#the powerlevel stuff made me stop and think about it for a moment but the math checks out

[seafoamtor]

“Less “affection flipped into hatred” and more “backlash out of worry that she [Morgan] hates him.”

“As the chief of the Fang Clan, he hates to see how Barghest gets more attention than him.”

“He’s a kind and tolerant pupper in his interactions with other Fae.”

“All his actions are dictated by a desire to be loved. After deluding himself into thinking Morgan wouldn’t love him anymore, he was tricked by Aurora’s sham love.”

“What made it feel like he lost Morgan’s love was her lack of praise. He got a lot of praise during the period of constant war including the Moss campaigns and the caterpillar slaying, but there was no war in the past 100 years, meaning he got nothing. The Faerie Knights hogged all the spotlights.”

“He knows very well how much Morgan hates typical fae behaviour, and for that reason he defies his own nature and skillfully performs typical human behaviour. That’s why he’s so annoying over proper manners.”

“The fae’s main criticism of him is that the Faerie Knights are stronger and that he became all bark and no bite , but Morgan and Oberon know that Woodwose is actually the strongest individual in Britain.”

[points] Dog. What a Dog. What a Good Dog. Yeah...

[onewomancitadel]

Idealism in RWBY

One of my favourite scenes in the whole show that made me sob like a baby when it aired and still makes me cry even thinking about it is the scene where Jinn bends the rules for Ruby and gives her a moment to close her eyes and breathe. It is absolutely beautiful and from a pacing perspective one of my favourite scenes - the shot of wings slowly beating and then stopping - Ruby closing her eyes and feeling the thing between all things - and then the reveal of Summer whose eyes become hers. It is conceptually excellent. That what she construed of as being laserbeams from her eyeballs actually necessitates looking inside herself and asking what that power really means is my favourite, favourite stuff.

In case it's not obvious from my finale criticism of V9, I actually deeply value the emotional sincerity and idealism of RWBY. It's a rare thing to earnestly get a scene specifically like that without it being undercut with a stupid joke (I hate this) or even such a scene at all. The proliferation of powerlevelling and 'hard magic systems' have basically broken peoples' ability to intuit actual narrative and the point of fucking storytelling. I love when characters make very forward emotional statements which are earnest and heartfelt (one that comes to mind is Blake -> Nora -> Penny, 'it's only part of you' - when Nora is almost passed out in pain she manages to convey a deep lesson for Penny which manages to give her strength and effectively foreshadows her Aura transformation), what I particularly do not like is when it is platitudinous and/or doesn't feel earnest and earnt.

The fact that there were absolutely parts of this volume that felt like that to emphasise Ruby's disillusionment and then subsequently they doubled down on it with Jaune (and validated it) made me really confused, because even the scene of Ruby's return the dialogue does not feel earnt and I really don't know what I'm supposed to make of that relationship - fix? - with her team and Jaune. It wasn't developed properly because really what they were developing was her disillusionment with her mother as opposed to strictly her team, but to be totally fair there is still a door open there in the next volume. I don't think they'll go in that direction any further, unfortunately.

But it's not like they actually struggle with emotional sincerity. This is why I felt it to be such a prominent weakness. I also didn't like the joke undercutting Jaune's transformation that he makes just because - first of all it's very quick - but second of all, it has major implications for other characters afflicted with Curses, but like, come on! You are the emotionally earnest show! You don't need to feel embarrassed about a handsome prince transformation! This is fucking Sheik revealing Zelda, this is Midna's true form, this is the Beast healed type shit (I can think of so many Zelda examples probably because Zelda is the archetypal princess, in my mind). You can be totally forthcoming and earnest about it, it's okay. But this is why the sequence felt weird because presumably whoever is his love interest should have something meaningful to say about it. Jaune was deeply disillusioned and wounded this volume, they found him and called him crazy (I did like this realistic rendering of the Maidens finding the Old Man - 'dude's a weirdo' is funny) and now everything is normal? It's not right because I don't think they generally fumble this stuff. I want more earnesty, I want more sincerity, I want more fundamental idealism.

I value the pain in the story because you can't have joy without pain. You don't get the effect of redemption and characters being saved in the story without Penny or Pyrrha or I/ronwood. This is why I/ronwood's fall is so carefully paralleled with Cinder's (burgeoning, and foreshadowed) rise. What a lot of twee 'everything is okay' stories do is they ignore the actual definition of happiness in life sometimes to the point of just being thoughtless but equally on my entire blog I take umbrage with narrative cynicism, and cynicism, and easy, lazy pain - easy cynicism because it's protective. What is more hopeful to me is idealism which is validated in the face of tragedy. That with RWBY I have the hope of that tragedy being transformed into comedy is actually rare. A lot of my favourite heart-touching stories off the top of my head are basically 'hopeful tragedy', because the promise of comedy is actually really rare.

I guess what I'm also curious about (that there is some assumption I don't value the idealism of RWBY, lol, or its emotional forthcomingness) is that to believe in something like Cinder's redemption, not just on a textual basis, actually by virtue means you have to believe redemption is always possible. It's never too late. You can be forgiven. You might be lost and disillusioned for the whole story but you're forgiven. You can commit a deed in the story which everybody holds against you forever and you're forgiven. You can be mean and terrible and ruin everything and be forgiven. It can take a while to get home but you'll get there.

Salem's redemption and the redemption of Ozlem is realised through her character; it is a major thematic statement and precipitates the resolution of the story. That Cinder's redemption might involve a romance which is similarly Ozlem in reverse is hopeful. Even after everything you can work back. The tragedy is the promise of comedy, the breakage is the promise of wholeness.

I celebrate darkness and disillusionment in the story because that is the path to true knowledge. Yet cynicism is its own protective insulation and refusal to confront joy. Breaking through those falsehoods is a thematic interest of RWBY, and if I sense something emotionally, tonally discordant, I'm going to point it out.

[zydrateacademy]

Review: Black Desert Online

A couple of years ago, BDO was released under a subscription plan and later went free to play. This brings in the usual debate but I can honestly say there is no pay to win here, largely cosmetics and utilities that typically don’t give you an advantage in player versus player combat, which is apparently a big part of this game that I take no part of. I’m going to get bloggy here for a while here, so I may edit this out of my Steam version but bear with me, as I feel some of this gives a fair amount of context to how I feel about MMOs in general and how that may affect my review of one. I’ve largely lost the energy to bother with MMOs at my age. I’m 28 now and there’s a unique parallel between the time I started getting employed (22ish, late I know but times are rough) and the time I stopped bothering with MMOs. They take a large chunk of time so on eight hour shifts, there’s almost no point in logging in. An hour of work gets me nothing and by the time I get home, I’m typically too tired to bother dedicating the time towards a raid. I used to think I just didn’t like questing but I still play RPGs, so that can’t be it. After several capped characters on WoW the questlines do become a bit samey but I can usually just turn on a podcast or three and grind my day away. I am also a hefty roleplayer and I like creating stories and interactions for people to bounce off of and when I sort-of quit WoW perhaps over a year ago (I never really quit, I just wait for an update to actually interest me), it was after I discovered my eccentric crazy-lady main just couldn’t find a place among the rather clique heavy communities that pervade roleplaying communities there. As it stands, I have nothing to go back to and to a degree I suspect the same will happen with BDO. That’s really the crux of the issue that makes or breaks MMOs for me. “Is there anything there for me?” is what the back of my mind consistently asks. There’s always goals I can set for myself, like specific gear that I find looks cool. However in BDO some of the best cosmetics are store-bought (because of course they are). There’s no dungeons or raids in the endgame so that’s clearly out. The only thing that will keep me on BDO is the community and the jury is still out on that because I’ve spent my ~40 or so hours so far just questing. So let’s talk about the game itself. I will say it’s likely not for everyone. Through the lack of dungeons (which I hear, from a single source I don’t know all that well, that they’ll be updated in eventually), raids, and my avoidance of PvP I do find there’s a lack of content for things that interest me. Don’t misunderstand, I’m sure there’s plenty to actually do in the game. When I hit level 50 I get treated to a sort of daily splash screen that congratulated me and gave me a whole list of things I could be doing. These include things like Gathering, Processing, Cooking, Hunting, Trading, Fishing, and a few others and I don’t know what some of them even mean. Leveling is a bit strange in this game, being very grind-heavy at the endgame. Experience comes largely in the form of mob-killing, quests themselves give you something else. Much of the land has high density mob packs that are designed to be pulled, kited, and murdered en masse with your best AoE attacks. Basically the leveling curve has a few different turning points. At 50, a good portion of the game is available to you, and about the time the main quest through a little black spirit buddy concludes. I like to call it the first “Cap”, and this game has multiple, strangely. At this point I started taking a lot more damage, and doing significantly less. Powerleveling is a thing here under the term “leech leveling”, where you basically just join a high powered grinder on their daily rotation and just hoover up experience and loot. I did this from 51 to 56. 56 by the way, being the second turning point and the secondary “level cap” the game seems to have. At this point you can do a questline to power up your class in what’s called “Awakening”, which I’m sure has some kind of in-story plotpoint but I wouldn’t fucking know because everything in this game is so convoluted and I will address that soon enough. At this point your character gets an extra weapon and a whole new window of skills to learn and combos to figure out. I hear this is where classes come alive, on a similar vein from other MMOs when you hear “Oh the game really starts at level [blank]”. For WoW, I feel the game does this at 70-80, because heroic dungeons make the world go ‘round. Other MMOs, major content typically unlocks at level cap. The actual “soft cap” is 60 but players can get to 62 and beyond, however one source tells me that “getting from 62 to 63 is like, grinding several hours a day for a year”. I am pretty sure this was hyperbole on his part, but he also added that there was almost no point because by 62, you have everything you need. In BDO however, the leveling curve gets ungodly slow and the grind begins. I cannot speak on how this is because I effectively took a break when my first main hit 56 properly, and wanted to explore other classes. The combat here is odd and may take some getting used to, but still falls a bit flat. It’s combo-based, y’see. You can hotbar skills but most are attached to a key combination, like moving left while left clicking or holding back and and pressing F. The directional keys interact with a few others and everything does something unique like giving you better accuracy for a few seconds and a myriad of other buffs. Not that I would know. It falls flat for me because I usually just find one or two attacks that hit more than four targets at a time and stick with those, with little to no reason to use single target attacks. My ninjagirl (which is called something I can’t pronounce or even begin to spell) has one attack that can grab enemies, spin in the air, and drop them to a ground for a knockdown effect. But why bother? Bosses are immune to it, which is the only source of single-targets I can find and basic random stragglers aren’t worth it when there’s a cluster of seven mobs right around the corner.

My sorceress was my first 56 and most of my leveling with throwing some purple lightning at everything. This was essentially my only attack for my entire leveling experience, perhaps with the occasional teleport or claw attack to regenerate mana. I know that’s a fair amount of shittalking, so let me pull up a couple of positives before driving the stake of irritation in this game’s heart. I don’t hate the leveling. I can appreciate how most experience comes from combat to a certain degree. I also like how the game throws experience buffs at you like no tomorrow, and money isn’t terribly difficult to get. Gear doesn’t really have a level gate here so I spent around eight million silver (that is not nearly as much as it sounds) on my new ninjagirl to get +15′s and +9′s (I’ll explain that in a bit) and hilariously curbstomped quests and enemies well into her 40′s. Leveling is very quick here and more experienced players can probably shoot up to 50 in a day. As a roleplayer this is valuable so that my character can have access to higher level towns to interact in, though mobs don’t tend to get pulled on roads and it’s fairly easy enough to run across the map at level 10 and you’d probably survive. Still, map exploration is a big part of the drive to play at the moment. BDO is also renowned for being the best looking MMO on the market, and that’s no lie. At least for a couple of years before that gets dethroned, too. The character creation is also insane, taking Saints Row’s crazy character creation, Champion Online’s asymmetry and ran with it for miles. You can manipulate your midsection, eye pupils on multiple levels, and even customize your own idle pose which I could not begin to figure out because I’m not a graphical engineer and none of it made sense to me.

There is one final point of contention that I would like to take to task. Everything is incredibly convoluted and overstuffed to the point of inconvenience. You can’t see enemy healthbars properly until you kill enough of them to gain “knowledge” on them. This isn’t just for enemy categories, but enemy TYPES. When you go fight some bandits, you have to kill enough of every single one of their musketeers, warriors, basics, and more just to see each and every one of their healthpools. This goes for destructible objects like camps, supplies, and traps as well. WHY? Stamina, health, and carry weight are all manipulated by sprinting everywhere, eating food, and carrying trade bundles over long distances. WHY? Many of my skills are stamina based so I can only increase that by running everywhere I go and forsaking the function of a mount. WHY? Quests don’t give experience, which is mostly fine because combat gives plenty. Instead, you get contribution points which acts as a secondary currency to rent gear and buy houses. Uhm... WHY? Ingame banks and storages are town specific. If you’ve stored your stuff in one of the beginner towns and bought a house there, but you’re in your 58′s and whatnot, killing knights in the upper eastern corner of the map and need to store all the money, gear, and loot you’ve made... You have to either run all the way back to do so or buy a house and then rent a storage chest for ten contribution points (which it will forever withhold until its returned, but you can continually increase how many contribution points you have) so it connects to the nearest warehouse so you can access your stuff, which is completely separate region to region. WHY? Energy is another tertiary resource which regenerates and increases as you discover the world and talk to people. However some NPC’s won’t talk to you about certain topics and might even withhold quests because you haven’t gained enough knowledge about the world. WHY? You can get horses and mounts but they have an entire health, hunger, and stamina mechanic. They also cannot be summoned at will but are attached to stables, much like storage warehouses are. Found yourself running towards a questline but left your horse in a safe area on the road? Too bad you can’t just summon it and ride away to safety. You have to whistle for it (wherein it’s always just too far to function) or track it, running back to it. WHY? A player had to explain to me how to even get gear because looting and questing certainly didn’t give me much. My first 15 hours or so was working with some basic stuff and by 35ish I was doing no damage and taking all of it. Only a discord community helped walk me to a marketplace (auction house) and tell me what kinds of things to buy. They never even told me about belts, which typically add 30 to 40 pounds (or whatever unit of measurement they’re using) of carry weight, which I did not discover until my 50′s. It was incredibly useful information to acquire. WHY did the game never give me a belt? Money has weight. WHY. Upgrading items is pointlessly complicated, even in its simplicity. In order to upgrade gear you need to use certain items that are acquired throughout the game (I had about forty of each by the time I hit 55). which only goes to 15. After that you need other, higher level crystal items to upgrade them further, which has a chance to actually downgrade the item of the chance fails. So you’ll have to spend millions upon millions of silver (If you don’t farm/grind for these items yourself) just to give yourself a few extra points of armor and damage. WHY.

This is one of many menu screens. Notice all the 0′s. I have no idea what I’m doing. I have ten other things I could go on about that are along the same lines. It’s the FFXIV problem all over again, just in a different way. Every function in this game is hidden behind a wall of inconvenience. That is truly why I state that this game is not for everyone. Like with anything else that’s multiplayer related, it will probably help if you come to this game with a certain core of friends. This game does not hold your hand but I would rather be treated like a child than abandoned in the middle of the street and get hit by a freighter.