#the journey shirt has some more context that i might be drawing later

[marvelleous]

if my heart was a house, you’d be home (1/2)

summary: Some things happen for a reason, events that cannot be altered no matter what, even if all the forces in the universe try to bind together and prevent it. Or, the one where Phil gets back from his ghost-rider ordeal and ends up adopting a kid with Melinda.

notes: this idea has been haunting me since 5x08 aired - philinda raising robin together, and i finally came up with a logical and realistic way to make it happen, so i hope you all enjoy :) you can also read on ao3

The reality is, no matter how hard one tries to prevent it, some things happen for a reason; they keep happening, they always happen.

Fitz had tried explaining it to them before, about how there was no future, no past, how time was fixed, only a perception. She hadn't understood it then, but after being sucked into the future and fighting her way back, it made much more sense to her now. His theories were not proven entirely true either.

Their journey through time and space had the singular purpose of preventing the world from being destroyed, and against all odds they had succeeded. The earth, which they had seen for themselves, crumbled into chunks of rock and debris, was once again whole. Life had been restored, buildings standing where they had always been, the planet looking exactly as it had before all the destruction had begun. They had changed the future, altered an outcome that by all means should have been unchangeable.

But for all their efforts, some points do appear as though they are fixed in time, because the day of the diner really is the last time they are all seen together.

After the things they have been through, not a single one of them is equipped to keep going on like this, to keep fighting. Neither the human body nor the mind was designed to cope in such a way, and as wistful as they all get before they part, no one raises objections to taking a break from things, at least for a little while.

Fitz and Simmons take a trip back home to visit their respective families, prepare for a wedding. Mack and Elena on a much-needed break, to recover from their ordeal; losing Flint had hit them both hard, especially Mack who had still yet to bounce back from the events of the framework.

Daisy goes off the grid for a while, just travelling around, no one knows where.

Phil is the first to go.

He says his goodbyes to the rest of the team, and there are warm embraces and tears from all participants. Melinda stands to one side and simply watches, until he turns towards her and everyone else appears to have made a hasty exit, giving them a chance to engage in a more private farewell. She doesn't hesitate when he wraps his arms around her, leaning into his touch and reciprocating, holding him just as tightly.

They don't have much time.

He presses a kiss to the crown of her head and she digs her fingers into his shoulder blades, unwilling to let him go.

“I'll see you soon,” he whispers against her hair, and the conviction with which he speaks gives her hope, faith that they’ll be together once more. She knows that there is nothing that can be done to keep him here, that he has to go and live out his end of the bargain with the rider, and as unfair as it is, they have little say in the matter.

She kisses him before they part, short and sweet, a promise of things to come when he returns. They both linger until they are forced to part, and she is left wondering just how long of a wait it might be until he comes back to her.

Melinda had once said that, to her, Phil and S.H.I.E.L.D, were indistinguishable. Phil Coulson was the living embodiment of S.H.I.E.L.D. and it’s values, but she had not counted on just how true that was in all contexts.

She tries to rebuild, to recreate the organisation she has spent most of her life fighting for, but her efforts prove futile. More than six months pass and her new team is a mess of former agents and mercenaries, their base of operations an abandoned warehouse with a huge basement in the middle of nowhere and their technology limited to the scraps she gathered here and there.

Nothing really comes together until he returns, rather dramatically, in the middle of the night, with a gift for her no less.

She's standing in a tank top and a pair of leggings, feet bare, watching as her precious Zephyr makes a rather awkward landing on the empty field by their base. A group of her agents have gathered, hovering behind her, and she can hear their curious whispers, wondering what on earth was happening and why she hadn't bothered to get dressed before rushing outside. It's all she can do to keep still, to stop herself from bolting towards him the moment that Phil makes an appearance, the dorky smile on his face clear to her even in the poor lighting.

He looks exactly as he does the night that he was forced to leave, but she can see that a huge weight has been lifted off his shoulders, that he walks towards her with nothing but relief in his eyes. She lets out a little gasp of surprise when he pulls her into his arms and kisses her for the entire world to see. The agents around them let out whistles and catcalls, but she finds that she does not care, not when the person who matters most to her in the world has returned.

They stay like that for a while, just holding on to one another, basking in the feeling of being together once more. When they part, he leads her back aboard her precious aircraft, knowing that they'll have to find somewhere else to store it if they don't want military personnel turning up at the crack of dawn the next morning and having them all arrested.

When all is done and dusted, they curl up in her old bunk, the place where they had shared their first real kiss, in what feels like a lifetime ago, and they sleep, wrapped up in each other’s arms, having finally found a little peace.

They have all the time in the world now, hope for a future where they have happiness, with each other, which only means that something life-changing is likely to happen soon, because given their track record, peace doesn’t last long.

The first thing she sees when she opens her eyes the next morning is Phil, lying beside her, with a smile on his face as he continues to play with a strand of her hair, watching her as if he’s afraid she’ll disappear should he look away. He pauses when he realises she’s staring back at him, shifting as if to draw his hand away when she stops him, reaching out and tracing the edge of his jaw with one finger.

There's a lull, one that feels almost endless, before they close the gap between them, their lips meeting with the desperation of two people who have been apart far too long.

It doesn't start off tentative, because for once in their lives they're placing their own needs ahead of others, and they have been waiting for this moment for quite some time. She tugs at the hem of his shirt, forcing him to pull away so he can take it off, before she's climbing on top of him, straddling his waist as she maps out the scar on his chest, feeling the ridges and valleys beneath her fingertips.

He groans at the sensation, before drawing her down towards him so their lips meet once more. She drags his hand to her hip, urging him to explore beneath her shirt, gasping as he slowly tucks the material upwards. He takes his time, as if trying to savour the experience, but she quickly grows impatient, leaning back and removing her top, flinging it to the ground. She’s exposed to him now, completely bare from the waist up, and he looks as though he cannot believe that these events are finally transpiring.

“What the hell are you waiting for?” she whispers, pressing a kiss to the edge of his jaw, fingers teasing the waistband of his boxers.

The indignant shriek she lets out a split second later when he flips their positions and pins her against the sheets is probably loud enough to be heard halfway across the base, and she thinks it's probably a good thing they decided to spend the night aboard the Zephyr.

Things don't go back to normal after that.

S.H.I.E.L.D. has been struggling on under her leadership, but now that Phil has returned, they thrive. They find a new balance, working together and being together, making an effort not to keep secrets from another in both their personal and professional relationships.

He’s still reluctant to speak of whatever went down when he disappeared those six months, but that she understands, only wishing he were able to share some of his burdens with her. She has her own fears and worries, but they're easier to cope with knowing that he's here with her.

That they'll support each other, no matter what happens.

Daisy turns up three weeks later, looking exhausted and worse for wear, but it’s the little girl asleep in her arms that Melinda cannot take her eyes off.

“Her mother’s dead,” she hears Daisy tell Phil, and all three of them exchange a knowing look. Polly Hinton had not survived in their other future either, though they cannot know for sure whether her death is a mere coincidence, or another fixed occurrence within time that cannot be altered. It's not the time to dwell on such thoughts however; having Daisy back is something that brings her joy, and she doesn't need to see the wide smile on Phil’s face to know he's happy too.

It didn't feel right without her around. Phil had told her once that he thought of Daisy as a daughter. She hadn't made the confession that she felt the same way, because she never believed she could be a mother.

Not after her actions in Bahrain, even having seen what the world could have turned to had Katya not been put down.

She had only begun to question her own convictions after learning that she had been the one to raise Robin in another life, that her actions had ensured the world was saved, that she served a purpose in the world other than to fight and cause bloodshed. Perhaps if she was given such an opportunity now, she could do it, though her thoughts are only premature at this stage.

Still, as she follows Phil down the hall, watching him guide Daisy into an empty room so she and Robin can have somewhere to rest up, seeing the expression upon his face as he chides her about taking better care of herself, she knows he’s even better suited to being a father than being an agent. He smiles when he meets her gaze and while she cannot tell what he is thinking at this moment, she knows that he’s reading her like an open book.

“So… Daisy’s back,” he says, starting a conversation he should know by now will be mostly one-sided. She nods, turning her gaze to the closed door that marks the room they had been saving for Daisy, coincidentally right down the hall from their own. In the time that Phil had been gone, she had kept tabs on each of the members of their team, making sure that they were okay but respecting their boundaries and refraining from making contact. She had her own motivations for staying in the field, keeping S.H.I.E.L.D. afloat, and she wasn’t about to drag them back in before they were ready, or if they had changed their mind about returning. It’s easier now that Daisy’s back, and judging by the duffel she had brought with her, planning on staying, at least for a little while.

Phil seems to take her silence as an invitation to keep rambling on as they make their way down the hall towards their bedroom, where she assumes they’ll sit down and have a conversation about what to do about Robin. She has already drafted up a list of viable options in her mind, and despite Phil’s seemingly carefree expression, she knows that he’s doing the same.

The views of those in the world are changing, albeit slowly compared to the sudden physical changes undergone by inhumans, but it's still far too dangerous to allow a child with abilities to go into the foster care system. They have little experience with powered individuals so young, but she knows there must be a reason why children were not subjected to terrigenesis before they matured, both by Daisy’s mother at Afterlife, and by the Kree during their time at the Lighthouse. Katya was the worst case scenario, but they have no way of knowing what a good outcome looks like. The adult Robin she had spoken with seemed well adjusted enough, but still acted like a child in her old age, though understandably her circumstances were not ideal to begin with.

Keeping a child on the base is not likely to be a feasible option either; their lives are dangerous, surrounded by death and destruction, and to bring someone so young and defenseless into the fold is much too risky. There have rooms stocked with weapons, an aircraft with missile launching abilities, dubious allies and even deadlier enemies. Neither their base nor their people are equipped to deal with raising a child, and as cruel as it sounds, they would not be giving the situation a second thought if it were a regular kid. Any unpowered individual would be better off away from a life like theirs, even if it meant being passed from home to home throughout their adolescence until they were old enough to get by on their own. But Robin is no regular kid, and she cannot for the life of her think of another feasible option where S.H.I.E.L.D. can keep watch over her while giving her a safe and happy environment to grow up in. She can come up with a hundred more reasons why it would be a bad idea.

But the truth is, she only needs one good reason to change her mind. Whether that's enough for the both of them is another matter.

[oakmd]

professor oak’s rp plotting cheat-sheet!

Want new-and-exciting plots for your character? Long to reach out to more of your followers, but don’t know where to start? Fear not! Fill out this form and give your RP partners both present and future all the of juicy jumping off points they need to help you get your characters acquainted.

Be sure to tag the players whose characters YOU want more cues to interact with, and repost, don’t reblog! Feel free to add or remove sections as you see fit. Template here.

Mod name: :v OOC Contact: Tumblr IM; but if we’re mutuals I’ll give you my discord! I have Skype too, but I don’t really use it much. 

WHO IS HE:

 Professor Oak is a renowned Pokémon Professor most notably known for his invention of the Pokédex, his Welcome To The World of Pokémon! lecture / documentary and his extensive research surrounding the relationships between pokémon and people. He’s a very recognizable icon in the pokéworld; it would be impossible not to know who he is. 

Alternatively, while he’s mostly known for being a scientist, he has wide recognition for his Pokémon poetry. He also does regular recordings with DJ Mary at Goldenrod Radio Tower. 

The Professor resides in Pallet Town, Kanto, in one of the world’s most impressive laboratory reserve - stretching across acres upon acres of land, built entirely to replicate all types of pokémon’s natural habitats and terrains. 

As a former pokémon trainer ( as well as Kanto Champion ), he has one grandson, Gary Oak, who is also former pokémon trainer, but is now currently on the path to becoming a Scientist himself, specializing in fossil revival.

Points of interest:

My portrayal of Professor Oak is mostly anime-based. This means I do not consider game function as canon or as character trait (ex. Professor Oak forgetting his grandson’s name. I have heard this joke enough to last me a lifetime, please Don’t™.) However, I include some elements of the manga/game, I guess, but usually only to fill in the many gaps untouched in the anime. With that being said, Green / Blue / Red and even Daisy do not exist. I have exceptions of interactions with some people, but it does not fall under my Main Canon and is more of some weird, blended AU, lol. 

Professor Oak is a 50+ year old man. On top of that, a parent and a grandparent. Because of this, most of the time ( not always ) he will naturally be more intuitive and perceptive to situations than a younger muse might be. He has had many, many life experiences to draw from that he applies to current context; empathizing and offering advice comes easy. With that being said, please communicate with me if I’ve crossed a line with this; I won’t take offense!

Professor Oak has interacted with legendary Pokémon. See: Celebi, ft. Suicune. Professor Oak is not immune to... strange occurrences. He’s interacted with the legendary pokémon Celebi ( and Suicune ) when he was a young boy. However, I portray this muse as someone that has seen much more ( of the unexplainable, not necessarily legendaries ), yet appreciates them within the comfort of his own privacy. 

Professor Oak has very high public status! While the man certainly lives his life as a regular person, his life is anything but. Hailing from Kanto and living peacefully in Pallet Town, Samuel’s demeanor is very humble, but his Net Worth is one of the highest, given his important influence, multi-faceted popularity and on-going relevancy among the citizens of the poké-universe. It goes without saying that he has made some of the most important contributions to the field of science and world of pokémon, but he is also sort of a pop culture “idol”. His name is attached to hundreds of awards, recognitions, lifetime achievements, entertainment achievements. Whatever there is to do, Professor Oak does it all: Scientist, Writer, Artist, Humanitarian, Pokémon Professor, TV Host, Radio Host, University Lecturer, Motivational Speaker, Activist, League Advisor, Parent. There is nothing he won’t dive into if it’s for the greater good.  List of Awards: here. 

What they’ve been up to recently:

*POST-CANON. Same ol’, same ol’. Professor Oak has many years left in him yet! You can still find him on his happy little hill in Pallet Town doing what he does best: giving trainers their starters, and babysitting those same 9482536 kids under his care. Including, but not limited to all the 3948357927682294 pokémon he and - everyone’s favorite personal assistant son - Tracey Sketchit share responsibility for. His life will pretty much be the same, as it has been; the perks of being old and well-adjusted.  *I use ‘post canon’ loosely. My default timeline is ongoing with the show itself, but since time never seems to progress, I’ve taken it upon myself to lazily assume some years have passed since S1E1 ( hence why I say Oak is 50+ rather than actually 50 ). 

MULTI-VERSE. If you are a non-pokémon muse, Professor Oak will happily accept that you’re simply not someone from his universe. As mentioned above, stranger things have happened to him. Because of his own experiences, he’s very open-minded about the possibilities the universe has up it’s sleeve. I like to think of his corral and his lab are portal spots for the unknown to materialize. Maybe a point deep in the mountain and forest terrain. Or perhaps from the forest ( between Kanto and Johto ) where Celebi dwells. This concept isn’t necessary to follow for the multi-verse, just a suggestion! TL;DR Let Professor Oak be your away-from-home grandpa, he has lots of Experience™.

Where to find them:

DEFAULT VERSE. There are a lot of places to find the ever-active Professor Oak. However, the top three most common places are: his research lab ( corral included ) in Pallet Town, Kanto, Goldenrod Radio Tower, and Celadon University. Because he is so famous, he can be anywhere, though. Whether it’s doing charity work, raising awareness, doing lectures, being a guest at internships, working with media across regions, visiting other pokémon professors, being on a much needed vacation, traveling for work. Pretty much, wherever your muse is, I can find a reason for Professor Oak to be there. 

POST-COLLEGE. I don’t actually have a ‘verse’ for this but it takes place shortly after Samuel finishes grad school and takes position as Kanto’s Pokémon Professor. He’s the first one to reside in Pallet Town. The lab itself is still under renovation; he’s moved back home after being away for years at school, and still trying to mourn the loss of his fiancé. He’s a single father, struggling to balance work and parenthood, but he gets by. ( Further down this timeline, about thirteen years later, he suffers the loss of his children, and becomes the guardian of his grandson, Gary Oak. )

To find Professor Oak is the other ‘verses’ from the Offered / Desired sections, just ask. 

Current plans:

Keeping busy. Professor Oak is a very goal-oriented person and although he finds relaxation necessary, he also prefers to be active. His hands are always full running the biggest pokémon lab, but he’s always throwing himself into new projects of all kinds of varieties.

Travel and meet new people. Ever the social butterfly, the Professor is always welcoming new faces to his growing list of companions. Although his reasons for traveling are no longer for becoming a Pokémon Champion, he finds that there are plenty of things he hadn’t quite noticed or appreciated before. It’s interesting to see how some things have changed, and for others, how they’ve stayed the same. It’s all for business purposes of course ( mostly ), but coming full circle provides closure for memories he’d only reminisced about for years after he graduated from college. 

Supporting Gary. As his grandson begins his journey in the field of science, Professor Oak prioritizes helping him adjust and giving him the support he needs.

Otherwise, the plans depend on what your muse brings. :O

Desired interactions:

Retired Oak! Literally everything is the same except he’s wearing tropical shirts and jorts. B^) Alola cruise, anyone?

Alzheimer’s Oak! LISTEN, I KNOW.. ... .. Game-mechanic jokes aside, lmao - I have no real excuse. It just hurts so good. ;^(

Grandpa Oak. I’m sure raising Gary and Ash was nothing but and Experience™.

TRACEY. MY PURE ASSISTANT SON -

College. What goes on in college, stays in college. College timeline: here.

Celebi, Again! Starring... Professor Oak! B^) Swapped into the body of his younger self. How does he fix this? Calamity ensues.

Dr. Fuji, Who? No, Professor Oak isn’t part of Team Rocket but he did get roped into helping them create MewTwo with the desperate attempt to also bring his family back to life. Did I rip that from Dr. Fuji? Yes I did, and I don’t care, let me live -

Team Rocket? Or, alternatively, he does work for Team Rocket with this ridiculous concept that he was blackmailed into working for them post-grad because of his unremarkable intelligence and promise. While his public face is the friendly Professor Oak everyone knows and loves, his lab holds darker secrets, the darkest being that he could no loner resist their persistence in making him comply, after they staged his children’s death as an innocent car accident. : ) ... Anyway, 

Persistent Press. Be annoying and invasive. Start scandals. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Unrequited. Get rejected by the notorious man himself. He will be gentle.

Agatha. How dare you,

CROSSOVERS!!!

Offered interactions:

Are you a Pokémon Trainer™ or some other kind of pokémon-specializing person ( pokémon watcher, photographer, breeder, ranger, etc. )? Ring up your Professor when Officer Jenny arrests you for something he told you not to do in the first place so he can judge you with a proper scolding. For the others, show him your talents and skills! If you’re not a Kanto Trainer, I’m sure one of the other Professors can send you his way, either to drop something off / pick something up / for general help, etc. and he’s always excited to meet his colleagues’ kiddos. Also excited to see others contribute to the world of pokémon in some way! He loves pokémon and humans interacting! 

Are you a Pokémon Professor? Doctor, Nurse? Let’s gather ‘round and be stressed about Ash our reckless trainers. But also drinking and karaoke! Pokémon Discourse™. Camping retreats. Boring, obligatory conferences. Peer Review. Or maybe you just need a little advice from one of the pokéworlds more experienced Professors! Unless you’re Professor Rowan - in that case you’re BFFs that get into shenanigans nobody would ever believe. 

Are you a Science Major? Limited internships available for college students.

Do you live in Pallet Town? Hi, neighbor! B^) Professor Oak ( and Tracey ) most likely talk to you in passing, should it occur. ( Please message me about pre-established relationships first. ) Common places include, the mart, post office, movie theaters, etc.

Summer Camp? Boom, Professor Oak has summer camp for the kiddos at his corral. 

Are you a big idolizer of Professor Oak? Lucky for you, there’s more than one way to be a fan! You can reach him via fanmail, @’ing him on social media, finding his personal phone number from some sketchy fan forum, hogging up the radio show hotline, stalking his schedule to make each appearance panel, hovering outside around his lab, stealing candid photos, bombarding him in public with intrusive questions, shoving your notepad out for an autograph... You can even be one of those weird people who try to proclaim your love to ‘celebrities’ too old for you that you know little about. Who knows what this poor man will do?

Are you into Traditional Kanto / Johto? You may share the same passions if you’re into calligraphy, ikebana, haiku, tea ceremonies, etc. 

Are you a Celadon University Student? Feel free to talk to your Intro To Pokémon ( or Pokémon Sociology 101, etc. ) Professor about anything unclear about assignments, to offer questions or concerns... or try to make excuses for not turning in homework and being late, you lazy student. :T Doubles as an Unofficial Guidance Counselor to said students even though that’s not his job - but he can’t help it, he’s a parent before he’s a Professor.

Are you a child associated with Make-A-Wish Foundation? Professor Oak offers terminally-ill children the opportunity to choose their starters, and spend time with their favorite idol. : (

Are you affiliated with the media? All press can inquire about guest speakings, giveaways, promotions, advertisement deals, interviews, volunteer work, hosting/co-hosting, etc. and Professor Oak will get back to you at his earliest convenience. This INCLUDES those working at Goldenrod Radio Tower!

Are you a business person? Politician? High-Profile Celebrity / Figure? Meet Professor Oak at a Gala! Or any other formal event. Feel free to offer business negotiations, inquire about his residence, or other sketchy things. :v 

Are you affiliated with Kanto’s Pokémon League? Albeit not as recently involved as per usual, he’s an advisor, so he and your muse are at least associates, if not more.

Are you one of the developers that helped with the Pokédex? Nerds will be nerds.

Do you know Samuel from his days prior to being Professor Oak? Whether it be from childhood, training days, or college, they all matter. ( I’m aware this is highly unlikely because nobody RP’s old pokémon muses, but with that being said, I’m open to interacting with kids / grandkids of the aforementioned. )

Are you Team Rocket a villain? Have you reached your Kidnap-A-Scientist quota today? 

Current open post/s:

I had very few, but I’m too lazy to look for them. Plotting is probably better. /gestures to this post

Anything else?:

Threading is not limited to this list. I’m always open to more ideas!  

I’m not sure what the huge difference is between the Desired / Offered interactions -

You don’t need a pokémon verse to interact with me! 

Your muse does not need to idolize Professor Oak to interact with him.

CROSSOVERS.

Tagged by: i stole this from @undinaes

Tagging: Whoever sees this!

[houseofvans]

ART SCHOOL | JONNY ALEXANDER (Detroit, MI)

Inspired by his love of the outdoors, artist and Head Screen Printer Jonny Alexander’s work incorporates Nature, landscapes, and its objects/processes, creating large open landscapes to cross sectional terrestrial islands sometimes floating in space, surrounded by oceans, or inhabiting surreal terrains.  Devoid of humans and human interactions, his visual narratives do, however, reflect his own “existential quandaries” or spotlight the human consequences to the environment as in a 2016 mural he created with the Pangeaseed: SeaWalls Murals in New Zealand.  We’re super excited to chat with Jonny about his art school experiences, his love of the outdoors, as well as his work ethic and tenacious attitude, all in this session of Art School. 

Photographs courtesy of the artist

Introduce yourself. Jonny Alexander / Currently in Detroit, Lived all previous years in California. I’m a painter, muralist, printmaker and Head Screen Printer for 1XRUN in Detroit

If you weren’t a painter, what do you think you would have ended up doing professionally?

Well, I kind of am doing something else professionally besides / as well as painting. I work full time as the Master Printer for the publishing company and gallery 1XRUN / Inner State in Detroit. I am also a full time painter… so I guess that means two full time jobs haha.  The Screen Printing is consistent and structured employment and the painting is sporadic in payment but constant in development.

We’re glad you’re a painter and an artist though, can you tell us about your journey? What was art school like for you? What were some of the best things you took away from that experience? What were you glad to get away from, once you graduated?  How was life after school for you at the time?

I’ll do a quick rundown of pre-college art. 9-13 years old I got introduced and started writing graffiti with neighborhood skateboarding friends. With high school friends we also skated, we weren’t doing graffiti but drawing weird shit in sketchbooks and starting to screen print t-shirts in the garage. Cut to college I moved from San Diego to Northern California and went to CSU, Chico, which is about 3 hours northeast of San Francisco. I went into college thinking I didn’t want to study art cause it might kill the enjoyment of making it, but I was wrong about that. I took courses regardless though and was introduced to the world of Printmaking. I only knew screen printing, but I took an intro course that had me doing etching, woodblock printing, screen printing, monotypes etc. I was pretty intrigued with the process. I realized that being in other classes was just taking time away from working on art. So I went full on into a Bachelor or Fine Arts with an emphasis in printmaking.I recognized from going through school studying art that the experience is honestly what you make of it. No one is going to teach you style, no one is going to teach you really how or what to paint or draw or make. But they will give you the fundamentals and above all the time and deadlines to produce as much art as you can. That was really what I got most from it. It gave me a really strong work ethic; it pushed me to form a strong studio practice and to produce work. It also, if you are lucky, gives you a strong community of peers to bounce ideas off of and pushes you with healthy competition to get better. What I did like getting away from was some of the real intense academic push to defend everything you make. I don’t want that to come off the wrong way. I genuinely cherish conceptual art and having meaning and depth to what you make, understanding what and why you are doing something and the context in which it lies in the grand narrative or art history. But I found myself chasing ideas into weird places that didn’t even feel like art to me. I would think myself out of a painting or print because I couldn’t conceptualize it, instead of just making it and moving on. I enjoyed the freedom when I finished school of just making a painting to make it. If only for its aesthetic, color or composition without heavy weighted conceptual arguments attached. It helped me to work faster and really push forward in developing my style.

Life after school was fruitful and painful. Lots of uncertainty with the newfound freedom, lack of structure and lack of employment but also a lot of fun. My girlfriend of 4 years broke up with me shortly after we finished school. Shortly after that I quite my crap job at a pizza place, took all the left over house paint I had and went into the rural hills of Northern California and started practicing painting murals. I painted 4 murals in 4 weeks on abandon structures. I was heartbroken the whole time but working my ass off, using my tears to wash my brushes after a long day painting. Haha But really that was the bootcamp I put myself through to break ground on painting murals. Less than a year later I was an assistant to my friend Tavar Zawacki who is a longtime artist who goes by the name ABOVE. He took me out to Detroit to help him with a Solo Exhibition with Inner State Gallery / 1XRUN. About 8 months after that I was moving from California to Detroit to be 1XRUNS Head Screen Printer. It has been almost two years now that I have been here. Side note: The girlfriend of 4 years that broke up with me after school, we got back together a little later on….Hey Bertha I love you

Having acquired a degree in printmaking, what aspects of that particular skill set proved to be super helpful or maybe gave you a different approach to painting as an art form? Or how have you used your printmaking skills to inform what you do as a painter?

One thing that was helpful, as I had kind of mentioned earlier is that it led me into the job I hold with 1XRUN today. It is a pretty useful trade to have and I see myself being a print maker and screen printer for years to come. But in terms of my art practice printmaking definitely helped develop my drawing style. Printmaking also broke down layers for me as well. To make a screen print you have to lay down colors in a specific order. It is a pretty methodic and regimented order of operations. This method of a layering process has come into my painting practice and really into my mural practice. It has helped me to think about how colors “stack” if you think of them as layers. I think it helped me to be able to translate my smaller more time consuming paintings into larger murals by way of simplifying the approach.

In terms of your paintings the landscapes, the natural environments, and the colors of nature – are heightened in a way. As if the viewer is often experiencing a different type of hyper landscape. Could you tells us a little more about these “psychedelic landscapes” and how these visuals came about?

Psychedelic Landscapes was a joke between my friend Ian Roffe and myself in school. Haha I think the real root of it is from my upbringing as a child. Growing up in San Diego my parents could have taken us to Disneyland or something like that but instead we spent all of our family road trips going up to the Eastern Sierras. Going to National Parks or almost every other weekend spent up in the local mountains in San Diego fishing, hiking and camping. I was always picking up rocks and sticks and looking at the patterns in them, collecting them, doing some “organic hoarding” that I still do to this day. I also grew up surfing by myself. None of my close friends picked up surfing so again I spent a lot of time roaming the cliffs and rock formations of some of San Diego’s coastline. I think all that naturally filtered into my paintings. I was really into some of the surrealist painters like Dali and Max Ernst in my younger years so that love of large open landscapes was really appealing. I think it has been a common thread throughout my art making and has just evolved and transformed over the years.

Your paintings often depict geological layers / structures and other aspects of the natural world. What natural structures or landscapes have influenced you the most and what about them most captivated you and percolated into your works?

Rocks man….goddamn rocks. They are so cool. There is so much variation in them. In the texture, the color the way they crack and fold. The way that erosion goes to work on them over years, it’s just some very beautiful patterning. There is also good metaphor for me in rocks and mountains. Rocks are really old material compressed together over vast amounts of time and buried deep in the earth. They have some wisdom to them for that reason. I titled a piece a number of years ago, “The Wisdom Rocks of Old are the Souls of the Past” which kind of sums up that thought. Mountains also though, they are the pushing up of these old chunks of earth and we can climb up them to see beyond what we could from the ground level maybe to get clarity or furthered vision. I think there is metaphor to see in all nature if you are looking for it. I think that is why I have continued to use it in my paintings over the years. Most of my paintings don’t have people in them so I rely on nature and objects to create narratives referring to existential quandaries I have. I read this quote years ago, which I think is pretty nice and applicable. “The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time”. - Henry David Thoreau

Who are some of your top 5 favorite contemporary artists? 5 favorites of all time? I would have to say… Interesni Kazki Aaron Glasson & Celeste Byers (good friends) Michael Reeder Saner Pat Perry James Turrell Salvador Dali Caravaggio Andy Goldsworthy Radiohead

What are your top 5 materials? Is there a medium you haven’t yet tried, but are looking to learn? Acrylic Gouache Micron and Radiographs Waterbased Screen Printed Gradients Wood Panels built by my friend Craig (For real if you want to buy heavy really nicely made wood panels DM this guy @chejka ) I have painted with oils a couple times but would like to start making some oil paintings and getting some real nice smooth gradients

We gotta find out - What are your favorite Vans?

Love me some Sk8-Hi’s, always been a sucker for high tops, cause they feel good on my feet and look cool with pants and can also make you look like a goofy shit when you wear them with some short shortz.

Being a lover of the outdoors, where’s a place you’d love to go for artistic inspiration and why?

That’s a tough one. There is a ton of places…so lets go for a list? Right? Never been to Zion or Bryce Canyon, plan on going there in the next year. Andes in Peru South Island of New Zealand Iceland (including small plane flights over all the crazy land formations) Yellowstone (Not in peak season maybe go in late fall) The bottom of the Grand Canyon Patagonia, Argentina Um… Probably a lot more places But mainly I’d like to go to most of those places to see some intense and awe inspiring natural beauty.

What’s a question you’d like to answer that you’ve never get asked in terms of art? How do you formulate ideas and what is their lifecycle? (It would be a really long and disjointed answer, but fun to talk about.

I read that you often love painting outside at the beach or just outdoors. What about painting in the outdoors do you enjoy? And when you can’t paint outdoors, what is your studio like? (What do you put in it for inspiration?)

I think I have to change that previous statement about liking to paint outdoors. I think I may have talked about that before I ever really had a proper studio. For most of my life my “studio” has been whatever bedroom I lived in at the time. That was very cramped and limiting. So I used to just go out somewhere and set up and work on stuff, which was really fun. But now that I have been living in my loft in Detroit for 2 years, I really love having a nice open space to work. I have a nice big table, I have panels to paint lying around, I paint upright on the wall, which is nice for my back as apposed to sitting in the sand at the beach. I love having space to sit all day and paint, cause I find I need at least 4-8 hours to really sit and have a successful session painting. My studio does have quite a few plants around, some weird organic hoarding trinkets and always music or a podcast floating through the air. I do still carry a sketchbook with me wherever I go and like to do some drawing outdoors, but I find I am usually too preoccupied with what is going on around me to just look into my book.

You’ve been doing a lot of large scale paintings and murals in the last few years. What was the your favorite large scale work, and what were the challenges (if any) and how did you overcome them? What’s the best advice you’d give to someone working large scale?

I had a lot of fun about a year ago (March 2016) with the Pangeaseed: SeaWalls Murals for Oceans project in Napier, New Zealand. The challenge as it is with murals is the weather. It rained 3 out of the 5 days we were supposed to paint. Which, when using brushes, is a big problem. You can get away with spray paint in some light rain, but liquid house paint with a brush just won’t stick. Besides that it was a really fun piece to work on, it had a definite message to it about sea level rise and the causality of it coming from us humans consumption habits. I also got a lot more comfortable using spray paint on this mural. Previously I had barely every used it, I worked mainly with brushes, but I was able to practice and get much more comfortable with cans. Advice I would give to someone is to have a plan of attack. As I had said before about thinking of it in simplified layers, that really helps. Day 1 for me is usually getting the sketch on the wall nice and proportioned how I want it. Day 2 I fill in all the large flat area of colors and then all the rest days it just tightening things up and doing all the detail and line work.

What advice if any, would you give upcoming artists or folks who want to become artists?

Don’t wait for opportunities to come to you. You’ve got to be very tenacious and dedicated to it and you have to sustain that momentum for a very long time. I have been at it for years now and I still have so much I need and want to do. Also be wise about splitting up time between creating the work and getting the work out to the world. A bunch of painting stuffed under the bed should see the light of day. You kind of have to be the artist, manager, content editor, prompter etc. I think that’s all I’ve got. Well maybe just be genuine and don’t rip off other people work or chase trends, try to be authentic and people can appreciate that. And network! Go meet people in your artist community!!

Finally, what projects or shows do you have that you’re excited about coming up? I just had a piece in the “Paint It Forward” Exhibition at Cass Contemporary in Tampa last month. I will be showing at Inner State Gallery’s LAX/DTW show curated by Thinkspace in the summer. I have some fun things coming up in my studio working with a friend who does Neon here in Detroit. I am supposed to be painting a mural in Kiev, Ukraine at some point this spring or summer with a project called Art United Us, which will be my largest mural to date. I am also looking for any murals projects the world has to throw at me! Thank you for your time!

Follow Jonny Website: http://jonnyalexander.com Instagram: @jonnyalexander 

[meeedeee]

Final Fantasy FXV: Thoughts RSS FEED OF POST WRITTEN BY FOZMEADOWS

When I first heard that FFXV was going to break with franchise tradition by having an all-male central team, I was more than a little surprised. Final Fantasy has always been distinguished as much by its memorable – and central – female characters as by any other element; which is why, somewhat paradoxically, I never felt particularly angry about the switch, either. As a whole, video games are still male-dominated in a way that frequently sets my teeth on edge, but Final Fantasy has a strong line of credit with me: whatever my thoughts on the state of gaming as an industry – and while criticism of Square Enix’s decision in this context is nonetheless valid – I felt I could still attempt the game itself.

Thus far, at roughly eight hours in – which is, I’m aware, not very far at all – I’m enjoying myself immensely, though possibly not in a way that was intended. And in order to satisfactorily explain why that is, I first need to say a little about my history with the franchise.

The first Final Fantasy I ever played was VIII, which always made me something of an oddity among my friends: unlike everyone who started the series at VII or earlier, I had no established sense of how the combat system ought to work, and so took the VIII model, which was a widely-hated departure from canon, as my yardstick for the series. This meant I was not only frustrated by the traditional setup used in VII and IX, but irritated by the more cartoonish character designs. Which isn’t to say that I disliked either game, exactly: just that they were always less beloved to me than VIII and, later on, X and XII, whose advanced graphics and combat systems more closely resembled what VIII had been trying – with, admittedly, more ambition than success – to achieve.

Even now, XII remains my favourite Final Fantasy. The writing and voice acting were both incredible, and even though Vaan, rather than Ashe, was the POV character, I loved the departure from canon that made him a non-romantic participant in her narrative. By contrast, XIII was a clusterfuck, so much so that I quickly set it aside as unplayable: the writing was naff, the voice acting melodramatic (with the single exception of Sazh), the premise confused and the combat frustratingly garbled. I couldn’t understand how the best aspects of XII had been so thoroughly disregarded, and as such, I never bothered with the sequel, which makes XV the first new Final Fantasy I’ve played since 2010.

Aesthetically, then, XV is paying a great deal of homage to my favourite games in the series – VIII and XII – which predisposes me to love it. The opening premise of an invading empire and a missing heir to the throne is evocative of both Galbadia and Archadia, with Noctis’s early quest to recover lost weapons from ancient tombs running a close parallel to Ashe’s quest in XII. The fact that Noctis, Prompto, Ignis and Gladio spend the game driving around in a sports car might seem ridiculous on the surface, especially if you’ve got a preference for the airships of VII, IX and XII, but only if you’ve forgotten the convertibles and jeeps of VIII, where driving on the worldmap was also a feature, and where fancy cars were a staple of the more dramatic cutscenes.

In fact, there’s always been something of a roadtrip vibe to a lot of the Final Fantasy games, and not only in terms of the main party journeying thither and yon across multiple fictional worlds. The many flashbacks to Lord Braska’s pilgrimage in X show him broing it up with Auron and Jecht (to whom Gladio bears more than a superficial physical and vocal resemblance), while their decision to sphere-capture their adventures is a clear forerunner to Prompto’s photography. VIII didn’t lack for female characters, but the initial SEED test features a grumpily all-male party, with Squall, Zell and Seifer forced into a temporary alliance. Squall and Zell were always something of an odd pair, but delightfully so, and their dynamic has been revived – and, I’d argue, improved – in the byplay between Noctis and Prompto. Likewise, Ignis’s dry drawl and dryer expression are more than a little reminiscent of Balthier, though his dutiful priorities make him a closer equivalent to Auron and Basch.

In other words, the four protagonists of XV are themselves a homage to the male relationships of previous Final Fantasy games, and quite clearly so. Together, they interact much as you’d expect of a quartet of twentysomething men, joking and snarking at each other in equal measure. The writing and voice acting aren’t as good as XII, but they’re nowhere near the abysmal mess of XIII. I’d peg them as being on par with X: naff at times, but somehow endearingly so, and overall engaging. Granted, the background plot is complex – it helps to have watched the prequel movie, Kingsglaive, and there’s also an accompanying anime series – but part of what makes the quartet watchable is how clearly established their friendship is: we’re getting to know the characters by how they know each other.

As far as the gameplay and levelling systems go, I’ve got no complaints thus far. Even without being able to run through the full tutorial for fighting – my version kept glitching when it came to learning how to warp – I’ve still found it intuitive to use. It’s a dissimilar combat system to most FF games, in that it’s not turn-based, but neither is it as blindingly fast-paced or poorly-designed as the system used in XIII, and the ability to warp to targets makes for some engaging tactical options. It helps that I’ve just come off a huge Dragon Age: Inquisition jag: my preferred approach to combat in both games can best be described as “running in headfirst with a large sword and hitting things until they fall down,” with magic and projectile weapons left on auto until or unless I’m specifically forced to use them. Players who favour different tactics might have more complaints to level here, but for my purposes, it works just fine.

But what I’m really loving about XV is the extent to which – I assume unintentionally – it’s both hilarious and heavily queercoded.

I’ll deal with the latter first, because it’s arguably the more contentious point. Let me be clear: I’m not for one second giving Square Enix props for deliberately creating queer representation here, because I don’t think for a second that it’s what they actually meant to do – or at least, if they’re trying to muddle vaguely in that direction, then they haven’t had the guts to confirm it. Culturally, the lines we draw been homosocial and homosexual behaviour tend to be as historically arbitrary as they are fiercely policed, with any overlap subject to argument on both sides. But cultural differences is, I suspect, a large part of why XV reads the way it does: the game is originally Japanese, and in trying to cater to both Japanese and Western masculine ideals, Square Enix has wandered into what plays as a rather spectacularly queer compromise.

First and most obviously, there’s the wardrobe issue. Clearly, the all-black leather aesthetic is meant to look Manly and Cool and Deeply Heterosexual In A Traditionally Masculine Way, and if the designs were simple, functional and militaristic, then that would probably work, even given the youth and beauty of the characters (more of which shortly). But Final Fantasy, like a great many Japanese properties, is famous for its distinctive clothing designs, which means the characters look less like soldiers and more like scene kids en route to a metal concert. Specifically: Noctis and Prompto look like they shop at Hot Topic, Ignis is wearing Cuban heeled boots, driving gloves and seme glasses (seriously) and Gladio consistently looks like he’s posing for a Grindr photo. Like. I’m aware that he’s meant to be the most hypermasculine  straight male self-identification fantasy of the four, what with the scar and the tattoos and the devastatingly Japanese mullet, but generally speaking, ripped guys in open leather shirts and tight leather pants are more visually reminiscent of Mardi Gras than the military. I’m just saying.

The fact that you can customise their outfits (to a degree), and that picking a new wardrobe changes their stats, isn’t a new development: in fact, it’s something the franchise first introduced with dress spheres in the all-female X-2, which makes its presence in the all-male XV a subtly pleasing symmetry. And yet it runs up against a standard of masculine gaming: changing your armour is one thing, because armour is Manly, but changing your clothes – which, stat bonuses or not, is what we’re functionally talking about – is something else entirely. It’s a truly strange demarcation, because there are plenty of instances where video game characters change outfits of their own accord, in cutscenes or for plot-specific purposes, or where the change represents a specific, all-over upgrade. But the option to alter the appearance of male characters for largely aesthetic reasons – to change how they look to you, the player, in clothes that are recognisably modern and fashionable – is not, I suspect, a common feature of games aimed at heterosexual men, nor is the in-game implication of the characters toting around a bunch of fancy matching outfits a particularly straight-coded thing.

And, okay. Even though we queer folk often telegraph our identities through fashion, there’s a degree of reductive stereotype inherent in judging sexuality on the basis of clothing choice, and if that were the only issue here, I wouldn’t have brought it up. (Except, of course, to point out the truly delightful ridiculousness of watching four goth boys run around the countryside in full club gear, often while complaining about the temperature. It’s like they’re headed for Glastonbury with monsters.) But the queercoding of XV is a package deal: it’s not just the clothes, but the clothes in combination with the characters themselves, the dialogue they’re given, and the way the four of them occupy the game.

Specifically: Final Fantasy is a gaming franchise that’s well aware, historically speaking, of its very large female fanbase. Even though the majority of the games have male protagonists, they’ve traditionally been designed for a straight female gaze – and more, I would argue, a teenage female gaze, given that the characters are usually in their teens or very early twenties – in line with aesthetics more Japanese than Western. Former heroes like Cloud, Squall, Zidane, Tidus and Vaan might be formidable warriors in-game, but they’re never beefed up: they’re overwhelmingly built lean, with much longer, more stylised hair than you typically see on masculine Western characters. They wear jewellery – often visible in their base character designs, and not just as a hidden accessory slot – and offhand, aside from various weird lines around Cloud crossdressing in VII, I can’t think of any real instances of sexism or misogyny from those characters that aren’t actively shut down. In fact, the number of female characters in the earlier games ensures that, in addition to any love interests, the leading men also have platonic female friends – something that’s still damnably unusual in most forms of media, let alone in video games.

All of which, thus far, holds true in XV, too: Princess Lunafreya, Noctis’s intended bride, is his childhood friend, as is Gladio’s sister, Iris. When the game begins, Noctis and his friends are travelling to meet Lunafreya before their (politically arranged) wedding; when everything goes awry because betrayal and empire, they’re forced to regroup and end up hanging out with Iris, who has escaped to the city of Lesallum. That’s where I’m up to so far, and what immediately stands out to me, as someone who spent a not inconsiderable portion of their adolescence and early twenties hanging around single straight guys, is the fact that the quartet barely ever talk about women at all. And the thing is, I can see why it’s been done! Final Fantasy has a heavy female fanbase, and in any case, they’re not the sort of games where the male soldiers sit around reminiscing about sexual conquests. But contextually, because of the way the game is presented – four friends driving and talking shit in real time, mocking each other, while initially on the way to see one of them married – the lack of talk about sex or romance of any kind is jarring.

Which isn’t to say the subject of women never comes up at all; it’s just that, when it does, the overwhelming impression is of dialogue written with a female audience in mind, but without any awareness of the queercoding implications of its delivery by these particular male characters. This means, for instance, that there’s a scene where the boys find a magazine article about Lunafreya’s wedding dress, and all of them start cooing about how beautiful it will be; Ignis notes that the dress is bespoke, designed by Vivienne Westwood, and Prompto starts enthusing about how pretty Lunafreya will look in it. In Hammerhead, the buxom mechanic Cindy, whose character design is clearly meant to please the straight male players, is someone who, in real life, you’d expect a bunch of straight boys on an ostensible stag trip to talk about. Except that they never do; and instead, the one time there’s a reference made to Gladio “chatting someone up,” it turns out to be a grumpily endearing scientist who wants you to go catch some frogs as penance for interrupting her research.

And then there’s Noctis taking a tour of Lestallum with Iris. Throughout this mini-quest, you’re given a set of binary conversational options to either encourage Iris in her enthusiasm for the town, or to disapprove. Then, at the end, she coyly suggests that being on the tour was almost like a date – an assertion you can either play off lightly, or outright deny: pointedly, there is no option to agree. If you deny, she laughs and says “you could at least play along for once,” suggesting that Iris knows Noctis isn’t interested in her and is willing to tease him about it – an odd thing to include, if you don’t want the audience to wonder about his preferences.

A little earlier in the game, Prompto asks Noctis what he ought to take more photos of: apart from declining, the only options are “me” (meaning Noctis), Ignis or Gladio. Again, there’s a gameworld logic to this – the photos are ultimately viewed by the player, who gets to pick which character they want to record the most – but in terms of the impact in setting, this is not an outstandingly heterosexual moment. Very possibly, there exists a group of straight bros whose designated photographer is happy asking, “Hey bro, which of our friends do you want to see more in pictures?” in an established No Homo way, and if so, more power to them. But if you want to find a context where that sort of exchange is an everyday thing, then look no further than the queer regions of Instagram. (Plus, it’s kind of conspicuous how often Prompto, when assessing the day’s photos, comments on how good Gladio the Perpetually Shirtless looks.)

And then there’s the occasional quirks of dialogue and voice acting: choices that, again, would be minor on their own, but which collectively become suggestive of something specific. Early on, Cor sends Gladio, Prompto and Ignis to make a distraction at a military blockade while he and Noctis sneak inside: the gambit is successful, and when the group reunites afterwards, Gladio says cheerfully, “The Niffs couldn’t keep their eyes off us!”. To which Ignis quips, in reference to Noctis and Cor’s arrival, “You spared us their attentions.” Offhand, I can think of about a dozen different ways to word that exchange that don’t remotely brush up against innuendo, and which are far more colloquially and contextually apt besides. The eyes/attentions combo is the kind of thing you’d expect a pair of femme fatales to say after seducing the guards and knocking them out in an action movie. (The fact that we don’t actually witness the initial distraction only adds to its ambiguity.) And yet, this is what they’ve gone with.

Other examples are smaller, but they all add up. Whenever you find new ingredients for Ignis to cook with, he stops to announce, with particular vocal flamboyance, that he’s just thought up a new recipe (exclamation mark!), and whips out a notebook to jot it down. (“I’ll taste test for ya,” Gladio says, in a playfully growling tone that always seems to have one eye on the bedroom.) And then there’s Prompto, who I’m inclined to think of as a confused bisexual puppy, whose voice turns dreamily fanboyish when discussing Cor’s exploits, and who gets just as excited on receiving Cor’s praise as he does at the prospect of seeing Lunafreya in her pretty wedding dress.

Put this all together, then, and what you have are a bunch of young men who are, by Western standards, more pretty than handsome, dressed in fashionable clothes and accessories that are more evocative of queer or queer-friendly subcultures than not, and who care enough about their appearance to have multiple outfits on hand at any given time. (You can, if you’re willing to sacrifice an accessory slot to aesthetics, buy hair gel for them to use.) These men are knowledgeable about fashion, have a platonic concern for the women they encounter, are constantly photographing one another for each other, have zero comments to make about the stupidly hot female mechanic unless they’re praising her competence, and whose idea of “chatting someone up” apparently means “talking to the grumpy frog lady about the local wildlife population”. This isn’t me leaping to conclusions, here: in the immortal words of Buffy Summers, I took a tiny step and there conclusions were.

All of which is a way of saying that, thus far, I’m delighted with Final Fantasy XV, though not in the ways I’d expected. The characters and setting are a homage to my favourite games in the series, and while I worried the absence of female characters would grate on me, our quartet of bumbling chocobros is stupidly endearing. At this point, Noctis is functionally useless as a prince: even when he’s recognised, the local yokels have no qualms about asking him to take their deliveries or run their errands, and while random sidequests are an RPG staple, they’re usually somewhat tailored to the protagonist’s perceived status. In FFXV, everything is rendered hilarious by the fact that Noctis is a prince, and is seen as a prince, and is still being asked to catch frogs in a swamp and grab shit from some random marketeer’s broken van.

(He’s also gloriously introverted: in dealing with people, his responses usually vary from monosyllabic to resigned disinterest, but when you come across a stray cat in need of feeding – a tiny sidequest that’s a deliberate throwback to Squall doing likewise in VIII – he talks to it at greater length and with more enthusiasm than he otherwise displays with anyone.)

As far as I’m concerned, FFXV is a magic road trip with a bunch of queer boys who have their wardrobes together, but not their shit. I can identify. And so, I suspect, can everyone else who’s fallen into the trashpile of this visually beautiful, thematically mishmash game. I honestly don’t care about the random anachronisms, like the fact that they’re carrying smartphones and fighting magic robots, but still using paper maps and newspapers, to say nothing of using a fucking dog as a messenger for vital correspondence through a warzone – or rather, I do care, but only because the clear discontinuity of it somehow plays as a feature instead of a bug. The entire thing ought to be ridiculous, and it kind of is, but pleasingly so, like a cat in a Halloween costume. The characters don’t take each other seriously, which frees the player up to do likewise – to laugh with them, rather than at them. And frankly, I’ll take that over XIII’s self-important melodrama any day of the week.

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