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consummate-deviant · 5 years ago

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Why I Think Entrapdak is Pretty Neat

Hello! How’s the family? Cat treating you okay? Isn’t autumn just...like… the best? Anyway, so, my Hordak thing turned out to be kinda popular. I’m flattered, really! If there are people out there willing to reward me writing stuff with positive attention, then I’ll just have to write more stuff. I mentioned back then that I had a similar write-up about Entrapdak, as a ship… and there seemed to be a little bit of interest in hearing my thoughts on the subject. So, here ya go! I’m Lancer, by the by. Not a lot to me. I’m a guy who likes things, and who enjoys articulating why I like things. I don’t really do it for any particular reason. I’m not trying to pwn haters or convert nonbelievers… As you may recall, though you might have missed it (I tend to be very lowkey and subtle about it), I’m not your dad and have no interest in the position… unless it pays. I just feel like the internet doesn’t have enough positivity, and the best way to remedy that is to produce some of my own.

As fate would have it, I like Entrapdak. A lot. I don’t ship often... a relationship has to really sync with me on a profound level to make me invested enough in it to want to write about it, but this one did it. Now, I’m not really promising originality here. As someone who explores the tag frequently, I know that plenty have expressed feelings I’m going to share with you here, many of whom did so better than I ever could, but sometimes you want to share your perspective, even if others whose opinions mirror yours have done so in the past, y’know? It’s a human thing! The relationship is a little… polarizing with people, though, I’ve noticed. A lot of people hate it, and have various reasons for doing so. Again, I ain’t here to convert you if you feel that way, but I did feel like the best way to kick things off would be to look at some of the major reasons other people tend to react to the ship like it were horseradish on a hotdog, and why those reasons don’t really bother me. A part that I, in my infinite wit and adorned in my clever pants, have dubbed:

Part 1: Entrapdak- Why I don’t hate it

***EXAMPLE THE FIRST: “HORDAK, THE AGED”***

By now it’s fairly well known that Entrapta is somewhere in the range of her late 20s to her early 30s. Now a few people refuse to accept this, citing her behavior as childish and accusing the creators of lying. I’m not really going to engage with that perspective. Hordak and Entrapta have appeared together in creator works and concept art dating back to 2017. Their interactions were intended to be a part of the show from the early stages of its creation. If you have so little faith in Noelle that you believe she planned for her story to have a romantic-coded relationship between an adult and a minor… I don’t know what I can even tell you.

Rather, the perspective that interests me comes from people who accept Entrapta being in the stated age range, but who still find themselves repulsed by the relationship on grounds of age. ‘She’s an adult, sure, but how old is Hordak? He could be in his fifties or sixties, or even be hundreds of years old.’ This point of view is at least interesting to think about, so I reckon I can share why this deal-breaker for some doesn’t really bother me.

To begin, assigning human ages, and the stigmas thereof, to an alien bat clone just feels strange to me. The Horde doesn’t seem like the type of place to want to waste resources on alien bat clone daycare... was Hordak born as an infant, or was he artificially developed to his current age? If it’s the later, do we consider him 0 years old at the moment of his birth, or already an adult? We don’t have a timescale provided to accurately determine his age, so investing too heavily in trying to learn it seems somewhat tedious and a lotofwhat pointless.

If we do, though, my next question is: what is the element of an age gap that makes it inappropriate? Now, that’s a personal question, of course. Morality isn’t something that really lends itself to objective declarations, but there are a few answers you can offer. ‘Morality’ isn’t really the operative word here anyway... since it has more to do with taste, though this particular taste does come from what you believe… Y’know, it just occurred to me, but… People who believe that their taste in ships makes them morally superior, and that ships they dislike are supported by moral degenerates, seem like people who just aren’t a lot of fun to be around or think about… but that’s a digression, I’ll refocus my thought-lazer.

For me, with age gaps, it comes down to two things:

1.) Both parties being on the same side of the child/adult divide- I should hope this one sounds reasonable, right? The ships that really powdered sugar my poptart are the ones that feel like equal partnerships, and relationships that try to cross this line tend to not be especially equal.

2.) What stage in their lives they’re at- It’s difficult for even a wizard of self expression like myself to state plainly, so let me give an example: If I saw a 25 year old dating a 50 year old, the 25-year age difference isn’t so much what makes it off-putting, but rather what those 25 years represent in this circumstance. At age 25, people are still struggling to find themselves. They’re adjusting to independence, gaining an identity, maybe finally finding an entryway into a career path that suits them. By 50, a person is already established. They likely have a career, they have a firm grasp on who they are as a person and what they want to be, and they almost certainly have a greater degree of financial stability. Thus, if they enter a relationship, which is supposed to be equal, it doesn’t feel that way. One side has a stronger position than the other, and over time that could become power they use to sway and control the other.

I don’t see Hordak as being in a more advanced stage of his life than Entrapta. They seem to be at about the same place when it comes to self actualization. In fact, Hordak is a bit more arrested in his development than Entrapta is, simply because he’s never really thought to question what would make him happy or why. Hordak rules the Horde, which Entrapta is a part of… which could lead to an imbalance, if Entrapta, like, could be bothered to give even the slightest toss of a salad about status or promotion, but she doesn’t. Neither of them holds higher ground over the other in a way that’s significant to the two of them. In terms of life stage, they’re perfectly equal. The fact that Hordak might be physically older than her by some unspecified amount is, by itself, completely arbitrary and meaningless.

*** EXAMPLE THE SECOND: ‘ENTRAPTA, THE MANIPULATED’***

A second, rarer discussion point for those who are unfond of the ship is that it’s unhealthy, on the grounds that Hordak is manipulating Entrapta. Taking advantage of her naivete to coerce her into aiding the forces of darkness despite not caring for her at all. Now, as I mentioned above, I ain’t writing this to change anyone’s mind. If you’re reading this, and this is a viewpoint you hold as valid, do what makes you happy, homie. That said, the issue I ran into when I tried to think of why this perspective didn’t bother me was a vexing one. See, I like to fancy myself an empathetic dude. I try really hard to consider other people’s perspectives when I have a disagreement, and avoid judging anyone too harshly if I don’t know their full circumstance… but even with all that alleged empathy at my disposal… this hot take about Entrapdak is… kinda completely incomprehensible to me? Like, I have no idea how anyone could have seen the interactions between the two and draw this conclusion?

Part of it has to do with how Entrapta is written. She’s both ADHD-coded and Autistic-coded, and there’s a tendency to perceive the behaviors of both those groups of people as childish. People who see that ‘childishness’ extrapolate it further to a general innocence/stupidity, and assume the character in question lacks the faculties to engage with other people evenly.

Look, I don’t have ADHD, but I am super, duper autistic. Having lived with myself for a lifetime, let me just say, I kind of get why this happens. We get extremely focused on our hobbies, we’re bad at reading social nuance, we have very simplistic body language, we tend to express our emotions in a very blunt and straightforward manner… I get that, for most neurotypical people, the only other group they ever encounter who shares these traits are children, and thus they tend to subconsciously connect the two. I understand why it happens, even if I do find it awkward and condescending.

…but y’all are underestimating Entrapta. She’s not helping the horde because she’s helpless and being manipulated. She’s helping them because she has no moral compass to speak of, and will eagerly assist with any scientific endeavor she finds interesting, without care for its ultimate application. In season 1, she knew well in advance the damage her actions would have on the world, and followed through with them anyway. In season 2, she happily assisted in the creation of a portal, knowing full-well that its opening would invite a colonialist military force into the vicinity of her home, and only withdrew her support for the project… hesitantly… when it became clearly evident that activating it would eradicate all life on the planet. At no point is she ever acting while the applications of her actions are being hidden from her by Hordak. She’s not an innocent child.

The thing is, though, I agree that Entrapta would be incredibly easy to manipulate… if someone knew what buttons to push. She is very self conscious of how difficult it is for her to form lasting emotional bonds with other people. She tends to blame herself when she feels she’s been abandoned by others, and feels that her inability make friends is a sign that she’s a defective failure. If someone wanted to manipulate her into doing something she didn’t want to do, they would probably find success if they offered her friendship and then fed into that self loathing, emotionally abusing her by implying that she was indeed a failure, and would be abandoned again if she didn’t obey. That is totally something someone could do to her, and I would absolutely not enjoy any ship between her and such a person. Good thing Hordak… y’know… did literally the opposite of that.

***EXAMPLE THE THIRD- “ENTRAPDAK, THE PLATONIC”***

A nice short one to balance out the longer examples above. Quite a few people just deny that there are romantic implications behind their interactions, and see them as a friendship instead. I do disagree with this assessment, but honestly, even if it were true, this would still be my favorite relationship in the show.

Something that has always boggled me about people on the internet is their tendency to treat friendship like some ‘equal but opposite’ force to romance… a status independent of a romantic relationship rather than literally the foundation upon which all successful romantic relationships are built. Genuine friendship is a beautiful, underrated thing, and acting as though the bond of friendship is inherently less worthy of appreciation than romance is silly.

So… yeah… platonic Entrapdak… I disagree, but even if you’re right and I’m wrong in the end… I’ll be pretty okay with that, too. Movin’ on.

***EXAMPLE THE FOURTH: ‘HORDAK, THE IRREDEEMABLE’***

For the last dealbreaker I want to consider today, I figured I’d bring one up that’s a lot like the platonic argument, in my eyes: that an evil guy like Hordak can’t change his ways, even with the power of love. Thus, the relationship is bust, because what’s the point of of a villain x heroine ship, if not to redeem the villain?

...

So, recently I wrote this whole big thing about Hordak, where I argued in favor of his redemption, and why I felt like that was where the story is going… I stand by the opinions expressed there, but I’d like to ask any who read that to push it out of their mind for now. Hordak’s redemptive potential is largely irrelevant to my feelings about this ship. When it comes to entrapdak, when confronted by the possibility that Hordak may remain a villain, my reaction is the most intense and passionate of shrugs.

...I just don’t care.

There’s a tendency to assume that redemption is the aim of a villain ship, and I suppose I can see why that is. There’s a bit of a stereotype for female fantasies where they fix a broken man with the power of their love, and when people ship villains, that’s probably the first assumption an outsider will make as to why. I cannot speak for others, but that’s just not a factor in the appeal of their relationship for me.

When you allow yourself to be vulnerable in front of another person, you open yourself up to the risk of being completely devastated by them. When you show vulnerability to another person, and they accept that side of you, and express vulnerability of their own, you establish a genuine connection with that person, and those connections are kiiiinda one of the most important elements of the human experience.

That Hordak was a villain who did terrible things was always kinda aside from the point of what really makes Entrapta and Hordak such a bewitching pairing for me. It was always the serendipity of two people who privately believe they’re alone in the world realizing they resonate with one another in a meaningful way. Resonance is the appeal of Entrapdak, not redemption.

I tend to hope for Hordak’s redemption, I won’t lie, and I do think it’s likely, but I don’t think it’ll be love that redeems him, nor would I want it to be… not entirely. I like seeing flawed, morally dark/gray characters overcome the obstacles that deny them self actualization, and watching them grow as a result.

That’s got nothing to do with him and Entrapta, though. Whether the story ends with the pair of them riding into the sunset to collect data and invent shit, or with the pair of them leading the Horde in the name of galactic conquest and terror… I’m down with it either way, dude. In the context of the ship, I care that Hordak is an evil overlord… about as much as Entrapta does.

However, pseudo-responding to naysayers is a bit negative for my tastes. I prefer to focus on the positive in life, like the smell of soil and rain on a crisp autumn morning. I… I’m in a very fall mood, okay? Sue me. Y’know what else I like, though? Entrapdak. Lemme wax poetic for a bit longer, and I’ll tell ya why this ship is, like, the peanut butter on my blueberry pancakes.

Part 2: Entrapdak- Why I love it

So, uh… If brevity is the soul of wit, I may be something of an idiot. I’ve made my peace with that, of course, I’m just sayin’: I’m many things, but I’m not pithy. If someone were to put a gun to my head, though, and demand that I describe the shipping aesthetic I love the most in life in a single sentence… I would probably respond with this:

My favorite ships are ones in which awkward, lonely people bond over a shared fondness of nerdy hobbies.

Now, that sounds super narrow, and it totally is… I don’t get new OTPs very often… but hearing that, I imagine you can see why Entrapta and Hordak immediately appealed to me. It goes a bit deeper, though.

The bonds between people are a major part of the story of She-ra. We see how characters are changed, positively or negatively, by the connection they share with other characters. Just like in real life, these connections are a mixed bag; some of them are positive, and some are negative. Some characters, like Hordak and Catra, resonate strongly with one another, but the resonance is a negative force in their lives, which draws them deeper into darkness, and for many of the characters in the show, their character journeys are about breaking free of such toxic relationships and forming healthy bonds.

The bond between Entrapta and Hordak is unique among all bonds in the show though, in that it is the only one that isn’t mixed. It is an unambiguous positive influence on both of them. Let’s break it down a little bit.

***ENTRAPTA***

Entrapta, at first, seems like the kind of person who isn’t super connected to other people. At the princess prom, she mentions that she finds observing the relationships of others far more fascinating than forging relationships of her own, and she spends much of the early seasons working alone with her robots, buried in whichever task happens to have her interest in that particular moment.

Later seasons gradually tear this facade away, though, and reveal a fairly tragic truth hidden behind it. I mentioned above that she internalizes her failures to form lasting bonds with other people, and is genuinely distraught about it. When she’s exiled to Beast Island, her frustration at her inability to make friends was the driving force that chained her there, even more so than her love of technology and invention. It becomes clear that, to some degree, she buries herself in her work to escape her feelings of inadequacy.

This is a relatable and sad thing to realize about a character, but it also has the unpleasant effect of making events that were played for laughs earlier in the show somewhat tragic in hindsight. Seeing the way she interacted with the Princess Alliance, you could see how she would have come to a very soul-crushing misunderstanding: That, among other people, she was someone whose presence was… tolerated- at times even appreciated- but never seemed to be enjoyed by anyone. She was the friend everyone sought out when they needed her help, then forgot about.

This wasn’t the case, of course, and clarifying her value to the group was what ultimately helped her escape the vines in season four, but from her perspective that was how it appeared, and likely how all her previous interactions with other people had gone before that. Some people complained about how easily Entrapta was able to believe that the princesses had left her behind, but it’s the same reason Hordak was so easily able to believe that Entrapta had betrayed him: In the eyes of someone who hates themselves, it’s only a matter of time before others abandon them.

That said, it also goes to show why Hordak became so special to her. For the first time in her life, she had a friend who joined her in her workspace, instead of leaving her to a task after giving it to her. Someone able to converse equally with her about subjects she was interested in. The elements of herself that made it so difficult to draw closer to others were the very same elements that caused her to get so close to him. Her intelligence and hyper-focus upon science made her the intellectual peer of a space-faring alien, her lack of awareness of social subtext helped her to see beyond the barriers he put up to keep other people away, and her past experience with failure and rejection helped her to empathize with his pain.

It’s perfectly pleasant to find someone who accepts you and enjoys your company despite not understanding the idiosyncratic elements of your personality, but that pales in comparison to how it feels to find someone who accepts you precisely because they understand those elements.

***Hordak***

Hordak didn’t really have ‘peers’, per se, for most of his life. We don’t know the level of autonomy the average clone has in the Horde… but I feel comfortable assuming that the level isn’t very high. Thus, his circumstance differs quite a bit from Entrapta, in that, rather than trying to form bonds with others, and feeling like he failed, for much of his life he never had the chance to try to form them in the first place.

He is, at first, deeply dismissive of the people of Etheria, whom he regards as primitives who are beneath his acknowledgment. Much of this, as with much of everything that dictates how he treats others, is born of projection… dude has some pretty major self-loathing issues… but regardless of cause, it results in a kind of self-imposed isolation.

Unlike Entrapta, who knew, on some level, that her lack of ability to bond with others troubled her, Hordak kept most of his emotions bottled up... Locked so deeply inside him that not even he really bothered to try to understand them. That was where her disposition and his meshed perfectly for him. Because Entrapta was defined by her curiosity, and her lackluster awareness of his attempts to keep her at bay, she was able to metaphorically crack him open, forcing him to vocalize and confront his own motivations.

Sometimes you need someone to just… like... grab you with their hair, push you up against a vat, and demand you tell them everything, man.

I’ve already discussed Hordak fairly extensively in my first blog blurb thingy, and while I repeat myself by accident quite frequently, I’m loathe to repeat myself on purpose. I just wanted to take the opportunity to marvel at how well their personalities fit together. Perhaps I’m just high on this feeling: I’ve never actually shipped something a creator so clearly intended to be there, before!

*** In Conclusion***

We’re all born imperfect, and we’ll all die imperfect. Our imperfections are similar, but never uniform. Each of us bears jagged cuts and missing sections of many shapes and sizes. Humans are social creatures, and it’s in our nature to constantly seek one another out. We keep trying to find people who are strong where we are weak; someone whose missing sections happen to lie in a pattern compatible with our own.

We’ll resonate with many in our lifetime. Sometimes, the melody will be harmonious, and guide all involved higher and higher into the light of self actualization. Other times the sound will be discordant, and pull us down into self destruction. Sadly, from our perspective in the middle, it will always be difficult to tell which is which.

I love the relationship between Entrapta and Hordak because it’s a dynamic that elevates both of them. Not in a moral sense, but in a personal one. In a series defined by toxic and uneven relationships that wear others down and tear them apart, these two have a dynamic that shelters and reinforces them. Giving them an opportunity to be glad they were born the way they were, instead of cursing their misfortune.

It’s the kind of relationship that makes me muse about how imperfection really is beautiful. It’s because we’re imperfect that we never stop trying to harmonize with other people, and if there’s one theme I can’t help but feel that the show itself is building toward, it’s this: Two in harmony surpass one in perfection.

*** So hey! Thanks for reading all of that! Sorry if it was a bit of a mess. Saying nothing with a great deal of words is a talent of mine, but I really do love these guys, and if you love ‘em too, don’t let anyone grind you down over it!

Let me know if you enjoyed my work, though! If so, I’ll be happy to share my thoughts on other things, since I’ll be stuck with this series on my brain until I see how my new obsession plays out. In the meantime take care of yourselves! If you do heavy lifting, make sure to do so with your knees, not your back. Tell someone who makes your day a little brighter how much you appreciate them. Then, take some time to savor the greatest of all winter beverages: hot apple cider.

#entrapdak #liking things #Entrapta #hordak #you try killing 8 hours at this job

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c-is-for-circinate · 6 years ago

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An M9 major arc breakdown: part 1

Arc 1: Who the fuck are you? (I think we might be mercenaries??): episodes 1-25

I was going to do a nice gloss over what I see as the four major arcs of the Mighty Nein story so far in one post, and then I realized that I am (*ahem*) long-winded, we’ll say. And there’s a lot to be said!

Instead, a separate post for each arc, why not. [I will stick links to parts 2-4 here when they’re written and posted!]

So: arc 1. Covering 24 episodes and, according to critrole stats, about 35 in-game days, this arc manages to be both one of the longest and one of the shortest. It covers levels 2-5, and everything from the first meeting in Trostenwald all the way through leaving Hupperdook. It’s a lot! And I thought a lot about trying to split it up, but the more I looked for a breaking point in these episodes, the more every possible division felt really arbitrary, and reinforced the idea that this chunk of episodes has the same theme at the center all the way through.

The arc of these episodes is specifically the progression of the Mighty Nein from not being a thing at all to maybe, sort of, somehow being a thing. It’s full of great character moments, and lays the groundwork for, I suspect, pretty much every important thing to happen throughout the entire campaign, (with the possible exception of some of Caduceus’s stuff, but even then, I have suspicions), because Matt is Good At His Shit. It’s also super interesting in terms of the entire show, because even though it establishes everything, the unsteady conclusion it seems to reach about who the M9 might be or might become gets almost completely (seemingly) thrown out the window by the very next arc--but more about that in the next arc’s post.

In this arc I think we need to take just a moment to get meta in terms of players vs characters, because this is the one part of the story so far where that division is actually, actively important. There’s two big reasons for that. One, the players are still learning who their own characters are, even as the characters are learning each other. Two, there is one single, central, and encompassingly important fact that the players all know that the characters don’t, and resolving that disconnect shapes the tone of this entire arc.

The members of the Mighty Nein are going to be together for a very long and very epic journey. It��s a fact. Even if individual characters die or choose to leave, the group itself is destined for something big, because everybody at that table has every intention of playing straight through to level 20 all over again. What’s more, everybody at that table is already family in nearly every real-life way that matters. The audience knows that this group is going to be something special, expects them to become family in their own right before they’ve even met. The DM knows. The world itself probably knows, in-game--a group of strangers meet in Trostenwald and somewhere on her celestial plane, the Raven Queen is probably watching a bunch of fate-threads tangle together and make a mess of her pretty fate tapestry all over again. The only people who don’t know how meaningful this group is going to be, to the world or to its own members, are the characters themselves.

And that leads to a fascinating dynamic, where these characters run into each other in Trostenwald, and then stay together for reasons even they can’t necessarily fully explain. They never sit down and say, “okay, let’s be mercenaries together”--they get kicked out of Trostenwald and say, “I guess let’s go to Zadash together, maybe?”, and then they just...never break up. The number one question for the whole first chunk of this arc is, “Why am I even with these assholes?” Sure, the easy answer is, “because the players have decided the characters are going to be,” but that’s boring and kind of besides the point. Yes the players have decided that the characters are going to be together--and that creates a story where the characters and the players both have to figure out why as they go along.

The way this plays out is different for each character, but there are some commonalities:

Caleb and Nott both have long-term goals, and even though neither of them knows it at first, they both have the same long-term goal: somehow get back to the way the world used to be. The trouble is, this is a really distant goal for both of them, something that requires the kind of intense magic they don’t understand and barely even believe in. Their short-term goals are a much more basic ‘survive and also keep this other person alive long enough to figure out how to achieve that long-term goal’, and that’s what they say they’ve signed up with the rest of the group for. It’s a relatively simple answer that ends up getting ever more complicated in reality.

Caleb and Nott’s relationships with the group actually parallel each other a lot at this early stage, and it isn’t just because they come as a prepackaged duo. Both of their long-term goals have an undercurrent of desperate loneliness that they’ve each been living with since their lives fell apart. In theory, getting what they’re after will help fix that one way or another--but in the mean time, suddenly they’re surrounded by people, and they can’t help but care. They just also don’t trust the rest of the group, because how do you trust people at all, ever? Nobody’s been particularly kind to either of them since everything went to shit, and if the universe had any kindness to begin with it never would’ve happened in the first place. But there’s this undercurrent of...maybe, if they learned to love and trust this group, they’d find out they don’t need what they’re trying to get to begin with, because they’ve already got the secure love and acceptance they’re really craving. Maybe. Certainly neither of them have started to figure that out yet. They can barely admit to liking their compatriots at all.

What’s even more tricky is that neither of them actually have much of a plan for getting from their short-term survival goals towards their long-term goals. Nott literally doesn’t know how Caleb could turn her back into a halfling--she just has faith that he can, if he gets powerful enough, and it leads to things like the stolen letter for an academy Caleb would not set foot in again for all the love or money in the world. Caleb is so bad at bridging the gap between what’s in front of him in this world right now, and the big nebulous world-shattering Thing he wants to eventually achieve. After all, what’s in front of Caleb right now doesn’t matter, or it won’t once he twists the whole world into a new shape anyway--except that it is in front of him right now, and needs to be survived and dealt with, somehow, and that’s distracting in its own right. So the whole first arc is full of moments like Caleb trying to take the spell scroll and Nott trying to steal Fjord’s letter, where they’re grabbing at an apparent immediate step towards their long-term goals at the expense of the people around them, and maybe even to the detriment of those ultimate aims.

Basically, for Caleb and Nott, being with this group is supposed to be a means to an end--but they don’t really know how being with this group is going to help them achieve that end, they’re just...pretty sure it will. Somehow. They’re definitely eating better now, and maybe if Caleb gets into that library it’ll help, or something, maybe, he hopes. The unspoken question for Caleb and Nott both, as Arc 1 progresses, is--do they actually think being with the group is going to help them achieve those all-important goals, or do they just like being here? Nott will follow Caleb anywhere, because he’s her way out of this goblin life, but she doesn’t encourage him to leave to progress somewhere else. Caleb argues with himself when he’s alone, but he always stays in the end. Is it practicality? Is there a plan? Or did they just accidentally fall in with a group of people they actually like, and the group’s constant shenanigans are a useful distraction from having to admit what they're apparently willing to sacrifice for the sake of being here rather than alone?

Fjord and Jester, meanwhile, both claim to have long-term goals, but they sure don’t show any indication that they care about pursuing them. Which makes sense, because Jester and Fjord show up in Trostenwald with personal quests that are devoted to a very nebulous, hypothetical sort of belonging (contrast with Caleb and Nott, who want to belong in very specific ways, in places they once already lived). Their worlds have both fallen apart, too, but far more recently and a little less dramatically. They’re not looking to get back to what they once had, they’re looking to replace it.

Or, to be more specific: Fjord’s entire adult life thus far has been defined by his job. Being a sailor wasn’t just his profession, it was his identity. It’s what he did; it’s where he lived; it’s where he found the only person who ever really cared about him or called him family; it’s where he found his self-worth and his social worth, the first and only place he ever felt valuable to anyone else in the community or the world at large. Heading up to the Soltryce Academy to figure out what’s up with this sword is about finding a whole new self, with a new purpose, a new job, a new person who can tell him what he’s good at and good for and where he belongs now.

Jester’s entire life has been defined by her mom. Marion is her entire world. Jester literally doesn’t know anybody outside the Lavish Chateau, and aside from the Traveller, the few people who do know she exists at all are servants or coworkers of her mother. Jester’s world is tiny, with Marion at the center of it. If Fjord’s self-worth is caught up in his job and what he does, Jester’s is entirely determined by making people joyful and happy, and the only two people she’s ever really had the chance to please in that way are her mother and the Traveler. So she’s looking for her other parent, to replace the one thing she’s always had right there.

In many ways, the particulars of what Fjord and Jester are pursuing don’t actually matter that much. Fjord doesn’t need the Soltryce to give him a job or a purpose. He jumps headfirst into the mercenary business almost overnight; they’ve been in Zadash less than a week before he’s chatting with the Gentleman about professional networking like a man who’s about to pull out his company business cards. Jester doesn’t need a dad, she just needs people to love her and be delighted by her presence. It turns out that this team of people just so happens to address that core need for both of them, and that’s enough for Jester and Fjord. They’re in this head first.

The thing about Fjord and Jester is, though, neither of them are asking any questions about the long term either. Because rolling with the Mighty Nein is hitting all the right buttons to get at the root of what they need, they’re both super blase about letting certain details go without question. Why does Fjord have these new powers he’s now starting to understand? What kind of relationship does Jester actually want with a parent? And where does the rest of the group see this whole situation going in the next weeks, months, years? Jester and Fjord aren’t asking--and that makes sense too, because if they’re not asking, then they don’t have to face the answers. If Fjord doesn’t ever make it to Soltryce, nobody can tell him he’s not good enough, and if Jester never quite gets around to meeting her father, she doesn’t have to find out why he never came back. If they don’t ask questions about the group, maybe nobody will ever remember to leave.

Beau and Molly would be so pissed at being grouped together here, which is not actually why I did it, but is a nice additional nuance. (Part of why they hate each other so much is because they’ve got a lot in common deep down--they both care very deeply and project an image of not caring very much at all, and it pisses both of them off constantly.) The truth is, Beau and Molly are both with the Mighty Nein because they literally have nowhere else to go. Caleb and Nott are trying to regain their old lives; Fjord and Jester are trying to replace their old lives; but Molly and Beau don’t really have lives besides this, or at least not lives they’d admit to.

These two are the closest thing to Professional Criminals in the group when it all gets started--Nott and Caleb might steal and con to survive, but for Beau and Molly it’s been an actual job, with coworkers and workplace etiquette, and bigger heists with full crews arguably similar to the M9 in the past. The circus was Molly’s everything and it got smashed to bits within the first four episodes, but the core Mollymauk of it all means that his life fundamentally doesn’t change with its loss. He is still on the road skipping from place to place, living out of bedrolls and carts and inns if there’s good luck; he’s still slinging bullshit and the odd con, doing a good turn when he can and keeping an eye out for coin; he’s still messing around with a couple of swords, trying not to get beat up or thrown in jail or run out of town, killing a bit when necessary; he’s still embedded in the middle of a group of walking disaster weirdos full of Issues and interpersonal conflict who somehow have to live together and rely on each other with all their broken bits and strangeness. Beau played local contact for every reasonably-sized crew of criminals to come through Kamordah, and not a one of them ever kept her around for the long haul, but she knows seedy underbellies and she knows how to punch people for pay and she knows about honor among thieves and she knows how to trust fundamentally untrustworthy people just exactly as far as she can throw them.

So just the basic everyday operation of being part of the Mighty Nein, the important job skills and general lifestyle, is more in line with what Beau and Molly have already been doing than it is for anyone else in the group. There’s also less conflict with their overarching long-term life goals. Neither of them have any, besides ‘keep doing this as long as I can’. I don’t think either Molly or Beau have any real vision of what a future even looks like, Beau because she’s young and too busy rebelling against to think about building towards, Molly because with no real past he barely even has a concept of change or becoming anything other than what he is. The most either of them can really picture would be a life they don’t want: the Proper Lionett Daughter or Lucien Whoever-The-Fuck. Those are nightmare scenario lives that belong to other people, and Beau and Molly will run from them literally as far and as fast as they can.

While Caleb and Nott are avoiding the question of “is this group really going to help me get what I want?” (because the answer might mean they should leave, and they want to stay); and Fjord and Jester are avoiding the question of “should I actually try to find the thing I came looking for in the first place?” (because real answers are so much scarier than unsolved questions); Beau and Molly are determinedly avoiding the high school guidance counselor question question of “where do you see yourself in five years?”. They have no long-term plans, and neither of them want any. What they’ve got going on right here is good. They don’t have to be alone (which Beau has been all her life, and Molly has never been once, and they both want so badly to avoid). They get to stay in constant motion, running and fighting and drinking and earning money and occasionally experimenting with illegal ethereal-plane-enhancing substances, and that’s just fine.

Yasha doesn’t quite fit in with anyone else because Yasha is gone so damn much, but also because she doesn’t quite match any of the categories. Her whole life fell apart, just like practically everyone else’s, but she’s not trying to get it back, and she’s not trying to replace it. And Yasha does have somewhere else to be, a path she thinks maybe she ought to be following if she could just figure out where it is. She keeps coming back because Molly is the closest thing she has to family; she keeps coming back because fate keeps bumping her into the group and saying she should; she keeps coming back because it’s good coin and easy killing-things work and they’ll have her; she keeps coming back because she likes them, because Caleb is awkward with people but lends her his cat, because Jester is bright and smiling and also loves flowers, because Beau fights next to her and Fjord respects her and Nott gave her flowers once, and that matters.

As Arc 1 progresses, as the players get to know their characters better and the characters get to know each other, they begin to collectively answer “Why am I with this group?” with another question: “Just what is this group, anyway?”. It’s a little out of order and a little bit of a mess, just like the party itself, just like life, but the truth is that the members of the Nein find themselves more or less attached to this merry little band before they’ve even really defined what said band is. The characters become a group by accident, by fate, by will of the players, because they’re all desperate for things and avoiding things and because why not. Many decisions about what kind of group they become, though, are a lot more deliberate.

‘Mercenary’ is the first thing they pick up, and they specifically don’t choose it for themselves. (It’s also the first thing they lose when the next arc starts, or maybe at the very end of this one.) They roll into Allfield in the middle of a gnoll attack, and Bryce offers cash for gnoll ears before they can even ask ‘what’s in it for us?’. They already had weapons in hand to deal with the threat--it’s impossible to say what the team would’ve done without that offer, and they were all broke as fuck and badly in need of money anyway--but they didn’t present themselves as swords-for-hire until someone was already asking to hire them.

Allfield teaches them that they can be mercenaries (and gives them an excuse to stay as a group), while Zadash begins to teach them what kind of mercenaries they want to be. It becomes very clear very quickly that this group does not like institutions of power (something I’ve already written about at length). They do a single job for the crownsguard and then immediately turn around and start working with back-tavern insurgents and underground smugglers. While their individual opinions may vary, collectively they do Not Like The Empire.

They also establish themselves as a group that does not trust in general, either the outside world or each other--and furthermore, a group that will push and investigate and uncover answers every time a mystery pops up. They don’t take the Knights of Requital at face value, they investigate around the back end; they track down the Gentleman just because he’s there. They demand answers from each other, from Molly baiting a trap to catch Nott stealing from Fjord to the whole group teaming up to demand ‘Lucien’ explain himself. Caleb doesn’t trust Callie, and Beau doesn’t trust Caleb, and nobody trusts Fjord’s stone-swallowing, and there’s no resolution, only more questions.

Likewise, they are not trustworthy. While they take jobs and generally deliver on what they pay for, they also ad-lib and change direction for their own benefit, and their loyalty to their employers is debatable at best. The argument over the spell scrolls in the High Richter’s house is a major division at the time, but by the time they’re clearing out necromancy for the Gentleman, nobody really sides against stealing the journal or Yasha’s sword. They just come up with a plan together to cheat the Gentleman effectively. When they clear out the merrow in his safehouse in the swamp, they have no problem taking as much of his stuff as they can. They are out for themselves, and the jobs they take are a means to their own ends, not particularly important in and of themselves.

The M9 feel very small, as a group, in the face of a world that’s very big, and we see that tie back in with the past two points over and over again. So much of the Zadash part of the arc involves the stirrings and edges of the war with Xhorhas, and the Nein’s almost instant response of, okay, we want to stay as FAR FROM THAT AS POSSIBLE. The major powers of the world are big enough to crush them, and they are afraid of that--but, the attitude seems to go, the major powers of the world are also big enough to miss noticing them, and that matters too. They steal the dodecahedron and disappear off into the shadows because they know it means something huge, and that’s scary, and therefore grabbing this piece of it might somehow protect them or the world in the long run. They’re able to do it because they’re small, because in this clash of international titans they’re still nobody.

Lastly, this group desperately wants to be doing something moral, they just don’t necessarily know how. They debate over whether the Knights of Requital are good guys, over whether they should help the crown, over the right thing to do with the Krynn assassin. They are so much more comfortable working for the Gentleman, who’s a criminal right there on the surface but doesn’t appear to be actively hurting anybody, than assisting the local law. Even when it’s not a job, or maybe even more when it’s not a job, they find themselves going out of their way to be good people: rescuing Kiri, helping Callie, finding ways to help Horace and Dolan after the attack on the spire explodes everything. For a group of self-proclaimed mercenaries, there’s a constant undercurrent of...should we be doing this? Is this the right thing to do? Should we totally betray our employers because that’s the right thing to do? They’re not loyal to anybody in particular, except maybe each other, but they’re struggling to find some kind of ideal or guiding principle to be loyal to.

All of this culminates in Hupperdook. The group is finally unbending a little, coming to trust each other that little bit more. Beau talks about her childhood, and Caleb says Astrid’s name, and Nott says Yeza’s, and Fjord talks about the orphanage where he grew up. They go down into a prison to fight a whirling death-robot, and it’s sort of because Rissa’s dad promised them a reward but also sort of because Rissa is Theirs Now, and more than anything it’s to save the parents of a bunch of penniless near-orphans. It’s a way to say fuck you! to the Imperial system; it’s a way to combine two jobs at once for their own purposes. It is above all a very new-feeling exploration of the idea that, small or not, they can in fact actually make a meaningful difference in the world. They have power, and that power can be used for good.

It’s by far the least mercenary-like job they’ve taken. Between the bail money they pay for the Schuesters and the additional cash they leave with them to take care of Kiri, they probably spend half as much on the whole endeavor as that new fancy crossbow was worth to begin with. They did something good, and it feels better and more right than all their fumbling maybes.

Aside from Trostenwald, where crisis came to them and the whole story was about getting themselves out of trouble, Allfield and Hupperdook very much bookend this arc, and that makes a lot of sense, because there’s a very similar feeling to both jobs. They’ve done something dangerous, and saved lives, and helped people--regular, good people who hadn’t hurt anyone to get into the situations they were in. They made some profit doing it. Those things are not mutually exclusive, and maybe, maybe they can build something of a career path out of finding the places where they intersect.

This first arc doesn’t exactly conclude--because with an ongoing show like this, nothing ever quite concludes--so much as it reaches a point where many of its primary themes and issues begin to look as though they could, in theory, someday be resolved. There’s a visible path ahead that combines altruism and self-interest. The group members are talking to each other, slowly and carefully. There are still a lot of unanswered questions about who everyone is and what they want, but it seems like the group might just be heading in a direction towards those questions at least eventually getting asked.

It’s maybe the most optimistic place the group’s been in so far, which is of course why this is the point where everything in the whole world comes crashing down--but that’s for the next arc.

#critical role #driveby meta attack #mighty nein #campaign 2 spoilers #mostly only for the first block of episodes

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yasuda-yoshiya · 5 years ago

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Opinions on Ciconia Phase 1!

All is in the name of guiding humanity down the right path...

This should be obvious, but there will be plenty of spoilers below, so please don’t read if you haven’t finished the game yet!

While I was reading, I felt like I had a bit of an up and down relationship with Ciconia. I felt really excited and impressed by the first few hours of the game - the setup of the intro with the whole military propaganda was intriguing and effective, Miyao and Jayden's dynamic was immediately super endearing and adorable, and the whole plot with Meow and her date with Jayden had me absolutely bursting with joy! I still can't quite process how happy I am that Ryukishi committed so hard to "gender weirdness" as a permanent WTC fixture here and that Yasu's story absolutely wasn't a one-off at all, and the whole framing of the plot was so heartfelt and sincere and sympathetic - Meow's gender ambiguity and her relationship with Jayden is completely accepted and celebrated by both the narrative and the entire cast, and the whole situation is framed as something totally sweet and wholesome without a single joke at their expense. Meow herself was incredibly cute, and Jayden's initial surprised reaction to her and his whole phase of overenthusiastically trying too hard to be accepting with Miyao about it in a way that ended up making him uncomfortable ("Yeah, I have a female alter, but I'm still ME, just treat me the same way you always did!") hit the perfect spot of how an awkward but totally well-meaning person really would react in that kind of situation - on the whole, I was and still am delighted that Ryukishi went so far with this!

I can definitely understand people having reservations about some of the specifics of the execution, and there are definitely valid concerns to be had with some of the CPP stuff to be sure - but at least for me personally, just the broader picture that Ryukishi chose to spend so much time having his characters explicitly working through and talking over gender issues in such an unambiguously accepting and humanising way made me so happy; I hadn't remotely anticipated that from Ciconia at all, but I genuinely felt that he did it with a lot of heart and the dynamic between Miyao/Meow and Jayden is still probably my favourite part of the VN overall! (And I also really appreciate that Miyao and Jayden were still definitely framed as being extremely flirty and gay as hell even after Meow entered the picture, since I was afraid we might end up losing that part of their dynamic at first! But no, Jayden's really obviously super in love with both of them and it's adorable.)

Unfortunately, after the very strong opening, I kind of felt a bit let down by the next ten hours or so running so hard into PLOT PLOT PLOT, with Meow almost completely disappearing for no obvious reason and the emotional core that had been originally set up being basically dropped for a lot of RGD-style political intrigue and mysterious apocalypse cults that I felt weren't really given enough context for me to get particularly invested in. It felt to me like there was a very long stretch where the plot basically amounted to a series of increasingly large-scale disasters interspersed with very samey and insubstantial discussions between Miyao and the other faction leaders about how powerless they are and agonising over whether there's anything they can do; since the whole plot takes place on such a macro scale and doesn't really take much time to meaningfully develop the faction leaders as individuals all that much beyond their basic personalities being likable on a surface level, it felt to me like the whole big series of incidents and disasters weren't really fleshed out enough or given the personal and emotional grounding for them to be individually interesting, so it all just sort of blurred together and started to feel kind of tedious.

So, around that point I was feeling more than a little disappointed by Ciconia! And yet... somehow, by the end, I felt like it genuinely did manage to gradually win me over, and the whole ending sequence hit me really hard in a way that I honestly hadn't expected it to. While I do still feel like that whole aforementioned section definitely could have been handled better and not been so dragged out (even just interspersing some of the cute character stuff from the postgame tips would have helped break it up a bit... which I kind of strongly suspect was originally the intent ala Higurashi, and I'm not really sure why they didn't go through with it), after a while I found I was genuinely won over by just how sincere and determined Miyao and the other kids were to avoid fighting each other and to find a peaceful solution, even with all the obstacles in their way. (I think I specifically remember the part where Miyao took over the COU newbie kette's gauntlets to help them intercept his own missiles where I found myself getting genuinely emotional and realising that, huh, I guess I really do care about these kids and this plot after all!)

It's funny, for a long time I felt kind of bemused - from a storytelling perspective - by just how solid the alliance between the kids was and how it totally lasted to the end. There were a whole bunch of incidents like the issue with the ABN/ACR conflict over the crop supplies that I was sort of expecting to lead to the group inevitably falling apart from distrust or suspicion or paranoia in the typical WTC fashion... but they never did! At first I was genuinely confused - like, you have the perfect setup to finally set up some conflict here and let things start to get interesting, Ryukishi! Why are you just sticking with the status quo! - but after a while, I sort of got the feeling that that was kind of the point; that these kids really did earnestly believe in each other and respected each other's common humanity and *did not want* to fight under any circumstances, and how tragic it was that even with their resolve being that strong and lasting through all those rough moments, that they ultimately weren't given any choice in the end. I felt that the game genuinely did sell me on the idea that the image of them all holding hands and chatting with each other to the end in the public bath VR room was their "real selves" - that that really was their true nature, and that those were their true feelings, that ultimately said much more about them as people and meant so much more than the arbitrarily tragic road they ended up being forced to go down entirely against their will.

I think I was kind of thrown for a loop with Ciconia because I generally expect Ryukishi's stories to follow a trajectory where the characters gradually reveal their flaws and their inner "ugliness" as the story goes on (albeit generally in a way that's still very sympathetic and humanising, of course) - but while that did sort of happen at the end here with things like Chloe and Aysha’s turnarounds (and may well happen some more in the future given that we know there were traitors in the order), in this case I honestly felt like the purpose of the story was more about bringing out the kids' inner goodness. They really were good kids! None of this was their fault! They really deserved better! And while I think I normally wouldn't be all that into a story with that kind of straightforward message (you know, me generally being a cynical loveless husk and all), in this case specifically I felt like Ryukishi really managed to convey that specific sort of feeling of loyalty and connectedness and breaking down of boundaries that comes from Internet friendships in a surprisingly touching way.

And I think in that context, even the fact that we don't ever get to see the different factions getting to know each other all that well or forming any particularly deep connections or relationships with each other beyond their political solidarity... also sort of works, honestly? Even just that very casual kind of connection, of these kids just screwing around in an improvised chatroom with a dumb name and babbling at each other about things that don't even particularly matter, the kind of interaction we've all probably experienced at some time without even thinking all that deeply about it - even just that is enough for those kids to meaningfully connect with and humanise each other, to understand on a deep level that the kids from the other factions are basically the same as them, and to want to value their common humanity over everything else. Even something that simple is enough for these kids who don't even know each other all that well to form a strong sense of solidarity that lasts through a hell of a lot of difficult times that could easily have driven them apart - to form a sense of loyalty and shared understanding with each other that feels more real and matters so much more to them than any arbitrary national loyalty possibly could. Maybe I'm just being overly sentimental, but I honestly think that message is kind of beautiful, in its way.

It also feels very relevant to me in... I guess, capturing that unique contemporary feeling of being a young person in the current political climate, and that frustration of the Internet generation being the most interconnected and least bound by national boundaries that we've ever been, and yet being forced to watch mostly powerlessly as the people in power push more and more towards stupid narrow-minded nationalism and xenophobia at a time when humanity most needs to unite against serious existential threats to the planet? So I think in that particular political context, I honestly ended up feeling really moved by just how unambiguously compassionate and sympathetic the narrative was towards these kids - that Ryukishi ended up so firmly deciding to emphasise their "goodness" and how real and precious their bonds were with each other, over anything else. It's not really the kind of story I expected from WTC, but I was legitimately touched by how much the kids' feelings around the bonds they made over the Internet being more "real" than their material reality were treated as being so totally valid - like, yes, the idea of the factory future is treated as a viscerally disturbing one, but the narrative also completely holds up the feelings that led the kids to idealise that future as 100% legit, with genuine emotional truth behind them! It doesn't feel dismissive or patronising at all, and it honestly did give me a bit of that same feeling I got from Umineko and Yasu's story from EP7 in the sense of that totally accepting and non-judgmental message of... "Even if some aspects of what you feel might be ugly, even if some people might be disturbed by you idealising something like that - it's okay to feel that way. Your pain matters. The things that led you to feel this way, to see the horror of a future like that and still long for it on some level, are completely valid. You're seen. You're understood."

And that's honestly come to feel genuinely precious to me as I've had time to reflect on Ciconia and the response it inspired in me; that it did make me feel "seen" in some deep way, maybe on a broader generational level rather than on an intimately personal one like Umineko did, but that still has a lot of value to me too. Ciconia feels very different from Umineko or Higurashi, but it's really got a lot of heart, and I personally felt in the end that the earnestness and overwhelming good nature of the intention behind it was enough for me to forgive any awkwardness in the execution. (Ryukishi is such a good guy! I love him!) So, all in all, I really appreciated Ciconia, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing where it goes from here!

#ciconia #factory future did nothing wrong #ilu ryukishi #more meow in phase 2 though pls

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romantichopelessly · 6 years ago

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The Seven Chakras and Sanders Sides

(AKA I have a Theory and decided to share it against all of my instincts, so buckle up kiddos)

So, last week I was rewatching the second Cartoon Therapy episode, “What AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER Can Teach Us About Self Worth.” Theres a part in the video (47:33-48:02, if you would like to watch the segment) where Picani and Kai talk about embracing all parts of themselves and reference the seven chakras from ATLA while doing so. Now, when I was rewatching last week, I had to pause because I noticed a pattern with these seven chakras and how they sounded suspiciously like the Sanders Sides.

So, here I am to provide details as to how each one of the chakras, and what each chakra is blocked by could describe each of the five known sides and give us a bit of insight as to what the remaining unrevealed sides could be.

Before I get into which chakras align with which side, I'm going to clarify a few things that this theory sort of relies on. The groundwork before we can theorize.

1) There is no such thing as “dark” and “light” sides: We know from canon that the name “Dark Sides” is something that Roman made up. In “Can Lying Be Good?” Roman actually says so, saying “I made that name up, pretty cool, right?” Now while it could be said that the sides that we do not yet know about do have darker functions, as suggested by Virgil’s blatant fear/distrust of Deceit’s ‘friends’, overall it seems as if the distinction between the dark and light sides is arbitrary at best. As Deceit says in “Selfishness vs. Selflessness” he too is just ‘looking out for [Thomas]’. Each of the sides is a little bit gilded, with “good” and “bad” characteristics. They can all be gray characters at times. Like Patton said in “Accepting Anxiety Part 2″, Thomas listening too much to any one of them could be a bad thing.

2) Virgil was once what Roman would have considered a “dark side”: Now there are plenty better, more in depth analyses on this theory from others, so I won’t get too deep into the indicators of this (Virgil not rising up, how he was first perceived by the others, etc.) but it is obvious that Virgil did have to slowly gain his place among Patton, Roman and Logan, as directly seen in the “Accepting Anxiety” arc.

3) There are at least seven sides in total: Okay, I’m sure lots of people have picked up on this, but I’m going to explain my reasoning anyway. Firstly, there are many theories that each “dark side” is the direct counterpart of one of our other sides. Commonly, Deceit is seen as Patton’s “dark side”, so there must be “dark sides” for all of the other sides, right? Except, if we continue with the idea that the line between “dark” and “light” sides is arbitrary as best, that idea cannot really hold up. So, how do we know how many unrevealed sides there are? Well, we know for a fact that there has to be more than one. In “Accepting Anxiety Part 2″ Roman comments that Virgil is “nothing compared to the others” suggesting that there is more than one other unrevealed side at that point. However, since that was before Deceit was revealed, it could have been that Roman was referring to Deceit and one other side. But, then again, after Deceit was revealed in “Can Lying Be Good?” Thomas asks if there are any other sides that he does not yet know about, and Roman again says that there are, the “dark sides”. Emphasis on the plural nature of the misnomer. In “Selfishness vs. Selflessness” Virgil comments again that Thomas should never let Deceit or any of his “friends” to stick around again. This makes two times that it is suggested that there is more than one unknown side remaining to be revealed, meaning that at the very least there are seven sides total, which just so happens to line up perfectly with the number of chakras. (Also the number of colors in the rainbow, but that's not what this is about right now)

Now that we have the clarifications out of the way, lets break down each of these seven chakras and how each one of them (and what they are inhibited by) represents one of the sides.

Insight/Illusion and Logan

Logan taking the role of Thomas’s insight was a pretty obvious choice. Logic is insight into hard facts and direct choices of action. Logan is the character that often provides the “explanatory exposition” into any episode’s given conflict. He offers charts, facts, and lists--reasoning--to anything that he wishes to tell the other sides or Thomas.

However, Logan is severely hindered by his own illusions. I don’t mean illusions as in lies, like Deceit represents, but falsehoods. Logan is always the one to point out the other sides’ delusions, which is why ‘falsehood’ has become sort of a catchphrase for him. He’s quick to see through and pick apart illusions, whether it’s Deceit in Patton’s clothing or Patton telling himself that he is only Thomas’s happy feelings. But I think many of us have noticed that he is not so good at doing this when it comes to himself. Logan consistently denies having feelings, despite every piece of evidence to the contrary. Thomas (not character Thomas) even confirmed that Logan does actually have feelings, he just won’t admit it.

“Losing My Motivation”, the episode in which Logan’s name is revealed, revolves entirely around Logan and by extension, Thomas, fooling themselves into believing that productivity can be achieved at the very last minute. Logan himself is so thoroughly against the idea of procrastination that he can’t even see that he himself is at the root of the issue. Thomas says himself, “So many times I finish a project at four in the morning, my eyes tired, my brain exhausted, and I’m so proud of myself for doing so I develop this faulty logic that I can tackle all of my projects like that.” Thomas creates this illusion around his system of doing things that allows Logan to go on believing that he can’t possibly be the problem.

Truth/Lies and Deceit

This connection is pretty obvious. Deceit is lies. That is his function within Thomas.

(Now, I feel like I should explain my thoughts as to why Deceit is named after what blocks the chakra that he represents rather than the chakra itself. I think that the “dark sides” are named this way for one of two reasons. Either they exemplify the trait of what blocks the chakra more, or they are equal parts chakra and inhibitor as each of the other side, it just takes a bit longer to see their “light side”. Until they get accepted. But more on that later, with Virgil.)

The trickier part of this parallel is seeing how Deceit could in any way represent truth. Many elements of the Sanders Sides episodes suggest that Patton or Logan would better represent truth, but here’s the thing--there are different kinds of truth. Patton represents universal truths. The ultimate, completely boiled down, this is the raw, golden truth. The Moral Truth, if you will. Logan represents factual truths. Truths that have evidence to back them up. Empirical truths. Things that could be disproven if new evidence were to come up, but now, through judgement, experimentation and data, are considered true. Deceit is Thomas’s truth.

In “Selfishness vs. Selflessness” Deceit spends a lot of time trying to make his voice heard in the courtroom. A place that both Thomas and Patton consider to be “where the truth comes to hang out”. Deceit laughs at this because no, The Truth (i.e. Patton’s version of truth) is not what courts are based on. Courts and juries do not always rule based on the truest form of what occurred, rather, judges and juries make decisions based on what they perceive about a case, taking into account the motivations of all parties present. Similarly, Deceit makes it clear that he is not trying to vilify Thomas, he just knows his motivations and what he truly wants. He directly says, “The point is, Thomas is an unconscious egoist, and this dilemma is actually between something that serves him verses something else that serves him. Between looking feeling like a good friend and a dream come true. If Thomas wanted to be seen as a good friend more than he wanted the role of a lifetime, then I’m all for that, but I just don’t buy it.” He knows what Thomas really wants, deep down, even if, eventually, that isn’t what happens.

Love/Grief and Patton

Patton fitting with the love chakra was another obvious fit. He’s Thomas’s heart. Emotions. “He has a lot of love to give.” As Thomas said in “Fitting In.”

As for Patton being grief, this is also rather easy to see. Patton is not only Thomas’s good emotions, but his more tumultuous ones as well. This can easily be seen in both parts of the “Moving On” episodes, as well as in his part of the song in “Learning New Things About Ourselves”. Patton is directly affected by Thomas losing people close to him, and while he sometimes has trouble dealing with the sadder emotions like grief, he has to because he is the center of them. Patton is quite possibly the side that has come the furthest in embracing what could be seen as the two sides of himself and growing from it.

Willpower/Shame and Roman

When it came to Roman, I probably had the hardest time determining which chakra best represented him. I almost went with pleasure, but ultimately, I feel like willpower is the best parallel too Roman.

Roman is easily the most willful of the sides. He is Thomas’s passion, he’s a very emotional character, and he is extremely driven. He makes no secrets of the things he wants--from his own Crofter’s flavor to the role in Psycho Godfather Wars. Though his will has sort of weakened over time, Roman does always fight for what he wants. At the beginning of the series, that was often for Virgil to go away, but as the series has progressed, and more and more of the things that Roman wants become unattainable, we can see his willpower waver. When “Accepting Anxiety” takes place, we see Roman begin to question what he is putting his princely willpower behind. He notices his faults and begins to falter. Then, in the immediately following episodes, “Fitting In” and the “Moving On” episodes, Roman continues to question his decisions. Putting Virgil in Slytherin, trying to call Thomas’s ex, and then in the “12 Days of Christmas” episode, his creations are belittled, which is followed by him being used by Deceit in “Can Lying Be Good?” This is amplified by his later interactions with Logan in “Why Do We Get Out of Bed in the Morning?” and “Crofter’s: The Musical”. He is always the first one to apologize, despite both of them being shown as equally hardheaded throughout the series. I’m sure that there are plenty better, more thought out analyses on Roman’s changing character throughout the series, but essentially it boils down to Roman’s willpower dwindling piece by piece. As he becomes more and more shameful.

Roman has always exhibited a bit of Thomas’s shame, as shown in “My Negative Thinking” when he was out of the conversation because Thomas messed up an audition, or in “Accepting Anxiety Part 1″ when he is visibly upset by the state of Thomas’s hair on camera. However, Roman’s shameful side is best shown in “Selfishness vs. Selflessness.” Roman is downright ashamed to be associated with Deceit, even though he would rather go to the callback than the wedding. Every time one of the other sides suggests that Roman is siding with Deceit, Roman gets defensive. He sputters and stutters his way through excuses, denying it right up until Deceit directly calls him out for lying. He’s so ashamed of being possibly seen as selfish, or as the bad guy, that he goes as far as to tell Thomas to go to the wedding in the end.

Survival/Fear and Virgil

This is where it gets interesting. Virgil is Thomas’s Anxiety. His fears and worries. As mentioned in the Deceit explanation, the “dark sides” (which, again, is totally arbitrary) are named after the element that blocks their chakra. This name doesn't really mean much, though, because although anxiety and fear are seen as the negative traits, we all know that Virgil encompasses more and has grown from being seen as a “dark side” by Roman, Patton and Logan. In a better light, Virgil is Thomas’s fight or flight survival.

In “Accepting Anxiety” many of the upsides to Virgil as a side are discussed. The point that immediately comes to mind that links Virgil with survival instincts is the bit when Logan throws a laptop at Thomas’s head. Without Virgil, Thomas does not even react to it until it is too late. Without Virgil, Thomas is “Unalert and without his natural defensive reflexes.”

It isn’t until the positive points of his character that align with the survival chakra are pointed out that Virgil is accepted.

Pleasure/Guilt

Here is where we get to unrevealed sides. Since the unrevealed sides are considered “dark sides”, at least by Roman, we can deduce that under this theory they would be named after what blocks the chakra that they represent. Therefore, I believe that the next side revealed will have something to do with Guilt.

(Ok so I know I read a post somewhere where someone suggested Guilt as the next side, but for the life of me I cannot find it, so if you know the post or it was your post, send me a link and I’ll link it here.)

There are many instances throughout the series that Thomas experiences guilt. Not that the character of Thomas is a bad one, or really has concrete reasons to experience this guilt, but he does feel a lot, and sometimes that manifests in guilt. During the second “Moving On” episode, Patton says, “I feel guilty for still feeling this way after so long.” Thomas spends a lot of his time feeling guilty for his feelings, rather than using the nostalgic time in Patton’s room to revisit the pleasure of his memories with his ex, which explains why he would be more likely to have a side centered around the guilt aspect rather than pleasure.

The most overwhelming pieces of evidence for Guilt being a future side comes from “Selfishness vs. Selflessness”. This entire episode centers around, like Deceit said, two things that serve Thomas. Or, more simply, two things that give Thomas pleasure. Looking like a good friend or attending the callback. Since the video, a lot of posts have been circulating detailing why Thomas should have ended up going to the callback instead of the wedding, and although I do believe that a better conclusion could have been reached, I think that a lot of these posts leave out one important thing that is only discussed at the very end of the episode, between Patton and Thomas. Patton describes the reason why Thomas would ultimately feel better going to the wedding as his empathy, but it obviously is not just that, or Thomas would have never truly considered lying to his friends. Sure, he imagines himself in their place, but he could have spoken to them about the callback and arranged another solution. Instead, Thomas’s entire dilemma hinges on his guilt. Thomas would have felt guilty (probably far more than is healthy) if he had missed the wedding, even if he had told the truth to his friends beforehand. So much so that Virgil even sides with Deceit and declares Thomas guilty. The pleasure of going to the callback and possibly getting the role of a lifetime was not even enough to assuage the crushing guilt of going back on a promise and missing his friends’ big day.

Cosmic Energy/Earthly Attachments

For this last chakra, I admit that I do not have a concrete idea. The idea of “Earthly Attachments” is rather vague in ways that it could be applied to a new side. Greed? Gluttony? I can’t see Thomas having an entire side dedicated to either of those, but we’ll just have to wait for new episodes and evidence to appear...

I can't summerize this well enough to write a TLDR, but I do have some final closing statements. The Seven Chakras and the elements that block them have far too many parallels with the sides for me to see this as a coincidence. Heck, both Patton and Virgil’s arcs center around the elements that they encompass that have to do with what blocks the specific chakra I have connected them with. So, maybe Roman’s arc is coming, centering around his growing shame. Maybe Logan’s is next, diving deeper into the illusions he’s letting himself fall for. Or maybe our next side, one defined by Thomas’s Guilt, will be revealed.

Tags of people who expressed interest: @fanders-unite @lazyscouts y'all are great hope this wasn't a disappointment

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patromlogil · 6 years ago

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Selfishness vs Selflessness: Analysis - Roles in the Case

Once again, Major Deceit Warning (no images) for those who need it

Deceit Analysis Tag List

@bumble-bitch-sanders @lacrimosathedark @imnotcameraready @viawkwardgamer @hatethesinlovethesinner92 @starryfirefliesbloggo @inksandpensblog @risiskifi @whizzie72 @emotional-mess-in-distress @monstercupcake61176 @sevencrashing @bluezingzapper @toxicity-levels-critical @yeet-ceit @intothevoidsunknown @bookworm85blr @greenneerg123 @septic-fallen @wingsofthefierydragonheart @extra-ordinary00 @totellismert @a-happy-crusteacean @imposterkid @positive--pancake @magpie1230 @sammy-is-trans-134 @glazed-transacotta @fandoms-winkitywonk @alenmatha10

people who asked to be tagged but Tumblr won’t let me tag - @thatoneawkwardmultishipper @ilovelotsofthings

The stage for this episode is the courtroom. A stage carefully constructed and controlled by Deceit. He is the one who picks everyone’s roles, guides them through the theatrics, and leads them towards his intended conclusion (or not as it turns out). Everything is precise and happens for a reason.

I kind of touched on Logan’s role in the case as witness and gallery member during my analysis of him, but after my last analysis (Purpose of the Case) I think that keeping Logan out also serves to create a void in the discussion between the Sides that allows Deceit to have a voice and be heard.

Patton is the defending lawyer because it puts him front and center. Though Thomas is being charged, Patton (Thomas’s Morality) is really the one on trial, it’s Patton’s actions and attitudes towards the whole situation that are being questioned and scrutinised. Being in such a prevalent position puts him on obvious display, and he is shown to be a bit of a bumbler, naive, and seemingly unaware of how his actions can appear.

The setting forces the others to consider Patton’s actions differently than they would normally. Instead of dismissing his candy-based pun (“sweeten the deal”) as they would normally with ‘oh that’s just Patton’, Deceit presents an alternative, equally true narrative, of ‘bribing the witness’, an interpretation that shows that Thomas’s current moral state can have serious consequences.

Symbolically speaking, Thomas’s morality is shown as being admirable (Patton is a well-loved character) but flawed. In its current state, it cannot be applied universally in all situations. There are going to be times where his simplistic approach to moral dilemmas will not suffice, and could in fact work against them and cause Thomas harm.

Roman as the judge is a curious choice. Given that Deceit knows Roman agrees with him, surely it would make more sense to have him on the jury so that he has a greater chance of winning? Not if he truly wants to get Roman on side and keep him there.

In the role of judge, Roman is allowed to feel more important as everybody knows the importance of the Judge in the courtroom (even if they don’t know what they do) and it’s a common trope across many forms of fiction that jury duty is akin to punishment, something that everybody hates. Letting Roman be the judge lets him feel important, and puts him directly in the middle of the debate, allowing him to hear and see everything said by everyone, without any pressure to speak up for himself. At multiple times, we can see Roman clearly struggling with the wish to speak up, but not having the confidence/belief that he should. He silences himself. Meanwhile on the stand, he’s not actually asked what he wants, probably because everyone already knows. In Deceit’s questioning, Roman gets the chance to plainly state that he feels like he is being kept from performing his duty because something ‘more important’ always comes up, and Deceit proceeds to gently guide Roman through an alternate perspective, one that he ultimately doesn’t necessarily disagree with, while Patton uses a scene to try and explain to Roman the moral/love our friends POV which he doesn’t completely back, possibly because of the viewpoint Deceit has just posed.

(Okay I can’t go into this as much as I want without rambling on forever so I will come back to Roman’s role in the Deceit and Roman post)

Virgil is easily the Side whose role I’ve been asked about the most. Given how much he is opposed to Deceit, how much of a potential problem he is, why include him at all and push Logan to the side? At the risk of sounding arrogant, for me, this one was easy.

Virgil isn’t there to be convinced. The jury’s decision in the end is arbitrary, it serves no purpose and is effectively meaningless. So think about it, who is the first one to speak up about his suspicion of Patton in Can Lying Be Good? Who is immediately there right after Deceit is revealed in this video? Anxiety clearly has an important role in keeping Deceit at bay, and discluding him from the scenario would just give Virgil a chance to interrupt. Deceit has to silence him.

More than once, Deceit reminds Virgil (and the others) that the juror is not allowed to object or speak out in the case. Encouraging the others to abide by the rules of the courtroom takes away their learned instinct to listen to Virgil, removing almost any sway he has over the situation.

The lawyers for the defence and prosecution speak continuously, the judge has the power to rule over the debate and even Logan, resigned to the gallery as he is, is allowed to shout out and contribute without question, but not Virgil.

Virgil has no platform to speak, and doesn’t want to play Deceit’s stupid game by participating in testimony until Deceit points out it’s his only chance to maybe be heard. But Virgil is the juror, why is he testifying? He knows his thoughts on all this so why put him in the hot seat?

Again it’s to bring him to heel. Deceit waves his leverage, his knowledge of Virgil’s secret directly in Virgil’s face, and Virgil obviously doesn’t like it, being short, being angry. Then Deceit allows Patton to step up and proceed to badger Virgil into submission.

Worst of all, it works. Virgil goes silent. He doesn’t take the situation seriously, lounging around, grumbling, but Deceit never tells him to sit up, to take this seriously. Why would he need to? His greatest threat, Anxiety, is silenced.

Everyone’s role is chosen to create the perfect circumstances that allow Deceit to finally be heard, without challenge, without interruption. For the first time since he impersonated Patton he has a direct line to Thomas and makes use of the opportunity to speak as freely as Thomas will allow him.

#Sanders Sides #Deceit Sanders #Logan Sanders #Roman Sanders #Virgil Sanders #Patton Sanders #Sanders Sides Theory #Selfishness vs Selflessness #ts Deceit

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tormundjonthings · 5 years ago

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GOT Politics Thoughts! (I know, I’m not original)

So I’ve been thinking a lot about the last couple seasons again after reading the finale script last week, specifically about how Game of Thrones handled politics in it’s last few seasons. A lot has been written about how the characters or relationships or fantasy elements were bungled, but I’m interested in how they muddled the political end too. And not just the in universe politics, like conflicts between houses or the challenges of moving/feeding armies. Although...that also pretty much vanishes, outside of that stray line of Sansa’s from s8 about feeding Dany’s armies (which is mainly there so Dany can get in a sick line about how cool dragons are.)

No, I’m more interested in how the larger political questions / parallels to politics in the real world vanish or become so confused that any message is lost entirely.

Lets venture back a few seasons, say to like season 5, and look at some of the big political topics being addressed. (This got SUPER long, so more under the cut)

Political Question One: What are borders?

The storyline at the Wall was always one of the most interesting parts of the show to me, mostly because of the nature of the conflict between the Nights Watch and the Free Folk. The the Wall was always a foil to the pettier political games happening elsewhere in the series. That whole Mormont quote “when the dead rise, do you think it matters who sits on the Iron Throne?” Like they’ve got a big, giant existential disaster to deal with, makes all the squabbling between houses look pretty damn silly!

Yet they also participate in some of this political squabbling, which is very interesting to me! They spend several SEVERAL seasons dealing primarily not with the existential threat at hand, but trying to fight off people who largely just want to escape to safety.

The reason Jon Snow is one of my favorite characters in the series is that he’s one of the very few people who looks at an underlying bit of “common political wisdom” in Westeros, something that’s been unchanged for thousands of years regardless of who sits on the Iron Throne, and says, “Hey, this is both very wrong and very dumb.”

He meets the Wildlings, notes that they follow the same religion as the North, speak the same language, have a lot of the same customs, and most importantly notes that they’re just people trying to live their lives in safety.

Some of them raid and kill, yes. But lets be honest...plenty plenty plenty of people born and bred in the Seven Kingdoms do that too.

The division between people of the Seven Kingdoms is entirely arbitrary. Other people in the series have noted this (Benjen, Tyrion) but Jon actually tries to do something about it. He says they’re all the same, that the Free Folk are part of the realms of men, and manages to get many of them south of the Wall.

This is incredibly controversial; he’s broken a huge political taboo here. The northern Lords hate “Wildling invaders.” Many members of the Nights Watch don’t care much about the White Walkers and see the Free Folk as their primary enemy. This is so controversial that Jon is murdered for it.

Now, if you live in almost any part of the world right now, you’ll note that this has many, many parallels to real life events. Especially if you see White Walkers as Climate Change. People trying to escape to safety from disasters and the complete immorality of holding up largely arbitrary borders in the face of existential threats to humanity is already an enormous political issue, and likely to be more so in the years to come. This is a good thing, maybe an essential thing, to explore and talk about through fiction right now.

So how is it handled after Jon is resurrected? Well...it kind of isn’t really. Some of the northern Lords are pissed about it when Jon asks for support during the Battle of the Bastards, but Robb’s old mess-ups are generally more the issue there. Apparently all the Nights Watch members who were uncool with it get hung for treason and...no one else in the manned castles says anything. There are some pissed off northern Lords again who mention Wildling invaders once they’re back in Winterfell but its pretty much skated over and they still all crown Jon king like immediately. The focus on borders and arbitrary divisions, how harmful and damaging they can be, which was a big part of the Wall plotline for several seasons, is pretty much just dropped.

Political Question Two: What is a Revolutionary?

So this is pretty much the whole question surrounding Dany’s plotline. I do think, especially in her earlier seasons, that Dany genuinely felt sympathy for enslaved people in Slavers Bay and wanted to free them. Like, if Jon is one person who looks at the underlying nature of this world and sees injustice, the other person who does so is Dany (at least initially.) I do truly think she saw parallels to her own terrifying situation when Viserys sold her to Drogo, and she wanted to help.

The problem is, despite her dragons and her military power, she is absolutely the wrong type of person to lead a revolution.

This is actually a quote from my sister, we were talking and she said “Dany is the kind of person who believes in a better world, but can’t see that she’s not the one who can bring that world into being.”

Dany was raised by an insanely scary brother who constantly went off about his rightful claim to the throne and their noble family history. The only adults in her life were the kind of Targaryen loyalists who wanted to see the precious heirs safe, or else the kind of people who thought they could get something out of Viserys and repeated his own bullshit back to him.

This has all clearly sunk into Dany; despite the fact that she started the incredibly huge political project of ending slavery, something that will require years YEARS of work, she still constantly wants to go off to Westeros and rule because she believes it’s her right. She’s also got a huge self myth about herself as a queen, and what that means, versus an interest in being a leader.

I’m not a politician, I’m a queen.

She likes to command, demand, pull the whole fire and blood thing. This all comes from her upbringing, from her understanding of who the Targaryens were and what they conquered/deserved.

Her status as someone from an old Westerosi house also means that she has a tendency to trust the rich and well named, especially rich people from Westeros, waaaaay more than she should. Trusting Tyrion, for example, is a huge huge error. Especially, again, given that she’s attempting the truly revolutionary project of ending fucking slavery. Tyrion is part of an old rich house, part of an old rich system. He is from a culture that does not have slavery, but he is still from a culture with a HIGHLY stratified class system. Fundamentally, he’s got more in common with the slavers than the slaves. Which is why he listens to the slavers, why he comes up with the oh so reasonable compromise of phasing slavery out over several years, and why he gives the slavers HUMAN BEINGS as presents to seal the deal.

One of the most interesting scenes in the entire series for me is the bit directly after Tyrion makes this deal, when we see Missandei and Grey Worm’s reaction to it. They are horrified.

Because the ones with a real read on this situation, the ones Dany should let have more input, are absolutely Missandei and Grey Worm. They are the two people the former slaves look to most when they have questions. They are seen as leaders by Dany’s base in the city, the formerly enslaved peoples. They are the ones who have suffered under the hands of this system, who know that it is not wise to make “reasonable compromises” with the kind of people willing to own human beings. The kind of person willing to buy and sell people will always try to take advantage, there is nothing to which they won’t sink. You don’t use them, they use you.

Yet Missandei and Grey Worm’s power is largely often ceremonial. Dany makes a lot of her real big choices listening to people like Jorah, like Tyrion. People from old Westerosi houses. Because she’s been raised to value that kind of power.

Dany’s whole plotline; her freeing slaves quickly without a plan, then letting the slavers into her ear, letting them take back some control, and ultimately leaving the situation in a whole mess to gain more personal power, is a great example of why top-down revolutions, revolutions where a wealthy savior wants to free/help the less fortunate, do not generally work out.

For a revolution to stick, for it’s ideas to stick, it needs to be led by those from below, people who are fully invested, people who understand the monstrosities of the system. People like Missandei and Grey Worm.

That whole scene where Dany talks to Tyrion about breaking the wheel is also super interesting to me. Because...they are both part of the wheel. And as long as Dany’s goal is still to rule, and Tyrion’s goal is to help her, they aren’t going to break that thing. That wheel won’t break until monastic power, until rule by a few families, ends, and that’s not really Dany’s goal. Because she wants to rule. And her family is part of the wheel.

Again...all of these poltical questions are important. We live under a system where the few, the very rich, rule us. This power is often inherited (because money is often inherited.) Some of them say they want to help...but ultimately nothing really changes.

And there’s a pretty recent example in world history of slavery ending, but politicians failing to root the perpetrators of that system out of power. Letting those people stay in power, letting them use influence and take advantage, led to slavery essentially returning in a different form (hello 13th amendment of the US Constitution!) So it’s an important thing to explore through fiction.

I kind of thought all this was going to come to a head, especially with Missandei and Grey Worm. Dany clearly trusts them with some power, but she lets Westerosi advisors like Tyrion make more and more of her decisions. The whole plotline with Missendei and Grey Worm is them moving past their trauma and becoming more self-actualized people. I thought they’d start to challenge Dany. I thought maybe they’d take issue with Dany’s desire for power at any cost, especially use of the Dothraki, who famously take and sell slaves. I thought they’d take issue with Dany wanting to leave for Westeros at all, with leaving the slaves of Mereen in such a desperate, hopeless situation. I thought maybe the show would highlight how becoming more folded into the powers that be in Westeros and ignoring the downtrodden people she met in Essos led to her downfall. It certainly seemed to be heading that way.

But then...Missandei and Grey Worm were relegated fully to the background. They don’t differ with Dany on anything at all in the last half of the series. Issues were raised with how Dany was approaching power, but most of these were centered around her individually being a bad person, having the “Targaryen madness,” not with her being part of a system that sees rule by a few powerful families as just and right. It’s just all a problem of one person being insane and power hungry! Not a problem of systems!

And then a member of another house on the wheel takes control at the end, but he’s from the Good House...so it’s framed as a win!

Political Question Three: What happens when the rich ignore the poor / What happens when religious movements redirect class consciousness?

This is one I really really wanted the series to get more into. The smallfolk are often talked about and seen in the background as the true victims in the wars that tear through Westeros. They suffer and starve and die because of things they had absolutely no say in, so a few people they’ll never meet can have a little power. And this tension between the poor and the rich was building throughout the series; the smallfolk were getting pissed the fuck off. That riot in King’s Landing where the poor literally tear the septon to pieces still gives me chills.

And we finally, finally started to see this start to come to a head with the Sparrows. I think it’s really interesting that they chose to use a religious movement. Religious grifters often do swoop in during moments of desperation and steal the energy / direct people away from class consciousness to build their own power. And the poor are so desperate for something anything different that it becomes easy for these grifters to thrive.

And the High Sparrow is this kind of religious grifter to his bones. It’s very interesting to me that when we finally learn his backstory, he wasn’t truly poor. He was a merchant, and one doing pretty okay. If Westeros had an emerging middle class, he was part of it. He wasn’t the lowest of the low in Flea Bottom; Gendry for example was likely worse off. But the Sparrow presents himself as of the poor, part of the poor, truly one of the people, and because of this he is able to build a shitton of power very quickly from smallfolk who are fed up with all the bullshit and want to see something anything done about it.

And I was very interested in this! Again, this is a good political problem to discuss; religious movements and charismatic grifters build power all the time by telling people that really they’re unhappy because of “these sinners or outsiders” and not because of the larger systemic issues. A LOT OF THAT has been happening lately.

Like this was the moment that the political scheming of people like Cersei and her absolute lack of interest in helping the people she’d supposedly ruling should have come home to roost. I was interested to see what would happen; how that tension would be resolved, IF that tension could be resolved.

And then...Cersei just blows up the Sept of Baelor and apparently every single member of the reactionary religious movement was inside of it because it’s never really brought up again.

There are no riots, no anger from the smallfolk at her destroying both the major religious figures AND the major religious site for a large chunk of Westeros. People still gladly flock to Cersei when Dany shows up with dragons, even though they KNOW Cersei is very willing to blow people up. It’s just..all dropped. Cersei spends the next several seasons drinking wine and wearing spiky dresses.

Granted, there were a few big political issues that D&D still tried to discuss through the end but uhh...I don’t think they did very well. For example -

They Tried! #1 - White Walkers = Climate Change and the Uselessness of the System as Usual in the Face of Existential Threats

So I do think D&D were kind of going for this a little bit, and it was certainly discussed a lot in all the blogs and meta posts leading up to season 8. And there was a lot of talk, especially in season 7, about how silly the petty political differences between Cersei and Dany were in the face of such a threat.

But the fact that the White Walkers were destroyed relatively easily all things considered, without fundamentally changing the existing power dynamic, without being forced to resolve the differences between Dany and Cersei...kind of ruins this whole parallel. Jon’s been saying throughout the whole series that they needed to fully unite to defeat the threat but uhh...they didn’t unite with Cersei and they still won so I guess it was all good!

Don’t worry guys, we don’t need to fundamentally approach politics differently to deal with climate change, lets just go to Antartica and stab the carbon emissions monster in the heart!

And the fact that ultimately the main battle of the series, the finale of the series, was focused on the various ruling houses opposing each other...kind of ends up saying that the most important thing really is the petty politics after all.

Well that’s a bad message!

They Tried! #2 - Dany the Imperialist

Now of all the political messages D&D were trying to get across in the series, I am absolutely 100% certain this one was intentional. They were trying to draw parallels between Dany and modern imperial regimes, specifically the US.

It’s all over that last script, explicitly. The dragons have frequently been portrayed as weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons, and in the script here there is an explicit connection between the destruction of King’s Landing and Hiroshima, an atrocity committed by the US. In the finale script, they also use the phrase “they burned the village in order to save it” which is a famous quote from a US general regarding the destruction of a Vietnamese village by American troops during the Vietnam War.

And Tyrion’s whole speech about Dany destroying evil men looking great from afar but horrible when you’re on the ground / closer to the reality of it has clear US parallels. The US often uses humanitarian justifications for war (taking out dictators, spreading democracy, etc) and does not much care about the atrocities the actual human beings who live in those countries face when their countries are torn apart by war (Afghanistan and Iraq are prime examples of this.)

They are very very clearly trying to make this parallel. To make a political point about how imperialism is bad. But Jesus Christ, it’s so muddled.

For one, it’s uhhh not great that the perpetrators of these atrocities are largely non-white and the victims are members of a culture that closely parallels western Europe. Given that the way the last several hundred years have played out...it’s usually been the other way around. This shows a lack of care in D&D’s part in truly wrestling with this topic, a lack of interest in really dealing with real world politics and history. Just no interest exploring how imperialism and white supremacy, how the idea that “we come from a ‘superior culture’ so clearly we know what’s best and can go around the world doing as we please” are INCREDIBLY linked.

For two...it’s mostly just Dany that’s the problem. Jon doesn’t want to destroy King’s Landing, Varys doesn’t, Tyrion doesn’t. Grey Worm does, but he’s barely a character at this point in the story. They all give her like, a million outs. Especially the bells. And those bells ring, the battle is won, but Dany decides to go on her murder rampage anyway.

The problem isn’t a system, it’s one person who has “the madness!” It’s one person being a psychotic dictator, and all the problems are solved when that person gets stabbed.

Which is absolutely not how it works in real life. We didn’t just go to war in Afghanistan in Iraq because George Bush was a bad person. If we had, we would have been out when Obama got into office. The US went to war in those countries because of a giant system of war and profit, a system that benefits many many people, that has been built over the past several generations. The US went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and stayed there, because weapons contractors wanted to be there so they could make money. Because oil companies and heavy mineral companies wanted the resources those countries had. Because the military itself has a huge amount influence over the government, and to justify their massive budget and continued influence they need to have things to do. The Afghanistan War continues loooong after the death of Osama Bin Laden because of a whole web of CEOs and lobbyists and generals and politicians, all of whom benefit from it. The problem is not one person. It’s a fundamental flaw in how the system is set up. How it rewards those who can buy influence.

And it’s so so clear to me that D&D do not understand this. Like...even a little. They don’t think in terms of systems, just good people and bad people. That’s why the end of the series, which is still a fucking monarchy, is framed positively. Because it’s not the system of power that’s the problem, it’s just that bad people were in charge! But now the good people are in charge, so it’s all good!

They like talking about the tragedy of war, like referencing historical atrocities in scripts, like talking about how deep it all is. They love to talk about how they wanted to create a fantasy series grounded not in magic, but political reality. But they have no understanding of political reality beyond the most basic basic shit. Like war is bad dontcha know! Yeah, no shit!

So these two messed up the characters, they messed up the fantasy, but they also messed up the part they claimed to care about most, the politics. Because they’re dumbshits.

Jesus this got long. If you read all this, thank you for listening to the ramblings I wrote while I should be working.

#got #got season 8 #game of thrones #anti game of thrones #anti d&d #holy shit why did i write so much #this is entirely just for me #no one else can be expected to read this

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sirius-archive · 6 years ago

Text

Young gods Part 5

Pairing: Sirius Black x Reader, Remus Lupin x Reader, Regulus Black x Reader

Warnings: Violence, Swearing, description of anxiety.

Word Count: 7486

A/N: This chapter is...oof. Just...oof. It hurt a lot to write the ending, but it has to happen this way. Anyway, I hope everyone had happy holidays and sorry for ruining them :/ Also THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO FILLS OUT THE TAGLIST FORM!! all of your responses have GIVEN ME LIFE i love you all sooooo much!

Chapter five: Silence or Turn to Stone

On the last day of term, Regulus Black finally makes a decision.

It may have taken over a month of awkward glances and a handful of uncomfortably quiet Potions lessons, but these things take time and you’ve always been a patient person. You also remember what Regulus is like; how he tends to pull things apart and scrutinize every tiny detail before carefully stitching them back together. He’s always been a deep thinker, cautious in his approach to life, a contrast to his brother who you don’t think has ever hesitated for a single moment before diving into the thick of things.

Still, it’s a breath of warm relief when you see him sidling over to you from across the Library, looking sheepish, uncomfortable and embarrassed all at the same time.

“Regulus,” you smile, eyes lighting up as he approaches.

“I thought you would have left with everyone else for Christmas?” He asks, surprised.

You close your book, rubbing your fingers across the smooth cover absentmindedly, “My grandma said that my aunt is staying with her for Christmas,” you explain, spinning your carefully planned excuse, “She wanted me to ‘stay with my friends and have a good time for a change.’”

Regulus nods in understanding. You tilt your head, examining him, “I thought you wanted to go home to your parents this year?”

Regulus swallows, his tongue darting out to swipe across his bottom lip nervously, “Uh - Yeah, they wanted me to stay too…” He shrugs, clearly uncomfortable with the subject “Listen, I’ve been thinking about what you said and ...Um...And I...I believe you, now.”

You nod, brows raised expectantly as Regulus swallows and continues.

“I mean, I thought it was suspicious that you wouldn’t talk to me for years and then suddenly you decide you want to be friends again. But then I did hear about Kamilah and Sirius and I thought that...maybe...what you were saying was the truth.”

Your lips pull into a smile on impulse, without requiring much effort on your part, “You know, not everyone has ulterior motives, Regulus...”

Hypocrite, your conscience hisses.

Regulus sighs and nods, “Yeah, I know. I guess old habits die hard.”

Regulus slides his hands into his pockets, staring at his feet. There’s a moment of awkward silence between the two of you, where you shift uncomfortably in your seat and close the book in your hands. Finally, you break the silence with a flash of a smile.

“So, we’re friends again?”

Regulus rakes a hand through his thick, black hair, “Yeah. We can - erm - we can be friends again.”

Your smile broadens uncontrollably, watching as Regulus relaxed at the sight of it. He even manages a smile of his own; a quick flicker across his lips that lights up his entire face.

You gesture toward the empty spot beside you, inviting him to sit. He accepts, smiling loosely, and you ignore the sharp, needle-point pricks of guilt that nip the edges of your chest, knowing deep down that this is all to help Regulus, not hurt him. And yes, you may detest his view on muggleborns, but perhaps your friendship could change that.

Maybe you could change that.

“What are you reading? Regulus asks, peering over at the book in your arms.

“Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” you reply, and Regulus raises an inquisitive eyebrow, “It’s a classic muggle book about a girl who falls into a rabbit hole and enters a crazy and strange new world.”

“Huh,” Regulus examines the book cover thoughtfully.

“My father used to read it to me all the time,” you say, reminiscing, “Every night before we went to bed, we read about Alice’s exciting journey down the rabbit hole. He was just as in love with it as I was. I think he was a lot like Lewis Carrol.”

You trail off into a brief silence, smiling as you remember the way your father used to act out each character. His impressions always had you and your mother in hysterics, especially his depiction of the Mad Hatter.

Regulus stares at the book curiously, then tears his eyes away, like he’s glimpsing st something he shouldn’t be. You glance between Regulus and the book, deciding whether to part with your beloved treasure of a book temporarily. Ultimately, you concede, and hold the book out to him.

“Take it,” you offer, smiling, “I’ve read it a million times.”

Regulus hesitates, uncertain, glancing between you and the book. Your smile broadens encouragingly. Finally, he takes it.

“Thanks,” he smiles, taking the book and running his hand across the cover, “I think I’ll enjoy this.”

“I know you’ll enjoy it,” you correct, smiling knowingly at him, “Sometimes, I feel like I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole myself, you know?”

Regulus stares at the book absently, as though he isn’t really reading anything.

“Yeah,” he mumbles, gloomily, “Yeah, I do.”

Silence swells between the two of you, contemplative and as grim as the greyish purple clouds bruising the sky, in which the pressure Regulus is under almost feels sentient like you could reach out and touch it. You’re tempted to cover his hand with your own as a sign of comfort, but you don’t want to let too much on. If he suspects you know something about his ‘trial’ then he’ll lose trust in you.

When Regulus speaks again, it almost feels unnatural, arbitrary given how intense the silence between you had been, but he shatters it with a meek invitation.

“I know it’s last minute but...We should go to Hogsmeade together this weekend,” Regulus blurts, before quickly adding, “As friends. To celebrate...if you’re not going with anyone else...”

You consider him, smiling, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. The few rays of sunlight poking through the cluster of grey clouds in the sky are streaming through the tall windows of the library and are catching on Regulus’ lashes, glinting off the flecks of blue in his grey eyes. The similarities he shares with Sirius are evident, though there are deliberate mistakes. Where Sirius is more chiselled and sharp, Regulus is more muted. Sirius is more handsome, Regulus is more aristocratic, handsome in his own way.

But right now, Regulus looks remarkably different with sunlight in his hair and glittering in his eyes.

Regulus mistakes your measured consideration as hesitance, and he winces.

“We don’t have to!” He says, quickly, “It was a terrible suggestion, why would you want to go with me-?”

“-I think it’s a wonderful idea, Regulus,” you state, smiling gently at him as you cover his hand with yours, “We can go for butterbeer at The Three Broomsticks.”

Regulus flashes a dashing smile; it has the most peculiar effect on your heart.

“Okay,” he murmurs, tucking a lip between his teeth.

You smile at him, marvelling at how easy this is becoming, how easy the smiles are and the blushes and the furtive glances.

It’s almost as though it’s meant to be.

***

Later that night, you’re sitting with the Marauders plus Lily in the Room of Requirement when you tell them the news.

“Regulus and I are friends again,” you murmur, guiltily, averting your gaze from Lily’s bright green eyes and staring at your feet, “He approached me earlier today in the Library.”

James beams at you, clapping an encouraging hand on your shoulder and giving it a gentle squeeze.

“Excellent!” He commends, cheerily, “Well done!”

As if sensing your discomfort, Lily ducks her gaze to catch your eyes, offering you a kind and gentle smile, “You did well,” she says, softly, “I know it’s not easy, but it’s for the greater good.”

You clamp your bottom lip between your teeth, nibbling nervously. You nod timidly, knowing that, ultimately, she’s right.

Beside you, Remus takes your hand and gives it a tiny squeeze, as though transferring some of his strength to you. He turns to you and flashes a small smile, and there’s something so reassuring about the way it pulls the edges of his lips, like sunlight bending in water. It’s radiant in ways you can’t describe, but soft enough to put you at ease.

“We’re going to go to Hogsmeade together,” you add, “On the weekend.”

Remus’ smile falters at its edges.

“That’s great!” Peter grins, “The more one-on-one time, the better.”

“I should come with you,” Remus insists, firmly, “Um...I mean, Kaitlyn and I should come and make sure you’re okay.”

Lily agrees with a nod, “It would be good if someone came with you, just to make sure you’re okay.”

“But how will he open up to me when other people are around?” You ask, briskly, “I know Regulus, and he’s not going to hurt me right in the middle of Hogsmeade!”

James considers you, brows furrowed in thought, “You’re right. The more people come with you, the less inclined Regulus will feel to open up.”

“James,” Remus snips, tersely, “Regulus is a recruit. If (Y/N) goes by herself, she could be am–”

“-I’m not completely defenceless, Remus,” You snap, a little harsher than intended, “I know how to use a wand.”

Remus glances away for a moment, abashed, “I know, and I’m not doubting your skills as a witch-”

“-Sounds like you are to me,” you intercept, curtly. Remus continues with a sigh.

“I just...” Remus lowers his voice to a soft murmur, “I want you to be safe.”

You force a smile that you hope looks reassuring onto your face, “I’ll be fine, Remus. Please trust me to take care of myself.”

Remus sighs, the exhale heavy on his lips as he rubs his forehead anxiously, “Okay, fine.”

“She’ll be fine, Remus,” James says, giving Remus a knowing look, before turning to you and winking, “We have complete faith in you.”

James’ confidence and million-dollar grin settle the rest of your writhing nerves, and you can’t help the tiny smile that flickers across your lips.

“A word of advice,” Sirius chimes in from where he leans against the wall, partially draped in shadows, “Don’t try to be too pushy with my brother. He’s sensitive, he’s cautious and he’ll be able to tell that you know more than you should.”

“Well that shouldn’t be too hard,” James says, “(Y/N) is a very patient and gentle person.”

“And keep your guard up,” Sirius warns, seriously, “Don’t get too complacent. He’s been brainwashed by his parents, so it’ll take a lot of subtle convincing.”

Remus rolls his eyes, sardonically, “Would you like to take (Y/N)’s place then, Sirius?”

Sirius scowls, “Of course not you prat. I just want to make sure.... look, never mind. (Y/N), Just ignore the furry oaf over there, it’s nearly his time of the month and he gets moody.”

Remus opens his mouth to argue but Lily intercepts, briskly.

“I guess that concludes our meeting for tonight,” She says, clapping her hands together, “James, Remus and I can go and tell Professor Dumbledore the latest. Sirius, do you want to take (Y/N) back to her common room?”

You freeze.

No, no, no, no, no

Your heart skips, slips, and tumbles in your chest. You bite down hard on your tongue, tasting warm iron as it spills across your taste buds, but you don’t care, not really because all you can think about is that familiar, greasy wave of nausea pooling obnoxiously at the pit of your stomach.

“Um-” you squeak, ready to blurt out everything including your own anxiety because no he does not want to ‘take me back to my Common room’, no he certainly does not-

“-Sure,” Sirius shrugs, smirking lazily, “If (Y/N) will have me...?”

No.

“O-okay.”

“Great,” Lily smiles, glancing between the two of you. Remus looks uneasy.

“Does Sirius - I mean - do I have to come?” Remus asks, meekly, cheeks pink and eyes darting away. James snickers but falls silent when Lily shoots him a look.

“Of course you do,” Lily says, firmly, “You have to report back to Professor Dumbledore about Mulciber and Avery.”

“Besides,” James adds, “There’s that thing that we have to discuss.”

Remus frowns and glances at Sirius, who shrugs again.

“Prongs already told me.”

You shift awkwardly in your seat. Everyone in the room knows about this unspoken subject except you, which could only mean it's about you.

Remus glances between you and Sirius warily, his hand squeezing yours a little harder, almost possessively, “What about Peter?”

“Going with them, obviously,” Peter says, jabbing a thumb at James and Lily. Remus nods, but he still looks unsure.

“My God, Moony, anyone would think that I’d have to escort the queen to her palace. What’s the big fuss?” Sirius retorts, a wicked, almost knowing smirk on his lips. He earns a few appreciative sniggers from James and a laugh from Peter.

Remus sighs, exasperated, and rolls his eyes, relenting, “Okay, fine,” he snaps, tersely, “Fine, take her Padfoot.”

He flaps a hand at Sirius, who pushes himself off the wall and saunters toward you.

“Take the cloak,” James instructs, handing him what you assume is the Invisibility Cloak, “If we get stopped, we can just tell them honestly that Professor Dumbledore is expecting us.”

“Okay,” Sirius shrugs, then smirks devilishly at you, “Get over her, (Y/N).”

You move to climb out of your seat but Peter suddenly springs to his feet and leans in close to you.

“Um, before you go...” Peter blurts in a low whisper, “Is...is Kaitlyn...er...dating anyone? Or is she - um - is she going to Hogsmeade this weekend?”

You watch as Peter blushes an unflattering shade of scarlet and you tuck strands of loose hair behind your ear, embarrassed for Peter, “Um...I don’t know...sorry Peter.”

Actually, that’s not entirely true. You do know, but you don’t have the heart to tell Peter that he is definitely not her type.

Disappointment flickers across Peters' face as his blush deepens, shade darkening and soaking from his cheeks, down his neck and across his chest.

“Oh,” he murmurs, trying to sound nonchalant, “That’s Okay. Thanks anyway...”

You try to give him a reassuring smile before you leave him, approaching Sirius slowly. You wear a blush of your own; you can feel the heat as it burns up the curve of your neck and creeps uncomfortably in your cheeks. Sirius wraps an arm around your waist and reigns you into his side, holding you close.

“Ready?” He asks

Not really, you think, but you nod timidly.

Sirius drapes the cloak over your shoulders and you begin to walk out of the door and toward the Ravenclaw common room.

You and Sirius marinate in an uncomfortable silence, each second that passes feeling more and more awkward. You try to think of things to say but every futile attempt to attempt a conversation is met with a barrage of self doubt and anxiety.

What do you even talk about with boys anyway? You think about your friendships with Regulus and Remus, the only two boys you talk to without much effort, but realise that they have always initiated the conversation. If it were up to you, you probably wouldn’t even be friends with them if they hadn’t originally spoken up. Sometimes, it even feels awkward talking to them, especially when the conversation dies down and you feel like you have to say more. Its unnerving for reasons you can’t quite comprehend, but are forced to understand anyway.

“So how did you and Regulus meet anyway?” Sirius suddenly asks, curiously.

You swallow your nerves and speak honestly.

“Um on the train to - uh - to Hogwarts in our first year.”

“Oh...?”

“Yeah.”

A beat of silence passes, stretches, lingers.

“And how long were you friends for?”

“About two years.”

“Okay.”

More silence. Your brain scrambles for something to say but the more seconds pass, the more awkward it becomes. Sirius doesn’t seem to find it awkward, though. In fact, he’s keeping the conversation going.

“What happened between the two of you, if you don’t mind me asking?”

You do mind him asking, actually. Not because you don’t trust Sirius but because talking about the past unstitches an old wound you’ve tried desperately to ignore. Still, Regulus is Sirius’ brother, who is in serious trouble, so maybe telling him will help somehow.

“I noticed he started drifting to the Dark Arts and realised his intentions, so I-I ended our friendship.”

Saying it like that makes it sound so simple, but there were so many emotions involved in leaving your best friend behind. Watching someone drift to life you know they don’t belong in feels like you’re abandoning them or helping hammer a nail into their own coffins. But Regulus wouldn’t listen. His parents had reached into his brain and tangled all his thoughts, snipped them and turned them into strings so they could puppeteer their own son.

You guess that’s why Sirius - someone who’s far too stubborn and wild to be tamed - left when he could.

Sirius nods knowingly, “That can’t have been easy.”

“It wasn’t,” you answer, honestly, gulping down the lump in the back of your throat.

Silence. Unbearable, uncomfortable silence drowns the two of you in waves of discomfort. It loiters like a menacing shadow until you reach the common room and Sirius pulls off the cloak, grinning at you.

“This looks vaguely familiar,” he smirks, referring to the last time he had left you outside the Ravenclaw common room.

“I suppose,” you shrug, a small smile flickering across your lips. Sirius snorts.

“You don’t talk much, do you, Ashton?”

You shrug, biting down on your bottom lip and playing with a loose ribbon of hair. Sirius’ eyes glimmer in the low light.

“Hey, um…how’s…how’s Kamilah,” Sirius asks, suddenly looking sheepish.

Your stomach sinks.

“She’s…” you trail off, bite your lip, “Honestly? I don’t know. I don’t talk to her much anymore and I try to avoid her. In saying that, she kind of looked sad this morning before she left. Why? Aren’t you guys–?”

Before you can say the apparently offensive word, Sirius grimaces and interrupts you hastily.

“–We’re not involved anymore,” he blurts, quickly, “Things got complicated way too quickly and we…yeah you don’t need to know the details.”

You frown at Sirius, and to your surprise, something dark and malicious curls inside of you, like a serpent unfurling itself deep inside places you never knew existed.

“Maybe you shouldn’t use women as objects for your own entertainment, then,” you spit before you even realize what you’re saying, “I mean, I’m not friends with Kamilah anymore but she was clearly in love with you. How could you lead her on like that and then just end it…?”

Sirius raises an eyebrow, both surprised and impressed.

“I’m impressed,” he says, a hint of a smirk flirting around his lips, “and here I thought you were the quiet one. I guess you only talk when it’s important.”

You flush, your face hot and itchy.

“I’m just saying, Kamilah had feelings for you…”

“And I made it clear right from the beginning that I wasn’t looking for a relationship,” Sirius explains, “She agreed to it. In fact, she was the one who suggested we keep it on the down low so no one got confused. It was a mutual agreement to keep things fun but not get too attached.”

You nod, prodding the back of your teeth with your tongue thoughtfully. So Kamilah actually agreed to this, even though she was practically guaranteed to have her heart broken. How could she be so reckless with her heart? Logically, it doesn’t make sense, though Kamilah isn’t one to be logical when it comes to matters of the heart. Otherwise, she would probably never have agreed to such terms if it meant alienating her two best friends.

“You know what you remind me of?” Sirius suddenly asks, and you nearly jump. You had been so tangled in your own thoughts, you had forgotten that Sirius was there, “You remind me of one of those Russian nesting dolls. You know the ones that you open up and there’s a smaller one inside and so on? Yeah, you remind me of one of those.”

You pin him with a questioning look, “Why - I mean - yeah, that’s what I mean - Why?”

“Because you have so many layers,” Sirius says, intrigued, “I mean, on the surface you’re the shy, good girl who probably spends most of her time trying to flatten out every kink in your skirt. But something about you tells me that theres so much more than that. For example, what you just said to me before, which was right in every way, but I digress. I’m curious about the type of person you are at your core.”

You blink at him, heat rushing to pool beneath your cheeks, “Um...”

“Anyway, Goodnight Doll,” he says, smirking, before wrapping the cloak around himself and folding into the night.

You blink at where he once stood, once again reduced to complete, baffled silence. Doll? Was that going to be his new nickname for you? You sigh and enter the Ravenclaw common room, both tired and confused.

****

“I can’t do this!” you whine, rubbing your forehead anxiously as you sit crossed-leg on your bed in the girls' dormitory. Kaitlyn sits beside you, rubbing soothing circles on your back as though trying to massage your worries away.

You release a sigh, fiddling nervously with your necklace, “I’m a terrible liar, Kaitlyn! And Regulus...he’s so smart! He’s a gifted liar! He knows what to look for...”

“Don’t think too much about it, (Y/N),” Kaitlyn advises, gently, “If you think about it, it becomes obvious. Part of the reason why he’s so good is because he’s a natural liar.”

You tear your fingers through your hair and tug on the roots, “But I can’t lie! It’s like there’s something wrong with me I’m just...shocking at it...”

“Well, you’ve managed to convince him thus far that you want to be friends, and you’ve been able to do so without revealing anything, so I’d say you’re doing pretty good.”

As she says it, Kaitlyn waves her wand around in the air and the projector screen sitting on the floor flies up and straightens against the wall.

“Listen, (Y/N),” Kaitlyn starts, seriously, “You have to do this, whether you like it r not, this is about Regulus’ life. All you have to do tomorrow morning is be is yourself, that’s the person Regulus befriended.”

You dig your teeth into your bottom lip and nod, fingers still restlessly threading the moon crescent pendant through your fingers. Kaitlyn’s right. She’s always right.

“Okay,” you breathe, “You’re right. I have to do this.”

Kaitlyn slaps a hand on your knee and gives it a gentle squeeze. She flashes you a comforting smile, setting your spiralling nerves at ease in that way that only Kaitlyn can. It’s strange yet beautiful how some friendships can transcend those borders and enter a stage where you’re closer than sisters.

Kaitlyn releases your knee and ambles toward the giant bean bags, collapsing into one. She looks like she’s sinking into a giant marshmallow, three times her size, yet it molds to her body and gives the impression that she’s being hugged by a cloud.

She looks over you and winks, smirking broadly. “Now get your ass over here and watch a movie with me!”

You grin at her, all your worries disappearing out the window and make your way over to where the bean bags are gathered around the large projector screen, dropping into a bean bag. The bean bag embraces you with phantom arms that promise comfort and relaxation and you sigh like you’re sinking into a hot bath.

It’s a lot larger than Kaitlyn’s – you suspect Kaitlyn had got a double bean bag instead of a single for some unknown reason since you’re significantly smaller than Kaitlyn – but you don’t argue or complain. In fact, it’s rather luxurious, though you’re not sure how you’re going to get out.

Since it’s just yourself and Kaitlyn in the girls' dorm, you had spoken to the Muggle Studies Professor about borrowing the projector to watch Christmas films, to which she had graciously agreed. With a few muggle movies and a lifetime supply of treats from the kitchen, you and Kaitlyn settle into the insanely large and irresistibly comfortable bean bags, ready to watch your first film.

A knock at the door temporarily hinders those plans.

“I’ll get it!” Kaitlyn exclaims, excitedly. You laugh hysterically as she struggles to pull herself out of the beanbag, her arms and legs flailing wildly in the air. You’re about to ask if she needs help when she finally heaves herself out of the bean bag, panting.

Grinning goofily, she springs to her feet and dashes toward the door, tearing it open excitedly. She and the visitor have a mumbled conversation that you can’t quite hear, and you’re just about to somehow peel yourself out of the bean bag and see what’s going on when Kaitlyn steps away and–

And–

Remus Lupin steps into the room, smiling broadly.

You hadn’t seen him since the meeting you had with the Marauders earlier that week, and to be honest, he looks terrible. Pale and exhausted looking, Remus looks as though he needs a giant hug, a huge mug of hot chocolate with dozens of marshmallows (just the way he likes it) and a twelve-year nap. But his smile, wide and radiant, chases away the weariness so evident on his face, almost like sunlight breaking through stormy clouds, and you can’t help but smile back at him.

“Remus!” You chime in surprise, struggling to get out of your bean bag, “I – argh – haven’t seen you for so – ugh – so long.”

“Not so funny now, is it?” Kaitlyn smirks.

You roll your eyes and double your efforts to climb out of the beanbag but it’s like struggling against a rip; the bean bag seems to swallow you. Remus smiles amusedly and holds up a hand.

“Don’t worry about getting up,” he chortles, “That bean bag looks like it’s about to devour you in one bite.”

You sigh, surrendering to the bean bag, “Yeah, Kaitlyn picked it. Anyway, how did you get up here? I mean, Rowena Ravenclaw cast protective charms on the girls dorm to stop boys climbing up them?”

A daring grin pulls Remus’ lips, and for a moment, he resembles James Potter.

“Well, all charms have a counter-charm,” Remus replies simply, almost devilishly, “It’s just figuring out which one works.”

You bite your lip, shaking your head in awe, “You should have been a Ravenclaw.”

The apples of Remus’ cheeks stain a light shade of pink, “Yeah, the Sorting Hat wanted to put me here but I think James would have dragged me back to Gryffindor tower the first chance he got.”

“I believe you,” Kaitlyn smirks, arms folded across her chest, before unfolding them and clapping her hands together, “So, Remus, let's get down to business. There are cakes and sweets over here, a few bottles of butterbeer over. Help yourself!”

While Remus strolls toward the sweets table, you take the opportunity to question Kaitlyn.

“You invited Remus?” you whisper and Kaitlyn grins, “You didn’t think to ask me, first?”

Kaitlyn’s brows crease in mild confusion, “Remus is your friend, too. Why is it a problem?” a knowing smirk suddenly fills across her lips, “Unless you fancy him?”

Your stomach tightens into a thick knot.

“I do not fancy Remus!” you snip, angrily, “He’s just a friend–”

“Where am I sitting?”

You turn to Remus and realise that there is no extra bean bag and with you having the biggest of the two–

“You could sit with (Y/N)?” Kaitlyn suggests, grinning wickedly, “It’s big enough for the two of you.”

You shoot Kaitlyn a nasty look, catching onto Kaitlyn’s devious schemes. She had deliberately set this up, positioned every pawn carefully on her chess board.

Remus doesn’t seem to notice this, though, and he flops down beside you, sighing as he settles in the bean bag. His knee brushes against yours, the warmth of his body seeping through your clothes, and you bite your tongue on a gasp.

Your heart flutters stupidly when your arm brushes against his, your face warm with an embarrassing blush.

“So, what are we watching?” he asks, glancing at you, but you quickly turn away before he can notice your flushed cheeks.

“We were thinking A Christmas Carol and then A Miracle on 34th Street,” Kaitlyn answers as Remus takes a swig of his butterbeer.

“Ah, classics,” he grins, lips glossed with butterbeer.

Kaitlyn flicks her wand and the projector whirs to life, the lights dimming, throwing the room into a warm ambience.

A Christmas Carol begins to play, the characters caught in a world of black and white as though trapped inside a snow globe, but as the film follows Ebenezer Scrooge’s adventures, you can’t seem to focus on any of it.

Remus is a furnace of warmth and comfort as he sits beside you, as though he had bottled up autumn and used it as an expensive cologne. Sitting so close to him feels different in this setting, and you’re not entirely sure how or why. You had always sat close to him during free periods, where you’d spend hours studying together. Why should it feel any different? Why can’t you enjoy a movie with Remus without feeling awkward or embarrassed? And why was Kaitlyn so insistent with her baseless theory that you liked Remus?

You had a crush on Sirius. Sirius, who is ridiculously handsome and charming and witty and intelligent, and he was the embodiment of every teenage girl's dream; he rode a motorbike and smelt of smoke and whiskey and adventure and he–he–

He…dated your best friend for five months. In secret. And maybe he didn’t know what he was doing but it still hurt in ways you couldn’t even begin to describe…

You have to admit that things are different now, not only with Sirius but yourself. How had you even managed to say more than three words to Sirius, let alone confront him about his playboy habits? It was as though the words had tumbled from your lips without actually realizing what they meant. You probably wouldn’t have that kind of confidence again…and certainly not with Sirius…

A soft snore issues from Kaitlyn’s beanbag. You glance over at her and smile, finding her curled into a ball like a cat, fast asleep.

“She’s asleep?” Remus asks, amusement in his voice.

“Yeah, she is–” You whisper as you turn back to him and you nearly gasp, suddenly aware of how close he is. Remus seems to notice this and tries to shift but the bean bag only pushes the two of you closer. You both laugh nervously until Remus gives up and leans back in the bean bag, resting his head against your trunk.

“Have you read the book to this?” Remus asks, nodding at the movie. You smile and nod.

“I read it every Christmas. One of my favourite things about Christmas, actually.”

Remus considers you for a moment before he turns back to the screen, “I really love this film but…I don’t know…there’s something about the book that contains certain magic the films can’t quite capture.”

“Isn’t that the case with most film adaptions?” you ask and Remus nods in a ‘Touché’ manner. You smile at Remus, eyes studying him for a moment longer than necessary, lingering on the curve of his lips as they quirk into a smile, and the weight of your worries seem to tear up between your ribs like a long, blunt knife and puncture your heart.

Your expression must have shifted because Remus notices and he places a hand on yours.

“What’s wrong, (Y/N)?” he asks, concern heavy in his voice, and after a moment of hesitation, you reply.

“I’m just…” you trail off, not sure how to describe it. Is it fear? Confusion? Guilt? Or all three? You sigh, and Remus seems to read your words without you even saying them.

“It’s okay to be scared,” Remus murmurs, softly, “These are trying times and you have a big task on your shoulders. But you’re not alone, we’re here for you…” After a short pause, a smile flickers on Remus’ lips, “I’m here.”

You smile warmly at Remus, wondering how you got so lucky, and rest your head on his shoulder, feeling his arm drape across your shoulders, holding you close.

****

Hogsmeade is beautiful this time of year.

Sheets of snow are draped over the picturesque village, bathing the town's center in clouds of fluffy white. Fairy lights have been strung between the buildings, sparkling like constellations that have been stolen from a midnight sky and stretched across the town. The whole village seems to bask in the warmth of that joyous Christmas glow, excitement mingling in the air with the sprinkling of snowflakes.

You smile as you walk beside Regulus, your hands in your pockets to keep them warm. Your breath crystallizes before you in plumes of mist, reminding you of how you used to pretend to be a fire-breathing dragon when you were eight or nine. Now, you can appreciate the beauty of it, as well as the aesthetically delightful beauty of the winter wonderland around you.

“Do you want to go anywhere first?” You ask, smiling softly at Regulus.

“Nah,” Regulus shrugs, “Let's go and get a Butterbeer.”

The two of you trudge toward The Three Broomsticks, which is full of cheery patrons. You peer into the window and glance at Regulus nervously. He doesn’t seem to notice your unease, so, mustering every ounce of courage deep inside of you, you follow Regulus into The Three Broomsticks.

It hits you like a sharp slap of icy air, stinging in your chest. Dozens and dozens of people stand around, laughing boisterously, cheeks flushed from the alcohol as Madam Rosmerta bustles past them. Your nerves tingle like a warning signal, screaming at you to leave while you still can as someone shoulders past you, and you feel like your diving head first into cold water, like the walls are inching closer, closing in all around you, and you can’t do this, you can’t, you can’t, you can’t!

“You have to do this, whether you like it or not,” Kaitlyn’s voice says in your ear, “This is about Regulus’ life.”

You can do this.

You have to.

Regulus finds a table near the back exit and tells you to wait while he gets you some butterbeer. You oblige all too willingly, slumping into your seat and trying to focus on your breathing. Your fingers fiddle with your necklace, white gold passing through your fingers like a ribbon of moonlight while you take a mental tour through your body.

Starting at your toes, you close your eyes and you make your way up your body, focusing on different points and using your senses to tap into your body. You feel the way the floor presses up against your feet, how the leather of your seat feels beneath your touch, how each one of your vertebrae connected to your spine is pressed against the back of your seat, how the subtle chill of a wintry breeze breathes a gentle, crisp sigh against your cheeks.

Finally, you reach the top of your head, where the sharp prickle of tension seems to lessen as you focus on how each individual strand of hair pokes out of your scalp like an endless field of wildflowers. Your breathing has slowed at this point, to an easy inhale and a gentle exhale, pulling air in then pushing it out in a never-ending cycle.

You open your eyes.

Regulus is already sitting in front of you, staring intensely.

“Better?” he asks, handing you your butterbeer. You flush and duck your chin, accepting the mug.

“Yeah,” you breathe and Regulus nods.

“Good.”

Silence settles between the two of you as you enjoy your butterbeer, the noise of the rowdy crowd now reduced to a hum in your ears. Butterbeer always has a profound effect on you and coupled with your little calming technique, it sets your feelings of ease aside, like clipping a mad dog onto a leash for just a little while longer.

“No Kaitlyn today?” Regulus asks, glancing around.

“She’s with Peter Pettigrew,” you explain, “I think he asked her to go to ice skating or something.”

Regulus arches a brow, “I didn’t realise he was friends with a mudblood…” You frown at him and Regulus looks mildly confused for a moment, as though using the racial slur is now second nature to him, but then he realizes and flushes, “Sorry, Muggleborn.”

“If we’re going to be friends again, we have to lay down some ground rules,” you snip, sharply, and Regulus nods.

“Of course.”

“One, you have to at least try to get on with Kaitlyn,” you say and Regulus winces.

“I…don’t think she likes me…”

“She doesn’t like most people,” you shrug, casually, “But she will consider you if you make an effort.”

Regulus seems hesitant but he nods anyway as you continue, “Two, you have to stop calling muggle-borns that word. It’s a racial slur!”

Regulus opens his mouth to argue the point but decides against it, choosing to nod silently.

“And finally, no more dark magic.”

Regulus’ eyes snap to you, widening, “But I don’t practice dark magic…”

You bite your lip, hoping that’s true and not just another lie, “Yes, I know. But in case you’re tempted to…”

Regulus nods in agreement, his expression oddly blank, as though he’s stretching the skin of his face into a look of apathy.

“Okay.”

He extends his hand and you take it, shaking over the table. You lock eyes for a long, lingering moment, in which you think he may never tear his gaze away from yours. But then his eyes drift to someone over your shoulder, and before you can follow his gaze, he pulls his hand away.

“Do you want to go for a walk?” Regulus asks, nervously, glancing around at the drunken patrons crowding the place, “It’s getting a little crowded in here.”

You couldn’t agree more.

“Yes,” You practically cry, “Please.”

Swiftly, Regulus guides you out of The Three Broomsticks and into the back alley. He swings the door shut.

“Thank goodness,” you sigh, breathing in the cool air, “Fresh air.”

A smile pinches the corners of his lips, but it looks a little lopsided like he’s been practising something that should come naturally.

“It gets way too stuffy in there around Christmas,” Regulus says, putting his hands in his pockets, “So, where to next?”

You shrug. Decisions have…never been your area of expertise.

“I don’t really know,” you mumble, shrugging again, “Wherever you want.”

Regulus pauses in thought for a moment, “How about the Shrieking Shack?”

You frown at him, “The what?”

Regulus bleats a laugh of disbelief, “You’ve been to Hogsmeade how many times and you still haven’t gone to the Shrieking Shack?”

“That’s…not that creepy, haunted house?” you ask, slowly, dread inching up your spine and Regulus nods, “Oh…well…if you want.”

Regulus nods shortly and begins heading toward the Shrieking Shack, scaling the slope.

According to Kaitlyn, the Shrieking Shack hasn’t always been haunted, but some sort of horrific crime had occurred there seven years ago, something so grisly and cruel the village refuses to acknowledge it. They’ve boarded it up to avoid any vengeful spirits escaping and attacking the town, so the spirits, vexed and seething, let out painful wails, as though forced to relive their torture every month.

That’s what the village believes, anyway.

You and Regulus follow the twisted, overgrown path through the dense forest, distancing yourselves from the safety of the village. When you arrive outside at the fence surrounding the Shrieking Shack, Regulus turns to you.

“I suppose you’ve heard some of the stories about the Shrieking Shack,” Regulus says and you nod.

“Someone got murdered here or something,” you murmur, flicking a nervous glance at the crumbling house and wondering if the spirits can hear you. It feels weird, daunting even, talking about the events that have given this house its reputation while standing just outside of it.

Regulus shrugs, “I don’t know. But something is stuck in there against its will…like it doesn’t have a choice…completely alone…”

Regulus trails off into a sombre silence, his eyes glinting with something you’ve never seen before. You’re about to reach out and touch his shoulder when Regulus turns to you, his eyes suddenly glistening with unshed tears.

“I’m sorry, (Y/N),” he murmurs, “I need you to know that I never wanted this for you...”

“What do you–” you’re cut off when you collapse to the ground, your mouth falling open in a silent scream.

It’s like you’re being pulled apart at the seams, stretching your cells apart and rupturing them. Like one thousand hot knives are carving canyons down the middle of your skull, splitting it open, blood spilling out and staining the snow. Like something is trying to claw its way out of you, scraping seven-inch nails up your ribcage and puncturing your chest.

The pain devours you, tearing your grip on the world away from your trembling hands as time and space seem to blend into one agonizing blur, and you try to scream but your shrieks of pain die in the air, as though it had gotten lost somewhere between your lungs and your lips, and you writhe in the snow, feeling it soak into your clothes, but it stings, like shards plunging into your skin, burrowing deeper and deeper, digging into your bones, into your soul–

“Well done, Regulus.”

You can only just register the hoarse voice of Mulciber; it rings in your ears and bounces off your skull like bullets. As he approaches, you notice the hungry expression crossing his face as he directs his wand at you.

“Now, take over from me. Prove yourself to the Dark Lord.”

Regulus’ hand trembles as he raises his wand, his mouth twisting and twitching like he’s trying to add a voice to the curse, but all that’s coming out is a gurgle at the back of his throat.

“Go on, Regulus,” says a new, greasy voice, “Otherwise I’ll take over from Mulciber.”

Avery steps into view, crouching low. His face looms over you, his gaze travelling hungrily over you, eyes like the open mouth of a starving, black hole. He trails a finger down your cheek, gripping your chin tightly.

“I bet she’ll cry,” Avery hisses, “She looks like a crier.”

“Leave her alone,” Regulus growls, his voice like distant thunder, “This is my trial, not yours.”

“Make us,” Mulciber sneers at Regulus, and a fresh wave of pain washes over you, dragging you under.

A scream sears up your throat and bursts from your lips as your knees buckle, your bones suddenly too weak to support you, the all-consuming pain returning to tear you from the inside out. Your vision blurs, brain short-circuiting, as your body weeps, your energy dwindling.

A shadow ripples across the world of grey and white painted before your eyes, tangling with Mulciber and Avery’s silhouettes into a knot.

Suddenly, the pain vanishes, replaced with a soul-shaking throb. Your body, wrung out and weary, feels boneless against the snow, but you’re too tired, too weak.

The world dims, dark jaws unhinging, devouring you.

You let it.

@whysoseriouspadfoot @ashkuuuu @sly-vixen-up2nogood @hervench @rageofcaliban @amelya5567 @hylianhighlander @lousimusician @randomoutsiders @littlewriter55 @jackie-houston @sirius-lysad @marauderskeeper @royalmaknae @yllwtaxi @trumpettay @lilaccoveredteapot @evyiione @swim-deep-or-die @pugsandcuddles @tamosbien @xrosegoldwolfx @clockworkherondale @dude-whatawave @avipshamitra @saturnaah @reimiwritrs @tchalland @mckjnnon @lucifersnipnips @reducto-bitch @bluskai @socialheartbreak @heliopvth @who-said @mhftrs

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eggoreviews · 5 years ago

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E3 2019 Nintendo Direct - BREAKDOWN

Oh wow. That big ol direct sure was something. So now I’m here to break down everything that happened in unnecessary fashion and give my personal reaction to everything that happened with my tried and true Excitement Rater. Want to see my heavily scientific and not at all arbitrary process? Then click down to see the deets.

Before we kick off my (very very scientific) breakdown of this year’s packed direct, I thought I’d briefly go over how I rate things:

A random string of letters/numbers = Immeasurable excitement

YEEHAW BABEY = Big excitement

Heck Yeck = Vague excitement

Yeah! = Not really excited, but still could be good

Sure, why not? = I’m more confused than excited but sure

Oh = The excitement isn’t there

Oh no = Used on the rare occasion I really don’t like what I’ve seen

The Hero from the Dragon Quest series in Smash!

After a brief montage of some games that already came out I guess, the direct jumps straight into an ominous shot of World of Light baddie Dharkon, followed by a seemingly hopeless fight between Link and one very possessed Marth. Then the Luminary turns up gloriously on his horse. With all the leaks that had been flying around for so long, I think pretty much everyone had accepted the presence of Dragon Quest at this point and I was totally stoked when this happened! I love Dragon Quest! And my boi from 11 is here, along with a few other DQ veterans as alt swaps and a pretty awesome looking stage overlooking what seems to be the land of Erdrea and the World Tree. Now to wait until summer and hope the Smash team have some sick ass remixes for us when the time comes!

Excitement Rating: YEEHAW BABEY

Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age - Definitive Edition

In a move that makes it a lil obvious that DQ’s Smash addition was more than a little commercially minded (not that I really care I’m still big hyped), a trailer for the expanded edition of the series’ latest installment follows. Seeming as I’ve already played this, I doubt I’ll be picking it up again but I still heartily recommend the game to any JRPG fan. Admittedly, the fact you apparently get to explore worlds from past games is pretty exciting.

ER: Heck Yeck

Luigi’s Mansion 3

In a way I thought was surprising, Nintendo’s first proper focus of Luigi’s Mansion 3 actually took up more time than Animal Crossing, but I guess that’s because it’s further along in development. We now know that the game is set within a haunted hotel and had some new gameplay features shown off, including the various ways Luigi can succ a ghost. Most exciting I think for me was the various multiplayer aspects, such as the local co-op option to play as Gooigi and the seemingly challenge and minigame-based ‘Scarescraper’ which I think incorporates online co-op too. Overall, this is looking to be a creative and well thought out entry in the series and I’m here for it.

ER: Heck Yeck

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance - Tactics

A licensed tie-in game for a thirty year old film feels a little odd, but I suppose stranger things have happened. This looks to be a sort of top-down tactical thingy involving the various characters from The Dark Crystal and for some reason Netflix is involved, I don’t know, but I guess it could be interesting.

ER: Sure, why not?

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening

The adorable remake of this classic Game Boy title seems to be coming along great and this direct’s extended trailer gave us a good look at what we’ll be exploring come September 20th. The overhaul Koholint Island has had is phenomenal, giving us designs for Link and various other characters that we’ve never seen before and that makes this remake look especially unique. Another very exciting aspect for me was the dungeon builder that looks like great fun! You collect different dungeon parts as you go and then you can build and explore your own! Am I a goblin child or does that sound like the best thing ever?

ER: YEEHAW BABEY!!

Trials of Mana / Collection of Mana

I’ll admit I’m not really familiar with the Mana series, but from what I was shown in this direct, it looks to be a fairly standard JRPG. That’s definitely not a bad thing, as most JRPGs are amazing, but nothing in this trailer really stood out and came into its own. That being said, the gameplay and graphics look pretty solid and I’m sure the Mana fans have been fairly starved for content for a while so that’s something to look forward to. On top of this remake/new game with the same title as an older game (I really don’t know), the Collection of Mana containing the series’ first three games is being released real soon on the eShop.

ER: Yeah!

The Witcher III: Wild Hunt - Complete Edition

Following a few scattered rumours, we finally have confirmation that a Witcher 3 port is in fact in the works, coming packed with all the game’s DLC. This basically legendary RPG is not one I personally had a great experience with, but I’m sure a lot of people are gonna be happy to play this in handheld. I’d keep expectations tempered however, with the likes of Assassin’s Creed 3 and Saints Row the Third proving that these ports don’t always function brilliantly on this platform.

ER: Yeah!

Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Yet another and probably our last Fire Emblem trailer was shown in this direct, giving us a better look at how the story might play out and what our villains are going to be. With most of the gameplay features explored in the previous February direct, it’s good to have a slightly better idea as to what’s actually going on in terms of story and, to me, the results seem pretty damn good. Definitely one to keep an eye on!

ER: Heck Yeck

Resident Evil

In a slightly unnecessarily convoluted advert, we were given a two minute reel of two teenagers playing the original RE in tabletop mode in an abandoned house (??), along with the kind of less than exciting announcement that we’re getting the two weakest entries in the series for Switch, RE 5 and 6. I probably wasn’t the only one who felt a little passive about this whole thing. That being said, definitely not complaining about 1 & 4 being ported over.

ER: Oh

No More Heroes III

After the very slightly disappointing Travis Strikes Again, I really wasn’t expecting them to drop a trailer for the series’ third mainline installment so soon after. What we’ve seen looks pretty much like classic Travis, with a smidge of gameplay seen that looks just a bit more like what we’re used to. Of course, with this being the first reveal, there’s still a lot to find out but this looks very promising.

ER: Heck Yeck

Contra: Rogue Corps / Contra: Anniversary Collection

I’m not gonna pretend to be familiar with the Contra series, but this doesn’t at all look like what I’ve seen in the past. Honestly, this seemingly tactical shooter didn’t elicit much excitement from me and neither did its rushed character drops or its oddly rough textures. I’m unsure of actual fan reactions to this, but in my mind this one kind of sits in the ‘guess this exists’ category. As well as this, we got a shadowdrop for the Contra Anniversary Collection, whereas Rogue Corps comes on September 24th.

ER: Oh

Daemon X Machina

In what seems to be almost a mainstay in Nintendo directs, we’ve got another vague trailer for this mech shooter that finally has a confirmed release date of September 13th. The gameplay looks harmless enough, with the mechs seeming to be a blast to pilot, but beyond that, I can’t really see a lot of substance that would draw me in beyond the cool robots. I’m sure it could be good, but not really one for me.

ER: Yeah!

Panzer Dragoon

I was completely unsure of what this one was, but it looks a bit like a cross between The Last Guardian and those bullet hell sections from Kingdom Hearts 2. They’ve certainly nailed the smooth graphics and the cool looking creatures, but this one is mostly a case of needing to know more.

ER: Yeah!

Pokemon Sword & Shield

This one’s obviously a title so monumental that it consistently needs its own directs, but there wasn’t any *real* news about it in this direct. We were given a brief explanation as to how the Pokeball Plus works in conjunction with the games (something to do with taking your Pokemon for a walk) and the fact that we’ll see more gameplay during Nintendo’s Treehouse streams. Still, excitement remains pretty high for these titles.

ER: Heck Yeck!

Astral Chain

This game, to put it bluntly, looks awesome. The newest Platinum Games IP seems to be set in Blade Runneresque futuristic city with an alien threat and some cool ass looking fighting police people. Our second proper look at this game has cleared up a few murky doubts as to what exactly is supposed to be happening, so now we’ve got a much better idea of what this game is going to be. The story seems pretty full and polished, the gameplay looks like brilliant fun and I’m definitely not mad at the cool monster designs. This is one I’m definitely watching.

ER: Heck Yeck!!!

Empire of Sin

I know very little about what this game is supposed to be, but it looks to be a 40s gangster XCOM, substituting alien fighting marines with gun toting mafia dudes. The trailer went for style over substance, giving us an edgy visual thing of some burning playing cards and broken bottles, but the little gameplay we saw looked decent enough and may just end up injecting more variety into this genre.

ER: Yeah!

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order

An obvious pick for any Marvel fan, this hack-and-slash is jam packed with various heroes and villains from the comic series’ rich history. Ghost Rider and Elektra were among those revealed to be playable, while the likes of Mysterio, Hela, the Destroyer, Doctor Octopus, Surtur and MODOK are seemingly part of growing cast of villains. Looks like a good bit of fun if nothing else, though the immediate presence of a season pass is a tiny red flag.

ER: Yeah!

Cadence of Hyrule

In an unexpected but greatly welcomed crossover between Nintendo’s RPG titan Zelda series and the indie developed Crypt of the Necrodancer, a new rhythm based dungeon crawler with some brand new Zelda remixes and the presence of Link and Zelda as playable characters. This game’s retro graphics look totally adorable and the addition of the Gohmaracas were a definite highlight.

ER: Heck Yeck!!!!!

Mario & Sonic at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games

Tell you what, this definitely looks like a Mario and Sonic Olympic Games game. There looks to be a decent amount of variety in terms of what sports are involved and with its online multiplayer, there’s no shortage of vaguely cartoon sportyness to be had with friends both real and virtual. I’d be lying if I said I was totally disinterested because it does look a bit fun, but we all know it won’t be anything groundbreaking.

ER: Yeah!

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

In a fairly drastic formula change, Nintendo have decided to strand us on a desert island rather than move us innocently to another village, but Tom Nook is still here and oh yes he’s coming to collect his bells. From this surprisingly brief trailer, most of Animal Crossing’s core gameplay seems to be intact, with the return of craftable items from Pocket Camp, and the sudden bombshell that the game has been pushed back to March next year. Never going to be a bad thing if the finished product is all the better for it, but I guess that just means more info is to come!

ER: Heck Yeck

Highlight Reel

In what looks like a list of honourable mentions, Nintendo gave us a laundry list of other titles coming to the system:

Spyro Reignited Trilogy is joining Crash on the Switch with his acclaimed remaster trilogy.

Hollow Knight: Silksong, the prequel to the original game, looks just as charmingly dark as its predecessor.

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch is showing up I guess, but I’ll come out and say I know nothing about it except that it looks cute.

Minecraft Dungeons looks better than it has any right to be and looks a bit like blocky Diablo I guess

The Elder Scrolls: Blades sure exists and I’m unsure of what it’s trying to be, but whatever quells off the need for Elder Scrolls 6 I guess.

My Friend Pedro, another strangely unique title from Devolver Digital, looks like it somehow incorporates banana peels into its combat system.

Doom Eternal looks like Doom always does, but a distinct lack of gameplay may put its dual release with the other consoles into question.

The Sinking City with its Lovecraftian inspiration looks totally brilliant and looks to be a unique experience for sure, so eyes firmly open for this one

Wolfenstein Youngblood definitely looks all Wolfenstein-y, but rumours of Dishonored-like sandbox levels has definitely piqued my interest.

Dead by Daylight still looks unfortunately a bit eh, with its slightly not great graphical quality from what we’ve seen in the trailers.

Alien Isolation was an extremely odd one, but I’m not gonna say no to more good horror content on the console.

Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles seems to be continually delayed, but they’ll probably get round to it eventually.

Dragon Quest Builders 2 looks adorable and I’m very into the idea of Dragon Quest Minecraft, so sign me up.

Stranger Things 3: The Game looks a little more SNES-like in terms of graphics than its 8 Bit mobile predecessor, which is definitely a decent step. An obvious pick for fellow fans of the show.

Just Dance 2020 is definitely a Just Dance game. Yep, sure is. I even checked. And it is.

Catan is a tabletop game of sorts, but I really couldn’t figure out what kind from that few seconds of vague footage.

New Super Lucky’s Tale looks like Bubsy, but actually good and worth real money

Dauntless looks like a bit of a Monster Hunter clone, but you know, doesn’t look terrible.

And lastly, Super Mario Maker 2 was tacked on the end there to remind us all that Nintendo is taking our money in 2 weeks.

Banjo-Kazooie become Smash Ultimate’s 3rd DLC Fighter

Just when we all petering out a little and the hype seemed all but dormant, they go and drop this on us out of nowhere. While I personally don’t have an attachment to the bear and bird, I’m fully aware of their significance and how much they mean to a lot of people out there. And that excitement ended up being contagious, so this fact coupled with a pitch perfect reveal trailer has got me hugely hyped to see these guys join the fight come autumn.

ER: YEEHAW BABEY

Sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

And now, dear reader, for the reveal that removed my scalp and cut out my eyeballs. At first, I was totally confused as to what this could be. And then I recognised the symbols, and then my perfect lil Hyrule eggs come on the screen and it’s all spooky and there’s dead Ganondorf and I don’t clock the fact that I’ve just screamed out loud. A direct sequel to my absolute favourite game of all time is happening and it’s real and I get to live another adventure in the best game world ever crafted all over again. I think it’s safe to say I have transcended the definition of hype when it comes to this one.

ER: AAA!!! AA!!! GFFGF!!! THIS!!! ZELDA!!!! HGGGG!!!!

So there’s my probably a little stupid breakdown of everything Nintendo bestowed upon us this E3. Guess I’ll jump in after the next direct to give you yet another heavily scientific analysis of its events. Or I’ll babble at you until I start punching the keyboard. Either way, happy trails my dudes. Don’t let the hype bugs bite.

#e3 #e3 2019 #zelda #loz #the legend of zelda #mario #smash #super smash bros #super smash ultimate #astral chain #fire emblem #animal crossing #pokemon #Luigi's Mansion #dragon quest #final fantasy #nintendo #marvel #resident evil

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marginalgloss · 6 years ago

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unforced errors

Before I started playing Into the Breach, I heard it mentioned a few times as being similar to chess. I can see the similarity: it is a turn-based game where every move has to be weighted carefully, and where careful tactical positioning counts for a lot more than your ability to reduce the enemy’s numbers. In this regard it made me think about tennis, which I’ve been watching a lot of since last year.

Like tennis, in Into the Breach you are only ever as good as your next point, and there’s no such thing as an insurmountable advantage because the sum of your mistakes is always worth far more than your next winning shot. You can be the best in the world on paper and still be suffocated by the weight of your own unforced errors. But in truth, Into the Breach is not at all like chess, and it isn’t much like tennis either — it succeeds not because it is similar to established sports and classic board games, but because of qualities particular to video games.

It is a simple game. You have three mechs, dropped into the middle of a landscape that spans an eight-by-eight board. Your mission is to protect the human homes scattered across the map, while achieving your mission objectives and defending against the invading Vek — a race of giant bugs that erupt from subterranean burrows. Each of your machines can do one thing particularly well: one might be good at punching or throwing enemies, one might be good at blasting them with a giant laser, and the third might be an artillery piece that can fire over mountains.

One of the first things the game teaches you is that you can never do enough damage to kill all your enemies with only the strength of your weapons. The numbers don’t add up: your weapons only do 1 or 2 points of damage, when the enemies sometimes have two or three times as much in health. Most of the time, you can’t neutralise the threat, and every turn brings fresh enemy reinforcements. But if you can’t defeat the enemy in direct combat, you can certainly manage them. Your weapons and abilities can push the Vek around the battlefield. You can push them into water or lava to drown them. You can block their spawn points, at a cost. You can push them into their allies for extra damage. You can flip them so they end up firing blindly into one another.

Most games of this type operate by concealing the intent of the opponent. They effectively pretend that the enemy is another human player: they’re a virtual presence across the chessboard, or a virtual hand around a distant racquet. From an AI perspective, usually this effort is unconvincing — certain patterns and idiosyncrasies quickly become apparent — but the point is that both sides operate by the same rules.

Into the Breach is different in this regard. The turns operate on an asymmetric basis: the player gets to move and attack at once, but the Vek don’t have this advantage. The Vek always have the first turn, and they will use it to manoeuvre into position — but they don’t actually get to attack. The player always gets to see how and where their attacks will land, in the moment before they actually execute. And they can use this information to interrupt them.

Initially, the advantage given by the asymmetric battle system makes most battles seem manageable. Imagine playing chess or tennis where you could see what your opponent was going to do next: both of those games, which are so much about anticipating and disarming, would become trivial. Into the Breach handles this in a very simple way: it overwhelms you with opponents. The equivalent would be trying to play that predictable-tennis against two or three people at once: you can still see where the balls are coming at you, but you have to decide which one to attack first.

As the game gets harder (and it does get very hard) the problem of dealing insufficient damage rears its head again. There are still too many of them, and there will only ever be three of you. And so now you have to make tough choices. You must preserve the human settlements — lose too many of them and the game is over — whereas mechs and their pilots are, to an extent, replaceable. But you need strong, experienced pilots to win the next battle, and the one after that; and given that the bonuses for completing your mission will make you stronger still, is losing a few settlements along the way too high a price to pay? You make the call. The number of lives saved ticks down or up accordingly.

It feels like fighting against a system, rather than struggling against a half-convincing impersonation of a person. This is something that video games do better than any other medium. You can never exactly predict what Vek are going to be spawned on the board next, nor which targets they will attack first — but they do have patterns of behaviour. They typically emerge in the same region; they almost never attack the same square or mech twice; they don’t prioritise in a tactical way; they make moves that would make no sense to a human player. They behave, in short, like stupid creatures — which is perhaps the best that can be said of even our smartest machines.

It is a game about gently revealing your own fallibility as a player: you are made to pay many times over for every all-too-human mistake you make. That tennis phrase unforced errors seems to capture this perfectly: that sense of losing not because you were put in an unwinnable position, but because you failed to think and act with sufficient systemic rigour.

The enemy doesn’t make mistakes, and it is perfectly rigorous in its systems, but it is ultimately weaker because it doesn’t have goals. It cannot make decisions. It doesn’t want anything, apart from to launch its next attack. Fighting the Vek feels like trying to stem an unthinking tide, directed by an instinctive intelligence that manifests itself as a series of rigid, difficult, half-arbitrary-half-predictable and highly visible decisions. You could never call the enemy smart in this game, but that’s precisely what makes it interesting.

#gaming #tennis #into the breach

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superdorkcat · 6 years ago

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Season 2 of SPOP is coming out soon and, before it does, I want to share what may very well be the ultimate unpopular opinion in the entire fandom: I don’t think Catra will ever get a redemption arc and, quite frankly, I don’t want her too.

Now, I admittedly don’t really know all of the details why people want her to be redeemed and the only two reasons I know about: 1.) because they sympathize with her due to her abuse at the hands of Shadow Weaver and 2.) because they want Catradora to become canon.

I’ll address the Catradora bit first, since I feel it’ll be more controversial. I don’t ship Catradora, but that’s because I’m just generally not into shipping; I just tend to go along with whatever ship the author’s pushing. Like, “Oh, we’re doing this? ‘Kay.”. (There are really only four ships that I care about.) I’m not trying to attack the ship, either. It just seems that in fandom culture, especially when it comes to shipping, arbitrary things like a character’s looks or if they’re somehow in the way of a ship take the front seat compared to much more pressing things, such as their actions. (Just look at the “Draco in Leather Pants” and “Ron the Death Eater” fanfic tropes to see what I mean.)

Secondly, while it’s true that a lot of Catra’s issues are due to Shadow Weaver’s abuse, it’s also true that Shadow Weaver’s abuse of her is just an explanation of why Catra does what she does and not an outright justification. After all, Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse. Catra has suffered horribly at the hands of Shadow Weaver. Catra also arranged the kidnapping of Bow and Glimmer, tried to kill Adora multiple times, and takes an almost vindictive sort of pleasure hurting her enemies. Just because someone has suffered doesn’t mean that they can do whatever they want and hurt people.

Catra has nearly no empathy for anyone that isn’t Adora or in her immediate social group whatsoever. She’s completely fine with the idea of aiding the Horde in conquering entire nations of innocent people who have never done anything in any shape or form to hurt her if she can be one of the people in charge. Noelle herself has said that Catra doesn’t quite understand Adora’s idealism and willingness to save everybody. She even called it the core tragedy of the show! She also had this to say:

"The idea of two people who are tied together by their experiences, but also have some key differences that push them tragically down different paths, is very interesting to me. I’ve always loved the nemesis relationship .... These people who mean the world to each other and hate each other but love each other, and it’s all wrapped up together. It’s a really confusing bundle, and I love it."

It’s pretty clear just who Noelle was talking about.

TL;DR: I don’t think/want Catra to be redeemed in future seasons of SPOP. I just think she’s done too much to be joining the side of the angels any time soon. To me, it seems like people just want her to join up with the Rebellion because they ship Catradora and/or they sympathize with her due to the abuse she’s suffered at the hands of Shadow Weaver. However, to me it just comes across as people infantilizing her by using Shadow Weaver’s abuse as a justification for her actions instead of an explanation and people putting their desire to see the Catradora ship sail instead of what will likely happen due to the characters’ actions and relationships.

#she-ra and the princesses of power #catra #adora #shadow weaver #bow #glimmer #anti catra redemption #unpopular opinion #meta ish

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captainmazzic · 6 years ago

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So every now and again I get a message in my inbox asking about what I thought about such-and-such a thing in new canon, or if I’m intending on writing any meta or analysis on a particular subject in Star Wars. And sometimes I keep those messages sitting in my inbox for months (one has been sitting there for a little over a year), because I think, maybe I will feel comfortable doing in-depth meta again and I’ll wish I’d remembered what this message had asked. But as time goes by I don’t think that’s going to happen.

Okay. Real talk for a minute here. Bear with me as I’m long-winded and I don’t really have a concise way of communicating this. Potential political views and personal opinions on certain points in cinematic history below.

Short backstory first. I’m an older Star Wars fan. I was a tiny child when the last of the original trilogy came out, and both my parents are sci-fi nerds so I was practically raised on Star Wars. They are also tabletop RPG nerds so I was also raised on D&D and the like. So naturally when Star Wars tabletop RPGs were floating around I snapped them up and consumed them like candy. The novels were a natural extension of the RPGs, and I consumed those just as enthusiastically. The Expanded Universe was my bread and butter, and to this day I’m very nostalgic and fond of it even if most of it is quite laughably terrible.

Where am I going with this? Everything is a product of their time. The original trilogy was created when George Lucas was a young liberal-minded fresh-faced director looking to change the world and make his mark. This was the 70s, war was awful, the government was evil, hippies and protests were everywhere, and the only thing that seemed to have any hope of changing the world were small bands of spunky misfits with a mission and a message. And that mentality is one that shows, in the original Star Wars films. Lucas designed the Empire as a representation of the United States circa the Vietnam War, just dressed up in the fashion and ceremony of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. (Sources: Chris Taylor, How Star Wars Conquered the Universe, Pp. 87-88; Michael Ondaatje, The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film, p.70) The message of the original trilogy boiled down to “the ability of a small group of people to defeat a gigantic power simply by the force of their convictions… no matter how small you are, you can defeat the overwhelmingly big power.” (quote: Walter Murch). He really struggled to get Star Wars onto the big screen, with a lot of setbacks and rejections, and many times when he thought it would never happen. But it did, and it was wildly successful. And I think in part it was because that message really spoke to people, and it didn’t hurt that it was wrapped up in a package with cool laser swords and explosions and space battles.

But then the 80s happened. And the 90s happened. And through that, what happened to Lucas is what happens to many people as they gain success, wealth, and fame as they grow older. The system started to work for him instead of against him. Suddenly the Powers That Be weren’t trying to suppress his ideas from getting to an audience; suddenly all those organizations that seemed so hell-bent on keeping him out were now enabling him to get and stay in, to conserve and gain influence; suddenly his opinion counted for so much it almost seemed god-like, especially in this galaxy far, far away that was unflowering under his direction and all-seeing eye. I guess the system isn’t so bad after all, eh?

And thus we have the Prequels. They can be a rollicking good time, but their message is muddled. Before them the books and the RPGs seemed to try as best they could to hold on to that earlier message of underdog vs. the powers-that-be (with the RPGs succeeding more often, imho), but they couldn’t continue in the face of their Ultimate Creator coming back in to make more SW movies. With the Prequels, suddenly the Old Republic is portrayed as noble and struggling instead of corrupt and dying, with a lot of hand-waving and “something something well actually” in regards to the role of the Jedi, the nature of the Senate, etc. There’s mixed messages where sometimes we get the old Star Wars back, with energetic groups of activists and freedom fighters trying to bring down the oppressors, but there’s also a lot of storytelling awkwardness where the audience is implored to trust the authorities and rely on the judgment of those with power over you within the same breath. This trend continues throughout the Clone Wars animation, and it is there that it becomes often so cognitively dissonant one wonders how you don’t get whiplash trying to follow whatever garbled message they think they’re communicating. And I think that’s where the Star Wars franchise really began to become a monster in its own right. Big businesses are hulking entities unto themselves, functioning like capitalist plutocracies within their host nations, and the Star Wars franchise is no exception. Whatever garbled message Lucas tried to send out with the Prequels grew amplified and even more confused with the Clone Wars, spread into the video games and the books, and continued to infect Star Wars as the franchise was turned over to the quintessential mega-plutocratic-empire, The Walt Disney Company.

And here we have the Sequel movies, the New Canon, and all of the disasters that come with them.

Disney walks a fine line between well-meaning family-friendly sugar and spice, and ruthless all-consuming hypercontroller of everything from arts and entertainment to food and clothes and government lobbying. Their bottom line is the dollar and the influence on – and power over – people’s lives that the dollar brings with it. Handing them a story whose original message was about people resisting the very kind of mammoth force that Disney embodies, and hoping that they will try to stay true to said original message, is hopeless and foolish at best and utterly disastrous at worst.

With the Sequels and subsequent movies, Disney pays good overt lip service to the original trilogy with things like Rogue One and the Rebels animation, which on the surface certainly do look like the same sort of message as the original trilogy. But scratch just below that surface and Disney is all about communicating that submitting to the authority of, say, higher Rebel command and following their orders even when it goes against your gut feeling (ex. Ezra Bridger in the Rebels animation), or that rebelling against an unjust government is only valid if it is done according to a strict but nebulous set of arbitrary rules and only if it is done in the service of a different unjust government that just happens to be slightly less evil than the one you’re trying to overthrow (ex. any iteration of the Old Republic ever, but I’m especially and particularly looking at you, Sequel-era Republic/Resistance and SWTOR Jedi/Republic).

And here is where I balk about ever doing meta on Star Wars again. I hate that this is the direction Star Wars is taking. I hate that New Canon feels like propaganda to me. I hate that I can’t enjoy any of this stuff if I take it for what it presents itself to be. I hate that the only way I truly can enjoy Star Wars now is by cherry-picking all of the tiny bits of window dressing that was pretty enough or interesting enough for me to want to look at it again, and very deliberately and consciously throwing out all the rest.

The experience of Star Wars that I create for myself is escapist and isolating, because it is so very tailor-made to what I can enjoy out of it now. When I go see a new Star Wars film or play a Star Wars game, I don’t actually see whatever story the franchise is trying to actually tell. I see bits and pieces that I can put together into something I can cope with better, something I can actually enjoy.

Examples include:

In Rebels, when the official franchise’s story killed off Maul. I cannot and will not acknowledge that, or function as though it happened. And I can’t really give my opinion on how not having Maul around will affect the future story, because I very literally do not care at all about any Star Wars where he is not in it.

In The Clone Wars, there are so many instances of Anakin Skywalker having agency and making decisions independent of the Jedi Council or without having their insipid code squarely in mind, where if he had made those decisions in a more realistic setting they would have turned out quite well, but what we get on screen is ominous background music and FoReShAdOwInG.

In The Last Jedi, I cannot fathom any reason why Yoda would be given the role that he was given, and find it a complete affront to Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker, who had every motivation, every reason, every right to have that role instead. So I can’t see that scene without him in it. I just… I don’t see it. It didn’t happen that way, and I find I cannot discuss it as it’s presented on-screen. I have nothing to say.

In the Sequel media, both books and movies, Supreme Leader Snoke is portrayed as a one-dimensional Saturday morning cartoon villain whose intended role in the story is blurred as the story progresses, and his death is completely nonsensical in regards to the buildup of information that we as an audience have gleaned about him. We see pieces of evidence that he could have actually cared about Kylo Ren that go nowhere in the actual story, and he ends up just being a scapegoat that gets thrown away halfway through the second sequel movie. I choose to see more in his character than what we were given in Actual Canon™, and thus see him very differently than what common discourse would allow. Because of this, if I discuss Snoke in mixed company I know that I will be called out as someone who advocates for only the limited cardboard-character that is portrayed on screen, instead of for the internalized view that I have personally built for him.

I know everyone’s personal view of a character or characters is different, because we all have different points of view. But there is often some sort of vague common ground in their portrayal that the author or storyteller was originally going for, that most people usually pick up on and base their opinions around. But what if some of the key characteristics that make up a character are just… things you choose not to see or are incapable of seeing, and your own personal view of that character becomes almost entirely different from the “original”? Probably the most benign example I can think of is Hera Syndulla. If I take what I see of her in canon, she infuriates me with how she treats her crew. But if I just decide that such-and-such a conversation never happened, or her decisions on such-and-such a mission were different than the on-screen one, she essentially becomes an alternate-universe version of herself. Only that this version is one that I can tolerate, and it is the only version I see anymore.

How does one communicate that my entire experience of Star Wars is as an AU?

And on and on it goes. Discussing meta and Actual Canon Events™ as portrayed on screen and on printed page has become nothing but a migraine headache to me. I cannot engage in discourse, because I am very much not seeing what everyone else is seeing and talking about, nor do I care to. I just… I can’t keep talking about the same stupid things over and over again. I can’t keep screaming into the void about the unsustainability of the Sith or the Jedi, about the complete inequality and corruption that would have to be absolutely omnipresent in the Republic for it to even be remotely realistic even by cartoon standards, about the inevitability of the Republic turning into an Empire, about the weird dissonance given to the concept of the Force that would end up making both the Jedi and the Sith’s case baseless and weak, etc. etc. ETC. It’s exhausting, it’s stressful, and for something that I’m here to try to enjoy, it’s not even remotely enjoyable.

The very core of the matter is that I love the Star Wars universe. I love the worlds, I love the aliens, I love the ships and the droids and the technology and the concept of the Force. I love the characters. I love all of these things, and sometimes I even love the plots and stories (thank you Chuck Wendig and Timothy Zahn). But I just can’t enjoy digging into the meta of it anymore.

So if you like what I post of my own personal Star Wars-brand AU, by all means dig right in. But I don’t think I can do anymore general meta or discourse. I’m sticking with fanart and fanfic.

#sarc speaks #long post #text post #sarc talks about star wars #star wars meta #kind of #this thing is extremely unpolished and I'm not communicating what I want very clearly #but this is the best i can do

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hivedent · 6 years ago

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i promised first guardian chat and here it is

so cats are often seen as the opposite to dogs even though thats due to completely arbitrary reasons

but because of this id decided to try the same with the troll first guardian assuming they had one. assuming you can even have a session without a guardian

anyway

i looked at doc scratch and i said “whats a fitting opposite to that then”

and i had the result of the opposite to “creepy adult who meddles with EVERYTHING” is “irrelevant child who has 0 influence on the world” (effectively making them a null first guardian like they didnt even have one to begin with)

the first guardian, who would bear a strong resemblance to “truth” from fullmetal alchemist would reside in a black pocket dimension and kind of observe things without interfering. which is doubly fitting imo because scratch is to caliborn as “truth” would be to calliope

but “truth” wouldnt have any first guardian abilities. so theyd be stuck in their home pocket dimension (wonk)

thus all things first guardian related would also be powerless like the cue ball

itd be black and hollow as if its “light” were turned off (think fenestrated plane being unplugged etc)

itd later be revealed that the pocket dimension is somewhat related to other first guardians

like where jack stored all his trophies. basically what im saying is more ultimately they would find lil cal at some point while in there

anyway

they would be created from (as i remember) a powerless cueball and horuss or perhaps some sort of horuss soulbot or something

but it wouldnt be a direct relative of horuss, thats not what im getting at. though it would still be fitting considering equius became a component of lord english who is also a component of doc scratch

it would be the combination of the “void” inside him (to deprive “truth” of powers) as well as calliopes soul that was symbolically inside him

thus. an opposite to doc scratch in almost every way. a little rude but not malicious, an observer who doesnt know all the facts, an inability to interact with the world, and a result of calliopes soul

i mentioned earlier that the felt jujus would be made via... eridan? lil cal? SOME kinda how? and theyd be used by the alpha trolls throughout their session

well aranea comes into possession of quarters’s coins

aranea mentions the last time she and meenah saw each other they had been having a fight

i decided this was about the afterlife

meenah received information from [UNNAMED SQUIDDLE 3;)] about the tumor. but aranea didnt trust this information and thought it was better to just scratch it. theres more to this but its in my notes and this isnt about that

(but ps i also decided the placements of the trolls on the lillypad decided who they sided with in the argument. ill post my file about those events later)

basically meenah and aranea are tied and cant choose. they decide on a coin toss. aranea flips sn0wmans coin because HAHAHAHA SPIDERSSSS

someone, likely cronus, is annoyed and shoots the coin mid toss with... a gun? a wand? whatever, its in part a reference to wizardy herberts short patience and blah blah blah

anyway he shoots it right through the center. so it is a black coin... with a hole in it

this summons “truth”

doc scratch was present since the early evolution of trolls but only ever was in the felt manor or RARELY places on alternia. he was present throughout all TIME but not all SPACE.

“truth” on the other hand would not be capable of being “ALREADY HERE” and thus would only exist for a single moment, almost no TIME at all, but exist nearly everywhere AT that time, thus all SPACE

while meenah prepares to blow them up anyway, the powerful force of being ripped from the first guardian teleportation dimension shoots “truth” super fast

they zap around the whole session collecting things (namely the felts’ jujus. u could argue they always envied them bc they could use it all as furniture in their pocket dimension to make a proper house)

at just the final moment when theyve collected them all, the scratch finalizes and with their last bit of energy, tosses them into the dimension. which maybe lets say in that last second connects scratch and “truth” by mutual guardianship and it all gets spit out into his foyer and voila now the felt have juus except they always seemed to have them so I DUNNO

(ps: meenah’s oven, rufioh’s egg timer (for games), kurloz’s voodoo doll, damara/mituna/or latulas crowbar? for cosplay or because of half life? idr. horuss’s gloves for cans?? etc)

anyway i read some stuff later about how it was probably a rabbit tho

because dogs were associated with jade, cats were associated with rose and puppets were associated with dave (and they all were prototyped as their sprites at one point or another) leaving either rabbits or jesters for john

so that could have been like. created from the corpse of lil sebastian or liv taylor or something and continued the... very weird and abrupt alice in wonderland themes hussie had going for like a dozen pages

and usagi-chan would be associated with damara bc witch affinities with first guardian related creatures (jade with bec, fef with scratchs gift glbgoylb)

but i hadnt really gotten to plan that much stuff out for that version of the first guardian if it would even be that different

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toasttz · 6 years ago

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How to make games: Hero Shooters

So, class, today I posit this little question to you all: Do you want to be the next Blizzard? Fuck no, you don't want to be "Don't you guys have phones?" Blizzard; you wanna be Blizzard from 5-10 years ago when they were at the height of their popularity. But that's not what I'm shooting for here. Do you want a fount of endless revenue? Do you want to do the absolute baseline minimum in terms of engine and game design to actually create a game but aren't creatively and ethically bankrupt enough to make a gacha game? Do you want to build a game whose rules, designs, and themes were just stolen from the effort of others? Do you really like Rule 34? Then it sounds to me like you want to make a Hero Shooter game! Hero shooters are easy to make on account they fundamentally have only three gameplay modes: push a payload, kill the other team, and kill the other team while standing on top of a glowing circular thing. They're also equally easy to design as they require no thematic consistency whatsoever and what little writing you'll be expected to bother with will simply be character bios, which you can keep so vague as to be virtually meaningless. There's never a 'story' in a hero shooter game and what semblance of one does exist is pretense for the non-canon aforementioned three game modes you'll be forced to build around. Best of all, the individual mechanics of each hero are easy to design - just steal them from whatever games came before. Now create about three or four maps with some different sorts of themes, but don't make them in any way mechanically varied - the most complex obstacles on any given map should be walls and maybe elevators that move at a very low speed. We're making a hero shooter, not Mario Party, dammit. If anyone asks why you are essentially just reskinning the same maps you can explain that it's to ensure that the game remains a "test of the players's skills" even though that's a bold-faced lie for the same reasons people who play Super Smash Bros as "tests of skill" are full of shit. Meta-gaming retards make games algebra homework instead of fun, but that's precisely what you'll be banking on in this genre. Once you have that, we need to get into the most important thing about hero shooters: the Heroes. Heroes in these games take one of three major roles: 1) The retard scrub DPS heroes - who will be played by the vast majority of your one-trick glory-chasing mentally-stunted community under the pretenses of being 'the most fun' and will be where the better part of your "cool" themes and motifs will be dedicated toward. These work under the key principle of "Shoot everything until it stops moving" and requires zero brainpower whatsoever. 2) The under-estimated doggedly persistent Tank heroes, played by those with either the willingness to learn something other than "Shoot bad guy with gun" or those who find pressing and holding a single button for the duration of the 10 minute match time to be the highlight of their bleak office-job lives. Though, on the other hand, some of the really cool designs will ultimately end up in this family. 3) The unsung gods among men known as the Support heroes, AKA: the ones no one will actually play. These characters will never be given cool or interesting mechanics or designs, but you'll be at liberty to make as many sexy nurse outfits as you can come up with and no one will be able to tell you otherwise. Like an ungodly amalgamation of tanks and DPS, your gameplay experience will boil down to pointing at your target and holding down the button the entire match - except unlike DPS heroes, you'll be shooting at the blue team and not the red team. Now, some might argue that there are technically other families of heroes, like flankers, zone controllers, pseudo-supports who can debuff enemies, but remember that the key to any good hero shooter is keeping everything rock-stupid. Every hero should have only enough abilities to fill a role for the left and right mouse buttons and the Q and E keys. F or R can be for reloading where applicable, but if you demand anything more of your players, you're going to lose their interest because Hero Shooters are hugboxes for sociopaths who care for nothing more than getting that sweet, sweet 5-second long "Play of the Game" replay at the match's end. This is why the character who invariably rips off Team Fortress 2's Demo Man and can kill people he doesn't have direct line of sight with will always be the most popular, without exception. I mean, sure, you can have 30 or 40 heroes, each with incredibly detailed outfits, backstories, kits, and personalities but everyone will just play the Not-Demo Man so you might as well accept that your userbase is going to be the only thing more toxic than a puffer-fish or a modern-day feminist. But I repeat myself. I don't have the time nor particular inclination to tell you exactly what you need to make but I can give you some character types that are obligatory by law to be in any hero shooter game. This will at least give you a start before you realize that being creative is hard and just steal kits from better games than your own. Call of Duty Man - The main DPS hero and usually the face of your game. Typically a grizzled war veteran man and almost exclusively an American if your game is set in the real world - remember, creativity is hard! He'll have a medium-ranged assault rifle and precisely one movement skill and one healing skill in his kit making him a jack-of-all-trades. Will either be loved or hated by your community with no room for in-betweens. Sexy Healer Lady - The main support hero who is literally just TF2's Medic reskinned and with tits. You really don't need to do anything more with her, as the fanbase will handle the rest. And the less said of that, the better. Big Knightly Dude - The main tank hero who has a big shield that, regardless of origin, will be transparent so Call of Duty Man and Not-Demo Man can fire through it while guarded. Probably wields a melee-ranged weapon even if in a modern warfare setting. By law, they can never be shorter than 6'6" (or 7200 cm. Pretty sure I did my conversion right on that). Flamethrower Guy - Literally just TF2's Pyro. Mechanic - Literally just TF2's Engineer. Sniper - Literally just TF2's Sniper. Probably also a voluptuous woman in a tight suit because creativity is fuckin' hard, man. Not-Demo Man - The cancer in your fanbase you will never nerf. Doesn't matter that he can party-wipe the enemy team single-handedly without being anywhere near them because Hero Shooter maps are literally just a set of narrow corridors so his kit is extremely OP. No, better just nerf Sexy Healer Lady again, since your DPS fanbase is pissing and moaning about her again and, this time, not in the same way a cat in heat does. Next, just make characters around elemental themes. Once you have 30 or so, you can get around to actually doing really mechanically interesting and varied heroes, since there's really only like 10-15 good FPS character ideas to begin with. So don't be surprised if you have some overlap. But by then we should hopefully have completed the next major step after the game is made: alienating your fanbase! This step is easy and requires no particular skill or coordination on your part. First, make some events seasonal, such that you have at least a major event every other month. Any more than that and your fans might actually think you're trying to be anything but another generic Korean eSport event, so be sure to space them out and have at least half of them be terrible. Valentine's Day is a good excuse to dress your female heroes sexily, summer games are a fun and not-at-all tired motif, and of course you need some kind of Christmas event. Just make sure these events only run maybe 2 weeks out of the year, have lots of stuff that you can only get during those times and, as said, that most of them are terrible and not fun at all to play. And don't -EVER- make any of them PvE, as that requires coding AI characters and effort and shit - what do you think think this is? Warframe? No, terrible gimmicky PvP events will be a good start because there is no frustration quite as severe as being told you didn't grind hard enough for: Loot boxes! Shit yeah, your hero shooter's gonna have loot boxes in them! Remember, we want maximum money for minimum effort and there's nothing like a Skinner Box within the hugbox that is the sweet dopamine high of popping a loot box open only to get common drops every time! If MMORPGs have taught us anything it's that Sub-1% drops are TOTALLY good game design and aren't at all unethical and an artificial, cheap tactic to keep people hooked on your game. This is why, in addition to the e-peen bolster that is your arbitrary profile ranking also drip-feeding a loot box upon level up that you have "Weekly Resets" for additional loot boxes. This runs on essentially the same principle as a cell phone games making you wait for additional tries to make it more a habit than a game - but that's okay! You can just rationalize it away as "it was the player's CHOICE to buy 300 loot boxes for the low, low price of 799.99 USD!" and not at all a psychological compunction found in human psychology! You're not an unethical douchebag in the slightest! And speaking of douchebags, it's time for the third and most important step in alienating your fanbase: Balancing the Game! What do I mean by that? You might think it's something like "Oh, this one character has an attack that is way too powerful and so it should be retooled in such a way that it either isn't available as-often, or maybe make its hitbox narrower to make the game more skill-based" but you're dead wrong. That requires actual effort and we all know how we feel about that. So, instead, just start an eSports team. Why? So you can listen only to the DPS players from each team and only implement THOSE changes. That way, only tanks and supports get nerfed into irrelevance and since no one in eSports is ever going to play those roles anyway, who cares? Who needs healers when you respawn to 100% after 7 seconds of dying?! Who cares if the majority of your fans hate these changes and that you end up completely destroying the kits and frameworks of their favorite heroes with needless, superfluous, unwelcomed tweaks? God-damn it, the Not-Demo Man needs to be able to wipe out an enemy team with a 3-second Time to Kill! No questions! I have a very specific vision!! Once your fanbase has been alienated - congrats! You're no longer obliged to release new heroes and levels! The responsibility of server upkeep and releasing new content twice a year are lifted! Now, just reskin the entire game top-down and release a new, better hero shooter founded on the same grounds to re-capture your fleeing audience and fleece them all over again! Now repeat ad infinitum and gain unlimited money. Congrats, you're now another Chinese game manufacturer that shits out products with no care for their fans or reputation but you get to go whaling every single day and fill your bathtub with money. You're ready to work for actual Blizzard now! You're welcome.

#satire #games #video games #hero shooters #comedy

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pagerunner-j · 6 years ago

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Before I begin, the obligatory disclaimer: the following is a bit of a feelings dump, and it’s more personal than I meant to get, especially since I’d intended to avoid posting personal stuff here at all. When I say “please don’t reblog,” I mean “PLEASE LISTEN THIS TIME AND DON’T REBLOG.”

But there’s a lot I’m trying to process about last night’s story, the friction between narrative and game mechanics, and the emotional repercussions of this sort of scenario. It’s been a long build-up that all kind of came to a head for me last night. Ergo, this post.

To give proper context, though, I need to back up a bit to the first campaign and explain why Percy’s second death, brief as it may have been, was ultimately worse for me than the first.

—

2017 did not start well. One January day I got a call from my audibly ill father saying that both he and my mother were in the emergency room. She’d been admitted for congestive heart failure. He was diagnosed within the day with what turned out to be stage 4 colon cancer. He’d been avoiding appointments, ignoring symptoms, and putting off the inevitable, until the doctors went in only to find that the tumors had spread to the point that there was nothing they could do. I still have a clearer mental image than I’d like of my dad’s scars, along with bags and tubes hanging out because what was left of his system couldn’t do its job anymore. They stitched him back up as neatly as they could, but there was no fixing the real damage. It was done.

I didn’t have much room to breathe for quite a while. My life was pretty much consumed with trying to figure out how the hell to handle any of this. I did manage, for better or for worse, to keep carving out a little bit of time each week to watch Critical Role, because I needed something good to think about while everything else was falling apart.

Unfortunately for me, it took less than two weeks between the day all that began and the final battle with Raishan.

I was braced for possible bad outcomes, considering the severity of the fight, but what I wasn’t prepared for was for someone to get felled in a way that was basically mundane. Sure, it was a dragon that did it, so much of the situation was fantastical: an enormous mythical monster, and a swipe of larger-than-life claws. But what I had to deal with, because it was, of course, described in detail, was an evisceration. It was, to be blunt, my favorite character getting his guts ripped out. And because Pat had to go and up that ante, writer that he is, I found myself sitting numbly through a scene afterward of Kerrek beside Percy’s body, trying uselessly to put the ruined mess back together.

I still can’t think about that scene without feeling sick. I couldn’t even feel properly relieved when Percy got revived. I wanted to. Obviously I was glad that he was there for the rest of the campaign, because I wanted to see his story find a less abrupt end. I just didn’t feel any better about the idea that well, sure, he got a magic fix. It just kind of ended up spotlighting the futility of what I was staring down.

My dad died in May that year, on a Thursday night. I got home very late after hours of trying to deal with things, and found myself alone, overwhelmed and unsure what to do with myself. For lack of anything else better to do, I pulled up that night’s VOD. I couldn’t really focus on it; I kept drifting out and only sort of coming back to. I let the episode keep running for a while, though, at least wanting some friendly voices to listen to.

Then I realized what everyone was doing, and I looked at the timestamp, and I counted backwards. And I froze.

While the party was playacting at speaking with the dead, I was sitting in a hospice room listening to my father pleading with us to let him go.

I only got a few seconds further in before I stopped the video and turned away.

Despite the fact that I’ve watched almost everything Critical Role has ever done, I still have no idea how that episode ends.

—

After all this I went in for my own medical tests, since my own heretofore-handwaved-by-my-doctors health concerns suddenly seemed more pressing. It turns out, unsurprisingly, I inherited all the fun stuff. Fortunately, none of the growths were cancerous yet, because at least my unfortunate genetic legacy is something that, with proper screenings and care, it’s possible to stay ahead of. But I was told they’d need me to come in in another six months, and probably every year after that forever — or until something finally goes nuclear, whichever comes first.

Guess we’ll see.

My shorter term problems were enough to deal with on their own. The day after the test, I found out I was losing my health insurance. Two days later I found out I was losing my job. Everything since has basically been trying to patch things together from scraps. Sometimes things are sort of okay. Sometimes it’s a bottomless pit of uncertainty. Obviously, nothing in the wider world has exactly improved since, either. In sum total: fun times, especially considering I was already struggling with severe anxiety before all this began.

I wasn’t really sure how to emotionally process the ratcheting stakes in Critical Role at that point either. When you’re still watching the show because you need a breather from months of continual crisis, but your beloved characters are facing down things like, oh, a dread god and the very real possibility of everything going straight to hell, it’s…not exactly something you can turn to for relief, per se. I kept on going, because the bright spots were still so good, but I can’t exactly say I was enjoying myself for significant parts of the run, either. It was also where I started to feel a very real frustration with D&D and the inherent capriciousness that can creep in.

In short, I desperately, desperately did not want this battle to go wrong. I didn’t want to have to face a story that I’d become so invested in going completely south not because it necessarily made narrative sense, but because the dice (as they always have the opportunity to do) said “fuck you.” Yes, the feeling was probably more selfish on my part than anything else. But I still hope it’s understandable for emotional reasons, and it also got me thinking again about the entire logic of “that’s just how the game works,” and how far you can run with that before you finally trip and hurt yourself.

I’ve always had problems with a few common things in game design. One of them — usually less of a problem when we’re talking about high-level D&D, although it can still surprise you — is when things arbitrarily become harder in the game than they would be in real life. (Floor/jumping puzzles in video games where you can’t step diagonally For Reasons, I’m looking at you.) Another is any kind of gameplay mechanic that robs you of your turn or otherwise puts you out of play. Varying degrees of success or failure is one thing, but I could never understand what’s ever fun about being stopped from participating in the thing you’ve come to do. Still, one way or another, there are so many ways for that to happen. Failed dice rolls, getting stunned or disabled, outright death: there are so, so many ways.

And it’s one thing if that’s happening during the course of, say, an everyday board game, but it feels different if it starts changing the course of a full-blown story.

Part of this is the editor in me talking (who will have words with me about this post, I’m sure), because she has Opinions about it all. She always wants to keep the story on track, not go off on useless tangents, and not drop things without getting proper resolution. She’s big on structure and pacing, suspicious of too much chaos. She does not get along well with D&D. This isn’t to say that this forms the entirety of my opinion, mind; I can still appreciate the way the game works, and the fact that so many interesting and unexpected things can be born entirely because of the random element, improvisation, and decisions you have to make in the moment. But dropped threads, unfinished plots, interrupted ideas, the things that get lost, or the characters that do…those can end up haunting me.

Honestly, and this is probably always going to be a fundamental disconnect between me and any D&D game: I’ve discovered both through watching CR and playing the game a bit myself that I don’t really care about the game as much of anything except as a skeleton for storytelling. If it supports the narrative, if it gives structure, if it enables activities, if it provides opportunities for play, I’m all for it. If it yanks the rug out from under you just because, again, the dice decided to say “fuck you,” or the rules get weird, or there’s something else that just doesn’t mesh between player and scenario and/or DM, I have a harder time with it.

And it’s crushing when stories I care about collapse or turn sour because the game says so, and for reasons that feel almost cruelly arbitrary — particularly when I’m getting more than enough of that in real life.

So for CR, the ending of campaign 1 was an exercise in protracted anxiety. I was in a space where I needed something to work out, but even the entertainment I’d been turning to was becoming dangerously precarious. Wasn’t the best feeling.

In the end, luckily, it ended about as well as it could have: not without consequence, but without everything crashing down. I felt relieved, and satisfied, and glad we got a chance for resolution with the characters we’d been following for months. If anyone had to permadie, the character who was already bound to the goddess of death was not a shocker, and in many ways it’s the kindest choice; he got more resolution than any human being in the real world ever will. It barely even registered as a sad ending. I envied him, really.

I’ve watched far worse go down.

Meanwhlie, i was also thinking that even though it would be tough to say goodbye to these characters, it could also be a refreshing reset. We’d get new characters needing to find out who they are, what they want, what they’re good at, how to relate to each other, how to begin. Smaller stories, with not everything having to be about the END OF THE WORLD (again). Lower stakes. I was fine with the idea of lower stakes for a while, and less threat of impending death and pain.

Well. Like I said. It was an idea.

That brings me around to Molly, and to story decisions and gameplay decisions that both broke my heart seven ways from goddamn Sunday.

—

It took me a while to come at this part, because it took some time for the thought to crystallize that I wasn’t only reacting to the rolls of the dice in last night’s scenario. That was part of it, absolutely. Luck is a thing, strategies work or don’t, fate is capricious. I wish that several things had played out very differently, and I’m especially upset that the way things fell out, it stopped a story in its tracks that had barely even started. (I’ll come back to that.) So the start of the thought was still game vs. narrative, and it’s part of why I wrote that whole run-up you just read.

That said, the more I poked at it, the more I got upset that we were playing out a scenario like this at all.

I was thinking aloud about this in another post, but to preface it a bit better: There’s an entire meta level to three players being gone last night that everyone knew about. I understand the impulse to avoid metagaming, but it also creates some odd situations, like everyone trying (and failing, because — yep — the dice said “fuck you”) to investigate the area and find out why their friends were gone. So we had to start with a big, clunky process of the characters figuring out what the audience and the cast already knew: that Matt had written Jester, Fjord, and Yasha out by having them get kidnapped. The story is streamlined enough. The gameplay around it, not so much.

But here’s what I got hung up on once it all sunk in: why did this have to be the story in the first place?

I’m not thrilled with how a situation that arose in real life because of pretty much the prototypical joyous event (i.e. a new baby) and something that had been mundane on the show until now (Ashley being away) got turned into a brutal story about a triple kidnapping and trafficking, which promptly resulted in a death. And it says a lot about the underlying plot they’re dealing with, which is not something I’m sure I’m willing to ride with much further. I’ve been leery for a while – starting off with mutterings about an evil god only a few episodes in put me on edge from the start – and then there’s the political unrest and the religious conflicts and people disappearing…it’s all going somewhere really unpleasant really fast.

It’s also derailed a story I wanted, which hurts like hell.

We’d barely even gotten to know Molly. Molly had barely even gotten to know Molly. We got tantalizing hints, and plenty of suggestions that there was more to discover — probably an entire character arc’s worth of material. And then…this. My inner editor? Yeah, she’s screaming with frustration. In any traditionally structured narrative, this would not have happened, because even if a death was in the cards, ether it would have been timed differently so that you could get further down the road with him, or if the character was always meant to die early, any decent edit would have trimmed out most of the details that suggested at things that never got payoff. But it’s D&D, and so it’s the push-pull at work: game vs. story, plus a(n un)healthy dose of “unavoidable meta circumstances vs. the apparent need for A: drama and B: to barrel right ahead into a crisis even though there were other choices that could have been made in the light of said meta circumstances.” And…here we are.

Here we are, with a dead character who should not, let’s be honest, be dead, and a story left hanging, and far fewer obvious options for fixing it than we had at any such crisis point in the previous campaign, and lots of miserable, hurt people.

One of them being me.

—

There’s a reason this shit hurts. Personally speaking, it would hurt even if I didn’t have over a year’s worth of unfortunate circumstances making narrative swerves like this even harder to take. It hurts because the story and the characters are so engaging, because they’re worth the investment, and, yes, because when things go wrong, sometimes they’re for reasons that make me want to flip a goddamn table. And yes, maybe it’s silly to get worked up when they might — might — be able to do something about it. But we can’t count on it, and so yes. It hurts. It hurts to have a source of joy becoming something else, especially when there were so many other options. It hurts to watch favorite characters get hurt and killed, yet still be expected to write it all off as “that’s just how the game works!”, as if having emotions about it is a weakness and to be scorned.

Honestly, I found myself screaming “FUCK THE GAME” aloud last night (and probably upsetting the neighbors), which sums my feelings up succinctly enough that I should have started right there. :\

But…again, here we are, and here I am, struggling with feeling hurt and sad and exhausted with so many things veering toward pain again when I was hoping for something different, and writing big long word-vomits of posts about it.

Because D&D.

(Memo to Editor Brain: I’m tired, and I’m not going to give you another three hours to edit this post into something more manageable, so you will just have to cope. Not everything or everyone gets good endings anyway. Apparently.)

#cr talk #cr spoilers

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