo and Wart being characters I wanted to see more of. This all led me to finally properly play SMB2 and beat it some time after I had beaten SMB3.

For my final history with the game, it relates mostly to Super Mario Advance, the remake of Super Mario Bros 2 that launched the Game Boy Advance. It was traditional at that point to launch a new Nintendo console with a Mario game, a pattern that would be broken only a few months later with the release of the Gamecube (which instead had Luigi’s Mansion, and the Wii wouldn’t have a Mario series game at all at launch.) This game was the first in the Super Mario Advance series and it’s arguably the version that was changed the most from the original game, with a few changes to the levels such as new giant Shy Guys and a fair bit more voice acting with all the bosses getting lines they’d say when you met them. This is pure speculation I’ve had since then, but I feel like they possibly picked Super Mario Bros 2 as they felt it was the game that they could risk changing most, and also that they changed it the most of the series so as to show off what the GBA was capable of with the voices and sprites. I remember when the GBA was the current console, Super Mario Advance was the game I’d tend to see most often being shown off in stores, even sometime after other games had come out. Despite this, it was probably the last game in the Advance series I got, but I’d say out of the Mario Advance series it’s the game I’d most recommend instead of or alongside the original or Allstars version as it’s the more unique experience. It’s due to this that I chose Super Mario Advance as the version for my playthrough rather than the others.

My Smash Playthrough.

I have actually played through this game fairly recently from start to finish, for a character much further down my list so the game is somewhat fresh in my memory compared to other games I’ve written about so far here. For this playthrough as it was the game I chose for Princess Peach I played through the whole game solely as her. In comparison I’d say she’s one of the characters who I prefer playing as due mostly to her extremely useful floating ability, with her downside (being her power which means she’s unable to pull vegetables or pick up enemies as quickly and a slower running speed) not really feeling too much of a hassle in exchange. I want to focus on Peach mostly, but Mario as always is the all-rounder having no real weaknesses nor gimmicks that make him excel in any area, Luigi has the best jump but is a little slower and less powerful than Mario (this is also the game where he first had his scuttle jump) and finally Toad (the character I played through the game as recently) is the fastest and most powerful but has the lowest jump, often requiring you to charge up a super jump (done by crouching down until the character starts glowing) to reach higher platforms. The plot of the game is that Mario had a dream one night where he went up a staircase and found a mysterious door. Opening the door he saw a vast world before him and heard a voice telling him this land was Subcon and that the evil Wart is causing suffering there. The voice tells Mario that only he can save the land and to remember Wart hates vegetables before Mario wakes up. The next day, Mario, Luigi, Toad and Princess Peach go for a picnic, Mario tells them of the dream he had and they all say they had the same dream. During their picnic they see a cave and look inside it, finding a staircase leading up to the same door from the dream. When they open it, they are once again standing before Subcon, with them this time entering which is where the game starts.

Probably the most immediate point for most Mario players to notice when first playing this game is how it is very different when it comes to a lot of the standard Mario mechanics, granted when the game came out this was following only the original Super Mario Bros, so it wasn’t quite as unusual. Some aspects remain the same, such as the characters turning small when they have only one hit left, however unlike in other Mario games their health is restored by finding hearts, with any amount of hearts over one bringing them back to regular size. Mushrooms are in the game still, but this time finding one and picking it up gives the character an extra heart (as well as fully healing them) which means they’re a lot less common than in other Mario games. This game also lacks any sort of power-ups such as the Fire Flower, with the only alternate form being brief invincibility when touching a Star. I quite enjoy the main mechanic used to fight in this game, being picking up objects or enemies and throwing them at other enemies to defeat them, it provides a fun and fairly unique style of gameplay to the other games in the series and creates fairly basic puzzles in some cases where you’re required to build a small tower of mushroom blocks as an example to be able to reach a high platform. Possibly one of the most infamous aspects of this game are the keys that are sometimes required in stages to get through a locked door. You are required to carry the keys similarly to other objects to the door, however when holding the key, the evil Phanto Masks will relentlessly pursue you, and only stop either when you use the key on the door or drop the key. Despite their reputation and giving me some trouble as a kid, nowadays I barely find them a problem as just throwing the key ahead of you usually gets them off your back long enough to travel a fair distance before they pursue you again.

When it comes to difficulties I faced playing the game, it’s a fairly easy game, with only two sections I remember really causing me many problems both recently and back during this playthrough. The first is a stage where you’re travelling across the tops of whales in the ocean. The top of them is a fairly big platform, although the middle of the platform will sometimes have water spout out of their blowhole. Touching this water from the side will hurt you which can be somewhat annoying, however jumping on top of the water that’s spurting out provides a platform. Perhaps the most irritating part to me is when you’re required to use the whales tails as platforms, mostly as they are very small and it can be very easy to slip off of them, leading to an instant death. The second and probably most irritating situation in the game for me are parts featuring you digging through sand. In these parts of the level there are layers of sand that you can dig by pulling them similarly to how you pull vegetables out of the ground. The problem with these parts are the Shy Guys who constantly walk from left to right, and will fall down the layers of Sand you’ve removed. Due to how little room you have to manoeuvre when you get lower in the sand, picking the Shy Guys up and throwing them doesn’t really work, often with them catching on a layer above and instantly walking back into you taking off health. The way I describe this sounds like it’s a design issue but it’s more just hard to describe and really makes sense when playing, it’s not unfair or anything, it’s just these sections are the ones I tend to die most at and find the most tedious, possibly simply due to impatience when it comes down to it.

The stages aren’t really ground-breaking, but when compared to the stages in the original Super Mario Bros I feel they have a fair bit more variety. The themes for them are grassland, vertical waterfall stages, desert stages, underground caves and snow stages, with some of them simply being at night. I still find the stages do some interesting things however with them not seeming just like variations of each other but often having a few unique features to them that makes them stand out, for example the very first stage is a fairly basic grassland, but the end of it has you going into a cave to reach the top of some hills, then climbing into the clouds before facing the boss. The levels are longer than those in the original Super Mario Bros, however there are less of them, with each world only having 3 stages, and the last world, World 7 only having two. The game is somewhat challenging, it was probably the one I got the least far in of the Super Mario Bros games as a kid, but despite a couple of issues I find it fairly simple to play through now, especially with Peach.

The Bosses are probably the more interesting of the first three Super Mario Bros games with there being quite a few variations, although some are repeated a few times. This game was the debut of Birdo who appears in a few variations. The most basic battle with Pink Birdo has her shoot eggs from her mouth at you, which you have to grab from the air and throw back at her. Red Birdo shoots eggs also, but varies it with some fireballs, so you have to be careful which projectile you jump onto and which you just avoid. Green Birdo is the final variation shooting only fireballs, requiring you to grab other objects from around the room to throw instead of eggs to beat her. There is a fourth sort of variation exclusive to Super Mario Advance, being the Robo Birdo. This boss fires eggs also like Birdo, however the eggs are giant and it also has a charging attack which requires you to grab one of the chains hanging from the ceiling to avoid. Birdos are usually the bosses of the regular stages in Super Mario Bros 2, with the third stage of each world having a unique boss to fight, Robo Birdo being one of these unique bosses who replaces a repeated boss in the original versions of the game. There are a couple of unique appearances of Birdo in the game however which I find neat personally, one of which is a Pink Birdo who appears at the very start of stage 4-3. This Birdo will always respawn when defeated when you leave the area through a door and return again. The reason why is that the eggs she fires are actually meant to be used to ride across a large chasm to reach the rest of the level, which is probably one of my favourite little gimmicks in the game.

Mouser is the first main boss in the game, a Mouse with sunglasses who likes to throw bombs everywhere, naturally the way to beat him is to throw his bombs back at him. I remember finding this boss a little annoying mostly as he’s on a platform above you, and only gets effected by the bomb if it goes off where he’s standing. Due to his erratic movements this can be down to luck somewhat as to whether he’ll stand in the right spot when the bomb explodes, although it’s hardly a difficult battle overall. What’s probably most interesting to me about Mouser is that he is probably the boss who varies the most between versions of the game. In the original form of the game, Doki Doki Panic he appeared as a boss three times, with a green eared version in stage 3-3 and a white furred version in 5-3. Super Mario Bros 2 replaced the version in 5-3 with another boss, and then Super Mario Advance replaced the green eared version with Robo Birdo, but actually had a second boss battle with the regular Mouser replace a second boss battle with another character. Tryclyde is the next boss faced all versions of the game, being a three headed snake that shoots fireballs and has to have mushroom blocks thrown at it. Interestingly Tryclyde appears again as a boss in SMB2 but in Super Mario Advance it’s replaced in it’s second battle by Mouser. Another odd factor with Tryclyde is in Super Mario Bros 2 it is red, but in the remake for Mario All-Stars and Super Mario Advance it is instead green with red patterns on it’s back. It’s particularly odd in this case as some enemies, Cobrats who are single headed snakes that appear in the game remain red in all versions. Tryclyde is more of a challenging boss than Mouser and caused me perhaps a death or two but wasn’t that tough overall. The next boss is probably the one I had the most trouble with, Fryguy a living flame. Due to being a flame, touching Fry Guy at all causes damage, so you have to throw mushroom blocks at him. What makes this battle more difficult is that Fryguy moves around a fair bit, and hitting him with the mushroom blocks due to this without being hit yourself can be a lot more tricky. On top of this, when you beat the first phase of the boss fight, Fryguy then splits into four smaller versions that can be just as tricky to hit and all need to be extinguished in order to beat him. Fryguy is probably second only to Wart when it comes to how often I’d die to him, and I think in this playthrough actually killed me more than Wart did. Clawgrip the crab is the final of the standard bosses in the game, throwing boulders at you which have to be picked up and thrown back at him. I remember this battle being a little tricky as landing on the boulders properly could be tough, and approaching from the side at all would cause you damage, but overall he was less tough than Fryguy to me. Clawgrip replaced the white Mouser and was the only boss who wasn’t in Doki Doki Panic (besides Robo Birdo.) Every boss is voiced in this version of the game and I find them fun little voicelines overall that make them more memorable, with lines like Mouser going “Here, have some bombs!” or Birdo’s “This is as far as you go!”

The final two levels are the most difficult overall, not being as irritating to me as the digging through sand or whale sections earlier in the game, but more difficult stages overall than the others, with the first having you travelling across clouds with a lot of enemies and pits to overcome and the second being a big palace which is probably the biggest maze in the game. They are both however, probably my favourite levels in the game overall. I tend to have an affinity for cloud based sky stages and I find the palace a fitting final location. Wart is the final boss of the game and is fought in a room with the Dream Machine which he has been using possibly to create the various monsters that make up his army of bad dreams. The Dream Machine seems to perhaps possess some sort of sentience however, as in the final battle it starts shooting out vegetables which can be grabbed and thrown into Wart’s mouth to defeat him. Wart fights by shooting out bubbles and it is only when he opens his mouth to do so he can be hurt by throwing a vegetable in there, which was why at the start of the game Mario was told about Wart hating them as a hint. I remember having some trouble years ago with timing the vegetables so as to not get hit by the bubbles, but this time it went fairly smoothly and I beat Wart I think first time. With Wart defeated you go through to the next room and free the native inhabitants of Subcon from a jar, who celebrate Mario, Luigi, Toad and Peach defeating Wart and saving them before seeming to throw the defeated Wart out of the Palace. With this, the scene then switches to Mario in bed, revealing the whole game was a dream as cast credits for all of the enemies in the game go by, which in the original version of the game had a couple of mistakes such as Ostro, a minor enemy and Birdo’s names being swapped, which is corrected in this version. It’s a nice ending and for those who overanalyse these games like me, somewhat interesting as a few of the enemies who first appeared in this game such as Shy Guys and Snifits actually also appeared in Yoshi’s Island when Mario was a baby, so as this is part of a dream those memories might be related to them appearing in Wart’s army of bad dreams, although I know it’s probably nothing that deep overall. So overall, I enjoyed playing through this game, it’s not overly long or difficult and as a portable game back when it came out and the first example of what the GBA could do, it was very good overall I’d say.

Specific aspects about the game relating to Peach in Smash.

I’ve pretty much gone over the main aspects of Princess Peach in this game when it comes to Super Smash Bros, this game was the origin of Peach’s floating jump ability and her pulling turnips out of the ground to throw at enemies. In Super Smash Bros, very rarely Peach can pull other items out of the ground instead of a turnip, one of which being a Bob-omb, which is possible also in Super Mario Bros 2 where some of the tufts of grass when pulled will turn out to be a Bob-omb which has to be thrown away immediately or else it will explode on you. Other than this however, most of Peach’s other moves come from other games I will cover later, such as her frying pan being from Super Mario RPG, Tennis Racket and Golf Club from their respective sports series and Parasol from various other games. There’s nothing really to customise so that’s pretty much it for Peach’s appearance in this game.

Credits.

For information on this game including dates of releases I must give credit to Super Mario Wiki.

The screenshots in this post are taken by me using Miiverse before it shut down.

[cruddyborderlandstheories]

this DLC has me FUCKED UP and i keep screaming

spoilers for Bounty of Blood under the cut, keep reading at ur own peril. Also some Guardian Takedown spoilers for anyone who hasn’t beat it yet

tl;dr: a comparison between something taken from BL2 and a thing taken from Bounty of Blood. more spoilery tl;dr below the cut.

also the siren thing is not spoilers so i’ll share it here for anyone curious, it’s just this: siren tattoos are blue but when lily absorbs eridium in 2, they turn pinkish/purple. just like how vaults do from bl1 to bl2. they’re white/blue in bl1, then purple-pink in bl2 (and tps), y’know, after Eridium begins erupting from the ground. just a neat little detail i noticed that im not entirely sure was intentional but im gonna believe it is.

tl;dr: Gythian Blood = Core and the Ruiner is of Eridian Origin even tho everyone in the DLC likes to say it was created with Jakobs’ bioengineering. disclaimer: idk if I’ve found every hidden ECHO so I may be missing a few things but I have done every side quest and took ample screenshots of all important dialogue in the DLC : )

“man i just sat here for like 15 minutes staring at my keyboard mentally comparing core and eridium like the dumb bitch i am. 

it's not like we can do an actual comparison because we have no idea what the natural fauna of gehenna was like before jakobs came and mutated everything with core unlike pandora where we know what skags and rakk and shit were like BEFORE the eridium crust erupted. 

altho!!! there's a neat comparison between joey ultraviolet and rose. like obviously he wasn't getting tattoos and was just doing lines of crushed up eridium but the point stands they both have glowy eyes and unique powers so i don't necessarily think this means rose is a siren just because she has magic powers especially when we know she got the whistling passed down to her from her grandmother. 

especially because we've never seen a siren interact with core before. altho that leaves the question we have seen core tattoos now what are eridium tattoos like? actually rose's tattoos were on her right arm obviously she isn't a siren as we know them right now (I saw a post on reddit where people thought rose was a siren) 

of course that brings up the point perhaps siren tattoos ARE eridium tattoos. but then we hear the general's log about how the devil riders were tattooing a man with core and blood so obviously they're not ‘naturally’ occurring unlike siren tattoos. so odds are they're probably not equivalents but something interesting i thought of while thinking about this is how well siren tattoos compare to the Vaults from borderlands 1 and borderlands 2″

anyway. this is all ive been thinking about. yes yes i know guardian takedown post but! >:( im still salty even tho this update has been lovely (outside of Blane not getting his correct damage scaling ‘till today......). so i’ll do that at my own damn pace. now let me elaborate so i can sleep at night lmao

Eridium

refinement produces slag, which weakens people and can mutate things

has mutating properties, mostly with imbuing elements into shit- possibly causes insanity

seems to be connected to another dimension, likely the one the Eridians are from

Core

has a secondary form of Infused Core

has mutating properties, mostly regarding a thing’s body and mind

apparently radioactive

there are some things i wanna note

1) People throughout the DLC say the Ruiner was created by the Jakobs corp (the company) thru bio-engineering but I’m 99% sure that’s not true. The paperwork seems to me like they found the egg somewhere on Gehenna and decided to roll and experiment with it like all corporations do when they find weird alien shit. so maybe they experimented with whatever was inside the egg, but I don’t think they actually created it entirely

“Excavated from [REDACTED] ... Local legends speaks of a [REDACTED]. This theory is not endorsed by our research personnel.

2) The Ruiner’s design reminds me a lot of the Warrior.

3) Core immediately reminded me of Gythian Blood from Guns Love and Tentacles and I don’t think that’s coincidence to have 2 back-to-back DLCs where the big bad is focused on green death juice. I think Gythian Blood and Core are of the same stuffs.

4) Therefore, I think the Ruiner is (mostly) of Eridian origin (if you haven’t already guessed). 

This gives us an amazing look into how the Eridians actually create their beasts!!! And I’m so happy they showed us this.

(side note, Interitus Regina (the long name for Ruiner) literally means Destruction Queen and I think that’s beautiful <3)

i mean the idea that they plunge them from orbit to create an explosion similar to a nuke is fucking horrifying (but holy shit I love it so much ahhh it’s so cool!!!!)

the one side line from Oletta about how the company couldn’t control the Ruiner deffo makes me double down on this theory. I’m not entirely sure how Rose’s grandma knew about the whistling (I don’t think I’ve found every echo log in that area YET), but I would bet it was part of the testing given how many fuckin’ tape players they have throughout the facility. The Warrior was controlled by verbal commands via Jack, so it’s possible that the Ruiner was intended to be controlled similarly, but Jakobs intervention (or something like the way Rose hatched it) fucked it up.

now we know the Warrior was created to protect the Vault of the Destroyer (hmm.) so what the heck was the Ruiner created for? Ruiner is a name given to it by Jakobs/the people of Gehenna so we can’t really assume, but then again the monster names are pretty apt in this series even tho they probably technically shouldn’t be. 

it was only an egg, so maybe it was another test of Core? A Vault Monster incubating until it was ready to protecc and attacc but was never hatched because the Eridians ‘sacrificed’ themselves before it could? (I’m still not convinced the Eridians are the good guys. Listen. LISTEN. The guardian takedown is something to think about, BUT it doesn’t disprove that theory and I’ll stand by it because I 100% trust the Overseer more than bitchpants mcgee over here who thinks he’s soooo special for no reason fuck you and your dumb ‘I did what the Watcher could not’ bull you haven’t done shit.) ok sorry im done he just angers me. stupid guardian man. your whip is stupid and you should feel bad. oh also I totally called us actually being Guardians thru Guardian Rank before the game came out aha yeah.

I definitely think Gythian was a test/use of Core from the Eridians. We see in Bounty of Blood that core seems to mutate more the physical (and occasionally mental) parts of people, like with the crew challenges u do for Juno with all the weird hybrid people and whatnot. Gythian had the whole ‘the heart still beats’ thing going on (which is definitely a physical mutation if i’ve ever seen one), plus the whole, you know, mind control and shit. Which is p similar to what the menta gnats can do when charged with Infused Core. And keep in mind in BLaT we see DAHL notes on what happens to test subjects when injected with Gythian Blood. They mutated physically and went insane.

What im saying is Sirens and Eridium and Elements are connected, so what does Core equal? body/mind sure but are there unique creatures for core (yes holy shit I’m not talking about h2o au for once and FINALLY they gave us a canon name for the green stuff!!!). If not, I’d love to see a Siren interact with Core to see what it does to them. seriously why hasn’t tannis interrupted us yet. horrible excuse for a science lover (kidding kidding, I love her). I’d also really love a fuller rundown on what the hell Rose’s powers were. Because the whistling thing seemed to just be her grandma’s thingie passed down to her from her mom

but the core stuff

her gun seems to be infused with it. So did her sword thing. I didn’t really get a good look at it i was too busy trying to see thru my blurry tears of LOVE for this DLC.

Strangely while her tattoos are (mostly) green I actually don’t know if they’re core infused bc look at this

n look back at hers. hers aren’t very lime.

anyway

her eyes

I’d love to know if the core gives her immediate future sight or just increased perception or reaction times. there’s a huge difference but she seemed to be able to shoot the gun outta the sheriff’s hand near immediately and it seems kinda implied its because of the core (or at least because her eyes are glowing green)

there’s a possibility she has some unique core powers/possibly implants because of her relations to the project in the first place, or as leader of the devil riders after looting the facility. it’s really hard to say without more info and like i said im not sure if i missed an ECHO or two or not regarding her backstory :( 

Her hair is also green which I just noticed. Maybe she has core powers bc her grandmother got suuuuuuuuper irradiated/influenced working on project horizons and it passed down thru her n Rose’s mom, to Rose. Tannis does have a line about Sirens having unique hair colors and, if Sirens are linked to Eridium, perhaps those linked to Core also have unique hair color. Could also explain why only Rose seems to have those whistling powers. That said we don’t really see anyone else trying that whistling thing out afaik and idk if it was, like, a special ability or a certain tone/ditty or w h a t. 

i know being vague with everything gives them more creative freedom to create amazing characters and scenarios, but dammit I want A N S W E R S.

All THAT said man I’m so glad magic is real in the borderlands universe. oh, sorry, “magic”. It’s magic. Science it, tannis, I dare you. either way, I win. Either it’s magic and H2O AU is canon, or it’s science and I finally get my goddamn answers. Hey gearbox can you make a book just explaining all the science and eridian stuff. please. I’d love you forever. please. pleaheheheheaaasseee it’s all i’ve ever wanted.

oh also can i just say, suuuper disappointed we didn’t learn anything about anshin. Really wish non-fan favorite corporations would get the spotlight/lore for once. Like, I like Jakobs as much as the next guy, and I get WHY they did it (can’t have a corporation looking too good!!!) but they now have 3 DLCs (Jakobs Cove, GLaT, and Bounty of Blood) and also a hefty chunk of the main game. Like... we all know Jakobs fuckin sucks, look at what they did on Pandora. I really just want info on a medical corporation 😭 I have to do everything my damn s e l f. but SERIOUSLY IMAGINE the possibilities that could come from a medical corp getting its hands on eridian tech. like, yeah obviously the weapons corps are gonna use it for weaponry and stuff BUT WOULDN’T THE MEDICAL CORPS MUTATING PEOPLE MAKE MORE SENSE??? ldfhgldfshg I have to do everything my damn self...

anyway all that aside, this is definitely by favorite borderlands dlc by a LONG shot. Nothing comes close. Ahhh the lore, the nuclear aspect, the a e s t h e t i c (seriously, have I mentioned how much I adore Trigun???), the art, the music, the cryoslinger, the fact I can bust out going beeEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAans like Ray Chase at any time and it will MAKE SENSE. I love all of it.

oh, also, Rose is totally not dead. C’mon, they couldn’t find her body. She pulled a Lilith. “Are you sure she didn’t just suffer a wound that LOOKS fatal, only for her to come back in a blockbuster sequel...?” is a line from mr Jones himself (the movie guy)

I just hope when she comes back she gets to meet Captain Scarlett. I’d love to watch their interactions plus pirates and or ninjas. That’s 2 DLC villains now that have vanished without a trace. And I like Captain Scarlett way more than Rose (seriously I spent the entire beginning of the DLC complaining about how her voice bothered me- I was so happy she was a villain, I was hoping that was the case).

oh yeah, reminder, the people of vestige were living next to highly radioactive egg for likely years. i feel really bad for them :(

also!!!

this made me smile

[repentantsky]

5 Unpopular JRPG’s Takes

I could probably make an entire career of my unpopular opinions, people seem to love to get angry about them, but seem to enjoy that anger. With that said, here are 5 unpopular takes on JRPG’s. Beware minor to major spoilers for every game mentioned on this list. 

5. Cloud, is an asshole, and he sure ain’t no hero - Final Fantasy VII.

Final Fantasy 7 is often revered as the best story and game of not only Final Fantasy, but JRPG’s in general, and yet, even though it would have been a bit less dramatic, Cloud’s horrible decisions, led to even worse consequences. Cloud knew that Sephiroth could control him, hell he even suggested staying back because of what could happen. Regardless of this knowledge, he kept bringing the Black Materia and himself in close proximity to Sephiroth, and kind of just let things play out as they would. If he had stayed back, his party likely would have been able to beat Sephiroth on their own, and Tifa could have even had a dramatic highlighted moment where she beat Sephiroth to death for Cloud’s sake and hers, and all could have been right with the world. Instead, Cloud went with his party, got tricked again into giving the Black Materia to Sephiroth, thereby making Aerith’s death a required sacrifice to make the planet strong enough to withstand a meteor, but not strong enough to avoid essentially an apocalypse. 

4. Veronica didn’t have to die, and time didn’t have to be restarted to save her. Dragon Quest XI. 

It goes without saying that hindsight is 20/20, but that doesn’t mean something entirely stupid didn’t happen that led to the death of Veronica, and the subsequent restarting of time before her death that could have dammed the whole planet. When The Hero, or Eleven as he should be called by DQ cannon, found the Sword of light, he just sort of, stood there gawking at it for a while. In the long run, this hesitation led to Veronica sacrificing herself, and as we saw when time was put back to before her death, that lack of hesitation resulted in more shenanigans than should ever be needed to save one person’s life, when the rest of all non-monster life is at risk. Simply put, grabbing the sword faster might have led to the same results as restarting time, but they pulled through that just fine, so it could have all ended just as well. But no, we had several more hours of adventuring to do, only to erase all of that, start over, and basically end up at the same place, and some people, might have actually preferred the original ending, and having Serena, grow a strength both literally and in game, that she ended up not needing. 

3. Persona 5′s Social Links, are all kind of bad, and Persona 5 Royal proves it.

Yes I’m calling them social links. Excuse me for playing other Persona games first and not liking the changed name that means the exact same thing, but Persona 5′s attempt to flush out it’s characters via non-required story all sort of fall flat. In games past, the characters grew up by handling their issues head-on, and in Persona 5, they kind of just, work through them while a nothing character spurs on their changes. Almost every character in Persona 5 is either being pushed around by another character and getting past them as a way to develop, or they are trying to help another character, and doing so does it for them. While it’s not a bad idea to let some growth come from handling the adversity that comes with getting involved in someone else’s life, to do it so often, and even to have many of the characters that move everyone’s plots by at times, entirely off screen characters, was just a bad choice, and felt extremely lazy compared to Persona’s 3 and 4. Other characters in those games, sometimes on screen, and sometimes not, helped other people as a small bit of their development, or let themselves be helped by others as a part of it, but to have the same kinds of characters be driving forces to character development, even if they aren’t or are hardly ever on screen, took the focus away from the people you interact with, thereby diminishing their roles, in their own stories. The popularity of Kasumi, who did have a story focused on her character development, and how she develops by interacting with Ren, the protagonist, and Goro who’s roll changed in Royal, proves that fans wanted that, and for whatever reason, Atlus originally, dropped the ball in that regard, almost entirely. 

2. Hating Final Fantasy XIII, but not Final Fantasy X, is kind of stupid.

If you aren’t a fan of FFXIII and it’s endless corridors, but love FFX, you might have a taste of nostalgia blinding you, or you might not be paying attention. Both games rely on corridor’s with limited space to move, FFX just, sort of hides it better, sort of. They do manage to make it feel like your traveling towards an end goal that’s worth fighting for better than XIII does, but even with that, they used a pretty similar idea, corridors with one open space towards the end, and then back to corridors. The only really noticeable change is that it’s far easier to get back to the open area, The Clam Lands, than it is to get back to FFXIII’s open space as you can get the airship sooner in FFX, than you can get to the area before you take on what is basically the Pope in FFXIII. I can already hear some people saying it was mostly about a difference of hardware capabilities, but that’s obviously not true, as games ranging from The Simpsons Hit and Run, to Grand Theft Auto, to Jak 3, to even Shadow of the Colossus to Yakuza 2 proved there were plenty of ways to implement a more open world, and Final Fantasy’s past, absolutely had open worlds as a standard. 

1. Vivi not stopping, would have actually been sadder - Final Fantasy IX. 

At the end of the Final Fantasy IX, my personal favorite in the series, Vivi has stopped, and we learn that he spent the remainder of his time, building smaller versions of himself. The ending text by him is supposed to make the ending bittersweet, after all Garnet and Zidane end up together, and there’s all those small Vivi’s are there celebrating the reunion of the two lovers in place of their creator who didn’t live to see it. However, as far as we know, Vivi wasn’t the last Black Mage to stop, meaning he got to avoid seeing much worse happen to his home, Black Mage Village. Vivi obviously felt a huge connection with the other Black Mages, even to the point where he considered staying with them and leaving the party to handle Kuja on their own, and while he missed seeing his friends reunite, he also got to miss seeing all the other mages stop, which arguably would have been more heartbreaking, espeically since the future of the village could have been in dire straits if everyone but Vivi had stopped. 

And that’s my list, did I miss any of your unpopular JRPG’s opinions? Let me know in the notes below, feel free to reblog this if it interested you, and have a wonderful day. 

[evajellion]

Why Suketoudara is (one of) the most well-developed characters in Puyo Puyo

You ever just look back at how far the Puyo Puyo and Madou Monogatari franchise has come, and think about how much the characters have changed over the years? 

Some have become main stay recurring cast members, while sadly some others have been completely left in the dust or remain in Quest or other spin-off titles. Others become more amazing in hindsight, such as Schezo and Rulue (even if most can argue SEGA dropped the ball on their character in recent times), starting off as slightly minor characters, getting their own arcs.

Witch is also pretty incredible to think about, what once was a mere mook enemy became one of the most popular characters, obtained her own spin-off title, and co-starred in a Madou game with Schezo.

Then you have the most interesting case imo, which is Suketoudara. What makes him so incredible? When you look at his actual personality and character, and how it’s changed across games… for the better!

Since I said I would talk about this after seeing @superbuffalo007​‘s post, I decided it’s time the unspoken truth is finally said-- which is Suketoudara’s character across the games.

So originally, Suketoudara started off no differently than Witch and Draco. The only huge key difference was his character design, in which rather than being a cute humanoid girl… Suketoudara was a funny fish with human arms and legs that liked to dance. His design was goofy albeit uncanny (especially in the PC98 Madou), which probably got some designers at Compile to chuckle, nothing more.

He was a blank slate enemy, nothing more, nothing less. And once we got the first two Puyo Puyo games, which had “Manzai” based dialogue for comedic purposes. We learn that this funky fish prides himself and his beautiful legs. I mean, to be completely fair… he does. Usually in these games (and Puyo Sun), Arle was the straight man while Suketoduara was the goof.

Out of nowhere, the guy skyrocketed in popularity. He, Nasu, and Carbuncle were easily marketable characters due to their distinct, funny appearance which I assume made them very popular with younger fans. In commercials, you would probably often see this character be frequently used-- that’s how iconic his design was. His personality though, was about as shallow as everyone else’s.

This changed of course, in 1996 and onward, where Compile decided “hey, maybe we should do more with this character besides just having him dance”.

In 1996, Madou Monogatari Hanamaru Daiyouchi Enji (Big Kindergarten Kids) would be released for the Super Famicom. Rather than the usual dungeon-crawler, this game took inspiration from the likes of A Link to the Past, Final Fantasy, and Earthbound in terms of its overworld design. More importantly though, it took what was once mere mooks, the most popular characters, and made some of them into full-on major bosses you had to fight.

Amongst those characters are Nasu Grave, Skeleton-T, Mini-Zombie, and Suketoudara (called Jr. in this game).

You know who wasn’t? Uh… Witch and Draco, if you can believe that. Yeah, that’s right. Suketoudara was a major, if not the main antagonist for a good chunk of this game, while Witch and Draco remained mere mooks. That’s pretty incredible if you ask me!

He’s the typical schoolyard bully/delinquent, going around causing problems for several towns and even stooping as far as to steal eggs from dragons. Suketoudara constantly meddles in Arle’s quest, and it only comes to an end one day after sending Arle a letter, in which he challenges her directly at her school. Turns out he just happens to have the last Secret Stone.

And at the end of the game, after Arle defeats Devil, the true main antagonist? Suketoudara has a complete change of heart, asking for Arle’s forgiveness, realizing he focused too much on his training, even saying he wants to be Arle’s henchman instead.

He even calls her “sis”, in a relatively friendly way, after everything he had done.

Whether or not you consider this game canon, it added a lot to Suketoudara (if this is the same as the one in the Puyo Puyo titles, and not Jr. as in a child of his). Suketoudara was a foul-mouthed bully in his youth, a complete contrast to the innocent, playful Arle. But he changed for the better after Arle told him to reflect on himself. That is way more characterization than Draco has ever received.

Suketoudara got fleshed out further in a couple of DiscStation games, both a year before Hanamaru and two years after, we would get some really interesting development, which would of course come from his interactions with another character.

DiscStation Volume 9 is (presumably) when we would first see Suketoudara interacting with Serilly in the game “Madou Sugoroku”, a Mario Party-esque game that seems to have no real story, pairs of characters are just competing while Harpy serves as the game hostess. This would be one of the earliest instances of Suketoudara being shown to have a crush on Serilly.

DiscStation Volume 18 would give us Serilly’s Happy Birthday, a game where Serilly uses a magical stone to go up to the surface in the hopes that she’ll make a friend that will celebrate her birthday with her, rather than leaving Serilly to celebrate it alone.

While I am sadly uncertain about the full details of this visual novel, it seems that in Suketoudara’s route, he collapses due to a drug Witch had made, so Serilly nurses him back to health by making an antidote. This leads to Suketoudara, a normally brash and selfish character, to become warmer and open up to Serilly. Again though, this is a loose translation of what transpires.

Lastly for DiscStation, we have Madou RUN! 

A game featuring Arle, Schezo, Witch… and not Satan, not Rulue, not Draco, but Suketoudara! In this game, our four protagonists compete in a game of tag set up by Momomo, for an object known as the Dragon Ball, which can grant any wish.

Oddly enough, rather than it being about his dancing, the only wish on Suketoudara’s mind is that he wants to be closer to Serilly. Mind you that the other three characters are more interested in the power of the Dragon Ball to become stronger, while Suketoudara just wants to improve his relationship with a friend he has feelings for.

His attitude in this game is notably far less aggressive when compared to how overly competitive Witch and Schezo are, a far cry from how Suketoudara used to be in the earliest Puyo Puyo games.

In Puyo Puyo~n, we have yet another cheerful Suketoudara, as opposed to the grouchy, territorial one we saw in past mainline Puyo titles. Much like the previously mentioned DiscStation games, Suketoudara is primarily just interested in Serilly’s presence, stuttering in a shy manner around her, and feeling crestfallen when Serilly says that he’s only a friend.

He only starts to lash out against Arle once he thinks that Serilly only called him a friend because another person was embarrassing her. To be fair, pretty rude of Arle to make comments or butt in. Overall? It seems that Serilly has had a positive influence on Suketoudara, but he still had some of his temper.

In Puyo Puyo Box, nothing interesting happens, but Suketoudara definitely mellowed out in the Quest Mode. Similarly in Minna de Puyo Puyo, Suketoudara only wants Arle to watch him dance, which she ignores in a rude manner.

After a couple years of going missing, Suketoudara returns in Puyo Puyo! 15th, and is arguably, the most friendly of the returning Compile characters next to Zoh Daimaoh.

Unlike Satan, Rulue, and Schezo, who are rude and dismissive of the Fever characters, Suketoudara seems happy to meet new faces and actively encourages them through dialogue usually related to dance. No mention of Serilly is made, but that just proves that unlike Rulue, he can go without thinking or talking about his love interest for every two scenes.

And also unlike 90% of 15th’s roster, he doesn’t get screwed over by the fake wishing medal. He makes a simple, short wish where he says he wants to be first to do solo dances.

Puyo Puyo 7, in my opinion, is the peak, friendliest Suketoudara has been in any game. Ringo runs into him, and rather than being actively antagonistic, he explains that he was with Arle (possessed by Ecolo) and got lost, so he asks for her help. In exchange, Suketoudara assists for a short period of time. He tries to persuade Rulue out of attacking him, manages to hold a decent conversation with Satan and Carbuncle, even showing concern about Arle’s strange behavior! 

He, along with Satan, are the only Madou characters in 7 that were genuinely worried about Arle. Schezo, Skeleton-T, Draco, and Rulue did not care in the slightest. He has grown from not wanting Arle around at all to being a friend that does care about her!

Puyo Puyo 20th… sadly took a step back, with Suketoudara obsessively searching for his shoes. A lot of the characters were jerks in this game though, so it’s not a problem exclusive to him. If anything, I’d argue he’s the tamest example and just being plain comedic.

Thankfully, in Puyo Puyo Tetris and Puyo Puyo Chronicle, Suketoudara was back to being his cheery self, unlike in 20th. He just wants to show off his dance moves, has friendly enough conversations with Arle, Ringo, and Ally-- playing Puyo just for fun rather than an offense reason…

Ess on the other hand… yeah, she’s straight-up rude to him, and he rightfully defends himself. I should note that through all of these games, Serilly went completely unmentioned, which might mean that Suketoudara actually got over his infatuation for Serilly. Even with her grand return in Puyo Puyo Chronicle, the two never have a conversation.

That being said, I definitely do think that Serilly’s kind personality, and if taken as canon, Suketoudara’s rivalry with Arle in Hanamaru, definitely molded him into being one of the most grown characters in the entire series. He went from being the typical jerk with only thing on his mind, to being an upbeat, helpful character that is willing to put dancing aside when there are greater matters at hand. Puyo Puyo 7, Tetris, and Chronicle are the arguable proof of this.

That’s why I like this character so much. That’s why I feel the fan-base kinda takes him for granted-- they don’t know about his evolution throughout the games. He went from a funny jerk, to a guy with a crush, to someone with a confident and friendly personality.

Because of that… I am honestly completely fine with Suketoudara staying for future mainline games. Even if he doesn’t add much, at least he isn’t as actively unpleasant as he was in Compile’s early run.

[delicioussshame]

Fuck it, have some wips I’ve been trying to get back to but alas, it’s not going well.

________________________________

“Shizun… It’s Shizun, isn’t it?”

Shen Qingqiu turns towards Luo Binghe, for who else could it be? “Yes.”

Luo Binghe, is, obviously, still as devastatingly handsome as he ever was. He didn’t lose anything by switching from the traditional style to more modern fashion. Maybe, Shen Qingqiu despairs, he even gained from it. Those jeans are literally stopping traffic.

He might miss his long locks though. Short hair suits him, but it wouldn’t feel the same under his fingers.

Shen Qingqiu shakes himself back to reality. The feeling of Luo Binghe’s hair under doesn’t have anything to do with him anymore.  “Binghe seems like he did well for himself.” He has no doubt on the matter. Managing their wealth through time was a challenge, but nothing an array of trusts, shell corporations, insider knowledge and skilled lawyers couldn’t arrange. Shen Qingqiu has been living lavishly for decades. He’s sure Binghe did the same.

“So does Shizun.”

The appellation brings a smile to his lips. It’s so ridiculous. Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe had spent centuries together. In comparison, the time Shen Qingqiu taught Luo Binghe was infinitesimal. The title is meaningless.

Luo Binghe used to say that Shen Qingqiu taught him something new every day. That they could spend eternity together and he’d never learn enough from him.

That was long ago now.

“This must be similar to the era Shizun came from, isn’t it?”

“Pretty much.” It’s not quite the same. Some events went differently, some didn’t, but daily life is almost indistinguishable

Investing in Tencent still proved profitable though.

Luo Binghe is wavering, obviously wondering if he’ll dare to say whatever he’s thinking of saying.  

It’s probably not a good idea. “Well, it was nice seeing you. I’m sure you have things to do.” Shen Yuan departs.

Or tries to. He’s hindered by Luo Binghe’s grasp on his arm. “Binghe. Let go.”

Shen Qingqiu almost stumbles from the shock of seeing Luo Binghe’s eyes swell with tears for the first time in forever. His heart squeezes like Binghe was still his young and eager husband, crumbling under the slightest disapproval. Without his consent, his hand reaches up and wipes those tears away gently, the gesture so familiar it hurt. “A-Yuan, please, don’t go! Give this disciple a day, no, an evening to catch up! I will take him to the best restaurant, pay for the grandest hotel, whatever he wants, as long as he spares me a fraction of his time.”

Shen Qingqiu knows better. He can’t falter here. He can’t let Luo Binghe charm him into a nice dinner where alcohol flows until, both of them tipsy, they fall into bed again and Shen Qingqiu finds himself spending another decade in Luo Binghe’s embrace.

________________________________

Shen Qingqiu pokes the collar half-heartedly.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with it. The leather is of the finest quality, soft and supple under his touch. Shen Qingqiu is pretty sure he could wear it all day without feeling sore or constricted. It’s white too, so between his skin and his robe, it wouldn’t even clash. It would almost be unnoticeable, really.

By all means, it should be black; Luo’s Binghe color. The point, after all, was to claim what was his. A subtle color was an allowance most weren’t afforded.

Then again, most submissives don’t spend their lives pretending they’re not.

He knows the original Shen Qingqiu didn’t manage to fool them all. Yue Qingyuan must know, and he’s pretty sure Mu Qingfang wasn’t fooled either.

Luo Binghe told him he always knew. That he could always feel something different from his shizun.

It’s not that surprising. Luo Binghe had been written as the ultimate dominant, bending every lady to his will with a word. Even if the version of him Shen Qingqiu had grown familiar with was a lot more masochistic than he had any right to be, he still had an intrinsic knowledge of what made everyone tick, the way the best dominants did.

Maybe that’s why he kept things simple. They both had to figure it out to begin with. More formal scenes could wait. Or, you know, just not happen. Shen Qingqiu is pretty sure that way would have been easier to handle.

________________________________

Mu Qingfang must really care for Liu Qingge’s wellbeing.

It’s the only reason Shen Yuan can think of for his presence every time Liu Qingge shows up for treatment, which is often. Shizun doesn’t shadow him when he’s with other patients. He can take care of most casual wounds and infections thrown his way with ease. The light cut on Liu Qingge’s arm barely merits treatment, to be honest. Not that Shen Yuan is going to tell Liu Qingge of all people that. He’s going to clean the wound, bandage it and send him on his merry way without a word about wasting the time of one of Mu Qingfang’s most senior disciples.

“Here, all done. Liu-shibo should be completely healed before tomorrow.” His cultivation would have taken care of it anyway.

Liu Qingge nods.

“Shen Yuan has other tasks to see to. If Liu-shixiong feels better, he should return to his peak. I’m sure his students missed him.”

Liu Qingge frowns at Mu Qingfang. “They don’t. They’re busy with their training.”

“Then Shixiong should go help them.”

Liu Qingge glares at Mu Qingfang, to Shen Yuan’s bafflement. Maybe they really don’t get along because Mu Qingfang doesn’t trust Liu Qingge not to create trouble everywhere he goes?

Liu Qingge stops glaring at Mu Qingfang and turns to Shen Yuan. “I’ll be back.”

Shen Yuan cringes interiorly. “Liu-shibo should take care of himself better instead of counting on this disciple’s meagre skills.” Please, Liu Qingge, what’s the point of having saved your life if you keep hurting yourself? You’ll be dead again before Luo Binghe turns evil!

Well, he won’t if Shen Yuan has a say about it, but let’s just admit he’s not very confident in his chances.

“Your skills are fine.”

Shen Yuan blinks. “…Thank you.” At least he’s being appreciated?

Mu Qingfang sighs as Liu Qingge departs. “Liu-shixiong isn’t a bad man, but he sometimes doesn’t know how to interact with people correctly.”

“Liu-shibo has never been improper with me.” He can be rude and demanding, but nothing Shen Yuan can’t handle. He’s dealt with disciples wounded in both body and pride that were much more of a handful.

Mu Qingfang stares at him. “Are you certain?”

Shen Yuan is confused. “Yes?”

Mu Qingfang… pats his head? What? Mu Qingfang isn’t known to be very physically demonstrative. “Good. You have a tendency to attract trouble, so I was worried.”

Excuse you, Shen Yuan does not “attract trouble”. Shen Yuan takes order from the System sometimes, that’s different. It’s not his fault he gets caught into weird plot lines all the time!

And why did he got retconned onto Qian Cao Peak anyway? What can he do on Qian Cao that he couldn’t on Qing Jing with the protagonist? Wouldn’t that make more sense?

At least Mu Qingfang is nice enough. “I’m sorry if I cause Shizun problems. I will strive to do better.” Not that he knows how to. He didn’t know anything about traditional medicine when he came here, and he still has to restrain himself when something particularly unscientific comes up. He’s been doing his best to fit in for years, since his very weird transmigration into an original character.

“I know you will. Go back to your duties now.”

Shen Yuan salutes his shizun and returns to work. Injuries in a sect of their magnitude are frequent. Shen Yuan is busy.

____________

“Shen-shidi!”

Shen Yuan smiles at his young shixiong, the protagonist himself, one Luo Binghe. He can’t help it. He’s cute! Shen Yuan can almost see his tail wagging! “Hello, Luo-shixiong.”

“Does Shidi have some time to teach me?”

Shen Yuan cannot say no to those puppy eyes. “Of course. Please come here.” He doesn’t. He’ll have to work late tonight to make up for the time he spends on teaching Luo Binghe.

It’s worth it. Everything he can do to help Luo Binghe is one more step of the “Save the sect from annihilation at the hands of the darkened protagonist” quest.

“Is Luo-shixiong doing well today?”

Luo Binghe shakes his head shyly.

Shen Yuan pushes the subject aside. They both know what Shen Yuan really asked: did Luo Binghe get bullied by his fellow disciples or his teacher today, and does he need Shen Yuan to look over it?

This is how they first met. Shen Yuan saw a young boy with a bruised face and favouring his right side, and instantly offered to help him. The boy tried to say no, but Shen Yuan is Mu Qingfang’s disciple. He has been taught that it is his duty to help those in need.

He had instantly recognised the wounds as the result of a fight, not training. As the healers of the sect, Qian Cao Peak disciples were expected to remain neutral in the context of peak rivalries. He couldn’t protect the young disciple himself, not without compromising his position. All he could do was offer his services.

“My name is Shen Yuan. If you ever need care again, please ask for me at Qian Cao Peak. Can I ask what your name is?”

“My name is Luo Binghe, of Qing Jing Peak.”

It had taken all of Shen Yuan’s strength of will not to gape at this admission. He knew Luo Binghe had arrived at the sect, but he had never thought they would meet like this, and that he would unwillingly create a link between them! Go him!

It had worked too! Two weeks later, Shen Yuan had been pulled from his normal studies by a worried shidi of his, who took him to a Luo Binghe with a sprained wrist, a broken finger and a black eye. Shen Yuan had instantly started to work on it, sending his qi through Luo Binghe as best he could while tending to his wounds.

Luo Binghe had thanked him from his help with a troubling wide-eyed awe that made Shen Yuan want to keep him in his room and feed him nice things. He restated his original offer to help Luo Binghe whenever he needed, which ended up being way more often than even Shen Yuan, who had never liked Shen Qingqiu to say the least, thought decent.

“Does Shidi think he could teach me? This way I wouldn’t be such a burden to him. If only my cultivation was better…”

Shen Yuan’s heart broke. Don’t worry, you’ll be the best cultivator some day! “I’d be happy to help.”

Luo Binghe had lighted up like the sun piercing through the clouds.

(Shen Yuan’s determination to save the sect from Luo Binghe might have switched to saving Luo Binghe from himself.)

Luo Binghe has been showing up regularly since then, soaking up all of Shen Yuan’s knowledge at frankly frightening speed. Hopefully it will be useful to him when he’s alone in the Abyss.

If he took the opportunity to correct a few of his cultivation bases, it’s not like Shen Qingqiu would ever find out.

________________________________ 

Luo Binghe still holds the favor the prince consort bestowed upon him close to his chest at all times.

Even if all the court knew the prince consort could defend his honor himself, it would have been improper. Of course it fell on his knights to defend Shen Qingqiu while the King Yue Qingyuan was away.

Luo Binghe had intended to return the token as soon as he had unseated the misbeliever from his horse, but blinded by Shen Qingqiu’s smile, his hand felt down still wrapped around the embroidered handkerchief.

He needs to return it before its disappearance is noticed. If someone doubted Shen Qingqiu’s loyalty because of his failings, he would seek penance until his death found him.

“The prince consort has allowed you entrance.”

(…)

Zheng Yang lies between them, the symbol of the vow Luo Binghe intends to respect.

Shen Qingqiu is completely still on the other side of the bed, white night clothes covering his whole body.

Luo Binghe prays for the salvation of his damned soul. He cannot betray the king’s trust by befouling his beloved.

[farmerlan]

Farmer Lan’s Rewatch Guide to The Untamed - Episode 8

Does it feel like she’s leading us into a trap? Naaaaah.

episode masterlist here

SPOILER WARNING!

[Wei Wuxian is upset that Lan Wangji went off to search for the Yin metal himself. Jiang Cheng shows up and asks if Wei Wuxian is planning to eat the rabbits and we see Lan Wangji watching them as they leave, bidding them farewell after they’ve left.

Meanwhile, Lan Xichen is harassed by WC and he is not taking any of that shit. Wen Chao threatens to go after Lan Wangji and sees a reaction from Lan Xichen. Satisfied, he leaves. Also, we learn that Wei Wuxian has basically eloped to be with Lan Wangji instead of returning to Yunmeng with the Jiang sect. Wen Chao sets an owl after them.]

Differences from the novel:

Nope. Not in the novel. Mooooving on.

[Wei Wuxian binds Lan Wangji’s wrists to his so that Lan Wangji will stop leaving him behind and they make their way to Tanzhou. Wei Wuxian is having a grand ol’ time shopping and then Nie Huaisang also shows up, so they’re having a blast while Lan Wangji is off to the side wondering when these idiots will knock it off (but really we all know he’s jealous). At Yunmeng, we see Jiang Cheng setting off to find his wayward bro.

Wei Wuxian grabs Lan Wangji’s arm and drags him over to the crowd - turns out there’s a damsel nearby - and legend has it that she awards long-lasting, beautiful flowers to anyone who impresses her with their poetry. At that moment, petals start falling from the sky. Nie Huaisang and Wei Wuxian are both admiring Lan Wangji (I mean, who wouldn’t), who is basking in the flowers, until they are once again interrupted by the movements of the Yin metal.]

Differences from the novel:

Still not in the novel, since, you know, Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji do not embark on a quest to find the Yin metal in the past. In its stead, what happens in Chapter 19 (post-Gusu flashback) is:

Wei Wuxian wakes up in Lan Wangji’s room (Jing Shi), and tells the juniors that he’s extremely tired from a lack of sleep due to NIGHT ACTIVITIES with Lan Wangji - keep in mind he’s still Mo Xuanyu and desperately trying to get out of Gusu by being as deplorable as possible. The juniors lead him to Little Apple, because they are at a loss as to what to do. The donkey will not shut up and the elders are losing their patience lol. Wei Wuxian then discovers a whole field of rabbits, only to learn that they are all Lan Wangji’s rabbits - yes, all of them. Wei Wuxian dies of laughter internally at the thought of him raising all these rabbits because he knows exactly where they came from.

Wei Wuxian and the juniors then rush to the watchtower as the alarm bells start ringing (literally), signalling that something has gone wrong with a spirit summoning ritual. Wei Wuxian enters the tower and sees Lan Wangji and a bunch of elders, including Lan Qiren. Everyone has fainted from the dark energy except for Lan Wangji, and with a duet they are able to finally temporarily suppress the demonic arm. Wei Wuxian intentionally plays terribly to make sure he doesn’t give himself away, so badly that he rouses Lan Qiren, only for him to shout “NO MORE! LEAVE! STOP--!” before fainting again lol. Poor man has been thoroughly traumatized. They realize that they need to find the other parts of the corpse to successfully understand how to quell the arm’s resentful spirit, so they embark on a quest which links up with post-flashback Episode 33 of the drama series.

From a chronological perspective, we’re not told what happens post-Gusu Lan in the book. Presumably, the next time they meet is during the archery contest when Wei Wuxian pulls off Lan Wangji’s ribbon lol. But they don’t embark on any side adventures together or anything.

[Suddenly, we cut to a razed courtyard (which turns out to be the florist’s mansion) and the protags find evidence that it is Wen Chao’s doing and that he’s tailing them with the owl. Turns out the flower event is all a plot to find the other pieces. Wen Chao refuses to listen to daddy and continues to head to Da Fan Shan instead of helping Xue Yang. It’s also revealed that Da Fan Shan is where Wen Qing’s family and ancestors are from originally - so they’re probably a distant offshoot of the Wen sect, or absorbed into the Wen sect somehow.

Jiang Cheng and Wen Qing run into each other at the tavern and idk what is going on (is this...flirting?) but it turns out Wen Qing is just trying to create an opportunity to warn Jiang Cheng that Wei Wuxian is in danger at Da Fan Shan.

The trio run into a crazy grandma at Da Fan Shan and make the connection that the temple and the snatching of the spirits = Yin metal! They spend the night at the temple, and the statue starts moving. After a fierce battle with the statue, it appears they’ve finally sealed it. Meanwhile, the whole town of puppets have converged upon them. Turns out - it was all a trap by Wen Chao to lure them into the temple. But wow, can the puppets move any slower?? I am aging as we speak.]

Differences from the novel:

The only event that occurs at Da Fan Shan in the novel is the part leading up to meeting Jin Ling/Jiang Cheng for the first time post-resurrection. Wen Qing and Wen Ning are indeed a branch of the Wen sect and not direct descendants of Wen Ruohan, but we’re not told where exactly they were from.

There is, however, the damsel of the flowers story! The novel goes into way more detail - it’s in Chapter 45, right after they all leave Yi city. They pass by an abandoned garden, and Lan Sizhui (!!) says he read that it was once the garden of an elf spirit who gave out flowers to poets, but if you recited incorrectly, she would come out and hit them in the face with flowers, causing them to faint, only to find themselves thrown out of the garden by the time they had awakened. Even though she was rumored to be extremely beautiful, no one had ever seen her face...except Wei Wuxian. The story goes that he persisted in reciting the wrong poem over twenty times, getting tossed out each time until he finally glimpsed her face, and then bragged to everyone about it LOL. The juniors are like holy hell he’s aggravating, and Wei Wuxian is like a) which dork recorded this in a book, b) where did you find the time to read about trivial stuff like this Sizhui, clearly none of you are studying properly so you’re all writing lines when we get back and c) who hasn’t done something like this?! It’s called youth hellooo?!

Overall thoughts:

The majority of this is not in the novel again (it gets better in Episode 10, lol) and I actually got curious because I’m like well...what’s IN the novel but NOT in the drama, because the drama covered a lot of ground but also had all this extra stuff in it. So I flipped through and honestly it’s pretty remarkable how much ground they covered.

There is a bunch of Lan Wangi/Wei Wuxian scenes cut out for censorship (Chapter 12 when they first go back to Gusu, Lan Wangji getting drunk THREE times (vs. only once in the drama excluding the Gusu Lan arc), a fair amount of the Phoenix Mountain hunt, the confession…) and there’s a bit more detail in the writing (for e.g. the damsel of the flowers story, the meaning of the Gusu ribbon etc.) that adds more interaction and relationship building between characters. But really, I think rewatching the drama has made me realize how they’ve really done a great job of bringing essentially the same story to screen.

[kayteewritessteve]

Love and War - 13/16

Description: In a harsh medieval world, you set out on a perilous quest that will lead you onto a forbidden land. A land ruled and controlled by a ruthless Warlord King, one who does not look favourably upon trespassers of any kind, and punishes all with an iron fist. You may not know exactly where this quest will end, but what you do know is you will forever be altered by it. And that knowledge alone is what truly terrifies you the most.

Catch up HERE.

Word Count: 4,190 ish.

Pairing: Medieval!Steve Rogers x Reader.

Rating: PG for now. May become 18+ later.

Warnings: Violence. Curse words. Mentions of fears and potentially brutal medieval tactics. Most likely more to come down the road. Please don’t let these warnings scare you too much, give the story a try before you judge it.

A/N: I sadly don’t own any of these characters. And no beta reader either, so I do proudly own all these errors and this story, so there’s that.

“And where exactly do you three think you’re going?”

You gulp as your eyes shift slowly between your siblings before finally flicking back over, landing on the fierce redhead now standing mere feet away from you. Promptly noticing that she’s raised a questioning brow in your direction, probably thanks to your complete and utter silence in this moment.

You sigh defeatedly, knowing there is no way you’ll be able to talk her into looking the other way. She is far too loyal to the King to willing let you waltz out of here without his permission. And you know once the King learns of your little escape plan, regardless of your reasonings, he will most likely be hurt and angered by this.

You’ll be lucky if he even believes your crazy reason for sneaking away in the middle of the night. Going to check out the cave in which you were trapped, fully asleep, and then freed by two strangers now known as your siblings? Yeah, that sounds insane, at best.

You barely even believe it’s real, and you actually trust your siblings. But the King? He has no reason to trust them, nor their words, so why would be even give the farfetched sounding explanation a second thought.

No, you can bet he’d just think you were lying, that you were trying to escape him for good, and just happened to get caught before you could.

“Hmm?” Natasha hums, prompting you to answer her original question as she crosses her arms over her chest.

You give her a pleading look, “I can explain, but you have to hear me out entirely.”

She nods informing you to go on, but doesn’t actually utter a word.

You glance at your siblings, who are just standing silently beside you then take a deep breath and focus your eyes back on Natasha. “So there is a volcano just outside of Triskelion, with a hidden cave located below it.”

“Okay,” Natasha says slowly, her expression neutral and unreadable.

“Oh Gods,” you groan quietly to yourself, shaking your head. She is not going to believe a single word of what you’re about to tell her. You just know it. “Okay, so almost 2 years ago now, Wanda and Pietro were camping near the base of this volcano. Long story short, they witnessed two men—one of which was Sir Brock, entering this hidden cave at the base. So when both men finally left, they went to investigate and found me, asleep in a glass box. They took me away from the cave and spent the next 10 months trying to wake me up. Then a year ago, they finally did.” You shake your head, your words even sounding ridiculous to you in this moment, “I never knew any of this till earlier today. So I wanted to see the cave for myself, I wanted to see it first hand. Maybe,” you falter glancing down, “maybe it will help retrieve my memories. Maybe it will help me figure out who I really am. Where I truly belong,” you whisper the last part.

“Is this true?” She asks, and even though you are intently staring at the ground, you know she isn’t asking you.

“It is,” Wanda and Pietro say in unison.

“And this volcano, it’s located near Triskelion?”

“Yes,” Pietro answers.

A moment goes by in sheer silence, you side eye Wanda questioningly and she only shrugs, unsure. Then you glance up to see Natasha with that far away look and you instantly know she is mind linking someone. As for who, you obviously can’t be sure. But you’re willing to bet it’s most likely the King.

She snaps out of it a moment later, but says nothing. Her face once again unreadable, like usual.

And now you’re panicking, your heart rate picking up as your hands become clammy. You really need her to understand just how important this is to you. You need her to let you do this, you have to do this. “You see, I know I didn’t receive proper permission to leave,” you start, catching her attention as you lock pleading eyes with her once again. “But I only plan to be gone for 2 days, at most. I will come back, I just have to do this. I need to see it for myself. I can’t live not knowing who I am or where I’m from. Please just,” you sigh, “please just try to understand. I will have Wanda and Pietro with me the entire time, we will just go look at the cave then come right back. I promise.”

Natasha finally speaks, though you instantly wish she hadn’t. “I’m sorry, Y/N. Truly I am, but I can’t allow the 3 of you to leave like this. It isn’t safe for you to venture from the castle without guards, nor to leave the territory at all. The King would be furious if I allowed you to walk away now. If I just turned a blind eye.”

Quiet footsteps begin to echo softly around you, the sound bouncing off the walls. You glance behind you, over your shoulder in the direction they are coming from and see Sam. You furrow your brows and turn back to look at Natasha, who now has a smirk on her lips.

As Sam comes closer you sigh and turn to face him, you have a few things you need to say to him. Preferably sooner rather than later, the guilt of the last interaction you both had, now weighing heavily on your shoulders.

He comes to rest beside Natasha, the silence in the dark hallway is suffocating. He gives you a small hesitant smile, that also looks a little like a frown.

“Sam, I,” you trail off, not even sure what to say to him. A simple apology just won’t suffice here.

“I know,” he steps forward and wraps you in a big bear hug. You tense up for a second, unsure what to do as this action has caught you completely off guard. But then you hug him back, and after a moment you both release from the embrace and each take a step back.

“I’m so sorry, Sam,” you sigh deeply. “I shouldn’t have talked to you like that. I should have trusted you more. I just,” you shake your head, “I didn’t know what to believe, I was so angry and hurt, and, and confused. I felt like I had been deceived, like I had been betrayed. And I just sort of snapped.” You glance down, “it wasn’t right of me to take that out on you. You weren’t the one who I was angry at, I just was so blinded by my rage that I couldn’t stop myself from lashing out at anyone who stood in my way. So,” you look back up and lock eyes with him, “I apologize to you, Sam. I’m truly sorry for my outburst. Can you—can you ever forgive me?”

He smiles, shaking his head. “There is nothing to forgive, Y/N. Look, I get it. If I had been in your place, I may have acted the same way towards you. There was so much you still didn’t know, so many things we all wanted to tell you but just couldn’t. The King had a plan, he had it all worked out in his head,” the corners of his lips droop a little, creating a small frown. “He wanted to be the one to tell you everything, when he knew more, but that snake beat him to it.”

You nod, “I know now that Brock’s words weren’t entirely true. And I heard the Kings side of all of this.” You glance at your siblings beside you, they have both stayed completely silent through this all. “Wanda and Pietro informed me of where they actually found me. And I need to see it, Sam,” you turn back to him, a pleading look in your eyes again. “I can’t go on not knowing who I am.”

He nods, glancing at Natasha, who smirks back at him and then he turns back to you, “alright. Then I guess we should get going before anyone realizes we are gone.”

Your eyes widen at his words, “wha—what do you mean?” You whisper, glad he has Lycan hearing as he might not have heard your words otherwise.

He scoffs, “like we’d let you guys go alone. The King would have our heads if he knew.” But then he chuckles, “and you know how I feel about keeping my head.”

You grin at his words, as you look between the two large Lycans, “so you’re both coming with us then?”

“Yes,” Natasha nods, smirking at you, “I could use an adventure, things have been rather boring here as of late.”

“Speak for yourself,” you scoff playfully, getting chuckles out of the two Generals. “This week has been the craziest one of my life so far.” You shake your head, “well, at least out of the parts I can actually remember—“

You are cut off by the sounds of footsteps down near the end of the hall, Natasha and Sam instantly begin ushering the 3 of you towards the, still open, hidden door.

“Time to go,” Natasha whispers quickly, “we might be okay with this plan, but not everyone will see it our way.”

You nod and then the 5 of you promptly head into the tunnels. Sam pulling the wall panel back into place once you are all in, as the soft sound of the locking mechanism clicking into place is heard in the silent space. Then you all slowly begin to make your way through the dark tunnels, glad to have the two Generals with you in this moment, as they both know the way to the iron doors. Saving you the possibility of getting all of you lost along the way.

You find yourself trudging through the dark forest at a reasonable pace. Pietro, Wanda and Sam deep in conversation, as Natasha and yourself stay silent. Walking slightly ahead of the three others, Natasha appears to be extra vigilant, intently listening to your surroundings, possibly trying to hear for anyone nearby. You assume it’s so she can locate them and help you all avoid them, long before they even know you 5 were near.

When you all had reached the iron doors, still inside the tunnels, Sam and Natasha had attempted to brainstorm a way to get by the guards unnoticed. But before they could give that anymore thought, Wanda did the same thing she had the first time. Closed her eyes, focused her mind and a moment later she began to push the doors open, you and Pietro helping as you both knew the drill.

Sam and Natasha had instantly tried to stop you all, but quickly noticed the guards were now in fact gone. No longer standing at their posts by the doors. They both looked slightly taken aback by this development, but said nothing. And once you all had exited the tunnels, shut the doors behind you again, and then ventured into the woods, Sam spoke up.

He’d asked what happened back there, and you just smirked and pointed to Wanda. The latter giggling quietly before she finally explained how she’d done it both times. She’d used her powers to move a few rocks and debris nearby, just enough to catch the guards attention. One would head off to investigate, and once she had led them out of eye shot, she’d move more things in the other direction. Effectively catching the second guards attention and after a moment, he’d also leave to check out the noise. And once they were both out of eye shot, you’d all make your escape.

It was genius really, no one was harmed, but you all got the outcome you needed. And once again, you are slightly jealous of all the amazing things Wanda can do. Whilst instantly reminded how mediocre you truly are. But you are also fully aware just how blessed you truly are to have Wanda by your side. Her and her powers, if it wasn’t for them, you wouldn’t be here right now. You’d still be very much asleep in a cave.

You glance over your shoulder when you hear the quiet laughs of the 3 people you care the most about. Well, 2 you did, though Sam was slowly rising in the ranks of your heart, Natasha as well if you’re being honest. You turn your head to look at the aforementioned and a question burns in your mind.

You can’t decide if you should ask or not, but your curiosity is slowly winning out. However before you can even open your mouth she speaks, “just ask.”

“I’m sorry?” You frown, slightly confused.

“I can hear the wheels in your head turning,” she grins, glancing at you momentarily before focusing on the darkness ahead of you again. “If you want to ask me something, feel free.”

Your steps falter for a moment, but you quickly correct them, keeping up with her long strides. “Can you actually hear me thinking?” You whisper, before even giving it a second thought. It wasn’t the question you wanted to ask originally, but you’re still learning about what Lycans can and can’t do. And the King had said almost the exact same thing to you once before, so maybe they actually can hear your thinking.

She laughs softly, “no, I can’t actually hear it. But I can smell your curiosity. That emotion gives off a very distinct aroma.”

You furrow your brows, “what? You can smell my curiosity? How is that—what does it,” you trail off. Unsure what you’re even asking at the moment. How can they smell that?

“All emotions give off a different smell. They aren’t bad smells, they are just your normal scent heightened in different ways.” She shrugs, “just depends on what emotion you are feeling. And our ability to read the differences.”

“So not all Lycans can smell the changes?”

She shakes her head, “no, it takes years of practise. But comes in handy during interrogations, so most of us,” she pauses for a second then continues, “Generals, have been trained to distinguish the differences. We can also tell when someone is lying, their heart rate picks up and our eyes can notice even the smallest of changes in their demeanour and perspiration.”

You nod slowly, “wow. I had no idea. But yet, now some of the things the King has said to me, make far more sense.”

She laughs softly again, “yes, he is the best, out of all of us, at reading people. Mainly because he’s had extensive training and years of honing the skill and perfecting it. But also because he’s an Alpha, that title heightens his senses immensely.” She glances quickly at you, “he’s actually the one who taught most of us how to properly do it.”

“His title heightens his sense?”

“Yes,” she nods. “When a Lycan fully takes on an Alpha title, it’s like a child becoming an adult overnight. The title causes both them and their wolf to grow larger, stronger, faster, smarter. It’s so they can protect their pack, their people. It helps an Alpha maintain control, and distinguishes them from others. It’s how they can defend their title, their land, and continue to remain in power. Their title demands respect and loyalty, it gives them the power of Will.”

You nod, you knew all about Will but didn’t want to mention that currently. You’d promised Sam to keep your knowledge of that to yourself.

“I’m aware you know about Will,” she smirks at you. “Just between us girls, after your little talk with the King, he called us all into his office and requested he be informed on everything you had been told so far.” She snickers, “Sam obviously had the most to confess to. The King wasn’t too pleased that he’d continued to fill you in, even after he’d been told not to, but it was too late to change that now.”

“Oh no,” you frown, “please tell me he didn’t get into trouble again?”

Natasha shakes her head, “no, the King has always had a soft spot for Sam. He could never actually be mad at him. But Sam did get a light scolding for it, though he didn’t seem all that phased by it after.” She chuckles, “Sam plays innocent, but he knows exactly what he can and can’t get away with. And he happily treads that line as close as he possibly can, though he never actually crosses it. He’s a smart shit,” she laughs quietly.

You giggle, “that sounds like Sam.”

She nods, but then you both fall into a silence again. Though it doesn’t last long, “I know that wasn’t what you’d originally wanted to ask.”

You almost smack your hand to your forehead, having completely forgotten about your original question. “You’re right, it wasn’t. I’d completely forgotten. Basically I just wanted to ask why,” you clear your throat, “why you chose to help me. I mean, you could have told the King of my plans to escape, but you didn’t. And now here we are. I just,” you shake your head, “I just don’t understand why you’re helping me. Isn’t going behind your Alpha’s back unacceptable and punishable in some sort of way?”

She hums in conformation, “it is. But he’d be more angry if Sam and I didn’t join you. If we had sent you back to your rooms, you would have just attempted this again another night, yes?” She glances at you with a quirked brow.

You sigh, nodding your head as you climb over a fallen tree. “Yeah, you have a point.”

She shrugs, “so I just figured it would be a smarter idea to just accompany you guys this time. That way you can get this out of your head and move on from it.”

“Thank you,” you say quietly, honestly so thankful she is here, helping you accomplish this.

She just nods and then another silence falls over you both like a blanket. It’s a peaceful quiet though, just hearing the crickets, owls and night time creatures going about their lives around you. The moon is slowly rising, casting a little light on the dark forest floor. You glance around, taking in how truly beautiful this realm is, even in the darkness of night.

“But I’m also here because I’m rather fond of you, and I have this strange urge to help you,” she pipes up quietly, breaking the silence again. “It’s this need to make sure you are happy and feel at home here. And to make sure you have everything you need to do that.”

You snap your head to her, her words catching you completely off guard, “really?”

She chuckles, probably at your shocked voice and wide eyes, “yes, really. I can’t explain it, I know I may not come off as the friendliest person, and usually I’m not. But for some reason I have always had this need to protect you, to make sure you are safe—” She halts both her words and her steps, as her eyes snap forward. She takes a gentle hold of your arm to stop your movements as well, then glances back at the others over her shoulder.

You turn to look back, seeing Sam also on high alert now, while holding your siblings at a stand still. The feeling of being turned around, forcefully yet gently, brings your attention back to Natasha. She locks eyes with you, raising her index finger up in front of her lips as she nods her head towards Sam. You get the message, loud and clear, nodding your head to her then slowly and quietly making your way towards the 3 others.

Once you reach Sam, you turn back to see Natasha is now gone. You hadn’t even heard her leave, she was always like a ghost. You’d never know she was there until she let you know. And the same was clear for your departures, obviously.

The 4 of you stand there in utter silence, Sam having released your siblings arms now. So the 4 of you just quietly watched, waiting for any noise or movement to indicate that Natasha had returned.

And after a few moments, you see her reemerge from the darkness. She looks to someone behind you, you assume Sam, and then she nods. Sam’s light chuckle behind you causes you to realize whatever just happened, was now done. You could all talk again, whatever threat they had noticed had now been handled.

And then you all continue on, picking up where your conversations had left off and heading towards the border to the Kings land, towards Triskelion, and towards the cave that once imprisoned you for Gods knows how long.

You finally arrive at the base of the volcano, the trek here was gruelling at best. Your legs feel as if they are no longer attached to your body, as if you’d left them back in the woods somewhere along the way, and were now just dragging your body limply along the ground.

The walk had been smooth after that near run in with the two Royal Guardsmen. Natasha had informed you that’s what she’d vanished to deal with. They were close to stumbling upon the 5 of you, but being that she is the third in command, she was able to make up an excuse as to why she was out there and send them off in a completely different direction.

You’d all reached the border still hidden under the blanket of night. Which made crossing it surprisingly simple, that and also Wanda and Pietro had been right, the way they’d taken the first time was not guarded at all. And was very much hidden away from view. Sam had made a comment about it, saying, ‘this really needs to be addressed. It shouldn’t be this easy to escape.’ And Natasha had agreed with him, saying she’d talk to Thor about it when you all returned to the castle.

The walk had taken much longer than you’d expected though, as the Generals both thought it best to completely avoid Triskelion. So you had to walk around the entire village, instead of through it like you’d originally planned. Keeping yourselves in the shadows of the outlying forest which surrounded the small town.

You’d all stopped a few times here and there, to rest and eat. But none of you had slept a wink, you aren’t sure why no one else was able to sleep, but you knew you weren’t because you were too nervous, your mind was running in circles about all of this. It couldn’t shut off, you were just too anxious about what laid ahead of you. What you were going to see once you reached the cave, what you were going to remember when you did.

So now you've all finally reached the volcano's base, and it was a little after mid day. Or at least that’s what the others claimed, obviously you still hadn’t learned to Sun Track yet. And you probably never would to be honest.

Pietro point towards the hidden cave entrance, and Natasha told you all to stay put while she checked it out. She wanted to make sure it was safe before any of you entered, so she slipped in between the small opening and a few moments later she reemerged.

Then it was finally time for you all to enter, Natasha went first, followed by Pietro and Wanda, then you and Sam last. You all walked through the dark tunnels for a while, until the tunnel abruptly opened up and you found yourself in a small room, of sorts. It was a cave, but almost looked like it had been chiseled out from the rock. Like it had been built to be a tiny room, a small holding cell. You instantly almost gasp when the realization hits you, no, it had been built to be crypt. Your crypt. The final resting place for you. Or at least that’s what your captors had probably thought.

Your eyes drift around the room slowly and then land on a glass box in the middle. No, a glass coffin, and instantly you froze. It was true, oh Gods, it was true. Yes, you believed Wanda and Pietro, of course you did. But that little voice in the back of your head still doubted this whole thing, still doubted that you’d actually find this place. That it actually existed.

So seeing first hand the glass tomb from which you’d been trapped in, for Gods knows how long, was both eye opening and nerve wracking. Why were you here? Who brought you here, who trapped you here? How did you get here?

You take hesitant steps towards the glass coffin, the 4 others not moving a muscle, not making a sound. They are all just allowing you to experience this moment in utter silence.

You finally reach the edge of the glass coffin, and cautiously reach a hand out to touch it, to feel it, to truly be sure it’s real and not just a figment of your imagination.

Your fingertips hesitantly make contact with its edge, gently grazing the surface of the glass top and your breath hitches, a sharp intake of air directly after that.

It’s real. It’s all real.

But before you can put anyone thought into this moment, into this realization, a darkness rapidly consumes your vision and instantly, your whole world goes black.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

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