#this isn��t all the way done (not to the point where I’d consider it finished) but I’m too tired to keep working on it

[enkisstories]

The android cemetery (Chapter 17)

Daniel stood in the therapist’s office, looking out of the window. At this time the streets were near empty, too bad the same couldn’t be said about the deviant’s mind. Normally Daniel routinely cursed Caroline Phillips for scheduling Emma’s appointments at a Saturday morning. Not so today. Today he was glad for anything that would require his full concentration and take his thoughts off what might happen at the DPD right now.

Additionally, for the first time since participating in these sessions Daniel wished he could be the one to do the talking. Last night had been taxing both mechanically and emotionally. And the harder Daniel tried to push away the memories of the shaft, the more vivid they returned. If there was a trick to keeping them in check, he wouldn’t find it within the next five minutes. Stray thoughts were nothing you could yell at or shoot dead. Like the android he had shot yesterday. But Daniel hadn’t killed it, right? Just… impeded a little?

Yeah, right. Shooting someone into the forearm and then leaving them trapped in an unstable shaft totally doesn’t equal killing them. Congrats, Daniel Phillips-Reed, you are a true human now, justifying the messes you leave in your wake.

But maybe the other android had made it, after all? Markus had escaped the landfill back in 2038, and he had been in a far worse condition! Daniel himself had learned to walk again within a handful of minutes after getting his legs re-attached. So there was a chance… however slim…

It’s not dead… And even if it were, it was it or me. I had no choice! No, that’s not true. I had lots of choices, but they were all crap. This isn’t fair. Maybe Elaine Sanders is the far worse specimen between me and her. She just never gets pushed into situations where that could get revealed!

Elaine Sanders, Emma’s therapist, had just finished today’s crossword when Caroline’s car entered the yard below. Daniel announced it to the woman, then continued to stare.

Elaine called up Emma’s file, one of the few she was working on. Times weren’t kind to her profession. A generic therapist was not qualified to tackle the cases of serious psychological problems and the minor ones could just as well get covered by androids by now. Emma’s was different, not suitable for “automated” solving by an android. For one, she was the victim of an android and for two her mother didn’t trust the devices anymore. Maybe this was the reason why Elaine had dragged out Emma’s sessions for son long: she was trying to milk her mother for money as long as possible.

“Were you a human, I’d say you look lost in thought”, Elaine commented on Daniel’s stance.

“I was wondering about repeating the same mistake over and over”, the android replied.

Elaine nodded. “Very perceptive, Dean”, she addressed the PL600 by the name she took to be its real one. “Emma has indeed done that.”

Yes, I have. Wait, what, did you say Emma? What mistake would Emma have made, let alone repeated? I do not like that one bit…

The door opened and in came Emma Phillips. She wore a glittery purple shirt, a jeans skirt and a vest and cap made of the same material. Her daypack was covered in math jokes of the There’s a band called 1023 MB – they haven’t had any gigs yet variety, but there was also an action figure of Ron Weasley riding his chess horse dangling from it. Everything about the girl’s appearance and movement said “I’m eleven and badass and coming here doesn’t make me weak!” Caroline didn’t allowed her daughter to cut or dye her hair, otherwise she’d probably have green strands in there somewhere now. A pin at Emma’s vest had the shape of a pheasant-like bird sitting on a blue egg, only on second glance the egg was the earth, with its continents reflecting the late Jurassic era. The pin was one of the most common pieces Beasts of Fire merchandise. Seeing it on Emma caused Daniel to smile, because he had recommended the books to Emma in his incarnation as Dean. Caroline had scanned the files for keywords promoting violence or nudity and when she had found none, allowed her child to read them, despite the story being recommended for age fourteen and up. Dean and Emma had had a field day, because Mrs. Phillips had missed that the whole thousands pages thing worked as a parable of the android situation. Not that is had been written with it in mind, back in the early decades of the century, before androids had even existed. But much like androids literature had a way of evolving with the needs of each new generation.

The new generation… Daniel liked to see a part of himself in the child. Many deviants were looking for parental figures. Strangely enough the most advanced of them were especially prone to this: Markus, Connor and Brandon. A few went the opposite route and slipped into parenthood naturally.

Emma approached Daniel to shake hands with him. She moved hers in a special pattern that Daniel adapted to without having to think about it. Halfway through the process the android realized that he had taught this “secret” handshake to Emma when she had been younger. He winced. Was the child onto something? But, no, this was a common handshake, Daniel told himself. It had been stored in his child-care app, along with thousands of other games.

To cover up any slip he might have made, Daniel pointed to Emma’s earbuds.

“What are you hearing?”

Wordlessly the girl handed over one of the pair, instead of inviting the android to link into the music app.

I've been to the edge and / There I stood 'n' looked down Living in a world / We never made / But is it too late now? Something is going on / And I'm really scared

“Huh…” Daniel uttered.

“I heard that a lot when I was ten”, Emma remarked. “But it’s just a song now. For little kids.”

Elaine watched Daniel give the earbud back. She said it was symptomatic. Emma had made great progress in getting over her traumatic experience and shaking off her irrational fear of PL600 androids, up to the point of considering Dean a friend.

“But, see, this is the same mistake you made when you were nine years old”, the therapist told Emma. “You need to understand what really happened to you.”

“I’d say it was pretty clear”, Danie said. “There’s little room for misunderstanding when you get carried away and threatened with a gun. She didn’t lounge by the pool and dreamed that shit, Mrs. Sanders. It happened.”

“See how it takes me literal, Emma?” Elaine took up Daniel’s contribution. “Because it is a machine operating within the boundaries of its programming. It cannot harm you. You are not the victim of a crime, but of an accident. A machine malfunctioned. It wasn’t your enemy. And neither was it, I am sorry to have to say that, your friend.”

Not letting android or child interrupt her, Elaine quickly followed with the command directed at Daniel: to take his outerskin down.

“Show her what you really are!”

Haha, nah, better not…

But Daniel’s secret identity aside, he had been given an order and one that a non-deviant PL600 shouldn’t have any trouble with, realistically. Never mind that the deed was both humiliating and utterly wrong. Anger welled up in the deviant… but before he could flare up and potentially compromise his cover, Daniel remembered something. A little addon that made this PL600 different from almost all the others and also from most of the deviants, because that little bit enabled Daniel to perform an action most of his brethren were not interested in.

“I cannot strip in front of a pre-teen!” Daniel whispered.

The protest and what it implied made Elaine blush.

“In clothes, then.”

“Oh… okay… I suppose I could do that. Now, Mrs. Sander?”

“Yes, now!”

“’kay. I guess…” Daniel turned towards the girl. “There’s nothing to fear, Emma. Gavin has seen me in factory state and could bear it. So can you.”

And so can I. Maybe.

The next moment Daniel felt Emma’s fingers reaching for his.

“Take my hand!” she said with a smile.

At first nothing happened. Daniel took down the skin starting at his toes, working upwards. That way he could get a feeling of his other state before Emma got to see it. The girl was waiting patiently, not letting go of the android’s hand. Then she saw it: a small part of the chest that Dean’s polo shirt exposed was turning grey. From there the change worked itself upwards to the throat and at the same time to the left and right. Flowing down the shoulders the whitish grey appeared from under Dean’s sleeves. Strangely, to Emma the transformation didn’t look like something got taken away, but more like an overlay getting applied. Still the girl winced when the change reached both their hands, but still held Dean’s fast. Only after she had stared at the exposed plastic for a minute or so did Emma look up. The android head was hairless now, Dean’s normally grey-blue eyes had turned to a darker, solid blue and were lacking pupils. The face would have been reminiscent of an alien of popular culture, but those rarely came with assembly lines.

The child didn’t say a word. Neither did the device.

“It’s a machine”, Elaine said in a quiet voice. “Someone activated it, it can get deactivated. We are in power all the time. There is no crime related to androids…”

So, there isn`t? Guess that means Connor and Captain Anderson are out of job now.

“…only accidents.”

Emma was still standing in silence. A few times it looked as if she wanted to say something, but decided against it. At one point the girl had gently let go of Daniel’s hand and was now fiddling with her trouser pockets, for the straps of her daypack, her hair… and always stopping when she realized what she was doing.

The awkward situation was broken by a phone ringing. It turned out to be Elaine’s, she answered the call and then announced cheerfully:

“Good news! The android has been found!”

“What android?” Emma asked.

“Daniel.”

“What?!”

Matter of factly Elaine explained that the DPD was in possession of Daniel’s corpse, how it had gotten misplaced, but found again this very morning.

Now it was for Daniel to reach for Emma’s hand. He grabbed her by the hand, then the wrist, then locked her in a full body tackle, because otherwise the girl would have pounced her therapist. In a way it was similar to the fateful august night: Daniel was holding a struggling Emma, the child was screaming, at the verge of tears, and across from them both stood someone who had gotten sent to help the girl, but who was in truth emotionally detached from both victim and kidnapper.

After a while Emma stopped making fists at Elaine and instead started kicking Daniel, who let go immediately.

“You knew!” Emma yelled at the android. “You were a cop before they sold you to the museum! You must have known Daniel was… stored… at the police station.”

“I wasn’t allowed in the evidence archive…”

“As if that would have stopped you! I told Mr. Reed our android’s name when we first met, of course he would have snooped around in the archive! And what he knows, you know, too, Dean! Don’t even try to deny it!”

“I…”

“You knew Daniel wasn’t destroyed, but didn’t tell me! If only I had known, I would have…”

“You would have what? Brought flowers?”

“Don’t mock me! I thought you were my friend!”

I am. Why do you think I keep my distance?

“I thought… you were… my… friend!!!”

Emma lashed out with her daypack against the android. The chess horse scratched across Daniel’s skin. He backed away. Were non-deviants supposed to allow attacks that could cause physical harm to them? Probably. Another step back it was. Emma had lost the daypack after her first, wild swing. She turned to pushing Daniel now. He landed in Elaine’s ficus elastica. Not a rubber plant, but an actual living potted gum tree.

“Hey, take care, cowboy! Unlike others present this here is alive!” Daniel snapped. “You might have hurt it and its feelings!”

“Oh, shut up! As if you knew anything about feelings!” Emma yelled. “You’re just simulating it, going through your damn apps. That was Daniel’s and my handshake that I accidently did and you just copied it as if it was nothing, as if it had no meaning.”

Emma grabbed her daypack from the floor. She sat down on a chair and held the object to herself like a shield. Across it and a little calmer now, she faced the PL600.

“Sometimes I daydreamed you were Daniel turned good again, but you aren’t, of course. And I want to scream that you betrayed me…”

Yes, I did.

“…but you didn’t. I see that now. You’re just a tool. A machine.”

Lesson learned, I suppose. Another feather in the lady’s cap, another one onto my pile of crap.

 “This didn’t end quite like planned”, Elaine admitted later, after the Phillips had left. “But the girl has overcome both her fear and her irrational attachment. She can start fresh now.”

Bitch, if you think this is over, you don’t know my kid! And I better not tell you…

“So, who gets the payment for you assisting in this case? The Science Center or Mr. Reed?”

“Gavin. The contract was signed when I was still in his possession.”

And that was all that remained to do: Elaine transferring the money to Gavin’s bank account. One more cache towards the caribbean vacation. It felt to Daniel as if he had just accepted blood money.

[dingoreviews]

Final Fantasy XIII Review

I feel like since this is my first(tm) review I should do some explaining on how this will work. But at the same time everyone and their mom posts reviews for things nowadays so I'm sure you get the picture. Feel free to skip all this and go to the end where I sum it up in one sentence. Don't worry. I won't mind.

...Still there? Neat. Unfortunately for you, you've probably made the worse of the two choices.

As a disclaimer, this rant is purely my opinion and completely subjective. No one is paying me to do this. If you dislike what I'm saying, leave an ask and I will sip my iced tea and laugh about it as I read it dramatically to my friends and loved ones. Anyway, let's continue with me shitting on ranting about the FFXIII series in detail. Potential spoilers, but these games are hella old so if you spoil yourself you can just eat a pint of ice cream and cry about it.

I like to consider myself a Square Enix/Final Fantasy fan. I tend to follow their actions and look forward to their games. Some of my favorite games are made by Square (Kingdom Hearts, Tomb Raider (the reboots) and FFX to name a few). That said, there’s a good chance I’m pretty biased in their favor.

But some of their most recent games have been kinda shaky for me, particularly FFXIII and XV. I’ll save FFXV for another time though.

So FFXIII (or 13 for the casuals) stars your typical cast of generic and angsty characters who, in classic JRPG fashion, have to kill god(tm) with the power of friendship and morals. It's got your pretty generic plot where the entire world/government is conspiring against you and your ragtag group has gotta stab everything between point A and point B. Did that sound like a criticism? I mean as cliche as that all is at that point it's basically Square's bread and butter for FF games so I'm not really worried about all that.

I mean, this is typically the part of the review where you go over the plot of the games right? Well maybe I would if I actually knew what it was. That brings me to my first rant point:

Where's the Damn Story?

There's been a trend in games lately where the devs leave little footnotes and data entries littered about that give you background and fully explain the lore of the world you're in. A lot of the time, that's typically reserved for less important information, like the time sheets for the town's police force or the color of their president's undergarments. You know, things that might be nice to know for people who are really into it, but not necessary to understand what is going on. FFXIII also decided to use this method of storytelling...

While on your epic hallway adventure, FFXIII gives you data entries about background and things when relevant. I, for one, made the assumption that, like many other games, I could save those until later as it wasn't necessary for understanding what was going on right now. BOY WAS I WRONG. Throughout the majority of the game the characters go on and on as if you're already well versed in their world. L'cie? Fal'cie? I mean if you're gonna make up words at least define them for me extremely clearly within the plot and storytelling itself.

Literally everything I understand about the plot of the first XIII game came from reading a wiki after the fact. And that says a lot considering I barely understand it even now. It really shows a failure on XIII's part to actually write a plot in a way that would be clear to anyone who played. Throwing data entries at me as a requirement for understanding the plot is EXTREMELY LAZY in my opinion.

Then there's the characters. Honestly, I didn't like any of them. I mean, I liked Fang and Vanilla (that was intentional) mostly, but they still felt kind of underwhelming. The characters had a lot of potential too. I feel like Lightning had genuine motives behind her actions, but she was as expressive as a spiky haired potato. I mean, at least her design wasn't overly emphasizing her tits and ass. I'm going to pretend that Lightning Returns doesn't exist yet because don't get me fucking started.

Then you get Snow who's just like look at me I'm the dumbass who believes I can save everyone herp. And Hope isn't any better with his momma's boy ass whining all the time. I guess there are character arcs but they only really happen by the weird plot point of hey if you don't fucking grow a pair this giant robot is gonna bury your ass so I'm not sure how much that counts.

Hallways for Days

I had already alluded to this, but the game is extremely linear.

Let me put that in perspective. I love FFX. For those of you that have played X, it is also extremely linear. But despite this, the game opens up in different ways that allow for side tracking and bonus stuff. It's not a whole ton until you get to the end, but it's something I don't mind about the game because there's so much more to it.

Meanwhile, FFXIII is so damn narrow that you could throw a hot dog down one of the hallways and it would get caught between the walls. They have all these lush, beautiful environments that you can only admire from a distance as the hallways the force you in make a sharp left turn away from it all. And then to top it off all those locations are one and done. You cannot go back to a majority of the game environments after completing them. Unless, of course, you restart the game. But why on earth would anyone subject themselves to another 30 hours of hallways anyway?

By the time the game opens up for you to roam and stretch your legs, you're basically in the final chapter. It's a question of "Do I fight the final boss or just grind until I die?" The game opens up so far in and so suddenly that, and this is no joke, when my boyfriend was playing the game he had such a shock from his comfortable, narrow hallways he got too overwhelmed to continue the game. That's a bad way to get introduced to the series, considering that was his first ever FF game.

Press X to Shaun Combat

Now my biggest gripe with XIII is the combat system. I saw combat system, but it’s more like a frustration magnet. So much of it feels less like a tactical system you have to actually control and think about and more like… pressing X until you win or die.

For those of you less familiar with the combat, your team takes actions by filling a turn bar with various commands based on their combat roles (or paradigms). Once they perform all their allotted tasks they then wait for the bar to refill again before taking more actions. This also applies to all of the enemies in the game.

Now, you’re probably saying Well if everyone is taking turns simultaneously based on any number of different timings then the battles must be pretty chaotic and fast paced. Yes, random citizen of the internet, they can be. Or, you know, you can press the Auto Battle option which the action cursor defaults to every time your characters have turns and it usually does the most optimal thing for that character based on their current paradigm.

That means we don’t have to think about anything at all! Let the game do it for us! Amazing! Everything I wanted in a movie video game! FFXIII successfully managed to take a combat system that is normally designed to create situations where players have to think strategically and remove almost all the thinking.

Honestly, that’s not what caused me agonizing frustration while playing the game. What destroyed my will to live most was the various area of effect (AoE) abilities that the characters and, more importantly, the enemies have. The most control you have for your characters’ positions is based entirely on their roles/ abilities used. Nothing stops your characters’ AIs from simply standing next to each other in a big pile. They might as well hold up a big sign that says Hit us with all your AoEs at once! I swear, if I had a dollar for every time my healer character walked right next to my tank character, who was pulling all the enemy aggro and died because they got hit by all the AoE, I’d have enough money to ship a package to Square Enix Japan with a video clip of Hope running directly into an attack directed at another character and a card with a big Why? written inside.

Conclusion

Yeah, you can probably tell that I wouldn’t recommend this game to anyone. I mean it’s pretty, the music is solid, and the internet believes that Lightning has great armpits. (As a gay man I have no comment on this.) But I just don’t think it’s very fun. Despite this, I did manage to finish the game and put a lot of time into some of the side quests. But in general, not a great game.

TL;DR

Battle is boring, plot is thrown at you unexplained, and it probably should have been a 48 hour movie. But hey, it’s pretty.