#rather than addressing any of the game's existing issues and while complete letting all

[here-there-were-dragons]

basically i think what happened is that they realized releasing new ancients is basically the only thing that significantly drives player numbers and site visitors in the short term, so they're just hyperfocusing on doing as much of that and only that as possible. the same way that the minecraft devs have become obsessed with adding a whole bunch of new and mostly useless bloat no one wants every update rather than fixing any of the glaring issues the game has had for years, because at the end of the day "LOOK NEW SHINY THING" will always sell better and get more eyes on screen and butts in seats than a glaringly long-needed code optimization.

so they're pumping out as many ancients as possible as fast as possible at the complete expense of literally every single other feature, because they know that's the one thing several thousand more people than usual will still regularly show up (and make them ad revenue) for. people don't turn out in droves for apparel or art fixes. people certainly don't turn out for, unfortunately, battlestone recolors, vistas, or scenes. everything they've been doing lately has been optimized to get as many people checking out the site at once as possible.

and as a side note, when they originally said "the ancient breed pipeline won't affect the speed/quality ect of the other development pipelines" i think we all knew that unless they were planning to hire new people just to make ancient breeds (or else obtain a mystical time distorting artifact to make there be more hours in the day) that was a complete fucking nonsense lie. that's just not how time management works. no matter how well-separated your development pipelines are the time to work on them still has to come from somewhere, or someone. you are still, fundamentally, going to be doing more work.

the staff might claim to be anti-crunch, but you kbow what could help them even more? actually slowing down with updates and gene expansions, and take time to go back to look at OLD bug reports (how long Strawberry Twinkle Aether M been broken for? since Aether's been introduced?? bro????) and take care of them, before adding 5 billion more genes and files into their pile.

there is seriously no need for huge gene expansions every x weeks. i beg you go back to the old ones and do what you can, instead of adding 50000000000 more with weird errors into the evergrowing backlog. this is more anti-crunch.

[thetoxicgamer]

‘We need to get our s**t together’: NRG Dhokla intent on avoiding previous LCS playoffs pitfalls

Summit's Fiora became monstrously fed within 20 minutes of yesterday's 2023 LCS Summer Split match between NRG and Team Liquid. NRG would eventually have to face off against this raid boss—one for which Dhokla accepted full responsibility—if they desired even a remote chance of defeating Liquid and therefore modestly improving their standings. Thanks to a handful of overextensions from their opponents, NRG were able to avoid Summit almost completely, letting them stare directly at a hard-fought and well-earned victory. Yet even as his teammates collectively sighed in relief that a back-and-forth 30-minute game had ended in their favor, Dhokla couldn’t shake the feeling that much of this could have been avoided. “For me, after we won, it was like ‘what a sense of relief’ just washed all over my body,” Dhokla told Dot Esports. “At the same time, I was like ‘damn, I really messed up where we even needed to be in a position like that.’ I can’t really believe that we won, but I’m really happy we did.” Top laner Dhokla is one of the few remaining pieces of the most recent CLG puzzle that transferred to NRG following the team’s acquisition in April, returning alongside jungler Contractz and mid laner Palafox. Just a split ago, this trio was crucial in CLG exceeding any and all expectations set among LCS players and fans alike, emerging from the regular season at the top of the standings with a synergy that the team had not previously expressed together. Now, more than halfway into the 2023 Summer Split with qualification into the LCS Championship on the line, NRG have only four wins to their name—including one that ended the short-lived undefeated streak of the reigning champions, Cloud9. NRG appear more than willing to go for flashy plays early, but as the mid and late-games approach, the synergy between the five members seems to falter as their focus shifts from major objectives to smaller victories that impede their momentum immensely. Dhokla attributes NRG’s current fluctuating performances to communication issues that have yet to be fully resolved by the team internally, particularly in terms of getting the team’s new bot lane ahead. While the members of NRG are willing to do early bot tower dives that could potentially result in major leads, the top laner emphasized how “almost game-losing” messing this up can be and has been for the team in recent weeks, placing high importance on this as an issue that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later. But Dhokla isn’t keen on looking that far ahead just yet. He feels these issues need to be addressed presently before NRG can even think about a playoff run—especially after they were the second team to be eliminated from the Spring Playoffs despite their success in the regular season. “I’m not sure what our future is right now, but we really need to just get our shit together,” Dhokla admitted. “When it comes to playoffs, we’ve kind of folded. I’m concerned about ironing out our issues as best as we can before playoffs, because, in reality, no one really remembers the regular season, and you feel a lot of regret if you don’t play well in the playoffs.” As part of the change from CLG to NRG, the team welcomed an entirely new bot lane in the form of FBI and IgNar, two seasoned LCS players with multiple accolades to their names—including visits to LCS finals and previous World Championships. Outside of their synergy on stage, Dhokla noted that the two have meshed with the existing trio very well, acknowledging FBI’s positive energy that keeps the morale high among the members of the team that contributes to an overall “positive atmosphere” and IgNar’s shot-calling nature in scrims—which Dhokla hopes IgNar becomes more comfortable with on stage with time. From top-five finishes in multiple LCS splits to dominating NACL seasons and even winning a split of Champions Queue, Dhokla has achieved numerous career highs throughout his half-decade-long career in the North American professional scene. But compared to his success during the Spring Split, Dhokla does not yet feel that he’s proven himself to be that same player thus far, acknowledging how little time there is left to show the rest of the LCS scene and himself that he hasn’t lost that spark—even if he feels that may be a bit cliché. “I don’t think I’ve had the best split so far compared to last split, but personally, I just want to play better,” Dhokla said. “I haven’t shown what I can do, so I just have to level up my gameplay before playoffs, pretty much. That’s what every player is going to say, but there’s not really much to do besides that. Just play better.” NRG will look to continue their upward climb in the 2023 LCS Summer Split later today when they face TSM, who they are currently tied with in the standings at 4-6. Read the full article

[dawn8080]

How about an MC who doesn't like telling people it's their bday because they don't like big parties or people making a fuss over it, and the brothers come to know it's their bday on the day itself? (Obey me Headcannon please :3)

MC who hates celebrating their birthday

(Big thanks to @obey-me-rules-my-life-now for the request!)

MC has never been one to celebrate their birthday. Parties were big celebrations, and big celebrations meant people in masses. So, to avoid having to face a party, embarrassment and disappointment, they told no one. They never brought up the topic and when a brother did, they shut it down. All too soon, the dreaded day approached. How will each brother react?

Lucifer:

He knew when MC’s birthday was. He read their file after all. But when MC never mentioned their birthday, the thought faded from his mind.

Lucifer could tell something was off; MC was being snappy and moody to everyone, including himself.

MC was extra snappy after yet another failed plan of making money that they were dragged into and wanted to be left alone in their room. However, Lucifer knew to address their snappiness and moodiness.

When Lucifer knocked on MC’s door, it was met with a grumpy “Go away”

Lucifer growled under his breath, “MC, we need to discuss your recent behavior.”

“There’s no reason. Now leave me alone.”

Knowing that MC wasn’t willing to tell him, he went back into his office, to do more paperwork.

After hours of working on paperwork, he took a moments break to look at his DDD, lighting up with notifications.

Diavolo: So Lucifer, how was today? Good, I’ll suppose?

Lucifer: What’s makes you say that?

Barbatos: Have you forgotten?

Lucifer: Forgotten what?

Diavolo: Today is MC’s birthday! Have you forgotten?

Lucifer understood all at once what had happened, and went to confront them about it.

When confronted, MC shrugged their shoulders and said, “So? It’s just another day. It marks another year of my existence. It just makes me feel older.”

Understanding where they were coming from, he sighed and said, “You’re still a guest here in the House of Lamination and as long as your in this exchange program, we are responsible for your safety and comfort. That being said,” as he takes MC hands, “Could I at least interest you in a dinner?”

MC looked calculating for a few seconds before saying “I guess just a dinner would be nice...”

Mammon:

Mammon was never trusted with any of MC’s personal information (understandably so). And he knew he and his brothers could be a bit too much sometimes! So he didn’t really question it when MC started getting a bit grumpier than usual.

It wasn’t until MC came home one day after a failed money making scheme, throwing their book bag at the wall and stomping to their room.

He immediately was concerned and was knocking on their door, begging to be let in. After 30 minuets of being told no, he stayed silent, but outside their door.

Soon, when he heard their shower running, he walked into their room to see what was so wrong.

He didn’t notice anything wierd until he looked at their phone, light up with notifications from their human relatives.

Curiosity got the best of him as he wandered over and read their screen. To say he was shocked is an understatement when he read how many Happy Birthday texts MC received.

MC then entered the room to see Mammon on their phone, which resulted in Mammon getting kicked out of the bedroom.

Mammon stood outside in shock; humans loved their birthdays, so why were they so grumpy? And more importantly, why didn’t the human tell the GREAT Mammon that it was their birthday?!

He went straight to Lucifer, head spinning in confusion.

After barging in and questioning Lucifer, he realized that maybe going through their phone wasn’t the best idea...

...or at least that’s what he realized as he hung from the ceiling in front of Lucifers office again.

MC was walking downtown he hallway when they heard, “Yo! Human! Come give me a hand!”

MC helped him, but then quickly started leaving. Before they could though, Mammon took their hand and said, “Now wait a minuet. Why didn’t you tell me today is you birth-”

MC quickly spun and held their free hand over his mouth to shush him. “Don’t speak of this day to anyone! Or I swear, Goldie will have a friend called Paper Shredder.”

Mammon moved their hand and said, “I already asked Lucifer if he knew. He did, no surprise. But why didn’t you tell me?”

MC then dropped their hands to their sides and said, “I just don’t like my birthday. I don’t like celebrating it.”

Mammon sighed, as if defeated. Then he brightened up again. “How about we just watch movies then?! You don’t need to say it’s a special occasion to watch movies with the GREAT Mammon!”

MC sighed, smiling lightly. “I guess it wouldn’t be weird, huh?” They then smirked suddenly, “Now how about Resident Evil-”

“MC NOO!”

Leviathan:

MC’s grumpiness really caught him off-guard. They were almost never grumpy, yet they’ve been acting this way for an entire week.

He heard the loud clash of a book bag hitting a wall and angry footsteps down the hallway, near his room. He peaked his head out of his room, only to see an angry/grumpy MC storming past him.

Ignoring him completely.

That... didn’t feel right. They always acknowledged him in one way or another.

So, rather than leaving his precious room, he grabbed his phone and started spamming MC questions.

Levi: MC?

Levi: Are you okay?

Levi: Hey, answer the phone!

He quickly realized they weren’t responding although he knew they saw the texts.

He sighed dejectedly. Who would want to talk to a gross, yucky otaku like him anyways?

As he kept wallowing in self-pity, he heard his phone ding with a text. He was reading the text in an instant, hopes falling with it.

MC: I have to cancel game night. Maybe next week?

Levi knew they never rescheduled his game and anime hang out sessions. Concerned, he headed over to their room for answers.

Levi knocked, and realized the door was open. But there was no MC. He glanced around the room and saw their homework on their desk, already completed.

He then sat on the foot of their bed, playing mobile games until MC came back. Where he would confront MC about the birthday.

That’s when he booted up one of the Devildom games that MC loved. Suddenly, it piped up with a notice on his login.

It was his mutuals friends birthday.

He covered his shock and set up a surprise for MC.

40 minuets later, MC came back into their room, only to see Levi sitting in front of his monitor, playing anime, while he was cuddling his Ruri-Chan body pillow.

To say they were surprised was an understatement, but before anything could be said, Levi dragged them down next to him.

“Hey, why couldn’t I know about your birthday?” Levi frowned and asked.

“I... just don’t like celebrating. Is that why you’re here?”

Levi shakes his head and offers a second head set labeled “Player 2” and MC accepts it.

“I just want to watch anime with you tonight. Maybe we can game next week?”

Satan:

Satan could’ve gotten his hands on your background, but he just had that golden opportunity to prank Lucifer too...! He, of course, chose priority.

He knew MC were moody before they did; becoming a master of masks made him very perceptive of others emotions.

He offered help with de-stressing and with homework, thinking that was the issue.

He did not think that his books would eventually be thrown into a wall as MC stormed to their room only days later.

He was furious at the treatment of the books that he lent, and went to confront MC about their behavior towards everyone.

He didn’t expect to hear the tail end of a call MC was having with relatives back home.

“Yes Mom, thank you. I’ll have a good birthday, now bye.” MC hung up the phone, tired out of their mind.

Satan stepped in, knocking on the door lightly. Though still shocked from the news he just received, he knew that he needed to stay silent. For now.

“MC, you threw your books in the doorway. They have been lended to you and you could damage them that way.”

“I’m sorry. I won’t be so careless next time.” MC replied, running a hand down their face in exhaustion.

Satan smiled and said, “You damaged the books I lent you. You could make up for that.”

MC audibly gulped, worried what they had to do.

Satan continued, “You could work in Hells Kitchen tomorrow to replace them? Or, you could stay here and read for a bit, if stress or unwanted events seems to be the issue.”

MC looked up, shocked. Then they smiled. “I prefer option 2 the most. Thank you.”

The two of them then sat side by side, reading books until MC fell asleep.

“Goodnight, MC. Have sweet dreams.”

Asmodeus:

Asmodeus didn’t understand why you were so moody and sassy so suddenly. He, too, figured it was due to stress, so he scheduled a self care night... on your birthday.

He knew the stress should be causing break outs so when he saw the first sign of acne, he practically screamed.

But we all know the gossipy demons habits. The day at RAD had been normal, until the walk home.

MC was walking faster than the others, and was radiating annoyance.

Asmodeus followed you as fast as he could, hoping to do the self care session before homework.

He didn’t expect you to walk so fast either. He was sweating slightly and had to redo his make up.

As he walked into your room, he saw you toss a letter into a nearby trash bin.

He was about to question it as MC said, “It’s nothing, Asmo. It’s fine.”

MC then smiled, letting him do the self care session and offering to do homework with him so it was “less stressing”.

However, as MC left to go get their abandoned books in the main hall, he couldn’t help but peek at the envelope, addressed from MC’a family.

Shock was very evident on Asmo’s face as MC walked in. Knowing what convorsation was to come from the party-loving demon, they shut the door.

“Asmo, I can explain-”

“MC, honey, it’s your birthday?! No one knew!” Asmo sounded distressed and MC awkwardly patted his shoulder.

“It’s fine Asmo. I just don’t like celebrating my birthday. It makes me feel... old.”

Asmo nodded, trying to understand. Some people just didn’t flaunt their age.

Asmo then sighed. “At least let us do something fun for your birthday then. Ooh, you can tell me how old you are!”

“Nope. Never telling my age.”

Asmo deflated like a kicked puppy, only for MC to pipe up.

“Asmo, we could watch silly movies if you want.”

He smiled and hugged MC.

“Thank you, MC. Now, what genre do we watch?”

Beelzebub:

He knew you were upset about something. And it upset him. So while you were moody, Beel was trying to cheer you up.

Did you not eat enough? Were you getting too little sleep? Were you getting to stressed? Poor boy just wanted to help.

Which is why he was carrying a plate of MC’s favorite food to their room, while he munched on his own snacks.

When he got to their room, he realized that they’d locked themself inside. He knocked on the doors and MC opened them minuets later.

Seeing their favorite food, MC instantly smiled.

And then froze.

“Wait, how did you know what today is?”

Beelzebub was confused and tilted his head to the side. “What is today?”

MC realized that he was trying to just be kind.

“Oh, nothing! Uh, thank you for the food.”

Beel wouldn’t let this drop so he followed MC into their room as they carried their food in, munching on his snacks while looking around.

“MC, what is today?”

MC sighed and said “Today is my.... birthday. But I don’t like celebrating it. Makes me feel too old, you know?”

He actually didn’t but knew that humans lives were much different.

“Well, we don’t have to celebrate it, but knowing would have been nice.” He looked upset and MC instantly regretted it.

“It’s okay Beel! Really.” MC smiled warmly at him. They walked over and hugged the big demon before going back to their food.

Beel sighed and said, “Can we cuddle tonight?”

MC turned, shocked. He didn’t specifically ask for cuddles often, so this was unexpected. MC instantly asked, “Because it’s my birthday?”

Beel shook his head.

“I really like cuddling with you.”

Belphegor

He was honestly annoyed at MC’s behavior. And worried. But if anyone asked, he was annoyed at it.

He was shocked- but still tired. So he pushed MC over slightly and layer down next to them.

Him popping up in MCs room was honestly a normal thing. They’d do whatever they were doing and Belphie would claim their bed.

So when he slunk to their room, he didn’t expect to see them in their bed.

As he was falling asleep, he heard MC’s phone start ringing. She had set her ringtone from the human world to be berry annoying.

He picked up the phone and said, “They’re asleep.” Before he could hang up, he heard them yell, “Tell her we said happy birthday!”

He was confused. MC had been acting bratty... because it was their birthday?

He decided he needed a well-deserved nap first and that he’d handle it when he woke up.

They were both woke up a few hours later for dinner, and afterwards, MC retreated back to their room again.

Belphie snuck back into their bed, waiting for MC to finish their homework.

When MC finished, Belphie looked at them and said “Happy birthday.”

As MC spluttered and tried asking how he knew, he rolled his eyes and said, “You had family that called.”

“Oh.”

Belphie was by MCs side now, as they had been walking over to the bed during this ordeal.

“MC, I don’t need your reasoning for not telling me your birthday, but I hope I’ll be told next year?”

MC nods, smiling lightly.

“MC, will you watch the stars with me?”

(Aah, this took longer than expected!! I hope it’s what was expected)

[utilitycaster]

You’ve talked about this subject before, so do you mind sharing your thoughts on ExUs use of rule of cool?

Hi anon,

So I have had some frustrations with EXU, specifically plot based; the vibes are immaculate, the characters are great and well served by each other and the DM-ing, and all the individual moments are fun and emotionally engaging but to me it feels like too many balls are in the air to stick the landing (this metaphor brought to you by a universe in which gymnasts also juggle while in the air I guess), unless next week’s episode is like, 7+ hours - it’s not that I can’t follow the plot so much that the pacing of said plot has felt increasingly unbalanced. I will reserve judgment until it airs, and I’m still very much looking forward to it, but for all the reasons I mentioned liking before, rather than any expectation of the mysteries being resolved. With all that said I think Aabria’s use rule of cool has been incredibly skillful and indeed I credit the immaculateness of the vibes to that*.

Now, having written more than you probably wanted to read for a mostly unrelated introduction with its own footnote: D&D actually allows a ton of agency and wiggle room, if you actually read the rules, and the idea that it doesn’t is a lie told by people who want to plug their favorite indie game. The overarching rule is “The DM has some degree of final say.” In other words, rule of cool is included in rules as written.

Anyway a lot of the “rule of cool” things, at least that I’m thinking of (also please give me examples if I’m on a totally different page than you) were boons during a tricky battle granted by a weird ancient rock, maybe, and I think that’s completely valid! Brennan Lee Mulligan does this with some frequency; Brian Murphy and Matt Mercer tend to grant things like this more formally through homebrew magical items but I think Aabria making it spontaneous fits well with her personal DM-ing style and makes more sense in the context of, well, being in the middle of the jungle.

The Opal and Ted magic stuff is also well done. I mentioned this a couple years ago when Fjord’s powers were lost: there is not much in D&D on how to handle how issues with one’s warlock patron (or deity) may resolve and it’s really up to the DM. Tasha’s pretty much gave DMs the barest of outlines on how to handle subclass/class switches and I see this as related; everyone resorts to Rule of Cool in this space, if you think about it.

I will admit I’m not personally a big fan of granting advantage after a roll is failed, unless it was a legit error, but I will also admit both that I’m a hardass and also that I struggle with moving the plot along as a DM at times and this might be part of it; I can’t really fault a DM on an actual-play show for doing so when the alternative is “nothing happens”. Indeed, when you consider her casual portrayal of some of the deities and NPCs (a very valid and enjoyable stylistic choice) and Aabria’s greater willingness to drop not only out of character but also “DM mode”, if that makes sense, I actually think even more rule of cool might have addressed some of my frustrations with the plot. She could have revealed much more earlier on, because low level characters understandably miss a lot and the series is time-limited.

Which is a learning moment for me! I think my thoughts on rule of cool are more flexible than I’d realized! I still think most things can and should be handled within the rules but a DM with good rule of cool instincts (and I think Aabria has some of the strongest rule of cool instincts I’ve seen) can and perhaps should lean into that more heavily. It’s certainly a specific style and it might not work for everyone, but I think it works here.

*FWIW I think an 8-episode at 4-ish hours each is a really tricky length for actual play, and I think the pre-existing setting and the need to play to both long-term fans wanting an update on Tal’Dorei and new fans complicated things further and I will probably write more about this next week, when I know how things have ended and any future intentions. But just to sum up: I feel Aabria’s DM-ing has been great but far more suited to a longer, more sandbox-y campaign, and indeed if this were a 16 or even 12 episode series I’d have absolutely no concerns at this point, but right now I'm like "how are you going to resolve Myr'etta, Poska, Ted, the missing week/Thordak/whatever Fy'ra was doing, the Ash Hole, the tetrarch in the Iron Authority, and the Circlet of Barbed vision in 5 hours when I also want more Observer lore; let's go in with no expectations of most of those being resolved and be pleasantly surprised if they are."

[atinytokki]

Paradise

vi. Bad Habit 

“You be good now, son,” were Father’s parting words. “Listen to your grandparents. I’ll see you as soon as I can get away.”

He had already said his goodbyes to Haneul, who was locked away in her bedroom, sick.

With the end of Father’s visit came school, and while San had enjoyed meeting his peers and flying through his course work last year, he was afraid it would be too easy for him this time.

Days spent inside gazing forlornly out windows while someone else told him things he already knew sounded less adventurous than they always made it out to be. And it sounded a lot like Haneul’s current state of existence; a prisoner.

Over the remainder of summer she had worsened and worsened. There was no evidence of this other than her decreasing time spent out in the world and Dr. Hong’s increasing time spent at their cottage.

He had met with Father last night, on the eve of his departure, apologising about taxes and prices and other things San didn’t understand. What he did understand was that Haneul now needed a medicine more expensive than they could afford.

“You’ll do as you’re told, right?” Father nudged as he began to pull away from a tight hug. “They really need you now.”

San could only nod weakly and relinquish his grip on his father as he stepped up to the front seat of the cart and let Grandfather drive on in the direction of the western docks. He would work ceaselessly when he arrived at home, every extra coin sent to Namhae for Haneul’s sake.

Managing household affairs was supposed to be a distant future for San, but already as he stood in the ocean and watched the sunrise, he could feel it creeping up.

He couldn’t be sure whether anything Dr. Hong had done was working or not, and Haneul didn’t seem keen to tell him.

San had fed her, administered every type of medicine they had in the cabinets, sung to her, read to her, played half a game of cards with her, and still nothing was bringing her out of her darkened mood.

Playing cards against someone who would rather stare out the window wasn’t the most fulfilling.

“Is something out there?” A high-pitched voice interrupted his musings. Little Inho had approached, school bag slung over his shoulder, likely expecting San to walk him to school. It was his first year and he was very excited.

“No, no,” he answered in a rush. “Just my imagination. You’re early.”

San’s observation changed the topic swiftly, and Inho went on to explain why he had come at the crack of dawn. “The garrison is finished! Don’t you want to go see it?”

“Are you sure?” San snorted, adjusting his own school bag and beginning the walk into town. The last thing he wanted was for some construction accident to befall the clumsy boy and become his responsibility.

“Yes, the officers who will attend it have already moved in,” Inho told him confidently, leading the way past shops and vendors to the site which had earlier been the source of constant noise and disruption.

“Woah,” San breathed when he laid eyes on it. It was no mere naval building, but an entire complex built near the town hall, complete with a jailhouse, offices, armoury, and some strange sort of display at the front that San couldn’t put a name to.

“Oh, the stocks and the whipping post,” Inho supplied easily when he asked. “Haven’t you heard of it? That’s where the criminal goes.”

“I thought criminals went to jail… or to the noose,” San muttered uncomfortably. They hadn’t been showcased for the town to see in strange torture devices, but then again, San had lived in a small town.

“But sometimes they go to the stocks or the whipping post,” Inho told him matter-of-factly, even as he stumbled over the long words. “To be publicly shamed.”

“Do you think there will be many criminals there?” San asked, not sure who he was addressing his question to, or why he was even asking.

Inho could do no more than shrug and skip away in the direction of the schoolhouse, sending San hurrying after him.

Considering how smart Inho was, San had no worries about his performance in class, so he turned his thoughts to his own situation.

Other than the several new students— children of naval officers moving in, according to the morning announcements— nothing much had changed.

There were more arithmetic problems to solve, more scientific experiments to conduct, and more ancient tragedies that hit too close to home to read.

Due to Haneul’s absence, the schoolmaster sent books home on San’s back for her to read, and even when he tried reading them to her she didn’t become conscious enough to show signs of paying attention.

It seemed like she was getting worse and worse and their relationship was following suit.

The wind fluttered the curtains of his bedroom where San watched birds fly out to sea and wished he could follow.

For the evening it was just him and Haneul while their grandparents went on an evening walk along the beach.

It was the first of many evenings like that, where Haneul stayed in her room and San in his, alone save for his imagination, his books, and the small wooden pirate ship he had whittled in secret.

Regardless of the new boys he sometimes played with, San felt less and less connected as he entered his teenage years. As excited as he had been about Namhae when he arrived as a child, it no longer seemed that he belonged. That he had ever belonged in the first place.

Surrounded by the ocean, the very symbol of freedom, life was nonetheless monotonous and restricting. School was followed by work in the carpentry shop and then sitting in silence by Haneul’s bedside, watching his grandparents leave for their walk, and if he was lucky enough, sneaking out to play with his new friends along the beach at night.

Without really realising it, he was acting out the way he did as a small child when life was frustrating. San was a man of action, and if there was nothing to be done, he resorted to desperate but futile acts in a disturbed mood.

On one such winter evening the year he turned fourteen, his grandparents returned early from a shorter beach walk, hands held the whole time, to see San hurriedly putting the carpentry shop back together after some rowdiness with the officers’ children.

Neither of them spoke, and Grandmother simply padded upstairs to let her husband deal with the problem.

“Is anything broken?” He eventually asked a silent San, who quickly shook his head and continued putting chairs upright and tools back on the bench. “What exactly did you boys do in here?”

San exhaled through his nose before admitting, “We were studying at first but some of them brought die and cards so we ended up playing…”

“And drinking?” Grandfather finished for him, voice unchanged though there was disappointment in his eyes.

“No,” San lied smoothly. “Some of the older boys did, but—”

“But this is how you spend your evenings?” The older man cut to the heart of the matter, settling into his chair while a long pause unfolded in the wake of his question.

Maybe it was the effects of the rice wine but as soon as San opened his mouth, he couldn’t stop.

“I’ve been to probably every place on this whole island. I know everyone who lives here. If this is how I spend my evenings it’s because there’s nothing else to do. Haneul is upstairs dying and no one cares, not even Dr. Hong. Do you know it’s been six months since he recommended a new medicine? The one I feed her every day does nothing. The money Father sends from the mainland does nothing. All the books I read in school, and all the furniture we sell in the shop, and all the friends I make do nothing, Grandfather. Maybe if you would just fix up the sailboat like you promised when we first came, maybe then I’d feel like I wasn’t so trapped on this island where every day is the same and nothing I do changes anything.”

Finally out of breath, he couldn’t bear Grandfather’s heartbroken eyes on him any longer and ran to his room.

As he cried into his pillow he tried to pinpoint the moment it had all gone wrong. His life wasn’t supposed to be like this.

The more he thought about it in his hazy, turbulent mind, the more he realised it had always been this way. And it was never going to change.

Morning brought the same gentle quiet of crashing waves and calling birds and the walk to school. San managed to avoid seeing his grandparents until school was done for the day, too guilty to know what to say to them if he did.

He and Grandfather worked in silence on a set of new sliding windows for Mr. Shim, and San was content to keep it that way, letting his actions speak with apology instead of his words.

But soon enough Grandfather opened his mouth.

“Your father hasn’t been sending money.”

San sat up from his work and furrowed his brows in confusion.

“It’s too dangerous,” Grandfather explained with a sigh. “Pirates and all. We wouldn’t want it to be stolen.”

Pirates were a variable none of them had accounted for. Although San’s friends always assured him the Royal Navy had them on the run, they were enough of a threat for trade to be severely impacted.

“Would you like to come on some of our evening walks?” Grandfather offered as they cleaned up and closed the shop. “That’s how your Grandmother and I deal with being powerless, and it might keep you out of trouble.”

The truth was, San did want to go. He had always wanted to tag along, because anything was better than watching Haneul toss and turn with pained moans, her clouded eyes far away from him and the seaside paradise their home used to be.

But he turned up his nose and faced away to hide his wet eyes. “No.”

Not if the only reason was to keep him out of trouble.

Life went on that afternoon and every afternoon following, with the issue dropped. San didn’t invite his friends over again, and only arranged to meet them at one of their houses or the beach.

Just before winter break, he went out one evening and nearly stumbled over the sailboat. Muttering to himself, he bent down to push it out of the way before the reason for its appearance dawned on him.

“It’s fixed!” He realised, eyes filling up with happy tears as he danced around the thing and quickly ran to Mr. Shim’s to knock on the door.

“Excuse me, sir!” He panted when the old ferryman opened it for him. “The boat— our boat— my grandfather finally fixed it! Can you, I mean would you, if it’s not an inconvenience, possibly be able to teach me how to sail it?”

Mr. Shim blinked at him for a moment before straightening and taking a glance at the setting sun. “I’ll send Jiyong to meet you in the square tomorrow afternoon?”

A slow smile spread on San’s face as he nodded his agreement and bowed respectfully several times over in thanks.

Tomorrow afternoon couldn’t come soon enough.

San flew through his schoolwork and brushed off his friends, begged Grandfather to let him off work early just this once and arrived in town’s central square right on time.

It was busier than usual by the garrison, and as San approached the crowd that had gathered he learned why.

Someone was chained to the whipping post, and an officer was flogging him right there for the whole island to see.

Wincing as a blow struck the man’s skin and left angry red blood trails behind, San wondered aloud who was being punished.

“A pirate,” Jiyong’s voice answered him as he drew up alongside the teenager, joining the crowd with his arms crossed to peer above heads and view the spectacle. “Not sure whose crew he belongs to, but he’s definitely one of the pirates they caught over the weekend.”

It was no disturbing occurrence, San reminded himself in an effort to keep from plugging his ears against the pirate’s cries. He had seen pirates before, almost been attacked by one in that cave on Dalhae.

He should be happy a pirate was getting his comeuppance.

“What’s going to happen to him?” San couldn’t help but ask when the man was unchained and dragged back into the prison, listless and painted in his own blood.

Jiyong let out an acknowledging hum before launching into an explanation.

“Well, you see, according to our laws here in Jaecho, when someone is caught with reasonable suspicion of being a pirate or of aiding a pirate, the navy can within its rights have them imprisoned, whipped, and whatever other interrogation tactics they use in there. But it’s not always a good idea to beat a suspected pirate, especially in public, should the claim be proven wrong and the accused demand reparations and public apologies. That would be… embarrassing.”

“I take it that situation has happened before,” San snorted.

Jiyong joined the laughter for a moment before nodding reluctantly. “A few times that I can think of.”

The sound of the door closing ominously behind the unlucky prisoner brought San’s attention back to the man’s fate. “Will he be executed?”

“Not unless he’s a proven pirate,” Jiyong rattled off instantly. “And to be one of those you must be either found guilty and sentenced to death by court, or marked with a pirate brand from a previous encounter, in which case the trial can be skipped.”

San went pale when it dawned on him why. There must be so many executions to get to that skipping the court process for several of them was necessary.

Jiyong continued, oblivious, “The branding is Admiral Kim’s tactic of keeping track of pirates that may slip through his fingers the first time he arrests them without enough evidence. If he catches them again, in the act of piracy or not, as long as he finds a brand he can have them hung and whatever else he pleases as soon as the schedule allows. And all the other pirates will see the corpse hung from the gibbet and beware.”

San shivered but spoke up as he caught on, “So since this man has been at the whipping post, there’s a high chance he really is a pirate, just an unbranded one?”

“Exactly. Or else we might’ve been watching his execution.”

Knowing that was a sight he would rather not try to stomach, San turned towards the harbour and Jiyong followed him.

“How do you know all this about courts and convictions anyway?” He asked the older man, who laughed and rubbed his neck bashfully.

“I study law when I’m not working,” Jiyong admitted, frowning when San seemed confused by the fact. “Did you think I was only going to work for Mr. Shim for the rest of my life?”

“But you’re his apprentice, you’re supposed to take over his business,” San reminded him matter-of-factly, crossing his arms in a way that probably looked a tad childish. After all, that was what Grandfather expected of him with regards to the carpentry shop.

“There’s no reason I can’t do both,” Jiyong insisted as the ocean came into view. “You don’t have to just take what you’re given in this world, ferrying passengers is fine but if there’s a chance to move up in status, I’d be a fool not to take it. Besides, it’s not like you haven’t taken up some bad habits.”

Clearly knowing too much, he accompanied his final remark with a wink and San found it necessary to change the subject to sailing before his behaviour was further exposed.

San got his first taste that day as Jiyong taught him everything he could possibly learn in a single afternoon about the handling of a small sailboat. And the following weekend he taught him everything else he could learn.

Grandfather had fixed the vessel for him in order to satiate his rebellious desires but, even as grateful as San was for his gift, the boat was quickly put to use for more unruly evenings.

He played hooky on and off for the rest of the school year, just enough to avoid being caught, and went out when he wasn’t permitted to. From his perspective it wasn’t as if he sailed into dangerous waters or endangered other passengers, and what Grandfather didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

For the time being it seemed he had no inkling. Haneul, on the other hand, did.

“Were you sailing?” The muttered question, barely louder than a whisper, interrupted his reading aloud.

San could only blink at her, surprised, as she gazed at him with her clear and piercing eyes, reflecting the candlelight by her bedside.

“You’re awake…” he breathed, stumbling to his feet in excitement. “Yes I was sailing, how did you know?”

Haneul’s expression didn’t change, but she glanced out the window and her eyes landed on the autumn moon. School had begun again after a scorching summer and San continued his nightly adventures unbeknownst to anyone else.

“You smell of the sea.”

San sat down again but closed the book and placed it on the table. Haneul hadn’t directly spoken to him in a couple of weeks, and even when she was coherent enough to do so, they never had much to talk about.

“Is it true you’re going to visit Father?” She asked quietly after a moment. It sounded like she wished she could come along.

San wasn’t sure how she even knew about those plans, considering the fact that he had only just asked Grandfather for permission that afternoon, but he nodded in answer and watched her face fall.

“I would bring you along but you’re still feeling ill and you don’t like sailing anyway and—”

“You need more attention than you’ve been getting,” she translated softly.

And, as usual, Haneul was correct but it embarrassed San to admit it.

“It’s just that I haven’t spent much time with him in the past few years.”

Because when he visits, he spends it with you, went unsaid.

“I’ll go over to Dr. Hong’s and ask if Eunkyung and Eunae can come visit you after school so you aren’t alone,” San offered when she didn’t reply.

The prospect brightened her mood for the rest of the evening, and as promised, San knocked on the neighbours’ door with his request before bed.

Eunkyung and Eunae had been too busy to manage more than a few afternoons at the Choi cottage, especially since there weren’t many games Haneul could participate in from the confines of her bed.

“How long will you be gone?” Inho asked with a pout as San slipped his shoes back on and prepared to go home, arrangements made.

“I’m not sure yet, maybe a week or so? You can survive walking to school without me for that long, right?”

Inho huffed but eventually agreed. “My noonas can take me. They’re boring compared to you, though.”

San couldn’t help but blush at the praise and gave the young boy an affectionate head pat before walking home and crawling into bed.

Perhaps it had been an exaggeration when he thought no one cared about him anymore. Sure, he often was alone and felt more like an outsider than ever, but he had Haneul, he had his grandparents, he had Inho and Jiyong and his friends at school, and most of all, he had sailing.

He dreamed about wind in his hair and sea grass bending over as if greeting a prince, the sky on fire with colour before him as he proceeded to his boat.

It was practically sailing itself across smooth and shining waves and San could sit back and feel the setting sun on skin.

He was where he belonged.

...

A/N: I have become swamped my school :< Been meaning to write this for some time, hopefully I’ll get a schedule underway but thanks for your patience, don’t forget to comment and motivate me lol and stay tuned ❤️

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[myaekingheart]

20 [Fanfic Writer] Questions Game

Thank you so much for tagging me, @lemony-snickers! This is tons of fun, I love answering these kinds of big questionnaires 😂💕 Also putting mine under a cut because there’s a lot of questions and I like to ramble. 

Also gonna go ahead and just tag whoever wants to do this! 😅💕

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

As of August 27, 2021, I have a total of 77 works on my AO3! 

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

Funny enough, I was just looking at this, specifically, earlier today and kind of laughing about it. Right now, my total word count across all my works is 1,148,941 😬 

3. How many fandoms have you written for, and what are they?

Apparently 12, but some of them I don’t really consider “big” in my fandom repertoire. Naruto is my greatest fandom with a total of 60 fics so far, followed by The Chronicles of Narnia and Rise of the Guardians. The rest are ones I either did crossover fics with or just did one-off little pieces with--The Incredibles, Tangled, Brave, How to Train Your Dragon, Arthurian Mythology, Disney Princesses, Fairy Tales and Related Fandoms, Back to the Future, and Frozen. 

4. What are your Top Five fics by kudos?

The Scarecrow and The Bell (Naruto) - 470 kudos The Day Kakashi’s Mask Slipped (Naruto) - 139 kudos Sunflowers (Naruto) - 92 kudos Sakumo the House Husband (Naruto) - 81 kudos Someone to Lean On (Naruto) - 67 kudos

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I always try to respond to comments, because I like to acknowledge when people respond to my work. I cherish comments like nobody’s business, especially when they’re kind and reactionary. I just really love seeing/hearing what people think of the way a story is progressing, or what they thought of a one-shot. Comments keep me going especially when it comes to longfic so I want to be able to let readers know that I do in fact see their comments, that I’m acknowledging what they’re saying, and that I appreciate them. Plus, it can be kind of fun to tease upcoming events in a fic through responses to people’s comments, too. Because I’m mean. 

6. What fic have you written with the angstiest ending?

Definitely Hothouse (Rise of the Guardians/The Incredibles; Jack Frost x Violet Parr; American Horror Story AU). This was the first multi-chaptered fic I ever wrote to completion and I honestly cringe when I remember it exists both because it’s so poorly organized (and full of nasty plot holes) and because I just went ham on the gore factor. It definitely has a really bittersweet and heartbreaking ending to it, too. 

7. What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

I think I’ll definitely have to say Temptation. The story itself was kind of a ride, and it’s only the first installment in a series, but it follows the plot of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe but remixed due to the presence of an original character, but the ending is still roughly the same as the original: they defeat the evil, the Pevensies are all crowned kings and queens, happy days. Reading the last few paragraphs of the last chapter honestly still gets me all up in my feelings. 

8. Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the craziest one you’ve written?

I used to be more of a crossover writer due to one of my main ships being a crossover ship. They weren’t super crazy, though, because they were both CGI-animated films. The craziest crossover I’ve ever written is an in-progress/unfinished multichapter piece, Kakashi, Enchanted, that sees our favorite Copy Ninja get kamui’d into the Disney princess dimension and has to help the likes of Snow White, Cinderella, and Rapunzel on his journey to find a way back to his own world. It’s a super weird premise but definitely one of my more lighthearted works and fun to revisit when I need to decompress. 

9. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

I don’t think I’ve ever received hate so much as I’ve received criticism. The closest I ever got to hate on a fic, I think, was someone left an overly personal and mentally disturbed comment on a chapter of my main fic that made me convinced they needed to seek therapy and deal with their own personal issues rather than take it out on a fanfic about animated ninjas. 

10. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Maybe 👀 I’m super vanilla when it comes to smut, though. I think the wildest thing I’ve ever written in smut is breeding kink. 

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of, and I hope I never will. 

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not yet! I had someone ask to translate a one-shot of mine in Russian but I never got a response back when I laid out my terms and conditions. 

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I have not! I used to do paragraph-style roleplay which was kind of like cowriting fanfiction but writing is so personal and sacred to me that I don’t know if I could ever actually cowrite a fic with someone. I like brainstorming with other people, but writing for me is more of a deeply personal and independent endeavour. 

14. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

Oh god, this is a tricky question because it depends on fandom. I absolutely love New Dream (Rapunzel x Eugene, Tangled) and have for the past ten years, and my love for them as only grown since watching Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel’s Tangled Adventure. I don’t write or even really read a ton of fanfiction for them, though. I’m also still highly dedicated to my favorite crossover crackship, Frostfield (Jack Frost x Violet Parr, Rise of the Guardians/The Incredibles) and to this day, if you search for that ship on AO3, I am the sole provider of every single fic about them so far. I’m not as active with them as I used to be, but they got me through some really rough times back in the day and still mean so much to me. A lot of my favorite ships across fandoms, though, are honestly canon x OC ships of mine because I am a self-indulgent bitch who needs to project. So Peter Pevensie x Eilonwy (The Chronicles of Narnia) and Kakashi Hatake x Rei Natsuki (Naruto) are really important to me and I’ve poured so much of myself specifically into their stories. I think it’s safe to say Kakashi and Rei is my all-time favorite ship across all fandoms, though, just because of how much their story means to me. The Scarecrow and The Bell is my magnum opus, my pride and joy, and I’m sure it will be my biggest fandom footprint of my entire life. I’ve dedicated the past three years to this story and these characters and I intend to continue doing it until it no longer brings me joy (which I hope it always will). There’s just so much I could say about this story and Kakashi and Rei’s relationship but I don’t think we have enough time or space in this post for that 😅 Just know that they mean the world to me and I will always hold them in the highest regard as a beautifully messy, flawed, passionate, soulmate-y ship that I love with all of my heart 🥺

EDIT: I also feel obligated to tack on some of my absolute favorite Naruto ships because I may not have written for all of them (yet) but they still make me unbelievably happy or I find them really compelling and enjoy the idea of exploring them: 

Naruhina is precious happy sunshine and The Last honestly felt like a wonderful Disney princess movie to me, it was so cute and the romance was so on-point, Naruhina just makes me so incredibly happy and I love them with all my heart. 

MinaKushi also gets me all up in my feels and I adore them with every fiber of my being. Their romance also gave me Disney princess movie vibes which I love, their story is just so damn sweet as is their character dynamic and I am still so heartbroken that they never got to be a happy family with Naruto because you know what? It’s what they deserved!

SasuSaku is so compelling to me and I really feel like we were cheated out of seeing their relationship develop and evolve postwar in the same way The Last did for Naruhina. They’re my favorite angst ship and while I don’t think they were written that well in canon, I love the possibility and potential of them together and am excited to explore them more in-depth in my own writing. 

NejiTen is just too cute, I really love the way Neji and Tenten’s personalities compliment each other? I don’t have much else to say about them except that I really love them together and think they have so much untapped potential that I also can’t wait to explore in more depth in my own writing. 

15. What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

Paper Hearts and Impromptu Bookmarks, probably. I love the premise of this story a lot and I have so many interesting ideas for it but at the same time, it also feels kind of cheap and cringey to me, in a way? It takes all of these ideas I probably would have had if I had been into Naruto when I was a kid and kind of compiles them all into one big story. Kakashi and Aiko’s relationship and story is still really important to me and I want to continue it someday but for right now, I just haven’t had the motivation or desire to write any more of it. I think I’m just so overwhelmingly preoccupied with writing Kakashi and Rei’s story that I can’t imagine writing any other Kakashi x OC fics right now. 

16. What are your writing strengths?

I want to say that I’m really good at capturing complex emotion? I don’t know, I write a lot of angst and mental upheaval in my fics which can be really difficult to try and capture, but I think I do a decent enough job of it? And just writing difficult subjects in general. I think it’s really important to address difficult topics such as mental illness and relationship difficulties and everything but I also want to try and write those topics in a way that is both authentic to the experience while also still tasteful. I don’t want to drive readers away with heavy subject matter but rather present a situation that feels real and authentic while also still being digestible. I may not be doing a very good job of that during the current arc of my fic that I’m working on, but I’m trying haha

EDIT 2: I also want to add onto this to say that I’m really proud of my organizational techniques for writing longfic. It’s not necessarily a strength in terms of the prose itself but it’s something that’s taken me years to really get a grasp on and find a method that works perfectly for me and so far, it’s been extremely helpful and beneficial to me. I don’t know where I would be now as a writer without these essential tools in my pocket. 

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I feel like I do a really bad job of the “show, don’t tell” thing. It can be really hard to balance descriptive prose with straightforward writing that moves things along. I don’t want to dwell on mental dialogue to the point where you lose track of what’s going on, but I also don’t want my stuff to read like “Character A did xyz. Character B said abc. They went to 123″, whatever. Another thing I struggle with is sentence variation. I always fall into the same patterns when I’m writing prose and I get really self-conscious about it because I don’t want to sound repetitive or disrupt the flow of the writing. One of my favorite things about prose is focusing on the cadence of the words, I think it’s one of the most beautiful things about writing in general, but it can just be really difficult to get a good grip on that. I’ve been told in the past that I apparently have a really good grasp/control of the language or whatever but sometimes I just find that really hard to believe when I look at my work with such scrutiny. I think one of my biggest pet peeves with my own writing, too, is feeling like I start all of my sentences the same five different ways. I’ll read other people’s works and they’ll write sentences like “Glass-blue water lapped against the shores of a deserted beach as a lonely woman gazed off into the distance” and I can just never figure out how to realistically write sentences that start like that in the context of my prose and it drives me fucking crazy, like I’m definitely jealous  😅

18. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I’ve never really thought much about it before, but I think there are pros and cons! For bilingual/multilingual readers, I think it can be a really enriching reading experience because they know what’s being said in both languages. For people who only know one language, however, unless a translation is provided, I feel like it can be really alienating. I think the best use of that for both worlds is using it as a means for miscommunication humor. Other than that, I think it can be a slippery slope that depends on what kind of reader you are and how it’s written. 

19. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

The Chronicles of Narnia! My very first fanfiction was a Narnia fanfic that I barely remember except that it laid the basis for Temptation and my Narnia fanfic series as a whole. I never posted this first iteration anyway, but I remember it was 2008/2009 and I wrote a solid 80 pages (which was wild for me at the time) and had gotten halfway through remixing the events of Prince Caspian when my computer crashed and I lost absolutely everything. I’m still heartbroken that it’s gone forever, not because I’d want to go back and read it necessarily (since I’m sure it was actually hot garbage) but at least for nostalgia’s sake. Either way, like I said, this long-lost fic laid the basis for the very first fanfiction I ever posted, the first published (and never finished) iteration of Temptation back in 2011 on deviantART and the since-defunct Figment. I fell out of the fandom around 2012/2013 and left the story alone for a while before ultimately deciding to completely redux and rewrite the story when the fixation swung back around again between 2016 and 2018. 

20. What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

Despite the fact that it’s still in-progress, definitely The Scarecrow and The Bell. This fic just genuinely means so damn much to me and I will cherish it for the rest of my life because of how much it’s given me, how much love and passion and time and even parts of myself that I have poured into this, and also just how expansive of a story this is. Not only does it touch on some very dark and heavy topics, but I’ve also created so much of my own characters and meta for this story that it’s almost an entire universe in and of itself. I’ve just contributed so much additional world-building and created so many new OCs to fill important roles in this story and in Rei’s life, and they’ve all become so deeply important to me as they’ve developed further over the years. I’ve come up with so many interesting ideas for everyone and their lives, which are all slowly becoming so rich and varied. Not to mention that it’s my most popular fic to date as well as my longest fic at 632k and counting. I’ve really just genuinely poured so much of my heart and soul into this story, it’s my absolute favorite thing I’ve ever done and I really mean it when I say that I will cherish it for the rest of my life. 

[kyogre-blue]

Liyue is all about contracts, but the way it treats contracts is rather inconsistent and currently lacking any interesting examination. 

What I mean: There are multiple mentions of how Liyue’s laws are constantly being updated as people find and exploit loopholes, and then those loopholes are closed to make the laws more tight and less open to exploitation. (In particular, in regard to Ningguang and Yanfei.) Good point! Laws (contracts) are often very limited, especially since Liyue very much lives by the word of the law and places no emphasis or interest in the spirit of the law. The intentions are irrelevant, only the exact wording matters. 

Outside the wall text lore, this is never brought up again. Every contract we see brought up in the story, aside from perhaps the Morax-Tsaritsa one which is kept obscured for plot reasons, is extremely simple and lacks even the most basic clauses you’d expect for very predictable eventualities. The contrast between “Liyue’s laws are a massive text covering minute details” and “these are purely verbal contracts that amount to a single sentence promise” is massive. 

I mean, look at the contracts that the adepti have to protect Liyue, or Azhdaha’s contract to not act against Liyue. These contracts are apparently completely open-ended. They also seem to lack any flexibility for “what if X” like Azhdaha being tortured by the Ley Lines humans damaged but there is no mention of him having any recourse to deal with this. His side doesn’t matter, all that matters is that he attacked people. 

There is in fact no concept of contracts ending at all. The adepti and Rex Lapis have no end clause in terms of protecting Liyue. There is no end goal of any sort that we’re aware of. Worse, the contract between Wanyan and Klimet. Klimet breaks the contract, which was intended purely to manage the distribution of any items found between them, and departs. By basic logic, the contract is now over, since one of the parties has peaced out and rendered the point of it null and void. But Zhongli proceeds to still enforce it on Wanyan for no discernable reason except because it exists. 

EXCEPT that Zhongli himself just kind of decides that his contract with Liyue can end because he feels it’s good enough. This doesn’t seem to be an actual clause or option in his contract with Liyue. He just decides this on his own and... frankly, breaks the contract quite blatantly, putting Liyue in great danger and then going off to retire. It’s over because he says it’s over, but no one else has that option. 

And then of course, there is the way Zhongli talks about contracts as a whole, which is honestly... concerning. He says that, “To get people to abide by a contract, and act in accordance with the guidelines set out within, is simply to ask them to respect the concept of fairness.” This has the implications that contracts are inherently fair, and this is just not the case. 

Think about cases like the old mining towns, where a company would trick miners into signing on to live in company-provided housing and be paid with company-issued “currency.” The miners soon realized that they were making less than the supposed cost of their and their families’ basic living expenses, quickly putting them into deeper and deeper debt to the company, despite putting in dangerous, back-breaking labor. This was all according to the contract between them, but how was any of it fair? 

Or what about a contract that one party is forced to sign under threat of pain or death? They agreed, you could say that they’re getting the benefit of “not being killed,” but is that really fair? Is that a contract that should be enforced? 

Liyue is supposed to be about contracts, but it doesn’t really say anything interesting about them at all. 

By comparison, Mond is about freedom. And while I am somewhat doubtful this is intentional, its history shows the double-edged nature of freedom. Venti left Mond to govern itself so they could be “free,” but after a thousand years, they ended up with deep corruption, including outright slavery. This was, in a sense, what they chose. In the end, it was only after the entire city felt that their freedom had been threatened (because Venti forged a document saying that Mond had been sold to Rex Lapis lol) that they joined together to overthrow the aristocracy. Until then, most of the city chose to just let things continue as they were. 

Maybe the nature of contracts will be addressed more in the future. After all, there is actually very little storyline currently available (after nine months...), so there could be far more that the game will say. This is just my thoughts at the moment (version 1.6). 

[quagmiremarch]

The Lies We Tell to Find Our Truth

New fic for Yuri on Ice Regency Week ( @yoiregencyweek). Cross-posted to AO3. Yuuri Katsuki considered himself a respectable man. Simple, perhaps, from a common family and of no great note in either affect or appearance, but polite and mindful of courtesy. Certainly not the sort of fellow to find himself improper or inclined to rule-breaking. And yet, here he found himself, shoulder-length hair curled and artfully draped as he allowed Mr. Phichit Chulanont, his most trusted acquaintance, to fit him into, of all things, a ball gown, for the purposes of committing a most imprudent and scandalous fraud. All for the sake of saving his family’s good name from his sister’s most willful disregard. It had been her that found the Lord Bin’s carriage disabled along the sea road, and she that chose to bring the unconscious lord and his retainer to the onsen to be tended.  And while Yuuri certainly applauded her kindness, and would most likely have done the same, it was not his ‘uncanny loveliness and kind heart’ that had prompted the elderly lord to issue to the Katsuki family an invitation for Mari and an escort to attend the spring ball where she might ‘find a suitor to raise her to the station that was her due.’ So, why then had it fallen upon Yuuri to prevent shame from befalling his family? Because his sister, while kind, lacked in courtesy and graciousness in the face of societal obligations. Which was the polite way to say that she had taken a single glance at the invitation when it arrived and declared, quite loudly, “I will assuredly not waste a fine evening playing made-up strumpet for a room full of arrogant boot-lickers when there is real work to be done.” And then she had tossed the invitation into the embers of the hearth. Yuuri caught a terrible burn in rescuing it, and a mighty headache trying to explain why Mari had no choice but to accept the invitation. The lord had bequeathed the onsen with accolades, and the Katsukis with an honorary title of no real import or value, but which bore a certain weight of obligation. Mari had responded that should Yuuri care so much for appearances and false niceties then he was most welcome to attend the ball in her place. Though perhaps her wording had been a tad more colorful. Regardless, this is how it came to be that Yuuri found himself bedecked and be-gowned in a likely disastrous attempt to pass himself off as his sister for one night. He’d procured the proper clothing, and Mr. Chulanont had a suspiciously skilled had at the application of hairpins and beauty powders to soften his features to something passingly feminine. Though he suspected ‘uncannily lovely’ beyond his reach.

He had even taken time to learn the roles in the dances he might be expected to know despite the mirth of his mentor in this endeavor. Now, he simply had to get to the proper location, avoid causing any offense, and if lucky speaking at all, and return home without anyone learning of this perfidy.

“Why, Miss Katsuki,” Phichit drawled with a sly grin, “you certainly are a vision.” Then the man frowned and stuck a hand down the front of Yuuri’s grown, adjusting the fabric in place to mimic feminine assets he most assuredly lacked. “There, much better. Shall we?”

With a sigh, Yuuri took Phichit’s arm and let himself be led into the carriage. Already it looked to be a dreadfully long evening ahead.

##

To Yuuri’s great relief, the elder Lord Bin was not in attendance at the ball, a minor ailment keeping him away. Not perhaps that it would much have mattered in the crowded ballroom. Everywhere people moved about like eddies and whorls of bright color, men in dapper suits and tails fluttering from one group of young ladies to another much as bees would traverse a field. Yuuri, in the much simpler attire affordable to him, looked much like a robin among a sky full of blue jays.

He found he did not mind. Being overlooked made his plan of going unnoticed much simpler. Lamentably, he had not accounted for his chaperone disappearing onto the dance floor to leave Yuuri to on his own. Still, he tucked himself away in a corner, a single glass of iced punch at hand, and counted the minutes until he might politely excuse himself.

He’d barely reached seven before the first gentleman approached. Tall and broad of shoulder, the younger Lord Bin looked much as his father must have in his prime, all square lines with the darkest of hair and eyes. Not perhaps to Yuuri’s taste—though he kept his inclinations towards those of his own gender close to his chest – but appealing in a general manner.

“Miss Katsuki,” Lord Bin addressed with what might have been either a deep tilt of his head or the shallowest of bows, “it is a pleasure to find you in attendance. I had thought my father’s claims to your beauty exaggerated, but I see now he had, in fact, rather understated your virtues.”

“Oh.” Yuuri swallowed as he felt the heat creep up his ears. While he’d practiced the dancing and the ways of walking in such binding garments, he’d lacked access to information on the ways of upper class polite small talk, had hoped rather fervently to avoid the need to make any. Now, he found himself at a loss as to the proper response to what seemed a rather forward comment. “Ah. You flatter me to greatly, Lord Bin.” He kept his eyes down and hoped any lack of manners would be forgiven as ignorance due to his lower station and not a complete misunderstanding of the expectations of a woman in such a situation.

“I do no such thing.” He offered his arm. “Might I have this dance?”

Yuuri simply nodded, allowing himself to be escorted onto the floor. He found Lord Bin to be a passable dancer, and the jaunty pace of the Scotch reel left no time or room for words between them. He might, perhaps have feared the conversation to come, had another gentleman not swept him up immediately into the next set.

And so, for some time Yuuri found himself surprisingly more entertained then he had hoped, caught up in the mood and the music, always, it seemed, a new face looking to usher him across the floor, and precious little discussion expected of him beyond the niceties of introductions and polite platitudes.

The break for dinner proved more of a challenge. Yuuri understood that ranking and status determined the proper table at which he should place himself, but had a fair lack of context as to the ranking of most the other guests to use his limited information. Phichit, his absence as chaperone the topic of several comments Yuuri received, remained missing from the gathering and so could not be consulted.

“Do you need assistance, Miss Katsuki?”

Yuuri turned at the words and found himself gazing upon the loveliest man perhaps ever created. Taller than Yuuri, though not by a tremendous amount, his eyes shone blue as the summer seas, and he had hair of so pale a blonde as to shine silver in the lights of the ballroom. A friendly smile danced across the man’s fair features, adding an air of approachability to his noble bearing.

“Miss Katsuki?”

Yuuri started, pulled from his shock and suddenly mortified by his terrible rudeness. “Ah! My apologies. I fear I found myself...lost in thought for a moment.” An atrocious excuse for his blatant staring, but the best Yuuri could manage.

“No need to apologize at all. Might I escort you to a seat?” The man offered an arm.

Yuuri offered a shy smile, skin flushing as he felt the man’s warmth even through the thin silk gloves he’d worn to the ball. “Thank you...” he trailed off, at a loss for how to proceed. He knew not the man’s name, nor rank. He feared addressing him improperly as ‘Mister’ when a ‘Lord’ might be required would cause great offense. He worried even more that this might be some man of great import, a Baron or Earl (or Prince for he certainly looked the part) and that Yuuri’s ignorance of his identity might be just as great an insult.

“Victor, please. Might I be so bold as to have your first name?”

Bold indeed, but caught in that azure gaze Yuuri forgot himself entirely. “Yu-” he coughed, and recovered himself quickly, horrified he had so simply nearly thrown away the whole game. “You may call me Mari.” The words came out low, embarrassed. Even Yuuri knew such familiarity on so brief an acquaintance counted as unseemly and forward to the extreme. And yet, something in Victor’s soft smile and the hand resting firmly upon Yuuri’s own invited such misbehavior.

“Mari,” Victor beamed, smile heart-shaped and bright, “a suitably lovely name for such a beauty as you.”

Yuuri wondered if the aristocratic men were always so flirtatious and forward or if they felt emboldened by Yuuri—Mari’s – lower station. A thing perhaps to ponder, though not a terribly important one. After this one eve he was unlikely to ever see again any of these gentlemen.

Gazing up at the strong line of Victor’s jaw, Yuuri regretted that fact for the first time since he’d conceived of this ridiculous plan. Not that there were any point to longing for further acquaintance. Yuuri had arrived in the guise of a woman; any further meetings would lead only to anger and accusations should his deception be discovered. There simply existed no future for knowing this beautiful Victor. Best not to linger on such thoughts. Once dinner completed, Yuuri might reasonably return home and to his simple, but happy life.

Except that as dinner was served, Victor started speaking. He talked with love and mirth of his darling poodle, of the smell of winter on the sea as his favorite scent, of his love of dance.

Poor Yuuri felt defenseless in the face of these revelations and so shared his own: stories of his own dog, anecdotes about the onsen patrons, a long and passionate tribute to ballet as an art and his own less inspiring studies thereof. To the latter he left out the ridicule his devotion to the art inspired in his local peers. Such a study would seem perfectly appropriate for someone like Mari. Another thing Yuuri envied his sister.

Dinner bled into dancing in Victor’s arms, a waltz followed by a shared moment on the balcony as they each drank in silence side-by-side. In the quiet isolation of that space, bathed in moonlight, Victor looked to the sky as he finally spoke quietly, “You are wonderful company, Mari. Might I call upon you sometime?”

And Yuuri froze, eyes wide. “I--” A drunken laugh interrupted as the balcony doors opened and a much inebriated Phichit stumbled upon them. “Yuuri! Here you are! I--” He stopped, gulped as he took in the other person present.

“Duke Nikiforov. You’re...here. With….Mari. Huh.” Phichit blinked owlishly and then grabbed Yuuri’s wrist. “Well, it is certainly late. We should go. Somewhere. Not here. Very well. Good-bye!”

With that the smaller boy tugged Yuuri back into the crowded ballroom and out the door to their waiting carriage.  One part of Yuuri realized this the best course of action. The rest longed to run back to Victor, to tell him the truth and hope against hope the connection they’d formed remained. A pointless dream, he knew.

But, as he looked back once, catching sight of Victor’s bright hair and strong form chasing after, his heart beat ever faster, and he hoped nonetheless, even after the curtains of the windows blocked his view and the racing horses carried him away from the fantasy and home to the onsen where only lonely reality waited.

[galacticnova3]

sorry but what do you mean by good faith headcanoning? /gen (i agree w/ you and you don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to, i’m just curious)

Oh I’m fine answering stuff like this! Helps me get my points across easier if people actually know what I’m talking about after all. Apologies in advance this got very long because I’m tired and can’t write short explanations when tired.

In a nutshell, it means not making some incredibly complicated headcanon that “explains” how x thing that clearly applies doesn’t actually apply. I just call it good faith headcanoning because it’s headcanon that doesn’t stem from much, if any canon basis, but that also isn’t used to excuse or push harmful or super unrealistic interpretations. An example of a good faith headcanon would be that Meta Knight is blind and his mask is what lets him see. There’s nothing that suggests or supports this in canon, and considering he still flies off even without his mask, it can be assumed it’s not actually required for vision. But saying that you headcanon he’s blind ultimately doesn’t do any harm, and just as importantly, doesn’t deny important established information.

As an example of a bad faith headcanon… Ok, this is gonna be silly, but I’m kinda brain’t right now. Say someone decided they don’t like the fact that Kirby loves strawberry shortcake for whatever reason, and said that they headcanon that Kirby LOATHES strawberry shortcake. In response to people pointing out that Kirby’s love of strawberry shortcake played a major roll in Squeak Squad, and has been depicted in other situations as well, they decide to say they headcanon that Kirby actually DOESN’T like it, but had to eat it for a challenge. Or they headcanon he was being “influenced” by something to make him want to eat the shortcake, as well as in every other instances of it being eaten.

The problem is that while this sort of thing technically DOES work as an explanation, it’s not a “fair” or reasonable one. No matter how much people point out that it contradicts something that’s been established, the person can always just point to their complicated workaround and say that “you can’t police my headcanons that’s mean!” In essence it’s basically the same issue teachers/professors have with you doing an opinion or argument-centric paper on something that can’t be disagreed with or argued against; at that point you’re not addressing the information, you’re just dodging the issue.

Yes, it’s true that people are allowed to headcanon what they want and that policing it(when it isn’t harmful/disgusting) is a shitty thing to do. I agree with that entirely. I’m also not against a bit of tip-toeing around in the vague parts of canon, and in fact that’s probably how the majority of my headcanons came about. However, in my opinion, there’s a point where it becomes a bit too much, where it’s really clear it’s all just an excuse to ignore important and well-established information about a character. Ignoring canon is fine until ignoring it fundamentally changes aspects of everything connected to it, in a way that no longer resembles the actual media.

The simple solution is to just call it an AU and then go from there, instead of making excuses for why X is like Z, when in the series X is shown to be like Y. In that case, so long as the impacts of changing that aspect are shown, and again, it’s not just an excuse to make abhorrent content, there’s no problem.

In reference to how this came about, the “bad faith” headcanons I was talking about would be the ones that basically say “Marx wasn’t actually a bad guy”, “Marx wasn’t being selfish”, “What Marx did wasn’t manipulative”, etc. as a means to justify Marx not experiencing consequences. Doing that essentially removes the basic core aspects of Marx’s character. Milky Way Wishes’ entire plot revolves around the simple fact that Marx is manipulative and a liar. He basically admits it himself when he says he got the sun and the moon to fight, got Kirby to summon Nova, and then brags about that whole thing going according to plan.

While it’s not out of the question to give him a motivation besides wanting to rule, like I did with Magolor in my headcanon, that motivation shouldn’t/can’t be used to undermine or otherwise excuse his actions. It doesn’t matter if he wanted to take over in order to improve Popstar or whatever(which he didn’t, because he gets excited about being able to cause all the mischief he wants, by the way). At the end of the day, he still probably caused major problems when the sun and moon started fighting, lied to and later attempted to kill Kirby(indirectly through exposure, then directly by fighting him), and ultimately got Nova destroyed. If the headcanon solely exists to say “but it’s ok and doesn’t matter anymore”, whether to woobify him into just a naughty widdle clown boy or (eugh) ship him with Someone, I can’t see a plausible way that it is in good faith and not just a tailored excuse to deny his wrongdoings in canon.

Now, this might seem like there’s an unfair line, because obviously not every unrealistic headcanon is in bad faith, but imo it can be figured out pretty simply. Generally, it can safely be assumed to be bad faith if multiple of the following things apply, within reason:

-It’s ignoring core information that, when changed, changes something completely in ways beyond just what’s being changed (ex. If you say Marx was actually possessed and that’s why he did MWW rather than being power hungry, there’s going to be more affected than just everyone going “oh it’s not his fault, ok” and then doing nothing)

-It’s changing so much information to make sense that, in justifying the one headcanon, many other things no longer line up or make sense, but go unaddressed (ex. Saying Meta Knight wasn’t bad in Revenge of Meta Knight because he wanted to take over Dreamland because there was actually some kind of great evil that he needed control to destroy, and that saying it’s because he wanted to end the lazy lifestyle was just a coverup to not cause mass panic)

-The headcanon attempts to justify an act that can’t be honestly justified or made ok in the canon circumstances (ex. Saying Sectonia actually wanted to rule Floralia and take over Popstar for good reasons that Kirby couldn’t see, like trying to unite them into a safer whole, or trying to justify Hyness’ mistreatment of Zan Partizanne by saying she’s actually the bad one)

-It is used in a manner that basically attempts to “victimize” the creator or “villainize” people who disagree if discrepancies in their headcanon are pointed out (ex. The creator “headcanons” Dedede is actually totally evil in order to write characters hating him, and acts like they’re being bullied when people correctly point out the positive relationships Dedede has with the main cast, as well as his role in aiding the side of good in games like Return to Dreamland, Triple Deluxe, and Star Allies.

-It is otherwise an unsupported, implausible headcanon being used to excuse gross and/or malicious content (ex. Headcanon excuses for shipping gross pairings, like MetaSusie or p*do/*nc*st ships)

While these criteria technically mean my shortcake example doesn’t count, I think there’s also always going to be a bit of case by case judgement with this sort of thing. Another important note, a bad faith headcanon isn’t necessarily bad conceptually; in most cases the issues can be solved by just making it an au with the appropriate changes, as that removes the issue of “how much canon can a headcanon ignore before it’s basically just an au?” As an example, “Au where Marx wasn’t a bad guy” is very different from “Marx wasn’t a bad guy”, while still allowing the same concept to be explored.

[fyrapartnersearch]

♔ Let's try this again ♔

Good evening my literary friends,

I am hoping to find a suitable partner for specific cravings and ideas I have in mind. My introduction will be brief and a bit more to the point than usual. I am quite thorough and detail-oriented when it comes to being a writer, including some of my rules and preferences. However, since I believe it would be quite a hassle to go through every point, my ad will be a bit more compact. A brief recap: You can call me Imp; I am in my twenties and a student, striving to become a part-time freelancer as well. My main hobbies are photography, traveling, drawing and of course, the art of writing. Currently, I reside in Europe, so my timezone could differ from yours, unless you are also from a similar region. Be sure to read through my ad to see if we’re compatible. Too many times I’ve encountered cases where the inquirers skimmed through all of the info and upon messaging me, were surprised to learn that we weren’t a match from the beginning. So if you haven’t properly read my ad, I’ll know. I’d like to urge everyone to stick with it so there won't be any misunderstandings and not waste everyone’s time. ————————


Me, myself and I ♦ Nickname: Imp ♦ Experience: 12 years and counting

♦ Age: 28 years.

♦ Gender: Female. ♦ Style: 1:1 with the inclusion of doubling ♦ Rating: Mature ♦ Roleplay Platform: Email and Google Docs ♦ Chat Platform: Email, Google Hangouts or Discord ♦ Pet peeves: Slice of Life

♦ Timezone: GMT+2


After finishing the game of Resident Evil 8 Village, I was struck by yet another muse.


I am currently looking for either a pre-existing canon inspired roleplay, or, something completely original. Be sure you are above the age of eighteen, preferably 21 and upwards. I will not accept any inquires from minors - this is not negotiable.

What to expect ♢  Content: Mature. I am more interested in darker things like horror, occultism, the supernatural, you can maybe guess where I am going with this. My limits are few, safe for a couple of minor pet peeves that I have, I am pretty much open to some experimentation; such as violence, gore and sexual themes. When it comes to heavy scenes, I will not fade to black, unless it serves no purpose to the story. Not a huge fan of censorship. However, I will not force or push my partner into something they are not comfortable with. If you want to know the extent to how far I am willing to go, what sort of content, or how graphic my writing will be, you can ask me directly.

 ♢ Rating: I have little to no issues with delving into more sensitive topics. Since reality is often stranger than fiction, it is very interesting to explore all sides of human nature, including the less comfortable subjects such as psychology, crime, etc. But I also like to remind that this is a world of fiction and no one in their right mind would condone such things in real life. The world of adults is not easy to handle, but it sure is interesting to explore. So if you are a gentle soul and can’t take the heat of more serious moments within the roleplay, be it a character going through trying times, etc; this might not be ideal for you. ♢ Writing: My texts are considerably lengthy, detailed, and elaborate. Third-person is usually my preferred way of playing my character unless there’s a special case where an exception can be made. Word count usually fluctuates, though I have a standard form of 400-500+ words per reply. It also highly depends on the given situation. ♢ Romancing: I admit to being a hopeless romantic. There’s nothing more enjoyable than witnessing good and powerful chemistry between two characters. Preferably I go for the usual MxF pairing dynamic but I am also open to FxF and MxM, should it feel more fitting. While doubling, I can write the character/love interest to my partner’s desire, but I always aim to stay true to their personality and character. I hate nothing more than forcing characters into a relationship, especially if there’s no spark, so I won’t respond well to being pressured into letting characters act out of their personality. It’s just not realistic. As for smut, or what have you, I have no issues with adding a few spicy scenes, sometimes even drawing them out of our pleasure. When there is, however, a running theme where sexual themes are taking the focal point of the plot, it can become quite boring. It is never the center of any of my roleplays, so be warned. ♢ Plotting: I am fairly quick when it comes to building new characters, concepts, premises, storylines, backstories, etc. It allows me a certain latitude. Feel free to communicate your ideas and thoughts with me. I am happy to chat, even when it doesn’t involve the roleplay directly. Though this is a hobby, I am still extremely passionate about good storytelling and interesting character arcs. I hope to meet someone who is just as enthusiastic and willing to put in the same amount of effort. If it’s only me who’s pulling all the weight, I will lose interest and feel forced to end the correspondence. No gos ♦ Won’t do: Pedophilia, Necrophilia, Bestiality, Scat, Vore, Toilet Play or roleplaying with minors. I am sure you can also think of many other strange fetishes that have developed over the years spent on the internet. ♦ Won’t write: The idea of supernatural beings trying to fit into human society. The typical bully x victim storyline. The run-of-the-mill vampires vs werewolf plot. BDSM centred stories. Slice of life. Flawless or excessively flawed characters.

♦ No vulgarity: Let's keep it classy. There's nothing more I dislike than slipping into senseless vulgarity, be it language, unnecessary drawn out violent or tasteless smut scenes. I'd rather have things done beautifully, even if it a subject on the darker side.

What I expect ♢ Literacy: You should at least have a decent grasp of basic grammar and coherency in your spelling. ♢ Flexibility: Since we all have lives outside of the roleplay, we both need to be flexible. Sometimes our schedules may differ, and if life is currently intervening, we can take things a bit easier. Plus, I can’t always respond every second of every day, either. This should be considered a hobby and not a job. If a hiatus is on the rise, there is no problem with putting things on ice until things clear up. ♢ Experience: And by that, I don’t mean how many years you’ve roleplayed, rather the experience that comes with age and emotional maturity. Especially if you want to write stories with grit. ♢ Open to doubling: Quick explanation. Doubling is when we play two main characters each. The dynamic is as follows; I write your chosen love interest against your main character while you do the same for me. ♢ Long term: Only long-term partnerships. ♢ Sharing the spotlight: Don’t forget, this is all about you too! Let me know all your specific cravings, interests, or wants that you want to be included into the roleplay. Cravings ♦ Urban fantasy: Supernaturals, demons, spirits, vampires, you name it. I’d be more interested in something original and unique, especially when it comes to vampirism and demonic entities. ♦ Dark Sci-Fi: So this is a bit inspired by Resident Evil. A world where monsters become a vicious reality, generating fear among the people they come in contact with. But as it turns out, these monsters are not supernatural, but rather infected or mutated by a virus that cannot be explained. ♦ History, mythology, and folklore: An interesting take on the historical timeline, where legends and myths were once a reality. However, their existence was greatly misrepresented in the storybooks, sometimes even completely distorted. Our characters could be accidental time travelers who have been sent from the future to see it with their own eyes. Inspirations are mostly Slavic, European, and ancient folklore from all over the world. ♦ Crime with a dark twist: Mafias, organized crime, and corrupted politicians run this town. All of them have one thing in common. A particular drug that grants humans superhuman abilities; but at a cost. The drug will turn force the users to reject their humanity and embrace their monstrosity. Canon & Fandoms ♢ Castlevania: Rather the original games than the Netflix series. But I am also not opposed to tackling the Netflix universe. ♢ Devil May Cry: Every game is game. Except for the reboot. Never played that one. ♢ Invincible: Not so invincible. ♢ Resident Evil: Village is one of the best games I’ve ever played. Periodt. ♢ Harry Potter: Next gen anyone? ———————— If you made it this far, I am glad you managed to hold on, lol. If you found what I wrote, agreeable and have a similar interests to mine, feel free to message me on this email address. Email: impish.and.angelic@gmail.com Hope to see you there. I wish you all a lovely day my fellow readers! -Imp

[zestria13]

Final Fantasy 15 Thoughts (Spoilers!)

So, I just finished playing Final Fantasy 15 Royal Edition and I have many feelings about it. As I understand it, I have avoided many of the basic gameplay and story problems by buying the Royal Edition, which has all of the patches, dlc's, and fixes many of the bugs encountered when FFXV first came out. Oh, and I have watched the brotherhood anime and the Kingsglaive movie. Overall, my first experience with FFXV is much more complete than it was when the game was initially released (that is my understanding anyways). To be clear, I enjoyed playing FFXV (at least a good portion of it), but I have many issues with it too. One of my main issues with FFXV is the plot, especially the plot following the rite in Altissia. I have read many complaints about how dark FFXV gets after this point and how it becomes a very narrow, plot driven narrative as opposed to its earlier more easygoing and open world setting. To some extent, I agree with these complaints. This change in the game feels very sudden and forced to some degree. However, I personally tend to play heavily narrative games because I like deep, complex plotlines. This turn into a plot driven narrative is not my main issue, though it was, in my opinion, too abrupt a change in the game. My main issue following the events in Altissia, simply, is that the game wasn't as much fun to play after that point. For a game promoting the concept of brotherhood and comradery, that pretty much disappeared after the events in Altissia. Don't get me wrong, I understand the events in Altissia were traumatic for all of the characters and that caused most of the tension, but it was like we were playing with a different group of characters than we started with. All of the comradery seen previously in the game, from the pep talks, to characters interactions, to the short quips in battle (My fav was between Noctis and Ignis, the "You got my back" and "Always" in reply) had created this atmosphere of a team, of a brotherhood that was connected not just by duty, but by genuine friendship. 

But then Altissia happens, and the group just...completely falls apart. There is such an emotional whiplash between the first part of the game and the second part of the game, and its jarring. I honestly felt uncomfortable playing the game after the events in Altissia because the atmosphere was tense and strained, and the comradery present in the first half of the game became nearly nonexistent. Frankly, the game never recovers from this mood shift, and the rest of the game has a sort of sullen, discomforting feel to it. And I know people would argue that the brotherhood comes back together at the end of the game, but I would argue that true reconciliation never happens between the characters, instead making their comradery at the end a byproduct of their circumstances. They never truly deal with the problems created by the events in Altissia and afterwards. They just push them aside because they need to do so in order to work as a team and save the world. Now, is it possible that the remaining trio living in darkness may have dealt with their issues and figured things out, but we wouldn't actually know because we aren't privy to anything that happens during those 10 years. Maybe the game wanted you to understand Noctis's perspective in this way (though they don't really touch on how incredibly disorienting that time skip must have been for Noctis). However, the point stands that there was never really time at any point in the rest of the game following Altissia for the group to reconcile and come back together as a cohesive unit.

That leads me to another huge issue I take with the plot of this game. The ending. I know, already, there are people who will comment and say that "Not everything has a happy ending" and "The sacrifice was necessary to save the world", and so on and so forth. My issue with the ending comes back to the question of why. Especially after having watched Episode Ardyn, I just don't feel that the game gives us a clear cut reason as to why any of the ending needs to happen the way it does. Ok, so the sun goes down and doesn't come up after Noctis is pulled into the Crystal, which means demons have pretty much free reign and everything is much more dangerous. Got it. But why did the sun disappear? I know the game explains that there are organisms infected with the Starscourge that release a light-absorbing miasma, which are the cause of the lengthening nights (though you need to be fairly thorough in your examination of items to learn this). It also mentions the idea that the Oracle dying is related to the longer nights and the disappearing sun, though it never really explains why besides the fact that the Oracle can heal the Starscourge. While I understand that her healing those with Starscourge helps to limit the amount of miasma being put into the world, it seems rather unlikely that one person can ever hope to keep up with that demand. Also, we only ever saw Luna heal people who had not fully turned into demons yet, and I would assume that those people aren't giving off the same level of miasma as fully turned demons. And, we know those fully turned demons exist, in the form of demons the party runs into and the MT's that the empire uses. I'm just not sure it is believable that the Oracle, by themselves, is actually healing enough people to actually prevent the endless night in the first place. As for the other part of the explanation, how did those organisms proliferate to the point where it caused an endless night? Based on what we hear from characters in FFXV and read in the research notes, the appearance of the longer nights was incredibly rapid, which begs the question of why those organisms suddenly started infecting creatures and producing this miasma so quickly in comparison to any other time in the history of this world (as far as we know). All in all, I can't think of a solid reason given in the game as to why the endless night even happens, or perhaps, why it hasn't happened already. 

Moving on, after Noctis is absorbed into the Crystal, we do a ten year time skip. Back to my question of why, why did Noctis have to be in the Crystal for 10 years? I know he went in to gain the power of providence, but 10 years seems a bit excessive. Maybe that’s just me. Ignoring the fact that almost all of the living things in the world would have died without 10 years of sunlight, the fact remains that, in all likelihood, most of the creatures living in that world would have perished, either by being killed by demons or due to a lack of resources. In all honesty, there probably aren't many people alive by the time Noctis returns, and it’s hard to say if a civilization would actually be able to recover from that kind of devastation. Anyways, let's move on to what is my biggest contention with the plot. The prophecy. I have to say, I really, really dislike this plot point in the game. For one, it makes no sense. The true king, in this story, exists to purge their star of the darkness. Ok, cool, love the vague terms. But again, why? The darkness, which basically refers to the Starscourge, has existed for at least 2000 years at this point in the world. If the gods were so invested in this issue, why didn't they address it earlier? Why wait for a so called chosen king after at least 2000 years of this darkness ravaging their world? And what makes Noctis the chosen king? Simply because the gods said so? If that is the case, why didn't they choose a chosen king earlier? I know, after watching Episode Ardyn, that Ardyn was also a chosen king with the ability to absorb Starscourge from other people into himself. An ability, I might add, granted to him by the gods. But when Ardyn tries to ascend to become a king, the Crystal, where Bahamut resides, suddenly rejects him because of his ability (which, again, was given to him by the gods), and so he is rejected basically by the gods via the gift they gave him. Which makes no sense. As we know, this action leads to the circumstances we see in the game. 

To me, at this point, it seems that the gods on Eos are incompetent and create this prophecy in order to fix the problem they created. This seems to become more glaringly obvious when Bahamut tells Ardyn (in Episode Ardyn) that he literally is a pawn in their game to fix the problem they created. At its core, that is what makes me so very frustrated with this prophecy plot line. It seems that the characters in this game are no more than pawns being made to do what the gods tell them to do, and that everything in this world is preordained. Not only does that rake against my own beliefs as an individual, but it ruins the purpose of the game for me. If everything is preordained, then what is the point? It also hurts my perception of the characters as well because the characters, except for Ardyn maybe, never think to go against the determinations made by the gods, they just go along with it. They never stop to consider trying to find another way and instead simply accept their fates as is. I understand there is something inherently powerful and moving in sacrificing yourself to save others, but making it fate instead of an active choice lessens the impact. Noctis doesn't choose to sacrifice himself to save Eos, it is forced upon him. There is no sense of choice here, merely one of acceptance. The cruelty of Noctis' preordained fate disturbs me. Not only is Noctis just randomly chosen to die to save the world, but the gods see fit to inform his father of that when Noctis is 5. I cannot truly imagine the depth of sorrow and helplessness probably felt by Regis in being told that his son is basically a sacrifice. Undoubtedly, knowing that weighed heavily on Regis and I'm sure at times that knowledge put a dour edge on his time with Noctis. One of the saddest things about Noctis' fate is how little time he actually gets to live. I know he is technically 30 at the time of his death, but he really only lived 20 years. Not only is his life cut short, but he actually loses a third of it in the process of becoming the ideal sacrifice for the gods. To me, Noctis' fate is just unbearably cruel. And don't misunderstand, I actually like games that have darker themes and angst in them, but I think there is a balance in crafting stories and this story didn't quite find a balance. And the thing is, I think the creators of the game have acknowledged that too, as they have now created 2 alternative storylines where Noctis doesn't die and his fate is subverted in some way. Personally, I prefer the message given in the Final Fantasy 7 remake where the characters actively fight against a pre-determined destiny, instead of simply accepting their destiny as is. I have more thoughts on the subject of Final Fantasy 15, but for the moment I will end my writing here.

[elyvorg]

Kaito Momota: Even Better In English

Here’s a noteworthy topic involving Kaito that I’ve never really talked about before on here, not even in my ridiculously lengthy commentary of the entirety of V3: his localisation differences from the original Japanese. Specifically, the fact that he’s a better-written character in the English localisation. Only very slightly, but in a way that I’m pretty sure was done deliberately by his localiser. And it’s not even that he’s different, as in the localiser having made up something entirely new about him that didn’t exist in the original – it’s just that they took what was already there in his character and tightened things up just a little to make it come across more clearly and make more sense. Admittedly I’m still pretty new to my interest in original/localisation differences in media, so I don’t have a huge host of examples to draw from, but this is something I imagine doesn’t happen very often at all.

(Disclaimer: I am not fluent in Japanese and have therefore not played through the entire game in its original Japanese form. I just have enough grasp of the language to be able to more or less understand things with the help of a dictionary, and I’ve used this to check out the Japanese versions of various bits I was interested in, which, because it’s me, included a lot of Kaito. So my knowledge of this is definitely incomplete – if I’m wrong or missing something big, do let me know! Regardless, I still think the parts I do know about are interesting enough to be worth discussing.)

Maybe let’s not have him sound like an asshole?

The first and most general thing of note is that, in Japanese, Kaito’s speech pattern is really rough and rude-sounding. Like, delinquent-street-thug, almost-makes-Mondo-sound-polite levels of rude. Granted, I’m not an expert in this as I’m not fluent, but one thing that does stand out to me as significantly worse than your average rough-teenage-male-Japanese is the word Kaito consistently uses for “you”.

Most characters with this sort of speech pattern use omae, or perhaps omee, a more slurred equivalent of it, which comes across as kind of impolite, but only in a sense that the speaker is an informal and impolite person in general, not that they’re trying to be specifically rude towards the person they’re using it for, which is usually just everyone. But rather than omae, Kaito almost always uses an even ruder variant, temee, which in my (admittedly limited) experience is only ever used when you’re actively trying to insult the person you’re using it on. It can be pretty reasonably translated as not just “you”, but more like “you jerk” or “you bastard”. And Kaito uses this for everyone. Even Shuichi and Maki, his best friends whom he literally dies for.

It’s really bizarre. Rough speech full of contractions and slurring alone would probably be fine in that it wouldn’t change how Kaito appears to treat others. But the fact that he chooses to address everybody else this way makes it come across like Kaito is an arrogant, hostile asshole who doesn’t care about anyone except himself and sees others as beneath him, which could not be further from who he is, what the actual hell.

English doesn’t have such a wide variety of speech patterns and ways to address people as Japanese, such that it’s not quite possible to translate this kind of thing directly. But what English does have that Japanese doesn’t is a much greater variety of swear-word intensities, so one way that localisation often gets across this kind of nuance in speech patterns is by making characters use an appropriate amount of swear words to match the original level of roughness. If Kaito had been localised completely faithfully, his speech would sound a lot like someone such as Mondo or Miu, full of F-bombs and other high-intensity swear words, which would give him a much more unnecessarily hostile tone. (And while Mondo is actually a decent person who cares about others in spite of the way he talks, him sounding hostile on the surface is part of the point with him, whereas it really shouldn’t be for Kaito.)

So, happily, the localiser decided not to faithfully localise Kaito’s speech pattern, because they evidently realised it was unnecessarily hindering the way he comes across in terms of the kind of person he is. As it is, Kaito’s English speech is still very casual, but his coarse language only extends to the level of lots of “damn”s and “hell”s and only a few very choice instances of “bastard” towards Monokuma, with almost nothing stronger than that. He’s still not exactly polite at all, but, unlike in Japanese, it also doesn’t sound like he’s actively trying to be rude. Which is only appropriate, considering that one of the most important things about Kaito as a person is how much he cares and is always trying to help the people around him and encourage co-operation, and that he values communication as something that’ll let him do that. Being unnecessarily rude isn’t going to help, and you’d think he should understand that!

It must be a really odd experience for someone fluent in Japanese to play through the original version of the game and have to slowly come to the realisation that Kaito’s a hell of a lot nicer than he sounds based on how he talks. Turns out actually all the “you bastard”-ing is just a weird quirk of his speech that somehow doesn’t even remotely mean he doesn’t care about the people he’s referring to like that. I also can’t help but worry that a lot of Japanese players might therefore never actually realise just how good of a person Kaito is because of this. (Which, geez, there’s already enough of a problem in English of people somehow not managing to pick up on how one of Kaito’s most defining character traits is his selflessness and desire to help everyone, and that’s with his improved speech pattern. Imagine that but worse.)

…There is one possible reason I can see for why Kaito’s Japanese speech pattern is so at odds with the kind of person he is. It could be that this is meant to be a remnant of pregame Kaito, who was an asshole who really didn’t give a fuck about anybody except himself and whom I can definitely imagine casually referring to literally everyone with temee. It seems that the Flashback Lights that created everyone’s characters somehow weren’t quite able to alter their original speech patterns, despite rewriting everything else about them to the point that, for all meaningful intents and purposes, they’re completely different people and their original selves are effectively dead. So our Ultimate Astronaut Kaito just casually accepts his speech pattern as normal for him without having ever consciously questioned why on earth he calls everyone, even his closest friends, “you bastard”.

But while I can appreciate that being there as a hint to the twist, if that is indeed the reason it’s a thing, I still think it’s a lot more worthwhile to make sure that Kaito doesn’t implicitly come across as a hostile asshole every time he opens his mouth. So I still think the localiser made a good call to change this.

Luminary of the Stars! and its less-shiny (but louder) equivalent

Let’s move on to some more specific words and phrases unique to Kaito’s character. His most iconic catchphrase, even more so than the impossible being possible, is him calling himself the Luminary of the Stars. So what was this in Japanese? Something equally impressive-sounding, right? Well… only kind of. In Japanese, he calls himself “uchuu ni todoroku Momota Kaito”. Uchuu ni todoroku literally means “to be famous in space”, so to translate that as directly as possible while having it sound right in English, I’d probably go for something like “the universe-famous Kaito Momota”.

The first thing about this is that, while it seems to fit Kaito at a glance, I’m really not sure he actually cares that much about being famous. Sure, ideally he’d like loads of people to know about him, but I don’t think that’s quite the point for him. It’s less that he wants a lot of people to superficially know who he is and more that he wants to have an influence on people and to have inspired them and changed them in some way. I really believe he would much rather have a meaningful influence on just a small handful of people than to be only superficially known by thousands or millions without any of them really caring. So “famous” isn’t quite the right word for what Kaito really wants to be.

(Hmm, though it seems I’m overlooking a double meaning in that todoroku can also mean “to roar/reverberate”, which I guess gives it a bit more of a sense of him having an impact than it would in English, even though that meaning would sound kind of odd on its own. (The French localisation of his title apparently went entirely with this meaning and translated it as something to the effect of “Kaito Momota, the roar from space!”, which… I’m kind of losing my mind trying to picture Kaito actually doing that.))

The other issue with the Japanese title, though, is that it’s just provably not true. As a mere astronaut trainee, Kaito isn’t even world-famous yet, much as he might (potentially?) like to be. And even if he was, the only way in which that would equate to him being universe-famous is if aliens don’t exist at all and so the Earth is the only part of the universe in which being famous mattered. Otherwise, if aliens do exist (and Kaito very much hopes they do!), they have undeniably not heard of him, so he isn’t famous throughout space at all. He never will be; no matter how many space missions he might go on in his future, a human lifetime just isn’t long enough to actually meet, well, probably any of the aliens that are out there, but even more definitely not all of them.

So Kaito making a repeated point of calling himself “universe-famous” in Japanese just kind of comes across like… empty boasting. Which is not remotely how Kaito actually is – yes, he talks big about his intentions, but he always wants to follow up his words and is genuinely trying to do so even if he can’t always quite manage to live up to them as much as he’d like to. By that token, he shouldn’t want to make grand claims that he knows are already completely impossible for him to ever live up to. And, sure, he always says the impossible is possible – but the thing about that catchphrase is that he’s never actually talking about things that are literally impossible, just things that might seem impossible, in order to inspire people to believe they’re not and that they can make it happen if they try.

Kaito calling himself something that he knows full well is literally never possible for him to actually be only really works as a fiction that he’s putting on: something he knows isn’t true and everyone else knows isn’t true, but maybe they’ll choose to buy into it and pretend it’s true anyway because it’s fun and maybe a little inspiring just to imagine it. It’s similar to the ridiculous stories of his childhood “adventures” he told in his FTEs that were very obviously just make-believe even though he acted like they were real – and it’s also kind of like how Himiko insistently calls herself a mage. And, well, I suppose that works well enough for Kaito’s character in and of itself.

It would have totally been an option to just directly translate this as “universe-famous” and leave things at that. That sounds perfectly fine in English, after all, and it’s less silly than the French take on it. But Kaito’s localiser apparently decided that, no, they could do better by Kaito than that. They could do much better.

“Luminary” can mean, as far as I’m aware, three different things. One is some kind of esteemed, respected figure in an academic field. So that’s sort of a match to the “famous” part, but that’s definitely the least relevant meaning here. The second and far more important meaning of “luminary” is someone who inspires and influences others. That’s exactly what Kaito is, so much, to Shuichi and Maki and even to everyone else! That’s what he cares the most about being to people – far more than he cares about being superficially “famous”. And then the third meaning is “an object which emits light”, usually specifically in terms of celestial bodies like the sun or stars. Which isn’t literally what Kaito is, but isn’t that just wonderfully fitting with his space theme and the “of the Stars” part of his title? (And it also means that any metaphors about him being “bright” or “shining” or something to that effect are especially appropriate.)

In the localisation, then, while it may sound like an overblown ridiculous fiction, Kaito’s self-proclaimed title of Luminary of the Stars is actually completely true and accurate. Nobody can deny that he’s someone who inspires and influences others! And while the “of the stars” part could be taken as an untrue exaggeration that he’s also a luminary to aliens all across the cosmos, it doesn’t have to mean that. It can simply mean that he’s associated with the stars in some way, which he is, since he’s an astronaut. If Kaito wants to call himself the Luminary of the Stars, why the hell shouldn’t he? It’s not wrong.

So I love that Kaito’s “title” was changed to this in the localisation, not only because I like being able to use the word “luminary” as a neat shorthand for the way he inspires people, or because I like to use light-based metaphors about him being inspiring like that, but also because I love how it’s more than just a fiction, even if it may seem like one at first glance. Kaito calls himself the Luminary of the Stars not just as an idealised image of him that other people can maybe buy into and be inspired by, but also as something that he’s actually trying to be. Because he wants it to be true. Because he’s trying to make it true. And because, in the end, it is more true about him than Kaito himself really believes it to be deep down.

[Edit: turns out that maybe actually the “roaring” meaning I briefly mentioned above is in fact the primary meaning a Japanese-speaker would be getting from Kaito’s original title, and with that in mind I wrote some extra thoughts about this.]

There wasn’t anything better to call you, bro

There is one notable part of how Kaito is localised that worked better and was more nuanced in the original Japanese, namely the part where Kaito begins to call Shuichi “bro” sometimes once they’ve started training together. In Japanese, while everyone usually addresses each other by their surnames since that’s normal for Japanese high school peers even if they’re pretty good friends, this part is instead Kaito beginning to call Shuichi by his given name with no honorifics, which is a sign of extremely close friendship. It’s a lot more of a big deal and a meaningful gesture than simply the English “bro”.

However, losing that nuance isn’t the localiser’s fault, because the connotations of the names and honorifics people use for each other are completely different between English and Japanese and this could never translate directly. The localiser had to do the best they could, so while “bro” doesn’t quite have the same intensity as the given-name-with-no-honorifics, it does at least come across as a sign of close friendship and trust.

Because the localiser didn’t want to make Kaito sound as ridiculously over-the-top with this as Mondo and Taka do with their whole “bro” thing, they only had Kaito call Shuichi “bro” sometimes, and he still uses Shuichi’s name a lot of the time. Which is a sensible choice, but it sadly means that a bit more nuance from the Japanese was unavoidably lost. One delightful part of the Japanese that I wish could have been replicated in English is how, at the end of trial 4 when Kaito coughs up blood in front of everyone and pushes away Shuichi’s offer of help as he leaves, he reverts to calling him “Saihara” for the first time in two and a half chapters, making that moment even more painful than it already was. In English, since Kaito only calls Shuichi “bro” sometimes, there’s nothing meaningful about him not doing so on one specific occasion and so this just can’t work.

Then during their conversation through the hangar window in chapter 5 (after half a chapter of not talking to him at all and therefore not using either name), Japanese-Kaito pointedly calls him “Shuichi” again as soon as Shuichi tries to bring up Gonta’s trial. It’s the perfect way for him to make it immediately clear that things are okay between them and they’re still friends. This even causes Shuichi to think, “Thank you for calling me by that name again”, which is just adorable – he really appreciated having someone who cared about him enough to address him that way and didn’t want to lose that! (This line was replaced in English simply by “Thank you for being my friend”, which is admittedly also adorable but somewhat misses the point the original line was making about Shuichi being glad they’ve made up and are still friends.)

Heroes and sidekicks and… small businesses?

Back to things that the localisation improved on, it’s time for the most interesting part of all this, and possibly the most bewildering thing about the Japanese (if you can believe that things could get more bewildering than casually calling your closest friends “you bastard”).

In English, Shuichi and Maki are Kaito’s “sidekicks”, and in that context, Kaito refers to himself as the “hero”. While this makes it sound like Kaito sees himself as greater than them and that they only exist to make him look good, that’s actually the exact opposite of what Kaito means by this. Kaito only makes someone his “sidekick” when he believes in their potential to be amazing – perhaps even greater than him – and his role as the “hero” in this arrangement is actually to give them as much support and guidance and inspiration to help them reach that potential as he possibly can.

Obviously, Kaito’s personal definitions of the words “hero” and “sidekick” in this context are very different to the usual ones. But there is at least some sense behind him using these words. Kaito is training his sidekicks to grow stronger and reach their full potential, so one could say he’s training them to become heroes themselves. In the regular definition of the word, sidekicks don’t only exist to back up the hero and make him look good; they’re also essentially junior heroes who are working under the main hero’s guidance to eventually one day become just as good as him. So while Kaito’s own definition of “sidekick” only partially overlaps with the usual definition of it, it’s not the worst word he could have chosen for this.

So what does Kaito call his sidekicks in Japanese? Just the English loanword saidokikku, since he’s fluent in English and would know exactly what that means? A Japanese word that means basically the same kind of thing? No – it’s “assistant”. (This is joshu, and it’s the same word that Sayaka used in DR1 when she declared herself to be Makoto’s “assistant”, so it seems to have exactly the kind of connotations you’d expect.) And rather than a “hero”, Kaito calls himself… their “boss”. (This is the English loanword bosu, the connotations of which I’m not sure about at all. For these purposes I’ll be assuming it’s equivalent to the English word, but there may be something I’m missing here.)

Which… just makes things sound very bizarrely like Kaito is running some kind of small business here. (“Boss” alone may not necessarily imply a business context, but next to “assistant”, it totally does, unless I’m missing something in the Japanese connotations.) The words Kaito used for this in English may have been a somewhat misleading representation of what he actually means by them, but it’s way worse in Japanese. Assistants only exist to help the boss out with his jobs and follow his instructions. This makes it sound not only like Kaito is greater than them and they exist to make him look good, but also that all Kaito wants to do is boss them around and have them do exactly as he says, which is even more completely not the point of what’s actually going on here. From the word “assistant” alone, there’s absolutely no connotations that they’re junior bosses, bosses-in-training who are going to learn the ropes of “business” from him and eventually graduate to bossing other people around themselves. And even if they were, being a “boss” isn’t something they would want to aspire to be that would be achieving their full potential anywhere near as much as being a “hero” is. This whole thing is so much more bewilderingly removed from the actual point of Kaito’s training and guidance that I find it difficult to buy that even someone as ridiculous as him would have ever thought these words made sense to use.

…I will give these terms one thing over the English ones, and that’s the implication that the boss can’t be a boss on his own. Heroes can be heroes even if they don’t have sidekicks, at least in the usual definition and not Kaito’s – yet one of Kaito’s problems is that he’s afraid he’s not really a hero if his sidekicks don’t actually need him. And, well, a boss can’t be called a “boss” any more if he doesn’t have anybody to boss around.

(Okay, at this point I’m going to have to stop and point you towards my lengthy post about Kaito’s hero issues, because I’m starting to get deep into said issues and rather than repeating a lot of what I said in that post I’m going to somewhat assume people already know what I’m talking about.)

So, consider Kaito’s Harmonious Heart event and it’s key line, “I can’t show weakness in front of my sidekick”. Obviously, he’s wrong, and he should be able to feel safe showing weakness to his sidekicks and know that doing so doesn’t constitute failing them or make him any less of a hero. Part of why sidekicks are there – in the regular definition of the word – is so that they can help the hero out with things he’s not strong enough to handle on his own! Helping the hero when he needs it is supposed to be one of the points of a sidekick!

But, while it’s painful that Kaito manages to miss the point here so badly, it makes sense that he does, given the fact that he’s seeing himself as a hero. The core of Kaito’s issues is that he has an extremely childlike view on heroes and believes he needs to be completely invincible and perfect in order to truly be a hero who can inspire people. He has no grasp of the concept that the most inspiring heroes are really the ones who struggle and suffer but manage to win in the end despite it all, and therefore that having weaknesses doesn’t stop him from being a hero at all.

In Japanese, this scene has nothing to do with heroes; this line is instead something to the effect of “a boss can’t show weakness in front of his assistant”. And… this entire concept of Kaito’s issues doesn’t work nearly as well when put in this bizarre context of a small business that his Japanese choice of words brings to mind. Strength and weakness aren’t nearly as much the point in a business setting. Technically, a boss can show as much weakness to his assistants as he likes, because they work for him and so he can do whatever he wants. If anything, it should be the assistants who are afraid of showing weakness to their boss in case he decides to fire them for not being good enough. Obviously none of this applies to Kaito’s definition of “boss”, but then it’s just very difficult to grasp where he even got the misguided idea that he in particular can’t show weakness (even though it’s fine if others do), because it sure as hell wasn’t from that word. And it should be even more obvious to Kaito that his “assistants” are allowed to help him when that’s literally meant to be the point of an assistant. It’s right there in the word! They’re there to assist him! (And it’s equally right there in the word in Japanese; the first kanji in joshu is the kanji for “help”.)

So, yes, Kaito being completely misguidedly convinced that he’s not allowed to show weakness to Shuichi is the whole point of his issues, but it makes so much less sense that he would actually misunderstand this so badly in Japanese when he frames things using such bizarre terms. It only makes so much sense in English because he’s making it about heroes in his head.

I remember way back, when I was still figuring out Kaito’s issues, that for a while I was stuck at “it’s so tragic that he believes heroes can’t ever show weakness to their sidekicks or they’d be a failure; what kind of hero stories has he been reading to make him think that?” and assuming that was basically a rhetorical question with no real answer – until I realised that, wait, there was evidence of him actually buying into these sorts of too-simplistic hero stories and that this was the entire point. But if I’d seen the Japanese version of the game instead, I’d have just got stuck on the unanswerable question of “why the hell does he think bosses can’t show weakness to their assistants?????” and I’d probably never have figured out Kaito’s issues any further than that at all. Which would be a crying shame.

And, see, these terms of “boss” and “assistant” could just have been translated directly. They have direct enough English equivalents, so there’d have been nothing actively wrong with leaving things like that. But rather than just settling for that, evidently Kaito’s localiser looked at this, realised what the intended point was, and decided that they could get that point across much better using different terms, so they did.

More heroes and not-quite-heroes

There’s more to this hero thing than just bosses and assistants, though, because there’s a couple of other contexts outside of the sidekick thing in which Kaito talks about heroes in English.

Perhaps the one most pointedly relevant to Kaito’s issues is the part where he’s talking about how he looked up to Ryoma because of his own passion for tennis. He describes Ryoma as a “hero”, which is a word choice that’s absolutely vital for understanding why Kaito was so harsh on Ryoma’s weakness and never even realised he could maybe help with it until it was too late. Because that’s exactly the same unrealistically perfect standard for heroes that Kaito holds himself to: heroes aren’t allowed to be weak, ever, or they’re a failure to anyone who ever looked up to them. And in Japanese, Kaito’s line about Ryoma also calls him a “hero” (literally the English loanword hiiro). But the connection to Kaito’s own issues is a lot less clear, since the notion of Kaito not being allowed to show any weakness in order to keep inspiring people is instead framed with the word “boss”.

Yet I’m so certain that this connection, this ridiculously high standard that Kaito only holds himself and Ryoma and nobody else to, is still the point and something very much intended by the original writers. Kaito needed a very, very good reason to not be willing to help Ryoma with his obvious weakness when he usually always tries to help anyone weak and suffering – because if Kaito had reached out to him, Ryoma would probably not have died. And tennis is not the most obvious choice for Kaito’s favourite sport, since it’s not a team sport focusing on communication and co-operation. So the only sensible reason for the out-universe writers to have made tennis be his favourite sport anyway has to be that they wanted Kaito to be uncharacteristically harsh on Ryoma and only Ryoma, and the way to do that with Kaito is to make it so that he used to look up to him. On the surface this would seem like an entirely counterintuitive way to make someone want to help a particular person less than normal – but not if it’s Kaito, because of his issues about heroes. The writers had to have known what they were doing.

So it’s bewildering to me that the writers didn’t then realise that they should make this connection more apparent by having Kaito use the same word for both himself and Ryoma in this context. Obviously it makes no sense for him to think of Ryoma as a “boss” – but instead, surely, this would make the writers think that Kaito referring to himself as a “boss”, in the “can’t show weakness in order to inspire people” sense, is completely ridiculous, and maybe actually “hero” is a better word for it, just like he used for Ryoma.

(And it’s absolutely wonderful to me that, despite that the original writers who consciously wrote Kaito this way somehow missed the obvious thing to do here, his localiser got it and fixed things to be the way they always should have been.)

Another time Kaito talks about heroes is that he describes himself as a hero when he’s announcing his Brilliant Plan to help everyone escape in chapter 5 (the plan that’s really him desperately trying to prove himself to Shuichi after the mess that was trial 4). And this is also “hero” in Japanese, for once – the only time Kaito calls himself a “hero” and not a “boss”.

There might be some logic behind this. In that analysis post about Kaito’s hero issues I linked, at one point I talked about how there’s essentially two different kinds of hero Kaito’s thinking of – the luminary kind of hero who inspires people through words, and the action kind of hero who Gets Shit Done. In English, Kaito makes no lexical distinction between these two types of heroes, even though there’s almost certainly a meaningful distinction in his mind, since he looks up to Shuichi for being an action hero and feels like his own luminary brand of heroism doesn’t match up to that (even though it totally does; give yourself and your strengths more credit, Kaito!). In Japanese, these are two different concepts in Kaito’s head – the luminary kind is a “boss”, while the action kind is a “hero”, aka the thing Kaito is trying really hard to finally be when he comes up with his totally-not-haphazard-and-aimless escape plan.

But even so, I feel like using two different words for this is the wrong call. If we do that, we lose out on all the fun implications of Kaito questioning whether Shuichi is really his sidekick during trial 4. Said implications are that Kaito is afraid Shuichi isn’t really a sidekick because he’s already a hero and doesn’t need Kaito at all. In Japanese, Kaito still questions whether or not Shuichi is really his “assistant”, which he still actually means in his own Planet-Kaito definition of “someone who needs my support” – but because of the word he’s using, that doesn’t then come with the implication that actually Shuichi’s already a… “boss”? Because the inspiring type of person that the word “boss” equates to in Kaito’s head is not the same thing as the person-who-gets-shit-done that Shuichi is undeniably being during this trial – the notion that Shuichi’s the real “hero” here seems like it has a lot less to do with this whole “boss” and “assistant” thing that Kaito is questioning.

(So the localiser realising what’s going on with Kaito in trial 4 and changing his boss-and-assistant thing to actually be about heroes in order to better tie everything together and get that across was, again, the best call.)

The last context in which Kaito talks about heroes in English is when he’s talking about stories: telling Shuichi and Maki in chapter 3, shortly after calling himself a hero, “Each of you are the heroes of your own stories! So act more like it!”, and saying in the chapter 5 hangar conversation, referring to himself, “It’d be a crappy story if the hero gave up so easily!”. On these occasions, in Japanese, he uses the term “main character” (shujinkou) instead of “hero”. Which is appropriate given the context about stories, I suppose – but then again, the word “hero” also equally brings to mind the idea of fiction, and, since heroes are usually main characters, can be taken to mean basically the same thing in the contexts Kaito’s saying it here.

And since it’s the word “hero” in English, that means these lines can also be linked into Kaito’s hero thing in ways that they can’t quite in Japanese. By saying that Shuichi and Maki are the heroes of their own stories, he’s essentially telling them – just like I described when talking about the connotations of “sidekick” earlier – that they’re heroes-in-training who will reach their potential and become full-fledged heroes one day! Which doesn’t connect at all in Japanese when they’re just his “assistants” who are also “main characters”. Not only that, but the fact that Kaito’s already referring to them as heroes carries with it the slight implication that maybe they don’t really need support from him as his “sidekicks” and can already manage on their own without him. That is indeed one of Kaito’s biggest worries going forward, at least with regards to Shuichi, which has already very vaguely begun to surface there in early chapter 3. And that doesn’t work in Japanese either, because that’d be him worrying that Shuichi’s already a “boss” or something; see my point about trial 4 above.

Meanwhile, Kaito continuing to describe himself as a hero in late chapter 5, despite the utter mess that was his “heroic” escape plan earlier that chapter, is a rather lovely moment because it shows that he’s still willing to give himself a chance as a hero and hasn’t given up on his ability to make a difference despite everything. It could even be taken to be relevant to his standards for heroes, since he’s talking about what makes a hero story good – and all he’s saying is that heroes need to not give up, not necessarily that they need to not have weaknesses at all. So this could maybe be a sign of some very important growth from him on that front! This line has an impact in English that just isn’t quite there as much in Japanese when he’s only calling himself a “main character”, rather than a “hero”… or a “boss”, I guess, since that’s the one where he’s not supposed to have weaknesses and would make absolutely no sense in this context about stories, geez.

My overall point for this section being: in Japanese, Kaito uses three different words in different contexts for what he simply calls a “hero” every time in English. While there’s some kind of logic behind his choice of a different word each time, it still feels like the Japanese writers seriously missed a trick by not realising they could tie all these things together. Having him use the exact same word for it in English every time just makes the core point of Kaito’s issues so much more cohesive, even though they’re still exactly the same issues that he has in Japanese. I absolutely love that his localiser realised this and made these changes even though they really didn’t have to.

In conclusion: how even.

With the number of times I’ve gleefully used the word “luminary” to describe Kaito being inspirational, or talked about his standards for heroes in a way that is deeply connected to how he behaves in front of his sidekicks, it is so, so strange to me that none of that is even possible when talking about him in Japanese. Kaito is still the same character in Japanese; nothing meaningful about his personality or his actions or his beliefs are different (well, as far as I know from my limited knowledge) – but talking about him and the way he is just makes so much more sense in English.

Let me describe it like this. If you’d somehow shown me both the Japanese and the English versions of Kaito’s story without any prior context and asked me to guess which one was the original and which one was a localised adaptation (assuming I was fluent in Japanese, and also assuming the characters being Japanese wasn’t a pretty big hint)… I would have been dead certain that the English was the original, and then it was localised into Japanese afterwards. It reads exactly like some Japanese localiser saw the English version, didn’t quite pick up on all the nuance of Kaito’s hero thing and how vital that was, and so when they localised it into Japanese they changed a few things without really realising that that’d dilute the point and make it less cohesive – not exactly out of bad intent, but simply because they didn’t understand it well enough to know better, since they’re not the original writers.

It’s utterly incredible to me that the truth is the exact opposite of that. It’s incredible that the original Japanese writers somehow wrote this whole thing about Kaito’s issues regarding heroes (and I really am like 99% certain they knew exactly what they were doing here and it’s not me just reading too much into it) but somehow didn’t realise that actually having him use the word “hero” in more contexts, including the most important one, would help that along and tie it together more.

But not only that, it’s also incredible to me that this managed to get fixed in the localisation. I think it’s amazing that Kaito’s localiser was able to look at everything about him in the original version of the story, understand what the main point was even though it’s a lot less clear in that version and they’re not the person who wrote it, and then decide, “You know what? This is already really good, but I’m going to tighten it up and make it just a tiny bit even better.”

Mad, mad props to whoever that person is – I’m so glad that they and not one of the other localisers who worked on the game happened to get assigned to Kaito. If someone less perceptive than them had been given the job, everything would have remained the still-good-but-not-quite-so-cohesive jumble that it is in Japanese, and ultimately, I’d understand and appreciate Kaito’s character significantly less than I do today.

[dyaus-pita]

Speaking as someone who likes both Ingrid and Hilda, I find the discussions around their prejudices to be cancerous.

I'll be blunt: I really dislike how the game handles both the Tragedy of Duscur and the relations between Goneril/Almyra, and a large part of it is because they feel so...mechanical, for the lack of a better word.

The part about Goneril having indentured Almyran servants seems to exist purely to explain how Cyril got to Fodlan while trying to add more "gray morality" and make Almyra more sympathetic; outside of the paralogue, which explains Cyril's backstory, it's never mentioned, which seems like a pretty glaring thing to miss in a route where Fodlan/Almyra relations is supposed to be important. The attempt at making Almyra sympathetic backfires because 1) it's confirmed that they attack the border just for the lulz, and 2) there's no reason why they conscript kids. Generally when a country employs child soldiers, it's a last resort and not the default behavior. In fiction, it's used to either depict a country as extremely evil or extremely desperate, and neither of those cases apply to Almyra.

Another issue with this particular plot point is that the game doesn't give any details on Cyril's time with House Goneril, which ties into third major problem which is that it creates character inconsistencies. Both the Goneril siblings want to make peace with Almyra, and they're both supposed to be rather compassionate individuals; Hilda's support with Cyril also says that everything she knows about Almyra is what people have told her, and it's not clear whether or not she's even met one before. So if House Goneril does have indentured servants, are they kept by relatives? Are there many of them? Are Holst and Hilda even aware of how they're being treated, and if they're not, is it a case of willful blindness or complete ignorance? These are important questions, but none of them are even acknowledged.

Claude looks worse too, since he just seems to ignore all of this. He doesn't acknowledge Almyra using child soldiers, his best friend's family using the captured soldiers as servants, or the fact that there are pointless raids happening in the first place, so his talk about opening borders and eliminating race issues just makes him look like a clueless knobend. Which again, would not be an issue if that was by design and if it was a part of the story, but it's not.

The worst part is that this wasn't even necessary to explain how Cyril got to Fodlan; he could be a survivor of a village on the border that got destroyed in the crossfire that Rhea just happened to find. If the writers didn't want to address the elephant in the room, that's probably what they should have gone with.

The Tragedy of Duscur has the advantage of being used in the plot, but just like with the servants in Goneril, the game only cares about it as a way to give something for the Lions to angst about and to serve as another mystery box. But the circumstances and details are barely touched upon and it's resolved by just having some random guy who doesn't even have a name say that he did it because Ideals before being just dropped altogether. To be honest, I find that even worse than the game forgetting about Goneril and Almyra, because this is something you're blueballed with for the whole game and the payoff is completely unsatisfactory, so it feels like game is wasting your time for getting invested in it.

So what does this have to do with Hilda and Ingrid? Basically when the topic of Ingrid and her racism comes up, there's often someone who brings up Hilda, often accompanied by "Hilda is the REAL CEO of Racism." Then there's a debate about who is more racist and therefore who deserves to be torn down, and these plot points will inevitably come up. I hate these arguments for several reasons:

It's pedantic as hell and it mainly boils down to which form of bad writing do you find more tolerable.

The arguments can get almost stan-like at times in the sense that one of the characters gets their lines read in the most uncharitable fashion, which is how you end up with takes where people claim that Ingrid and Hilda refer to Almyrans and Duscurans as animals - something that's not even implied by the text. It also involves people ignoring key parts of their dialogue, such as Ingrid apologizing to Dedue and Hilda's B and A rank supports with Cyril.

CEO of Racism jokes are unfunny cancer, regardless of which character is stuck with that label.

It's because of this that you end up with people talking about some weird, bastardized, one-dimensional versions of the characters, such as Ingrid being a homophobe because she doesn't let Dorothea sexually harrass her, or the Claude/Hilda ending leading to Hilda being some sort of oppressive queen, which is a take I've actually seen. It also has the consequence of stifling the discussion of certain character traits that don't get brought up often, but give them a lot of color.

tl;dr version: Ingrid and Hilda are good people with a pretty glaring character flaw that is not addressed properly because the writers are hacks; all the memes are reductionist garbage and I wish people would stop trying to tear them down.

[fuzzywitchsoul]

They Had Mild Covid. Then Their Serious Symptoms Kicked In.

Pam Belluck is a health and science writer whose honors include sharing a Pulitzer Prize and winning the Nellie Bly Award for Best Front Page Story. She is the author of Island Practice, a book about an unusual doctor. @PamBelluckMs. Khan said that she experienced “heart palpitations if I just got up to open the curtains.” Her cardiologist said she was the fifth previously healthy young person to walk into his office that week. In the beginning, her fatigue was so severe that walking two or three laps around her 600-square-foot apartment would exhaust her for the rest of the day. In addition, she said that she had “really intense mood fluctuations that don’t feel like they’re mine.”“Waking up every day in this body, sometimes hope feels a little dangerous,” said Ms. Khan, who will soon start the cognitive rehab program. “I have to wonder: Am I going to recover, or am I going to just figure out how to live with my new brain?”In his job, “my clients would tell me things like a passcode or an address and I couldn’t remember it,” he said.At Mr. Palacios’s first appointment with the Northwestern clinic, “I did the cognitive tests, and I failed them all,” he said. On a return visit, he did another battery of tests, he said, “and I didn’t do so hot on that, either.”Mr. Palacios was referred for cognitive rehab at a long-established program in Chicago that helps give patients strategies to manage and improve memory, organizational and cognitive difficulties. But he didn’t go, he said, because “I completely forgot.” He plans to go now.In the Northwestern study, 43 percent of the patients had depression before having Covid-19; 16 percent had previous autoimmune diseases, the same percentage of patients who had previous lung disease or had struggled with insomnia.Experts cautioned that because the study was relatively small, these pre-existing conditions might or might not be representative of all long-term patients. “We are all seeing very small pieces of the elephant in terms of the long Covid group,” Dr. Bell said. “Some of us are seeing tail; some of us are seeing trunk.”Along with neurological symptoms, 85 percent of the patients were experiencing fatigue, and nearly half had shortness of breath. Some also had chest pain, gastrointestinal symptoms, variable heart rate or blood pressure. Nearly half of the participants were experiencing depression or anxiety.“I was cleaning my gutters and I forgot where I was, I forgot what I was doing on the roof,” Mr. Palacios said. When he remembered, he added, the idea of doing “something as simple as climbing on a ladder all of a sudden became a mountain.”Dr. Allison P. Navis, a neuro-infectious disease specialist at Mount Sinai Health System in New York City who was not involved in the study, said that about 75 percent of her 200 post-Covid patients were experiencing issues like “depression, anxiety, irritability or some mood symptoms.”Participants in the study were overwhelmingly white, and 70 percent were women. Dr. Navis and others said that the lack of diversity quite likely reflected the demographics of people able to seek care relatively early in the pandemic rather than the full spectrum of people affected by post-Covid neurological symptoms.“Especially in New York City, the majority of patients who got sick with Covid are people of color and Medicaid patients, and that’s absolutely not the patients one sees at the post-Covid center,” Dr. Navis said. “The majority of patients are white, often they have private insurance, and I think we have to figure out a little bit more what’s going on there with those disparities — if it’s purely just a lack of access or are symptoms being dismissed in people of color or if it’s something else.”In the Northwestern study, Dr. Koralnik said that because coronavirus testing was difficult to obtain early in the pandemic, only half of the participants had tested positive for the coronavirus, but all had the initial physical symptoms of Covid-19. The study found very little difference between those who had tested positive and those who had not. Dr. Koralnik said that those who tested negative tended to contact the clinic about a month later in the course of the disease than those who tested positive, possibly because some had spent weeks being evaluated or trying to have their problems addressed by other doctors.Ms. Khan was among the participants who had a negative test for the virus, but she said she later tested positive for coronavirus antibodies, proof that she had been infected.Another study participant, Eddie Palacios, 50, a commercial real estate broker who lives in Naperville, a Chicago suburb, tested positive for the coronavirus in the fall, experiencing only a headache and loss of taste and smell. But “a month later, things changed,” he said.Across the country, doctors who are treating people with post-Covid neurological symptoms say the study’s findings echo what they have been seeing.“We need to take this seriously,” said Dr. Kathleen Bell, the chairwoman of the physical medicine and rehabilitation department at the University Texas Southwestern Medical Center, who was not involved in the new study. “We can either let people get worse and the situation gets more complicated, or we can really realize that we have a crisis.”Dr. Bell and Dr. Koralnik said many of the symptoms resembled those of people who had concussions or traumatic brain injuries or who had mental fogginess after chemotherapy.In the case of Covid, Dr. Bell said, experts believe that the symptoms are caused by “an inflammatory reaction to the virus” that can affect the brain as well as the rest of the body. And it makes sense that some people experience multiple neurological symptoms simultaneously or in clusters, Dr. Bell said, because “there’s only so much real estate in the brain, and there’s a lot of overlap” in regions responsible for different brain functions.“If you have inflammation disturbances,” she said, “you can very well have cognitive effects and things like emotional effects. It’s really hard to have one neurological problem without having multiple.”In the Northwestern study, many experienced symptoms that fluctuated or persisted for months. Most improved over time, but there was wide variation. “Some people after two months are 95 percent recovered, while some people after nine months are only 10 percent recovered,” said Dr. Koralnik. Five months after contracting the virus, patients estimated, they felt on average only 64 percent recovered.The study of 100 patients from 21 states, published on Tuesday in The Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology, found that 85 percent of them experienced four or more neurological issues like brain fog, headaches, tingling, muscle pain and dizziness.“We are seeing people who are really highly, highly functional individuals, used to multitasking all the time and being on top of their game, but, all of a sudden, it’s really a struggle for them,” said Dr. Igor J. Koralnik, the chief of neuro-infectious diseases and global neurology at Northwestern Medicine, who oversees the clinic and is the senior author of the study.The report, in which the average patient age was 43, underscores the emerging understanding that for many people, long Covid can be worse than their initial bouts with the infection, with a stubborn and complex array of symptoms.This month, a study that analyzed electronic medical records in California found that nearly a third of the people struggling with long Covid symptoms — like shortness of breath, cough and abdominal pain — did not have any signs of illness in the first 10 days after they tested positive for the coronavirus. Surveys by patient-led groups have also found that many Covid survivors with long-term symptoms were never hospitalized for the disease.A new study illuminates the complex array of neurological issues experienced by people months after their coronavirus infections.

In the fall, after Samar Khan came down with a mild case of Covid-19, she expected to recover and return to her previous energetic life in Chicago. After all, she was just 25, and healthy.

But weeks later, she said, “this weird constellation of symptoms began to set in.”

She had blurred vision encircled with strange halos. She had ringing in her ears, and everything began to smell like cigarettes or Lysol. One leg started to tingle, and her hands would tremble while putting on eyeliner.

She also developed “really intense brain fog,” she said. Trying to concentrate on a call for her job in financial services, she felt as if she had just come out of anesthesia. And during a debate about politics with her husband, Zayd Hayani, “I didn’t remember what I was trying to say or what my stance was,” she said.

By the end of the year, Ms. Khan was referred to a special clinic for Covid-related neurological symptoms at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, which has been evaluating and counseling hundreds of people from across the country who are experiencing similar problems.

Now, the clinic, which sees about 60 new patients a month, in-person and via telemedicine, has published the first study focused on long-term neurological symptoms in people who were never physically sick enough from Covid-19 to need hospitalization, including Ms. Khan.

[jqlgirl]

A Personal Message to the cEDH Community

Bona fides: I’m a Level 3 Magic judge and have been judging since 2009. I’ve judged tournaments of all formats and all levels from FNM to the Pro Tour. I understand how decks, formats, and metagames work and can absorb such information quickly. I’ve also been playing EDH since before it was called Commander and have been a member of the Commander Advisory Group since its inception last year.

So, let’s talk about cEDH and Flash in particular. While there have been calls to ban this card due to its cEDH implications since Protean Hulk’s unbanning in 2017, the furore has reached something of a desperate and fevered pitch in the weeks since Thassa’s Oracle was revealed. This anger redoubled this past monday when the Commander Rules Committee announced no changes to the Commander banlist in its quarterly update.

I understand the effect that Thassa’s Orcale will have on cEDH’s metagame when combined with Flash/Hulk combos. From everything I’ve heard, it puts the format in something of a solved state and reduces viable deck diversity down to a single combo that is virtually immune to interaction outside of Stifle and its ilk. It seems to me that the only matter that isn’t yet settled is if it’s better to use it with a Consultation package or a Cephalid Breakfast package. The correct answer is probably just to run both to ensure maximum flexibility.

At any rate, these FishHulk decks are going to make the format stale and no fun whatsoever. In any other format, this is beyond the pale of what would lead to a banning for competitive balance. However, Commander isn’t like other formats in that its banlist exists for a completely separate reason to that of competitive balance. Rather, the Commander banlist exists to attempt to set a baseline expectation of what is and isn’t acceptable in the format and to remove elements from the format that players at an average power level would be able to abuse to the detriment of those they play with.

Many RC and CAG members, myself included, sympathize with the concerns of the cEDH community in regards to Flash, Oracle, and its metagame issues in general. We have heard your concerns and have been in conversation with luminaries of the cEDH community almost continuously in the past few months. We understand the nature of the problem, but we have our own concerns about how making a ban solely for the benefit of cEDH players would be perceived by the broader community and if it would actually serve to “fix” that end of the format. We worry that it would just be a bandaid over a deeper wound and that we would all end up in the same position again in six months or a year. 

Additionally, while Flash may not see much casual play, there is nothing to say that recent printing of cards such as Arena Rector or Nyxbloom Ancient won’t lead to it seeing wider adoption in the community. While I’m personally of the opinion that Flash should be banned, that opinion isn’t universal among the RC and CAG, and many wish to be more cautious about making such a change. What if the next card to break cEDH is something like Sol Ring or Cyclonic Rift? Should such broadly played cards be banned for the sake of the competitive edge of the format? These are the questions we have been considering.

The one thing that is absolutely set in stone for the RC is that the banlist will never serve the purpose of attempting to regulate the format for tournament play. That isn’t what the format is meant to do and is antithetical to its goals. Magic is full of lots of other formats that revolve around tournaments and Commander is meant to be a haven away from the unfriendly elements of those events. (While many players enjoy these elements of the game, many others don’t and come to commander to get a break from them.)  In light of this, a ban for competitive balance isn’t likely to be allowed. Even if such bans did happen, they would reshape commander into a format unrecognizable to those who love it for the strange quasi-broken mess that it is right now.

As far as I’m concerned, there’s no clear answer to the problems that exist in cEDH right now. While a Flash ban would make this better for now, I feel like some other best strategy would emerge and lead to similar problems soon enough. I also don’t think that cEDH should split off from the rest of the Commander community to become its own format, as that isn’t something that the cEDH community wants.

To everyone in the cEDH community who is upset with the RC and CAG for seemingly not addressing these issues, I feel your pain and understand your anger. You fear the loss of something that you love and there seems to be nothing you can do about it. I would ask that you give us a modicum of your trust and understanding, however. Your voices aren’t being ignored and we have been doing nothing but considering these problems since before the announcement on Monday. The RC moves slowly, perhaps slower than it should, but achieving workable change takes time. I can promise you that I personally will do my utmost to continue listening to the cEDH community and sharing those concerns with the rest of the CAG and RC. I want to find a solution to this issue that will work for all of the EDH community, both casual and competitive.

If anyone wants to talk to me about this issues, you can reach me here on tumblr, on twitter (@jqlgirl) or on discord (JqlGirl#9431). Thank you for your time.

-- Charlotte Sable

[bigskydreaming]

Just a quick driveby post here to thank people for their continuing messages of support and donations despite the current theme of my blog being Welcome to Dullsville, Population: Me.. Not to put too fine a point on it, but its literally all that’s kept me alive, fed and with a roof over my head the past week lol, while I spend pretty much every single minute of every single hour I actually spend awake like, doing the Super Sexy Shuffle all about town as I continue hunting for a stable apartment/room to rent. Just, y’know, like, while disabled and broke and also like, during a literal pandemic because lololol, no, see, that’s what makes it FUN!

But like, yeah. So unfortunately, until I find SOMEWHERE stable to just like....exist in, until the surgery, like, my entire waking existence revolves around Addressing That. As lolol I simply can not afford to spend any of what little time I can stay upright/mobile at the moment on anything that isn’t productive towards like....tackling my one singular and obnoxiously pressing Need to fill/take care of.

Like, the good news is absolutely every single other thing needed to make the surgery even possible and get me ready for it, after an extremely long and drawn out three years, is finally and completely done and crossed off my list and officially Out of My Hands now. All scans have been done from every possible angle for the people making the prosthetic joint, insurance company has pre-approved and authorized every step and aspect of the actual surgery and hospital stay, and all of that is ready to go, I freaking got all my teeth extracted at age 35 just so as to as cheaply as possible get two straight and even rows dentures that even actually COULD be used to set a whole new bite from scratch, and that they could actually work with and use to align and position the new jaw/jaw angle at properly.....etc etc etc blah blah blah whatever.

Point is, all of that which feels so taxing and tedious even just rattling off in paragraph form, let alone LIVING it and that basically being the entirety of my whole life all day every day for three years.......like at least now its officially all done and out of my hands and at this point there is absolutely nothing left for me to do on my end or that I even CAN do on my end, other than wait fpr tje prosthetic to be finished, at which point they’ll book the surgery ASAP and at long last Make It So.

So like, I’m done done, according to every single one of the people I’ve extensively quizzed on that and then re-quizzed on that because its not like I haven’t heard that before and was told around this time LAST summer that I was at that stage only then get wallopped by the Plot Twist where they were like lol wait no scratch that, we lied.

But as far as I can tell, and accounting for every angle and possible late-stage obstacle that could still come up that I could even think of, everyone seems agreed that no This Time Its For REAL For Real Though, and like, pinky swore on it and everything, albeit in a socially distant way, of course.

*Shrugs* So they’re like, from here out its totally out of your hands and just a waiting game, so all that’s left for you to even do now is just.....keep existing until the prosthetic’s done and its surgery time. So just rest up as much as you possibly can and try to minimize your stress and pain-from-movement so as not to aggravate the issues your body is having any further than they already are.

Which totally makes sense as a plan and I am ALL for that gameplan and like, even found some cheap-o dictation software to experiment with and see if I can use it to just type-talk while lying down resting. Like, Ive gotten really good at talking while barely moving my mouth/jaw much at all, lol,  so that’s likely to still take WAY less of a toll on me than it does, having to sit up and type while gravity makes like an asshole and just stands on my jaw and makes everything worse all the ding-dong day long 

So anyway, that’s the plan at this point, and I’m totally on board and moooooore than ready to give the whole “bed-ridden” thing a try, lol. Just like. As soon as I first find a bed to be bed-ridden in, that’s at least even just a little more “actually something I can call my own bed” than the ones that I basically just rent by the day in motels that at their cheapest right now still cost like, a hundred bucks a day and lololol no that’s not sustainable and hasn’t been for a long while now but I just couldnt really do much about before while I still had to shuttle back and forth regularly between cities for different parts/stages of pre-surgery treatment.

Anyway, that’s the super exciting update on where I’ve ben and what I’ve been up to all week, and why Im not around much at the moment until I land somewhere stable, and like, preferably MUCH sooner rather than alter. But speaking of beds, now Im gonna go crash and crash HARD because Ive been up for a couple days straight now trying to Make Things Happen as much and as quickly as I can until my body force-quits on me and demands I plug back into bed for a recharging session or whatever. Ugh. 

Yeah, and tbh I have no idea if what Im saying even makes sense at this point and given how obnoxiously long it took me to get even this fairly-short-by-my-standards ramble out and onto the page, like.....this is me declaring myself officially Useless at this point and gonna go collapse now, kthxbai.

But also, seriously, seriously SO much thanks for everything everyone has done to help me this past week in particular. Legends only, each and every one of you. And like, your combined and continued goodwill is making it hard for me to even have a villain origin story so if anything that’s what’s gonna be my ultimate villain origin story so jot that down. And like. Make it make sense though.

Anyway. Thanks again! Or still, or always. And also like....goodnight! Or good morning, or good afternoon or ugh shut the fuck up and go the fuck to sleep, me.