#tim rhymeless

[pyreflydust]

[pyreflyashes]

Huevember day 2: mist cloak!

[gachagachaart]

[dragongirl-tail]

i love this art soooo much

source post (afaik): https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/7060408 artist: sako (namocake) / さこ / https://twitter.com/bis_cotti / https://www.pixiv.net/en/users/289343

[thewapolls]

The WILD ARMS Hero Tourney: THIRD DIVISION - Match 13 of 14

[gogglebob]

Wild Arms 3 Part 41: The History of the World Part 1

Hope you’re all healthy and ready for February 13, Tobacco Day. I wanted to give my father homemade tobacco so I went into the mountains to pick tobacco leaves. But when I burned some leaves to check its scent, the smoke pattern from the fire was mistaken for a distress signal, and I was mistakenly rescued. Previously on Wild Arms 3: The gang detonated an Ark excavation site (on purpose this…

[littleeyesofpallas]

man im in a weird headspace recently... first The One headcanons, and now this... that's a lotta thoroughly dead content i'm giving brain space to

So, in the now tragically forgotten and buried jrpg franchise, Wild Arms, there was this whole fun gimmick where the wild west influence extended into other tangential americana as well. there's heavy borrowing from D&D, and horror films as well as westerns, and classic romanticized cowboy mythos and such... So in any case the games also had a few cross media spinoffs, including a TV anime and a shortlived manga.

There is a character in the manga named Jye-chi-ka[ジェチカ] which the brave, lone scanlator team, TurtleParadise --back in... what, 2010?-- romanized as Jessica. But I don't know if that's correct.

For context, the other two leads in the series are named Ma-ku-shi Re-mi-n'-to-n'[マキシ・レミントン] transliterated back into Maxi Remington, a clear reference to the Remington Arms Company, his sister, ko-ne-tto[コネット] taken to be something like Conette or Connett, and Gy[ギィ] who they called Guy, as in the French name, which I think was the correct choice. But as you can sort of see, apart from the Remington bit, the names don't appear to be overt references to anything else to help triangulate Jechika's name.

Jechika is btw a member of a minority group of native American analogs within the Wild Arms world, semi-consistent across different games, called the Baskar. Some other Baskar have been named things like...

Tim Rhymeless and Colette Mapleleaf in WA2; both rather innocuous names... And the family of Gallows, Shane, and Halle Carradine in WA3, much more overtly referencing the iconic scene of lawless frontier justice, Shane from the movie Shane, and Halley's comet plus actor David Carradine, probably tied to this thru the now infamous cult classic TV show, Kung Fu, where producer meddling outed Bruce Lee as lead in favor of having David Carradine play Kwai Chang Caine, a wandering shaolin monk in the wild west.

But this all, as you may be catching onto, also does not help establish clear patterns to help with...

Some random NPCs have names like Harold, Ellen, Cordell, and Laraina? Funny enough these I can sort of tie into references with a bit of guess work.

Cordell in particular stands out as a less common name to have picked here, and I want to assume it's a reference to Cordell Walker, Chuck Norris' star character in Walker Texas Ranger.

In the context of wild west icons, legendary outlaw, Ellen Liddy "Cattle Kate" Watson is the first to come to mind.

I have no idea what to make of Harold... Harold Gould? Semi-famous character actor in TV and film of the 60s-70s? He hardly seems reference worthy, he didn't exactly have a lot of standout roles... Harold McCracken? Sort of famous painter of pseudo-historical wild west scenes? Are those names a random Japanese game dev would have really been able to stumble into in the 2000s? It's the name "Harold" it could be practicallyanyone...

And technically "Laraina"'s name is actually written ri-re-i-na[リレイナ] so that one could just be a localization flub. Actually, it appears to be how they japanized the name of Wynona Rider's character in the 1994 movie, Reality Bites; the character's name is Lelaina Pierce. It's far from being a western but it does take place in Texas, for a Japanese creator maybe that's cowboy adjacent enough?)

So I dunno... Maybe it is Jessica and it's just a weird choice of names because the manga author doesnt have access to the core creative team's specific sensibilities. Maybe it doesn't matter because the core team's sensibilities are also unstable. And if anything, it feels vaguely slavic to me? Like, the way those phonetics roll off the tongue to me sounds like it ought to be something like Tetscheka? Dzhetgya?? Czeschka(like the painter)??? But why would anyone have named a native american analog in some sort of pseudo-slovenian?

I realize this is a cold case. And one without any real answers. But it's one of those things that drives me nuts when I look up somethings simple like, "What were those characters' names again?" and then find myself having wasted the morning on a wild goose chase and now i'm late for work...

[darkspeardrifter]

Aesthetics of Filgaia - Wild ARMs 2 - Opening 1

[heartbxnd-blog]

@thetreeofbeginning has sent: Riley and Morty and Matsuba and Aaron for the kid meme because yes

If they had a kid meme         [Accepting, mutuals]

Aaron/Matsuba

Name: Kin

Gender: Male

General Appearance: Slanky, quite tall compared to others around his age.

Personality: A smartass, sassy, someone who definetely knows how to use his words in order to get his way/what he wants out of people.

Special Talents: Although not having any special abilities like Matsuba and Aaron, the boy has showed how agile/quick on his feet he can be.

Who they like better: Aaron

Who they take after more: Matsuba

Personal Head canon: Kin had to come from the streets- likely from Rota. Probably from a group of bandits/thugs, his plan was to just steal something from Aaron (after all knights must have something worth of a few coins)- however Matsuba foiled every attempt the boy tried he also never fell for any of his attempts to gain sympathy.

Face Claim: Umewakamaru (young) from the anime Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan.

Morty/Riley

Name: Gavyn

Gender: Male

General Appearance: His most distinct feature are his bright vibrant blue eyes- which make him stand out from the crowd, he has a small stature- giving him a more feminine look/appearance.

Personality: Gavyn is quiet, observant- not really shy nor socially awkward. He just prefers to not be the center of attention. He is extremely hard worker and faithful to those close to him.

Special Talents: He is an aura user- this is why Riley took him under his wing, there could be other reasons but this is the big main one for him.

Who they like better: Riley

Who they take after more: Riley

Personal Head canon: Morty was strongly against Riley adopting Gavyn, he unlike RIley- has never had any desire in becoming a parent at all. Despite that, Morty would never do any harm to Gavyn- out of his loyalty to Riley. He does try to help him raise the kid, but it is clear Riley is better off raising/training Gavyn on his own.

Face Claim: Tim Rhymeless from the video game Wild Arms 2.

[dungeonecologist]

WILD ARMS 2 - Hidden Trial Arena

It’s time for MUH BOI TIM!!! (look at his perfect precious beautiful dumb face.  it was made for suffering) I hadn’t mentioned them before, as they aren’t really a part of the plot, but back in Ashley’s prologue, the boy we rescued was named Tony.  Technically you can name him anything, but the default name is a throwback to the original Wild Arms, where the blue haired hero boy, Rudy Roughnight, rescues a boy named Tony in his prologue too.  But on a more subtle level, the reference it twofold:

See, when you get back to town and meet Tony’s orphan friends, one is another faceless NPC named Scott, and the other is Tim Rhymeless, the character we’re in this dungeon to recruit.  But the thing is, Tony and Scott aren’t actually entirely faceless.  As NPCs they don’t have character portraits, but they did get their own character art in the core guides and databooks, which, granted, don’t get to see a lot of circulation.  BUT...

Sorry these posts have gotten a lot longer than I really expected them to be, so from now on (and retroactively) I’m gonna throw some preview cuts in here to help make them a little less cumbersome...  Anyhow, resume your viewing!

Their full names aren’t actually mentioned in-game anywhere, but they are in fact listed on their profile pages in the art book as Tony Stark and Scott Summers.  And if you take a second look at their outfits, knowing that, the references become very clear.  It might help to know, but this game actually has a huge overarching theme of heroism, which I’m not going to get into because that is a slippery slope and I could write an essay on it, so the fact that we have two super hero references just loitering about in the background is super appropriate.  Oddly though, the game seems to take more cues from DC’s Watchmen comic than anything Marvel had put out at the time.

Anyway, we have a flying ship, and access to new places on the map.  We find a suspiciously lush forest in some remote corner and trudge off into the wilderness to find a the village where Tim’s late mother came from.  Right off the bat, I love this world building, because by now we’ve seen the tiny patch of grass that the first Live Reflector was hidden in, and we’ve seen the large forest surrounding Sylvaland Castle --SYLVA LAND: “Forest Land”--  But compared the the kingdom known and named for it’s greenery, these woods dwarf it by far.  And in a world we know to be withering, this gives a sense of great importance.

Real quick we bump into two enemies in this deep forest: The Tabanga, taken from the 1957 horror film, From Hell it Came, in which the Tabanga is the spirit of a dead prince, hexed by a witch doctor, brought back to life to exact revenge, AND THEN also experimented on with nuclear radiation.  He becomes an unstoppable tree man with the knife that killed him still lodged in his chest.  The one attack I’ve ever seen it use deals mutual damage with the target and kills itself.

The second monster in these jungles are Owl Bears, perhaps the most iconic of Dungeons & Dragons monsters.  Almost entirely original to D&D, they were based on Chinese bootleg toys of Japanese toku monsters, erroneously packaged and sold as “prehistoric animals” in the 1970s.  This series of enigmatic creatures would become the basis for a number of D&D monsters, including the Rust Monster, and the Bulette, with their lore spun from whole clothe for the game.  The look has thankfully been updated over the years to better reflect its name, and the Wild Arms 2 version is a pretty cut and dry representation.  The basic attack animation even uses the Owl Bear’s iconic bearhug and peck combo.

Also the Balloons are back?  I don’t know why.  As best I can tell they aren’t any stronger either.  Guess the area just needed an obligatory 3rd enemy type?  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anyway, we find that Tim is the chosen one of Baskar faith, and as such must undergo sacred rites.  In Wild Arms, the Baskar are generally Native American archetypes in one form or another.  In the original game, they were a little more on the nose; living in teepees in the desert and pining for the power of the Guardians, lost with the weakening of the planet and of nature.  They get a more hodgepodge treatment here, with a mix of European Pagan iconography, but little hints of the Native American influence, and even a few echos of Peruvian Incan influences.

Tim and party hike off into the woods to find the dungeon where he’ll undergo his trial, and we get a really neat host of enemies...

Most common here are the Fairylights, which is a peculiar round about reference but one with some meat.  They’re basically just fairies, but the name refers to the term for what Americans generally just call “christmas lights.” Specifically they got the name from their use in the 1882 opening of the Sullivan & Gilbert opera, Iolanthe.  The production opened at the Savoy theatre, the first opera house to utilize electric and not gas lighting; to take advantage of this, the fairies featured in the story appear with costumes wreathed in strings of small electric lights.

Thematically they work as signifiers of some otherworldly and ethereal magic force, which is to say the will of the Guardians of Filgaia.  They use Light magic primarily, which makes sense: a spell called Ray Xamber, which I think is itself a kind of reference to the original Wild Arms, where the Demon, Ziekfried wields a weapon called the Glumzamber.  In either case the corruption is of the word “Saber.”

We also run into the caterpillar-like Squirm.  The name is taken from the 1976 horror film about flesh eating worms attacking an American fishing town in the deep south.  The visual appearance however seems to have been lifted largely from Godzilla lore.  Mothra herself, as the star of her own 1961 kaiju film, but perhaps better known as a returning Godzilla ally and co-star, is always heralded by two small fairie women, but less used is the villain Battra, from the 1992 Godzilla vs Mothra movie.  Battra is basically just an evil Mothra, complete with his own larva stage, which you can see the similarities to above.

What’s neat here is that it makes sense on a basic in-world logic of the trial grounds being overrun by nature (as following monsters will really hammer home) but also it’s symbolic of an impending rebirth.  Butterflies are pretty universally seen as symbols of change and transition and growth, which Tim is very much on the cusp of here as he embraces his apparent destiny as the chosen one.

Also, although a bit of a stretch, but Battra’s lore in the Godzilla universe is that, like Mothra, he exists to protect the planet Earth, but specifically seeks to do so by wiping out mankind, which he sees as the core cause of the Earth’s plight; and Tim is trying to fulfill his destiny as the chosen one in order to save the planet, but specifically the human race.

Rarer here is the Raflessia, named after one of two commonly known breeds of  “corpse flower,” so named for the smell of rotting meat they produce to attract bugs.  I don’t know why but Japan has some weird fascination with the Raflessia, as I seem to see it pop up in JRPGs all the time in some form or another.  If you hadn’t guessed, it’s the basis of Gloom and Vileplume, in Pokemon.

We also have a miniboss that goes hand in hand with Raflessia: The Compound Plant Monster, Reguleus.  I’ll be honest, I don’t get what this name is supposed to be.*  It’s not helped by having 3 Rs to flip-flop around with Ls to check for mis-romanizations, but the katakana doesn’t give any leads either.  I even went through lists of D&D monsters and plant based movie monsters to see if anything matching the vague phonetic patterns of the name caught my eye, but nothing.  In any case, what I like is how it and Raflessia contribute to the idea of an ancient structure lost deep in the jungle and overgrown with plants, and the will of nature manifest in them. 

*Tiny note: the closest thing I know of is that the star Alpha Leonis, the brightest star in the constellation Leo, is also named Regulus.  Phonetically it’s pretty close but not quite withing range, but beyond that it doesn’t seem to have any relevancy in this context.

And finally the really bizarre boss monster, The Transforming Ninja Monster, Gehenna Neros.  I don’t know what a ninja has to do with this dungeon.  I don’t know what this design has to do with ninja.  I don’t know what this design has to do with this name.  It’s an odd one.  There is one thing that makes some clear sense here: The boss fight gives us/Tim the Combine ability, which is our summon in Wild Arms 2, and to put emphasis on it’s power, it is effectively the best way to win this fight, as any damaging Guardian summon will effectively end the fight.  This is specifically because the ninja monster can create a duplicate, which in turn will summon another duplicate if it is ever left alone on the field.  So a ninja that uses clones makes sense, the rest less so...

The name is itself two disparate references; One to Gehenna and the Valley of Hinnom in Jersualem, and of biblical note, and the other is probably a reference to Nero, notorious emperor of Rome.

Gehenna is described variously in Hebrew scripture in relation to judgement, punishment, and apparent murder of what amount to unworthy children.  It is also once referred to as the ‘burning place.”  In Christian text is has frequently been conflated with and outright mistranslated as some variation of Hell.  This is actually all surprisingly relevant...

Nero is the Roman emperor perhaps best known for the burning of Rome,  Historically it’s very unlikely he had any hand in causing the fires, but by all accounts he seemed to have been wholly invested in letting the various districts go unassisted during the blaze, AND he very tactlessly built himself a mansion in the space he repossessed once the rubble was cleared.  He also blamed it on the Christian cult present in Rome at the time, citing their fixation on Revelation and judgement, and subsequent;y already bad reputation as a doomsday cult.  He was also responsible for the feeding of the Christians to lions in the wake of the burning of Rome.

So, together the name Gehenna Neros, suggests a Nero-like figure presiding over a Gehenna-like place; a person known to persecute, punish, and burn in a place known for judgement and burning of children.  Effectively Gehenna Neros is, without any actual explanation of this fact on part of the writers, a perfectly built nemesis to Tim in this dungeon.  He represents everything that Tim faces here: judgments of worthiness, child sacrifice, hell fire, and apocalyptic destruction of civilization...  It’s a weirdly clever monster to have built considering no attention is drawn to the fact.

[pyreflydust]

[pyreflyashes]

[the-porcupine]

[thewapolls]

TOURNAMENT OF HEROES - DIVISION 3 PRELIMINARIES ROUND 1 (OF 2)

1. Jude Maverick -vs- Levin Brenton

2. Tim Rhymeless -vs- Alfred Schroedinger

3. Hanpan -vs- Shady Thousand

4. Luceid -vs- Tony(?)

5. Dean Stark -vs- Asgard

6. Ruka Hetfield -vs- Emma Hetfield

7. Brad Evans -vs- Ragnar Blitz Lebrett

8. Loretta Oratorio -vs- Mercedes Rosenberg

Polls open until May 28th

First batch of adjusted timeline polls. You get 3 days. Make'm count!

[edit]:oh dang i did not expect to lose some of these characters so early in the tournament. in a positively stunning last minute upset, Tim has pulled it into a tie at the absolute last second, forcing me to withdraw my vote as a tie breaker. Tim advances to the next round!

[gogglebob]

Wild Arms 3 Part 04: Gallows Humor

Wild Arms 3 Part 04: Gallows Humor

or Staring at the Rude Boy This is initially being posted on May 16, Fortune Telling Day. “Read people’s minds and tell them what they want to hear.” Those are the words of a famous fortune teller… Sounds like a scam to me. Previously on Wild Arms 3: Clive protected a town against an avian enemy that was filled with poison. Please don’t lick its corpse, kiddies! And now we have our final…

[littleeyesofpallas]

Wild Arms 2nd Ignition (1999)