#where you have to make a ton of very specific choices to keep alive and its a pain in the ass
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Chekhov's Gattling Gun, Part 2
Usually, the climax of a story is the climax of someone's life. Right? There will be moments afterwards, but this is the main thing to happen to the protagonist, and they will spend the rest of their time winding down.
And yet, life doesn't work that way. Happily ever after can happen, but its usually more complex. New problems come into being and old ones might fade without every really being addressed. So, what if there was a climax to a story that mirrored this? How would that happen?
It would probably be about how to move forwards. It might suggest that there will be more trouble ahead, you just need to bear this with a smile and move on with your life. Push through to a greater tomorrow.
Maybe the antagonistic force is centred around regression? Maybe they want to preserve the past at any cost, even killing those whom they claim they want to protect.
You might end up with something like The Trial, from Stray Gods: The Role Playing Musical.
Let me explain.
SPOILERS AHEAD
Stray Gods pays homage to a ton of Ancient Greek stories. The Odyssey is a notable one, as Adrift is a reference to Odysseus and his journey. But this moment is, at least in my eyes, reminiscent of the Orestia.
The Oresteia details the death of Agamemnon after the Iliad (because he was a wanker), and the consequences thereof. You can see the theme of choice and consequences pretty boldly there. The story is named after Orestes, the exiled son (it's complicated) of Agamemnon, and the murder spiral that leads to the invention of the Athenian justice system at the hands of Athena. Overly Sarcastic Productions has a fantastic video on the subject.
In any case, the story's climax decides how Orestes will go forwards, specifically alive, because of a murder he committed in revenge, because its technically a tragedy. This is reflected in Stray Gods, with the climax featuring a trial, with Athena serving as a judge, over a murder that the protagonist "committed".
The difference here is Athena's position in this. Because Calliope was killed on Athena's orders, in an attempt to preserve the past. This is a complete heel face turn from the Oresteia. Now instead of changing the world for the better, Athena is trying to keep it the same. But I would argue this isn't out of character.
There is another theme at work here, and I will get there in a moment.
Before that, however, the callbacks. My favourite is Freddie's moment, because it is Freddie, not Grace, that is Athena's antithesis. Grace falls in the middle of themes, unable to choose, unable to decide. She gets swept up in a murder plot, in which everyone is thinking grand scale, and wrapped in complex relationships with the past and future. Athena wants to control the future to hang on to the past, for example.
And Freddie doesn't care about that. Freddie is there for Grace, that's it, she's concerned with the little things. She believes that life will find a way, and you just have to ride the waves. It is notable that this is a version of the song where you, as Grace, have very little say in the events. Grace has relinquished control and will do as Freddie says. She will make her move, and await the result.
"Only, if only you knew
that you can't force the future"
I also love that little look at Grace as she says that, I take it as acceptance and forgiveness, momentarily, for the revival against her will.
But I also find the wording fascinating. Athena is the goddess of wisdom, and yet the response to her is "if only you knew." Wisdom should have gotten her this far, but something is holding her back.
Look at Apollo's body language here. This is the tune of Phantom Pains, a song notable for its deeply morose atmosphere, and now Apollo sings the tune with a bit more oomph, but his posture is... relaxed? He stands there, chest bare, heart open, holding out a hand to Athena.
And look at Athena's response to it. She's expecting a fight, something to stop her. But instead, Apollo is calm, and quiet. He's reassuring in posture, in contrast to what he's saying. Apollo means no harm here, there's a care for the enemy there that I really like.
"You're lost, little boy.
You've lost all perspective
You're ready to throw this away,
You call that wise."
For a woman who's whole thing is reason and debate, Athena's response to Apollo's question is fascinating. She doesn't answer it at all. Apollo asks if she is still a voice of wisdom, and Athena's response is an insult.
I think she knows she's losing it, and like Apollo does earlier in the musical, she is lashing out. "The best defence is a good offence" is a sentiment with debatable success in war, but in conversations like this, it is foolish.
Pan represents living in the moment. He is a smooth talker, here for the dancing type of character. But if you linger around a beach long enough, you will probably get an idea of what the waves are like, and what might happen when the wind changes.
"I'm here for the dance,
But I don't want to dance
with blood on my hands."
Athena is trying to keep everything the same, to crystalise a singular moment in time, and while all the other idols are suffering, so the obviously don't want to stay motionless, Pan is the truest embodiment of what Athena is trying to protect. Athena wants the carefree life of dancing, and that moment personified looks back at her and calls her out for destroying it. The dance isn't fun when people are being killed.
"Lost little girls, they dream up a future.
They're sure how they feel, sure their vision's true"
Who, exactly, is Persephone talking about here? Because it could fit Grace, as a compliment, to say Grace is sure of herself. Or it could be directed at herself and Athena.
Persephone was a character who saw everything as a threat and a weapon to be used against her, she tried to get back a past that was lost. But here is Athena, dressed in armour for a trial, ready to fight at the slightest hint of trouble, trying to hold on to a moment that has long passed, if it ever existed at all.
This reading is made even more apparent by Persephone's words in a different version of the song.
"A great shiny throne, but still in the darkness.
Kill her today, and Athena... that's you too."
The fact that they're standing in front of Hades' empty throne is poignant, because its a symbol of an empty ambition. Persephone has brought Athena to a baren kingdom and effectively said "this is what I wanted, you are the same as me."
I mentioned another theme in effect here, and that would be trauma. Athena has repeatedly taken the fall for the idols, over and over again, for hundreds of years. And she may be an idol, but she is very human. Of course, she is going to slip up from time to time, but she has internalised it in a martyr complex.
When Athena is challenged on her views, the screen goes red to mimic her blind rage in possibly the least subtle metaphor in the entire musical.
I wouldn't exactly call this a cycle of abuse, but it's not spontaneous either. Athena is lashing out at those closest to her, because she is scared, and she can't get through to them. Athena is lost, and the rest of the idols are getting caught in the crossfire of her own mind falling apart on itself.
"This lost little girl,
she's got a few tricks now.
She's taken some punches,
she's made some friends."
Once again, this melody comes back, now accompanied by a drum to hammer home the anger and the betrayal. The power of the muse has always been to empathise, not merely to make people sing. The music is a gimmick, this is what a muse does, and this is why Grace was chosen. Grace takes all of the pain and fear and throws it back at Athena, calling her out for it.
But the repeated wording here is important. Grace knows Athena is lost, and is trying to talk to her, maybe to help her, maybe not. But there is that recognition there. Grace has empathised with Athena, and is weaponizing that.
This is backed up here, in another version of this segment. It's a call back to The Ritual.
"I won't have you dying for me.
That's not how this should work,
I need you to see,
That you're lost in a moment, lost in a song"
I love that Athena is represented in the same way Ares was. All red (Ares had a bit of orange, but you get the point), and where Ares held Aphrodite in his hands, under his control, Athena now holds all of the idols. Their fate is up to her, and they're begging her to not destroy them.
The moments when everyone comforts Grace is cathartic for a number of reasons. First, up, it is a relief from all of the red and horror movie soundtrack of Athena's delusions. But more importantly, this is the moment in which you realise what you have achieved here.
You have saved Aphrodite and Eros from self-destruction. You have brought Asterion and Hecate together. You have made Apollo and Persephone get over themselves. And, maybe, just maybe, you have reconciled with your oldest friend.
You have made everyone in the trial room a better person by your actions, and now they stand up to help her in return. And this fading reveal that they are all still there, still behind Athena is empowering.
It doesn't matter how much the matron of the idols can posture, they have all changed. And now they are offering that aid, that chance to change and be better, to Athena. This is not a story in which everyone gets a good hit in on the villain before they are dramatically killed by the hero or fall from a great hight; this is a story about healing, and it would be callous to not extend that healing to Athena.
I love all the little callbacks in this one scene, the eye is Medusa's thing, the lighthouse for Apollo. I don't need to point them all out. What I want to talk about is the general mis en scene. There is a distinctly storybook aesthetic that these characters are holding onto. In contrast to Athena.
You would think that Athena, the person trying to get back to the past, would be associated with this aesthetic, but no. Athena has been cast out of this idyllic world by her own hand, and everyone else is trying to get her to see that.
"My Olympus is gone,
And you're all looking on,
At a stranger wearing my face.
My Olympus is gone,
now I'm some other one.
Just how long has she been in place?"
This is the Adrift tune again. I think that's so cool. This is Athena in the same place Grace was at the beginning of the musical. She's lost, and she knows it, and she doesn't know what to do.
Athena is in a rut of her own actions, and it's heartbreaking.
Look at the scale of Athena here. She is dwarfed by her own statue, and her own helmet. She is fragile, and small, next to the enormity of her image. And that image is covered in enough blood to drown someone. All of this serves as a fantastic metaphor to show just how crushed Athena is by her own guilt.
"I was wrong and now I don't know what the right thing is.
I leave it up to you what to do with this."
"I forgive you, Athena"
Final Thoughts
Bloody hell, this was long. Thank you for reading this far.
I really love this song, and while I think The Ritual is my favourite, The Trial definitely wins my award for being the most technically impressive, both on a musical level, and on a storytelling and visual level. There is so much cool stuff going on here that I didn't have the brain capacity to talk about in full.
Which brings me to my final thing. I would like to know what you think of Stray Gods, and I would like to create a little collage of opinions other than my own. So, send me a message or comment on this post your analysis, or even reblog this. It could be of a single line, or an entire song, or the entire story. And in two weeks time, when I put up my own final thoughts on the musical as a whole, I will show some other views as well, as a kind of collaborative discussion.
I'm going to be using It's Time to frame my analysis next week, so stick around if that interests you.
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#rants#literary analysis#literature analysis#character analysis#what's so special about...?#greek mythology#stray gods#stray gods the musical#stray gods grace#greddie#grace#stray gods spoilers#stray gods the roleplaying musical#stray gods athena#stray gods the trial#part 2/2#meta#meta analysis
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where are you at in worlds beyond number?
After today’s commute, I am at the very beginning of Episode 11 and things are *T E N S E*
Love the show, though. I’m currently bouncing back and forth between this and Murder She Rolled, and they’re both very different actual-plays in terms of setting and style and vibe, but in both instances the players and DMs bring the whole thing alive in a very fun and engaging way where it’s both sitting at the table while these people all have a ton of fun playing DND, and also a very immersive story that you get attached to very quickly.
Sorry I’ve been flipped into Gush About Stuff I’m Listening To Mode, I’m gonna ramble and gush about these podcasts for a bit now.
Alan Seawright in MSR is great at bouncing off of everyone at the table and flipping the switch between being the action hero in a serious way and an action hero in a comedic way, and basically everyone else at the table has picked up on that seemingly from the beginning, and it’s great. If you like…dark comedy and eldritch horror, it’s very fun.
Now.
Worlds Beyond Number is four heavyweight DND champions (both in actual-play settings and in terms of DND advice and design and generally being people present in the culture).
First off. @quiddie is a genius. Because she did something I now desperately want to try in the future, which is create inter-party tension by creating Suvi as a character that is intensely devoted to both her friends/adoptive family, but also to this place that she has now been raised and shaped by for the majority of her formative years that is set in opposition to what sort of ways Ame and Eursulon come from.
Second off, Erika Ishii as Ame is amazing, and a very fun way of playing…what I think is a Druid with some tweaks? It’s such a fun way of approaching what feels like the same class set but from a direction I absolutely would never have thought of and it’s amazing, I wanna try it now in a future game if I get the chance. Also Erika’s great, they’re amazing at interacting with everyone and keeping the lighthearted stuff lighthearted but also being able to drop into drama when needed (as has happened in the last few episodes quick specifically).
Lou Wilson as Eursulon is the sleeper hit of the show. For sure. And I am astounded by how well Lou managed to make it happen naturally. Because early on the episodes focus more on Suvi and Ame finding each other and going to find him with a quest focused on Ame and a lot of tension from Suvi’s background coming into play and being utilized to get things rolling, and then…Port Talon happens. And you realize he’s not been playing this dude that’s seemingly hit rock bottom and is ashamed of being taken advantage of as the new guy in town one too many times despite trying to live up to this *impossible* ideal, and he pulls out all these great character moments that build right to where I’m at where he’s been shamed by this great spirit for what he wanted to be and leaving his old world behind, and having finally clawed back what he could to reach what they set out to do he has to make a *choice* now, and he’s clearly struggling with what that choice is in the face of his friends’ lives being in danger and his old ideals coming back to give him pause about what he’s been doing and just…*gods* he’s possibly going to be my favorite at this rate? He’s playing a very similar character arc to what I wanted Jace to have when I played him in the campaign I played in with @charlezarrd, only…*way* more, and it’s amazing.
Also BLeeM’gan is an insanely good GM, this probably doesn’t need saying given his reputation, but it bears mentioning anyways. He’s crafted an insanely deep world that’s immersive and feels alive in a way that is…not easily describable.
And also him as the Fox is the best. The Fox is my other favorite character. He’s so good.
(Also Will Gallows might be my new favorite criminal mastermind, TBQH)
Anyways yeah Worlds Beyond Number is great! The only reason I’m not fully caught up up yet is because Murder She Rolled is also great!
(TBQH I would love to see Alan Seawright and the e rest do the MSR crew get thrown at the WBN crew, because I think it would be total chaos in the best way)
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hello! am ranked battle struggler. any specific advice for neo splash-o-matic/heavy splatling? any help is v appreciated:)
Woah two very different weapons I see! Both good choices for ranked battles tho.
Neo splash:
this weapon paints super well and is very fast! Make sure you're always painting the map in areas where your team wants to be. As tempting as it is to fight people, paint is super important for your teammates to be able to move around and do what they need to do, so as a neo splash it's good to focus on supporting them. It makes so much of a difference, trust me
If you get into a fight with this weapon, remember that you're very fast and usually faster than the opponent. move around a lot (both running and swimming) and play around cover so it's harder for your opponent to hit you. Make sure to paint the area around them so its harder for them to move then go for the kill when the moment comes!!
Sub: suction bomb is great for keeping enemies out of an area since it lasts for a while and is very threatening and has a big explosion radius. Throw it where the enemy is trying to go to slow them down, and throw it to clear enemies out of areas you want to gain control over! When your team is down on members you can throw suction bombs from a safe distance at the enemy (most importantly where they're trying to push through) and stay alive while your teammates respawn! Very very useful sub weapon, one of the best in the game
Tri strike: really good for cleaning out an area your team wants to move into since it forces people out of a lot of space and paints it so your team can move in quickly. Throw these where your teammates are trying to go! You can also use them to push the enemy away on defense, but they're more helpful on the offensive. Try to use these while all 4 players on your team are alive so people can play off of the space they make - if no one is able to move in with the strikes it's usually a waste of them (not always but usually)
Heavy splatling:
I'll be honest I don't play tons of backlines and am not the greatest at splatlings. My advice is pretty basic but very key: remember that you don't always have to be killing someone. (Maybe you know this already but many players I've coached don't so I figured I'd say this anyway)
As a backline your presence on the map creates a lot of space the enemy can't move through. Take positions where you can see a lot of people and are behind your other frontliner teammates. Try and be active and painting most of the time, it makes a huge difference. The splatling player for my team says half his kills are just people running into his shots because they got within his range, you don't have to be going for the kill all the time to get them!
As a backline you're also responsible for giving jumps back in to your team since you are usually a safe place to jump to being further from the action. When your teammates go down make sure to stay alive and give them jumps back in before you start fighting again!
That's all my advice for now - sorry if it was a lot. There's probably even more I could say I could talk about it forever, but this is the most important stuff.
Good luck in your games and let me know if you have any more questions!
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You mentioned wanting to flesh the crew out more so your choice of Normandy crew for 🌱🖤 ✍️ & 🍄
Normandy crew:
🌱 Nature- Kaiden, sadly, never saw very much ground action during the SR1 days- similar to Liara, when it came to combat teams, Shepard provided solid biotic capabilities and either needed heavier fire backup or dedicated tech expertise. But, he did appreciate that she kept him in mind, often bringing back samples from non-radioactive mineral deposits- they always got a laugh over her handing over a chunk of gold or platinum in particular. While Kaiden had spent a good bit of his life on earth, his experiences on Jump Zero left him particularly sentimental to keeping reminders of... maybe not Earth, specifically, but solid ground nearby; he was pretty good at identifying various rocks and minerals, and often assists ship-side on the surveys.
(When Mordin shares about his time on stage, Shepard actually gets a little... not weepy, but it's not a completely happy laugh, when she says 'a friend of mine tried teaching me the elements to that tune')
🖤: yeah actually I've been here for like an hour, I got nothing lol. I'll try to work on one & will edit/reblog and tag if I do?
✍️ Education: Wrex was among the last generation of krogan who got an education that halfway included anything beyond hard combat focus, and his favorite subjects as a whelp were history and literature; particularly where the two came together in epic sagas, and he has extremely strong opinions on word choice and structuring damn it. He tries to keep reading after leaving Tuchanka, but it gets pushed to the backburner: most surviving older krogan regard it as a waste of time, and the few children born just... don't get the point of it. So he's... really surprised when, on the Normandy, Adrian extends what is clearly a token invitation of 'hey, Ash is starting a book club, want to join', and he figures why the hell not?
It's part of what kicks his conviction to return to Tuchanka- human literature was surprisingly nice, but then he got the chance to share something. Chose the story of a small, loyal band protecting their clan leader from a hostile uprising- not a major battle, but he liked it because it was one that was verifiable and was just plain beautiful, exemplifying a true leader fighting honorably at the head of the battle, demonstrating strength of will to survive over complete brute force, something that seems to have been lost over time.
The humans loved it (Ashley immediately suggested he check out some Tennyson), but it was also the first time he'd really felt that kind of... passion, again, turns out a long life just means longer depressive funks. And goddamn it, the krogan were better- are better, whatever anyone may think- they have culture, they have beauty, and like hell is he going to let that get pissed away.
(After Grunt is officially welcomed into Clan Urdnot, Wrex sends him a few books- a personally curated collection of krogan works of course, but there's ultimately a novel or collection of verse from every major species, just to make sure the kid has variety.)
🍄 Cooking/food: Jack spends a ton of time around the mess early in. She's- look even before prison, she was not well cared for and she was probably never fed enough, especially considering the toll her biotics would take (in fact, Chakwas puts her foot down on Jack doing any groundwork for a solid bit of time, because her body is basically on the verge of eating itself alive for a while). It evens out though, but she's still often raiding whatever eatables she can because there's that very loud, distinct instinct that it's not going to last and at least she can be in good shape before getting kicked out.
Everyone notices, but it's Rupert of all people who takes action first. Tells her she can at least make a sandwich instead of stealing energy bars. (Jack thinks, why not both, because she's been targeting Miranda's favorites and it's hilarious seeing her get frustrated.)
But she also, with plenty of complaining and name-calling on either side, decides fuck it might as well, and it might be a good skill- if she makes her own food, with her own ingredients, she can be extra sure it's not going to be drugged or something. And then it turns out to be fun (she's encouraged to set something on fire? Fuck yes), and it's great to lord over Commander 'I can save the galaxy but am banned from kitchens for life and death' Shepard. And she can threaten the crew with getting thrown across the entire second floor if they don't eat what she's made! Which is, of course, the only reason they do so, and the ones saying it's actually good are just brown-nosing. Sucks for them, just means she's going to keep doing it until someone cracks!
#ask#mass effect hcs#i was challenging myself to work with characters i usually don't but there's a line between that and 'i barely know how to work em yet' xD#my writing
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alright lets finish this
----
so. things came to a head and i finally hit a point where i had to commit to one side even though ive been kind of just playing by my own rules and helping whoever i felt like rather than taking any Side particularly
what i wanted the most was to take down the legion so ive been working mostly with the NCR. but i hit a dead end in both the ncr line and the house line (i dont trust him but i felt like being in mr. house's good graces was a wise move lmao) where everyone wanted me to destroy the brotherhood of steel. and i dont... really Trust them, and i understand they're potentially a formidable threat, but i didn't want to make enemies with them for that reason, and just, like, i don't know, i really don't see why murdering everyone in there unprovoked is a good decision. i couldn't justify that. the only thing they've ever done to me is threaten me and briefly bomb collar me into doing them a favor which, while admittedly fucking rude, who HASN'T tried to kill me for one reason or another around here, y'know,
so i decided in the end if i absolutely must decide between murdering a ton of people for no clear reason either because a rich capitalist dictator told me to or because an army known for not really being there for people when they're needed and kinda serving their own needs told me to. or, y'know, not doing that. i figured. we're not doing that
so i killed mr. house. which i don't feel great about. i don't really feel like i needed to do that either. i could've left him powerless but technically still alive but he said he didn't want that, so i guess i made the best choice i could given the options but it still kinda feels like murder with an unclear motive or purpose. don't love that for me
i don't understand why the securitrons didn't immediately turn on me this feels very passive aggressively threatening. i feel unsafe
OH NO VICTOR.... what did i do. did i do this? could i have prevented this? i don't know. i feel like this is my fault. im sorry victor
i feel like putting the ai specifically designed to say yes to everything/give unrestricted access to just whatever you ask him for in this kind of position is extremely reckless at best but what do i know. i guess we're doing this now
OH boy here we go
i didn't really want to go against the NCR directly. i was hoping to be able to do this to take out the legion myself, i know i have all those fucking robots right under caesar's camp, i saw them, i do not fucking understand why i didn't get to just unleash chaos and burn them all to the ground. i killed that one really dramatic officer but it didn't feel like enough
i guess in the end independence probably is the best for everyone. maybe my courier was able to make a difference. i had hoped to negotiate and work with the NCR but i guess this is where we ended up
also turns out new vegas has my video game ending pet peeve of when you finish the game you just go back to immediately before you did the Final Quest and none of that actually happened. if you want to keep playing you just get to be stuck in "technically i resolved all this already but since that's The End it hasn't happened yet" limbo forever. i fucking hate that lmfao
ANYWay. that's that. i also played dead money but i really really want to get going on my fallout 4 liveblogs so im probably going to focus on sorting through all that next
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Okay let's elaborate on this. However before I start I would like to say I haven't played Sekiro yet and while I adore Demon's Souls, I've only played through its once and am much less familiar with its themes, so those two aren't on this post, but please add on with your thoughts on them, or elaborated thoughts/points I missed on the games I did talk about :))
Anyways putting my thoughts on this down is kind of hard, so bear with me if it's a little all over the place.
Elden Ring is about love and just how strong of a force it is.
We see this with almost every major character in the game and their stories. Marika literally became a god to avenge the people she loved. The part of the game that I think shows this the best though is the Frenzied Flame ending.
The whole philosophy of the Flame of Frenzy is that life itself is the cause of suffering and that the only way to get rid of suffering is by getting rid of life. The thing about it though is that the game makes it very clear that this is the wrong choice, the wrong philosophy, and tries to push us away from it. It's super hard and tedious to get to the three fingers. The sewers alone where a maze, and I'm pretty sure I died to the platforming puzzle more than I did to any of the dlc bosses. Melina actively tries to push us away from the three fingers too, and some of my favorite dialogue in the game actually comes from this.
"However ruined this world has become, however mired in torment and despair, life endures. Births continue. There is beauty in that, is there not?"
No matter how awful it gets, there is still beauty in the world. There is still love. Is it really worth taking that away?
Hell, the guy who steers us towards the free fingers is even in game called "the most reviled man in history" by the game. And finally, how exactly does he steer you towards the Flame of Frenzy? Takes advantage of your love for Melina, shows you a way to keep her alive.
And as previously stated, this is far from the only time love and it's importance, it's power, is shown to you by the game. The DLC hammers this point home with both Marika and Messmer, and for as many problems as I may have with his story, Miquella especially.
I might elaborate on more of the examples and other themes present in either a reblog or a completely new post because there is TONS to talk about. For now though let's move on.
Bloodborne, while not as central, still shares these themes in a lot of places. Familial and motherly love specifically is everywhere in Yharnam, although not exclusively.
Gascoigne and his family clearly were all very close at some point, and while at least partially brought on by guilt, Djura shows a protective kind of love and kindness towards the beasts of Old Yharnam. Whichever way you interpret it, Gehrman loved Maria, and her death drives to sacrifice a lot in an attempt to bring her back.
The Doll has her speech about love that makes me tear up if I think about it too hard, and even if she hadn't said it she very clearly loves our Hunter, and likely the ones that came before us as well. Everytime we stop talking to her to, she tells us goodbye and that she hopes we find worth in the waking world. What is the doll if not full of love.
The Chapel Dweller too, has a love for the people of Yharnam and does as much as they can to keep them safe. They love us as well, even going so far as to clarify that we're amazing not just because we hunt, but because we're us.
The Great Ones too, have their own strangely human kind of love we catch glimpses of every once in a while, like when Ebrietas is mourning Rom, or Kos's protective anger over the fishing hamlet and whatever was done to her child. The whole thing with how every great one yearns for a child too seems to often be more about the desire to love their child than just to reproduce, at least that's the reading I get.
All this without mentioning Queen Yharnam and Mergo, too.
Bloodborne is admittedly the hardest to argue this for, and not the main point in my eyes, but the themes of love are still present in their own slightly darker ways. If anyone has any other thoughts on this game specifically I'd love to hear them :)
Dark Souls however, is the most significant with these themes in my eyes, and has geniuenly changed my worldview.
Dark Souls, is about how there is always hope, no matter how bad it gets, and positive change is inevitable no matter how much people try to prevent it.
Let's look at Gwyn, the age of fire, and the linking of the flame. Here we have an old man in a place of power who ruled over the relatively successful age of fire. Once it became evident however, that this age of fire would eventually end he did everything he could to prevent it put of fear.
Out of the fear of change, he put a curse on humanity and burnt himself alive to extend the order that he knew. And it worked in a way, with people coming after him to keep extending it when it eventually started to fade again. But with each linking of the fire, the time before the next one grew shorter, and the world started to collapse on itself. The age of fire lasting as long as it had was against the nature of world, and so the world was rejecting it more and more as time went on. But no matter how many times the fire got linked, no matter how desperately some tried to cling to the flame, to the old order, to the old world, change did eventually come. The flame did fizzle out, and a new world took its place.
What is this story about if not about change? About how there is always hope for change?
Dark Souls is full of light. To me, at least.
And this is all without going into how game mechanics reinforce these themes, and add their own. But that's already been talked about ad nauseum.
For as bleak and dark and scary as the worlds of these games are, they are filled to the brim with love, hope, and and faith in the future. And that's beautiful, isn't it?
Our world is also bleak and dark and scary right now, but please don't ever forget that it is also filled to the brim with love and hope and a better future that will inevitably come. Don't you dare give up on it. Don't you dare go hollow.
Souls games are about love and hope and change btw
#i have so many more thoughts its just so hard to lay them all out in a way that looks nice#im not even sure this is super fun to read but here it is!!#anyways these games mean a lot to me and ill forever be frustrated that they get reduced down to “hard game with confusing lore”#because they are so so so so much more than that#they are geniuenly some of the most lifechanging and awe inspiring pieces of media ive ever gotten to consume#and i wish for everyone to experience at least one of them some day#because i think what they twach you is important#also aologies if this is formatted oddly i wrote it all on my phone and it was FIGHTING WITH ME
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Reflecting on Heartless, ranting about Momori
Spoilerific, so read on if you dare!! Thoughts on Heartless, Momori’s involvement, and then just...goes everywhere lmao
First off, big BIG big thanks for including me (and Momori!) in the Heartless campaign! It was super fun, and ultra inspiring to see...what RP can be?? It's absolutely crazy the stuff that went down, and I hope Mei + all others involved in its organization are proud of what they've achieved. I entered with like, 0 understanding of what the heck was going on, and everyone was very patient w/ my dumb brain. If nothing else know that I greatly appreciate being a small part of Heartless and won't forget it like...ever!! put me down as a reference if you wanna add this to your resume. I’m serious! What a wild ride. It’s already been an inspiration for me and my own campaigns.
I also wanna apologize. For killing Momori, and the emotional cost that might have. It sucks, and I've been on the receiving end. For me, it feels like losing a REAL FRIEND when other people kill their characters, regardless of whether I know said character well or not. I think it has to do with, like...lost opportunity? It freaks me out knowing I’ve missed my window to experience another person’s creation. So please if you want to say anything, my inbox is always open. But also, please know that this isn't the end of Momori...just an end in the context of Heartless. And I'd be honored if you want to continue rping with her.
Anyway, cue full on ranting! kldfsdafsds I just. have a lot of thoughts about Momori and wanna dump them somewhere aaa
Momori is, at heart, a villain-type character raised in 'good' (or really, goodish) circumstances. I like to imagine Azula from ATLA, but instead of being raised in the Evil Empire of Fire (tm), she's raised in a philanthropic organization. There's definitely a conversation about nature vs nurture to be had, but I (selfishly) want to play a morally grey character. So Momori does good, but her motivation for doing good comes from the wrong place. She does good to climb a social hierarchy, to win someone's affection, to experience (and wield) power. It's a contest for her.
But there IS opportunity for her to break free of the ‘bad end’ track that she's on. She needs to be in an environment that forces her to disprove several of her preconceived notions. I don't want to get too deep into this, but the 'good' organization she's in (Silver Scholars) is pretty surface level good. Not outright evil, but there are other evils...like peer pressure, lack of transparency, extreme expectations, hazing, etc. Just the right brew of trash to cause her to lean into her character flaws! And it has fostered toxic relationships that must be broken for her to dip towards the light.
I appreciate that Heartless gave me the opportunity to have an unceremonious end for Momori (She got lost in the sauce MAN what a classic bad guy ending). She was just starting to turn around thanks to the Voyage’s kindness, just starting to be like "HECK YEAH I'll do what I want, not what I think Father wants!" But this also means that she’s gonna indulge in her, errrr, bad habits? She legitimately enjoys doing work that actively harms others (intelligence and assassination). And she definitely would dive into the deep end for tech/magic, regardless of the potential human cost. Momori is not blameless. She is limitless and dangerous and these are all reasons why I find her end here fitting.
Her death is no one’s fault but her own (except I guess mine? UMMm). She dies engaging with her darker impulses (killing) and was lured close by a strange, man-eating aetheric engine. She doesn’t stop to consider how gruesome the engine is, and instead wonders about how it can be used. Hell, her ego prevents her from even considering death as an option. Still, it's unfair that she's cut off from her growth. But it's similarly unfair that Momori thinks herself above others, so much so that she feels justified in her bullying behavior. She has a lot of negative karma, and this is payback.
Memento Momori. hahaha
Momori deserves penance. But she also deserves a chance at redemption. Although she doesn’t make it in Heartless, her journey continues in the main canon. Most of her 'fates' end horribly, but...that there’s a single path where she might make it? Maybe? Just one? I find that kinda inspiring. If you're interested in being a part of that journey, please!! Reach out to me! We can rework Heartless relationships into the main canon, or heck just start over w/ something new.
#FFXIVheartless#heartless au#momori mori#art#im ranting HECK!!#momori is definitely like....*those* characters in games#where you have to make a ton of very specific choices to keep alive and its a pain in the ass#like Loghain from dragon age origins#she's also just like...a case study of that quote from westworld#these violent delights have violent ends#OOC talk
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yknow those episodes where a character's whole personality gets split into 3-5 different distinct separate bodies? what bodies would cas have? I feel like it'd just be a mess tbh, imagine 5 different castiels all of them loving dean to a certain extent but showing it VASTLY differently. one cas would literally want to murder the others lmao
okay so i don’t actually think this trope would be an effective tool for analyzing cas? he’s not conflicted enough in himself. he’s too impulsive, too singleminded, too uninhibited. like, in the end, cas always ends up doing whatever he wants. there aren’t multiple discrete voices vying for control, really, or rather, if there are, one is always significantly stronger than the others. like in the end cas will always end up eating raw meat off the floor, you know? he’ll do what he wants. if i was going to do personality splitting i’d do it to someone intensely internally conflicted, like dean.
however, because i’m in an essay writing mood today, i’ll answer a question slightly to the left of the one you asked. cas may not be internally conflicted, but he is intensely changeable. these two things are related, actually; the same impulsivity and singlemindedness that mean he doesn’t have a ton of internal conflict at any given time mean that different ideas sound good to him at different times, because he isn’t really thinking about, say, what future-him will think of them. and he’s not really trying to maintain an image or identity. he’s just doing what feels right at the time, which is very different at different times and in different situations.
anyway, that in mind, i think a lot about ways to bring together many alternate versions of cas which sort of correspond to different times in the show.
i have a fic in my head about a bunch of cas-es pulled from alternate timelines by some kind of spell. so this would be set during the widower arc because the basic impulse here is to show dean a very bad time. just absolutely put him through hell. also, all the alternate timelines are different because different stuff happened, not because cas made different choices, because if we’re torturing dean it has to be like 5x04, the changes in cas can’t be cas’ fault. they have to be dean’s or just like, the universe’s (which makes them dean’s).
so dean is trying to bring cas back, and he finds some kind of spell that can bring someone “from another world.” and he tries it because hey. can’t hurt to try. anyway i’ve thought a long time about different versions of cas i would put in this and here is what i have. in order of when the timeline split off.
- a cas who never raised dean from hell. think 14x13 “lebanon.” this one i’m not too sure about, like, this could be fun, but i don’t know if it’s different enough from the next one. like this castiel would have lived through the averted apocalypse and subsequent general fuckery that happened as an angelic footsoldier, which would actually be pretty interesting now that i think about it, especially since all that stuff would have gone down soooooooo differently without cas specifically for your average angel footsoldier. like cas has PERSONALLY caused more upheaval in heaven in twelve years of spn than there seems to have been in millennia. so he would be the point of view of a normal footsoldier from a totally other world.
- a cas who died mid season four, and is pulled out of the empty in 2017 by this spell. i’m not sure when this cas died. my thoughts are (1) killed in on the head of a pin by alistair, (2) killed during his torture in the rapture, or (3) simply never resurrected after lucifer rising. (3) makes the most sense, but that cas has already thrown away everything for dean. i prefer the idea of a cas who loves dean, is already on the brink of disobedience for him, but has not yet taken the plunge. both on the head of a pin and the rapture are great places for this, and they both have strengths and weaknesses. if he died in the rapture, he was killed by heaven, which is fundamentally more fun, but he was also really very much over the edge already. if he died in on the head of a pin, he wasn’t killed by heaven, but he is perfectly teetering on the brink of falling for dean. regardless of when he died, the purpose of this cas is to be horrified at all the various and myriad ways he has destroyed and corrupted himself for dean in the other timelines.
- possibly endverse cas, who would have died in 2014, but like s4 cas, would have been pulled from the afterlife by the spell. i’m not so sure on this one. we as a society love endverse cas but i dunno what purpose he would serve. maybe endverse cas didn’t die in 2014, and instead was imprisoned by lucifer, because, you know. he’s the only brother lucifer has left. so he is very excited to see dean alive and well, since his dean is dead, and, not being an angel, cas can’t bring him back. the purpose of this cas would be to horrify dean that cas loves him and needs him so much, and to disgust the other cas-es with his neediness.
- a cas who was in some way on better terms with dean during s6. maybe dean and cas ride off into the sunset together after swan song instead of dean going to live with lisa, maybe dean prayed to cas while he was with lisa because he missed him, who knows. either way, cas has dean’s help with the angel revolution in season six from the start, and never goes to crowley. the plan cas and dean come up with to beat raphael includes breaking into the cage and stealing the grace of michael and lucifer, freeing sam and adam in the process. incidentally, it also involves cas possessing dean, because if cas is gonna eat archangel grace to become more powerful, he’s going to need a stronger vessel. so cas and dean have a whole like. midam situation happening. they’re a double archangel together, and godstiel never happened so none of the other terrible apocalypses that stemmed from that happened, and everything is pretty cool where they’re from, and also they’re obviously uhhhhhh SOME kind of together. the purpose of this cas is to upset dean because this cas shows how much better everything could have been and how much better his and cas’ relationship could have been if dean had simply been more considerate of cas in s6, and also freak dean out with how uh. close. this dean and cas are.
- a godstiel who managed to swallow purgatory without swallowing the leviathans and remained god. he’s probably soooomewhat less scary and murdery than canonverse godstiel because no leviathans, so you know, not as many angel purges or massacres on earth. and he probably went and fixed sam’s wall within about three days because cas is prideful but he does NOT like it when dean is mad at him. so they did kiss and make up, and so this cas would have had dean to act as his morality chain. but he’s still very scary and godstiel. and also he refers to dean as “The Beloved” you know. his purpose is to freak everyone out, because he’s scary, but also, for the past cas-es, because he is a terrifying abomination that they could never imagine becoming, for the future cas-es, because he is a reminder of their worst selves, and for dean, because he is a reminder of how dangerous cas is, but also because he uh. obviously has some feelings about his dean. unclear if they are consummated or not.
- a cas who naomi never rescued from purgatory, and who stayed there. hasn't spoken to another being in half a decade, has not recovered from his emotionally destroyed state in purgatory in s8. believes at first that the spell is his dean rescuing him, and is crushed when he realizes he was wrong. like endverse cas, his purpose is to show dean how much cas needs him and depends on him emotionally, and how he (dean) is capable of destroying cas, as well as his guilt for leaving him in purgatory and how lucky he is that his cas got out. this is especially noteworthy since the guilt for leaving cas in purgatory is part of the reason dean is trying to get cas back.
- a cas who stayed human after season nine, and has built himself a small human life over the next four years. he has a job and an apartment and friends outside the winchesters and yes, he still goes hunting after work sometimes, and he's still in contact with dean, but he is also independent in a way no other version of cas has ever been. he exists to freak out dean because dean has never seen cas independent of him. he is also fairly bitter at dean since dean did kind of stop spending time with him when he was no longer useful, and our dean feels guilty for that.
- a cas who showed up twenty minutes later in 10x03, finding sam dead and dean gone, and had to chase down demon dean, and has now spent three years following demon dean around as his tragically adoring stalker, because he hasn't found a way to resurrect sam yet and he doesn't want to put dean through the demon cure until he can save sam because he doesn't want dean to experience that guilt, but he also adores dean and wants to keep an eye on him and keep him safe and also keep him from doing anything too heinous, so he just covertly follows him around the country and watches from a distance as he commits various murders and fucks his way through every local bar scene. and occasionally cas finds dean something to kill, when the mark gets hungry, and drops it in his path. his purpose is to freak dean out with the lengths cas would go for him, and the depths cas would sink to.
anyway. lebanon cas and season four cas are horrified and perhaps disgusted (lebanon cas more than s4 cas) by ALL of the later cas-es, and how far they’re fallen, all of it for dean. godstiel and archangel cas being abominations, endverse cas and s9 cas being fallen, even purgatory cas and demon dean’s cas for their total dependence on dean.
purgatory cas and endverse cas are just happy to see a dean, even if it’s not their dean. demon dean’s cas, too, in a way. he’s happy to see a dean who is still human, who he can still have as a friend.
human cas is pissed to see that he was right, that dean would have stuck by him if he’d still had his powers, that this version of dean is doing spells to try and bring his cas, who is still an angel, back, whereas he and his dean only see each other once every couple months.
everyone is terrified and disgusted by godstiel, as i said before.
they’re mostly kind of thrown by archangel cas. a lot of them are jealous. godstiel is furious because how dare anyone, even an alternate version of himself, take dean as a vessel (even if dean likes it). godstiel isn’t really there, though, he resisted the summoning and just sort of popped his head through to see what was going on, and he goes back to his own reality pretty fast without murdering anyone.
also to be clear dean has not at this point examined or acknowledged any feelings he may have about his cas besides “friendship,” nor has he wondered what feelings his cas may have for him. given how many of the cas-es were clearly in some kind of relationship with their dean (endverse cas, archangel cas) or just openly in love with their dean (godstiel, purgatory cas, demon dean’s cas), dean is forced to reevaluate the nature of his and cas’ relationship.
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ok, the thing is: i’m not saying chomsky’s "version" of anarchism is without flaws or the ideal end-all of anarchist thinking. critique of his positions is fair and, imo, important. a lot of people don't like his viewpoints on "justified hierarchies" for ages, and i can't argue with that. it blurs the line when we try to discuss a genuinely egalitarian, anti-hierarchical society. anarchism is ultimately about dismantling oppressive structures, so debating the legitimacy of some of them is kind of pointless. in that regard, chomsky’s position is confusing at best. i will concede that point.
that being said, calling him "not a real anarchist" because he’s not on the bleeding edge of philosophical purity seems like it’s missing the forest for the trees. you can consider him controversial, but he’s done more to put anarchist thought in front of a mainstream & primarily liberal audience than almost anyone else in modern history. he’s responsible for driving discussions on the left about power and authority, and that means something.
anarchism, like any philosophy, isn’t a monolith; tons of anarchists have had different views across history. some disagree with kropotkin, malatesta, or bakunin. do we cut them all out of "real anarchism" too? are they stripped of their "anarchist" label because they don't meet a specific ideological purity test by a minority sect of the left?
the reality is, chomsky's take on anarchism - and largely my own - often comes from a pragmatic place, not a strictly ideological one. chomsky opposes the state in principle but recognizes that, within the current system, some forms of state intervention (like welfare) can actually help reduce suffering right now. we can argue whether that’s right, but i think it’s easy to sit back and say "abolish everything or bust" without thinking through what that means for people alive right now. dogmatic opposition to any practical reform could even be quantified as anti-anarchist if it prioritizes ideological purity over people’s material conditions.
honestly, all this purity gatekeeping in leftist spaces ends up keeping us fringe and ineffectual. look at how much time we have spent arguing who’s a "real" anarchist or leftist on the internet in the last few days alone. we don’t have to fold to right-wing tactics, but it’s kind of basic fact at this point that they’re better at connecting with the general public. on the left, so many very online people act like gatekeepers, pushing everyone else out with ideological purity tests that no one can live up to. all this accomplishes is keeping anarchism and leftist politics in general on the fringes, where only a handful of people are “pure” enough to participate.
if you can’t engage with a thinker because they’re not 100% ideologically aligned with you, that’s a personal choice—but it’s also a luxury we might not be able to afford if we want to effect change. that's the point that i am trying to make.
just saw someone say Chomsky isn't a "real anarchist." sigh.
there is no other way to say it: if you are at this stage, you need to get off the internet. i say this a lot, but man, it really is the best suggestion that i can offer for some of you. at this point, you're drifting toward hyper-nihilism as opposed to anarchism. maybe proto-anarchism. but you're quite literally becoming an extreme dissenter on the outer fringes of reality.
if you ever wonder why our political ideology isn't taken seriously by people outside of our own circles, it's because of twitter anarchists like this who are constantly banging furiously against the far reaches of the overton window. you've drifted into an area on the left that is populated by like 5 people. chill out.
what are you hoping to accomplish besides setting yourself apart so distinctly from the rest of the crowd? are you that enamored with individuality that you have to portray yourself as "distinctly anarchist"? everyone is entitled to their own unique beliefs but you kind of start coming off more concerned with being contrarian than dealing with facts and reality when you start saying shit like this.
please come back to earth, we could really use you down here.
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I'm not disagreeing with your logic, but isn't it also true then that grocers and doctors are parasites? They're no less guilty of holding human necessities for ransom.
Okay, so this is gonna be difficult because I know that there are probably words for the concepts I'm trying to explain, but I don't have an education in economics or policy ("lol I can tell," there, I said it for you) so this...wanders a little. Bear with me, yeah?
Firstly: Housing isn't movable. (Even "mobile homes," really.) I'm not just paying for the walls I live in. I'm paying for the spot of land it sits on. I'm paying to live specifically in this neighborhood, in this city; near my job, where I can ride a bicycle everywhere, where I can walk to grocery stores.
Humans can be moved between houses--but only at a cost of time, stress, and money. So people usually prefer not to do it more than necessary.
If I don't like a doctor, I can (usually) just walk out of the appointment and try to find someone else. If a grocery store costs too much or has bad customer service, I can (usually) shop somewhere else. Obviously, depending on insurance/location the doctor one might be a lot trickier--but with very few exceptions, it's not gonna be as hard as moving house.
Landlords/property companies know my choices are: deal with all their bullshit, or go through the pain and expense of looking for another place--if there ARE any I can afford!--and then moving. (Or, if they evict me for any/no reason, and/or I can't find an affordable place, risking homelessness.)
Part of what you pay for when you buy a house is stability--no one can force you to move just because they want to make the house nicer and more expensive, or because they want to live there instead of you. You're not worried that at any moment someone might come into your house and tell you you're not keeping it clean to their standards, so you better clean it up or you'll be homeless. (There isn't someone watching what I do with the lettuce I bought and disqualifying me from food benefits or even shopping at that grocery store because I didn't eat it all before it went bad.)
Secondly: I am actively making use of my housing for the majority of the time I am alive. If I'm not at work, and not on vacation, I am usually at home. I require housing every single day--even away from home, one of the major expenses is shelter--a hotel, a hostel, a campground and camping supplies. When I am not at home, the majority of my belongings are in my housing.
"You also need to eat every single day?" yes but I don't need to go grocery shopping daily. I shop once a week or less, usually. I could even skip a week, and my choices would narrow a bit but I wouldn't go hungry. I often switch which store I shop at every week based on my needs/wants: Trader Joe's one week, Fred Meyer another, doing an online Safeway order the week after that. I am not locked into one store every single week. Grocery stores know this, and compete amongst among each other by (among other things) lowering prices. Landlords are not doing that.
Tl;dr: I am not dependent on one grocery store or one doctor and can switch if I don't like them. Switching houses is a tremendous pain in the ass and expensive.
Thirdly: With groceries and food in general: it is easier to get SNAP benefits (aka "food stamps") or go to a food bank than it is to get housing benefits/rental assistance, though this might have changed in some places due to the pandemic.
In regards to doctors: There's a lot of effort put into attempting to get poor people on publicly funded health insurance (in most/sane states, anyway). Also, if you go to the ER, they cannot deny you emergency care based on your ability to pay.
But we regularly let people go homeless.
Fourthly: As a general rule (see caveats below) there aren't a ton of people out there buying up all the groceries and medical care and then not using them and holding onto them just so they can wait for the price to increase before selling--and when people do buy up medical supplies just to jack up the price, we all recognize this as unethical and there are even laws against it in many places. There's not entire companies (again, exceptions noted below) whose business model is based on making sure there isn't enough food or medical care to go around specifically with the goal of jacking up the expense of it and making a profit.
Lastly: I actually think it should be illegal for healthcare to have a profit motive. I'm absolutely in favor of single-payer socialized medicine. I do in fact think that holding medical care ransom is also unethical, though your average GP isn't the problem--and unlike landlords, healthcare workers are doing something of value that takes a great deal of skill, and they should be paid appropriately.
Tl;dr, part two: Food and medical care are human rights as much as housing is, but making sure everyone gets them will look different.
(General caveat/disclaimer: In many rural places, there is in fact only one doctor/clinic and one grocery store--and if they jack up the price because they can, they are also unethically holding life necessities for ransom. Ironically (or not?) housing is often much, much less expensive in those places. Aka "Holy shit this house is cheap, but who the fuck wants to live out there? And where would I work???") (ALSO ALSO: lol tbh there are examples of people holding onto all of a particular kind of food with the idea of making it more expensive--the first example that came to mind was Quebec's supply of maple syrup! Which is tasty but not uhhh irreplaceable or necessary for human life. It happens far more often with medication--witness the price of insulin in the US. Which every decent person realizes is unethical, morally wrong bullshit.)
#I hope this makes sense????#I took too long to write this and I know it meanders#plus I fucked up the formatting at one point and then confused myself lol#landlord discourse
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I feel like I've read a ton, but I'm honestly still pretty new to comics rn. That being said... What is one more day? Ik we don't like it and it happened a while ago, but that's about it [,=
Time for Spider-Man History With Traincat: Highly Controversial Storylines! And that feeling is totally normal with comics with huge canons -- you can read a ton and still have some fairly big blindspots in your understanding of the total picture. That being said, this is kind of a big one, both in terms of Spider-Man history/canon and in terms of how Spider-Man fandom functions. I would say probably no other storyline has had quite as much impact on how the fandom views and interacts with the source material as One More Day/Brand New Day. It's been the Wild West out here ever since it happened. (Which was in 2007, so like, yes, fairly long ago, especially when you look at how Spider-Man canon has evolved since, but in the grand scheme of things, also kind of recent. One More Day is not old enough to rent a car.)
So when people talk about Spider-Man's One More Day, they're usually actually talking about two related arcs: One More Day and Brand New Day. For the sake of simplicity, I'm going to be covering both. For the sake of transparency, I am going to admit that I think One More Day, as a self-contained story, is good, actually. This is controversial! I admit that! But I stand by my stupid opinions on this blog, for some reason. I think One More Day when you examine it on its own, by which I mean you ignore the decade and a half worth of canon that came after it, as a Spider-Man story and as a PeterMJ-centric story holds up under scrutiny and that people who don't like it don't like complicated love stories and might actually throw their own mothers under buses. No offense to the OMD haters. Little bit of offense to the OMD haters. Brand New Day, which is the continuation of One More Day, on the other hand -- largely bad. Very largely bad.
But let's backtrack. One More Day is a four issue crossover storyline that takes place directly after Civil War, during which Iron Man and Captain America got divorced and divvied up the superhero community and Spider-Man made some startlingly bad decisions and made a fugitive out of himself and his family in a manner that got Aunt May shot, and Spider-Man: Back in Black (Amazing Spider-Man #539–543) which examines Peter's actions immediately after Aunt May is shot and ends with him humiliating the Kingpin in front of an entire prison. One More Day consists of Amazing Spider-Man #544 -> Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #24 -> Sensational Spider-Man v2 #41 -> Amazing Spider-Man #545. In One More Day, Aunt May is dying, all of Peter's efforts to save her have thus far failed, and, consumed by guilt, he is rapidly running out of time. Approached by Mephisto, a literal demon from hell, Peter is offered a deal: Aunt May will live -- and Peter's identity, which was previously revealed to the world at large during Civil War, will once again be hidden from the memories of all but a select few -- if Peter trades him his marriage to Mary Jane. Peter and Mary Jane struggle with this, but eventually both agree to the deal. The clock strikes twelve, the deal is done, and Peter and Mary Jane's marriage fades into history.
(ASM #545) A reasonably simple premise for a story that caused so many problems -- most, I would argue, not actually the original story's fault. So obviously, this was an unpopular move -- Peter and Mary Jane had for a long time been a fan favorite Marvel couple, and in a fictional universe where most relationships are doomed as soon as they begin, the enduring Spider-Marriage was sacred ground. And then, with a snap of its fingers, it was gone: Peter wakes up in Aunt May's house, no longer married, with Mary Jane out of the picture. (She would not return to the book on any sort of consistent basis for over 50 issues.) In the wake of One More Day began Brand New Day, which is basically what it sounds like: a promised "brand new day" of "exciting" Spider-Man content and a publishing schedule where Amazing Spider-Man came out three times a month. (Which sounds good on paper but I think in practice caused more problems than it created good storylines.) Peter, newly single again, had new love interests! And also Harry Osborn was alive again for some reason! I generally like Harry's post-BND stories so that part's fine with me.
But overall? Brand New Day is a mess. It knows it wants to tread new and exciting ground with Peter -- tell new stories! ensnare new readers! make them fork out for a book three times a month. -- but it doesn't know what those stories should be. Readers who were invested in Peter and Mary Jane's relationship -- a major facet of Spider-Man comics for decades at that point -- felt rightfully betrayed that the marriage could be so easily traded in and that Mary Jane herself, perhaps the second most important figure in Spider-Man comics after Peter, could be tossed aside. From a personal point of view, I think Brand New Day fails in large part because it abandons what has always made Spider-Man such a compelling series, and that's the mix of Peter's personal life with his vigilante life. BND sees Peter with new friends, new jobs, new love interests, etc -- it is very much a brand new day! But it isn't a better day compared to the stories that came before it. I do like some post-BND stories, especially American Son (ASM #595-599) and Grim Hunt (ASM #634-637), but compared to pre-BND where I think the majority of canon is good, it's a very lacking body of work that is hurt by the way it divorced itself from the PeterMJ marriage as Spider-Man's central relationship.
"But Traincat, I thought you said you liked One More Day?" Yeaaaaah. I do. This is why I keep saying I like One More Day on its own merits, and not on the merits of the stories it opened the doors for. I like a good romantic tragedy in fiction, and the way Peter and Mary Jane's final scene in One More Day plays out is beautiful. I like the idea of Peter caught in this impossible situation, being asked to choose between two women he loves more than his own life. A really common criticism I see leveled against One More Day is that Peter should have chosen his relationship with Mary Jane over May's life, which is -- okay, I think it's weird that people keep insisting on this, not in the least because by asking Peter to sacrifice his aunt's life they're essentially demanding he commit a callous, out of character act in order to further his own interests. It's also weird because the thing is, Peter already chose Mary Jane over May -- that's what gets them into this situation. It's literally in the scene where May is shot:
(ASM #538) When the gun goes off, Peter's spider-sense kicks in, and he covers Mary Jane, leaving May in the path of the bullet. He does choose Mary Jane over May, regardless of whether he realized what he was doing. And that's why he can't make that choice a second time. His actions in One More Day do make sense for him as a character, whether or not any individual reader likes them, and Mary Jane's actions make sense, too -- after all, she's the one who ultimately tells Mephisto that they agree to the deal when Peter can't bring himself to voice it.
A lot of people also like to nitpick One More Day by going, well, why could (x) or (y) with life saving powers save Aunt May which is like -- yeah, I guess, but if we're going to ask that about this specific comic book near death setup, you kind of have to do it with every single one, and I'm not going to stake every single moment of comic book drama on whether or not that gold kid from the X-Men was busy at the time. Comics are soap operas in flimsy paper form: serialized longform storytelling that relies heavily on melodrama. Sometimes you have to go with things. Sometimes you sell your marriage to the devil. Stuff happens. That in and of itself doesn't make One More Day a bad story -- and while some people blame the Spider-Marriage's dissolution entirely on One More Day, I think that's a little shortsighted when you look at the history of Spider-Man since the turn of the century. It's clear -- and Marvel themselves have been perhaps a little too open about this -- that Marvel in the past few decades has had trouble with the direction they want to take Spider-Man. They WANTED Spider-Man to appeal to a distinctly youthful audience that they didn't think they were actually reaching -- understandable, considering that Marvel nearly went bankrupt around 2000 and was saved by Ultimate Spider-Man, an out of main continuity series which retold Spider-Man from the beginning and focused heavily on Peter as a teen -- but the problem was Spider-Man in the main continuity was at that point in canon a happily married man who was pushing the dreaded 30 whether or not they wanted to admit that. This is also why Marvel has continually pivoted away from Spider-Man having kids, because they feared that making him a dad would age him too much and make him unrelatable to their coveted audience of Teens. (This is also why almost every new Spider-Man property, especially the live action movies, perpetually stick him back into high school, despite that occupying a very small slice of 616 canon.) So around the year 2000, they started trying things in relation to the Spider-Marriage, which was viewed as a major problem -- after all, what's more adult than being married and liking your wife. First, they had Mary Jane presumed dead. Then, they had Mary Jane and Peter separate. Then, when Mary Jane and Peter had only recently gotten back together, One More Day struck. If One More Day specifically hadn't gone the way it had, it's pretty clear that the Spider-Marriage was going to go one way or another -- it's a little bit of a shame it happened when it did, because OMD is the end of J Michael Straczynski's run, and JMS wrote a really beautiful Peter and MJ relationship. But Marvel as a company and especially editor in chief at the time Joe Quesada viewed Peter and Mary Jane's relationship as a major problem in how they wanted to portray Spider-Man and thought that striking the relationship from the books would allow them more freedom in their portrayal of him as younger and more relatable to their Desired Audience of people who I guess really wanted to see Peter sleep with characters who weren't Mary Jane.
(ASM #546. Younger! Fresher! Less attached! Kissing random women in the club!)
The problem with One More Day has always been in the follow through -- from the content of Brand New Day to the pacing of events to the fact that Marvel withheld key information for such a long time that it allowed misinformation to thrive. After all, what does it MEAN to trade Peter and Mary Jane's marriage to the devil? It altered the events of canon in Peter and the majority of other characters' memories so that the marriage didn't exist, but it left people wondering -- did the relationship as they remembered it existed? How much of Spider-Man canon was altered? And the answers didn't come for over 100 issues of Amazing Spider-Man. One Moment In Time or OMIT (Amazing Spider-Man #638-641), which revealed that while Peter and Mary Jane never got married in the altered canon they did continue their long committed relationship up until just after Civil War, was published in 2010, so essentially readers were hung out to dry without answers for three years. That's a long time to string people along, but not as long as it took Marvel to confirm that the popular fan theory that Mary Jane retained her memories of the original timeline as part of her own deal with Mephisto was also true, which happened this year. I would say, at least from my perspective, a lot of the frustration doesn't come from the individual One More Day storyline so much as how Marvel has continually dragged out the aftermath, using the promise of a Spider-Marriage return to keep fans on the hook. Which is why One More Day continually comes up in discussion of current Spider-Man, because Spencer's run has relied very heavily on imagery from that period with a serious question of whether or not there actually was going to be payoff, something which is still up in the air.
This has been Spider-Man History With Traincat, brought to you by anonymice like you.
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One Hundred Evils and You: Stall Teams (for the F2P Player)
Introduction:
Here is a guide on how to defeat the Hundred Evils/Hundred Calamities with easy-to-acquire units and easy-to-aquire memoria!
Please note that this is not the only approach to the Hundred Evils, and it might not even be the best approach for you personally. However, it is the most generic approach that is made with Free-to-Play Players in mind. Stall teams are easier and more accessible to make than most Charge or Magia teams. Blast teams can work in the Hundred Evils (I’ve done them before) but it’s tricky and they’re not always applicable, depending greatly on who you fight. In the end a Stall team might be your best option!
This is an extremely long guide. I wanted to be thorough, but I might have overdone it. Still, I hope this is helpful! Some of these hints might be a little obvious, but I wanted to make sure that even new players could get some practical advice.
What is the Hundred Evils?
The Hundred Evils is located on the far right tab where you have three different battles to fight that only cost a reasonable 1AP each. Inside, you’ll battle against several different waves of Magical Girls (and only Magical Girls-- no Witches, Uwasa, Kimochi, or other kinds of minions will be found inside).
What is a Stall Team?
A Stall team is a team that
Uses Magia to protect its team + deal out damage
Uses memoria to protect its team and debuff enemy
Uses specific characters for buffing, debuffing, healing, ect
This is not a team that will kill fast, but is one that can take some serious hits and stick around.
Preparing Your Team
Like many strategies, most of the difficulty is in the planning. But before we talk about the characters themselves, let’s take a quick moment to talk about the preparation needed to make them excel at their work. Unfortunately this will require investment in both their Spirit Enhancement and in their Magia (you’ll want several of them to have Doppels).
More importantly, you’ll also want these characters to have multiple slots-- the worse your memoria are, the more slots you’ll want. Essentially, you really need each character to have four of them.
For more established players, it’s very possible that you’ll have several of these girls kitted out already with their required slots, but for very new players, it might take a few events to finally get them fully slotted. Luckily you can do this easily with Magia Chips and Destiny Bottles, unlike with natural four-stars, but this still might take time to build up.
As for Spirit Enhancement, it depends-- some characters you’ll really want that Active (for example, Kako’s party-wide HP Regen heal) and some characters... eh. It’s not as important.
But it’s still a good idea to grab as much as you can. Some characters, like Kako again, have SE that gives them more MP at the start of the battle or HP Regen. This is inconsequential for high-end content, but vital for a FTP Magia Stall strategy team. You want everything that will make a character live longer, heal themselves on their own, get them to Magia faster, ect. You don’t need to get them to 60/60 SE, but it’d be good to aim for them to have all their Passives and Active.
Who to Use:
Let me introduce you to a F2P’s saviors:
Let’s go through them and analyze why these girls in particular are so good for Stall teams.
Oriko Mikuni: Oriko is the team leader of this bunch. Why is that? She’s your go-to Magia damage dealer. She’s a Magia type, she deals a decent amount of damage for an uncapped girl, her Magia is an AOE, and her typing (Light) means that she should be able to deal decent damage against anything you throw at her. Her Spirit Enhancement is full of increased Magia Damage Up, and she also has the passive 15% chance to inflict Skill Seal on her enemies-- it’s not enough to be reliable, but I find that it’s still really useful when it pops off unexpectedly. The focus on Evade can be useful in some circumstances-- she’s fragile, and it’s an easy way to protect her. Lastly, her connect gives Accele MP Gain Up, which lets her help your team gain more MP.
Kako Natsume: The GOAT for F2P, Kako Natsume is pretty mighty. Her Accele Draw personal memoria is great for getting things set up, she offers good heals through her connect, her Magia/Doppel, and even through her Active SE, and her SE is also pretty decent with giving her lots of stuff that helps her survive. Her damage isn’t the best as a Healer, but her single-target Magia/Doppel can kill troublesome Aqua-types when needed. Her Magia/Doppel/Connect also gives “Remove Status Ailments” which can be extremely helpful. Lastly, her Doppel will provide “Remove Buffs” towards the target which can help with increasing damage potential.
Emiri Kisaki: Don’t let Emiri fool you into thinking she’s all giggles-- she's fearsome! She’s excellent as a Debuffer and will protect your team through inflicting Dazzle onto the enemies. Not only does Dazzle make them more liable to miss, but it also means the enemy takes increased damage from their weak element, so she can also help increase damage done. Additionally, her Magia/Doppel gives all enemies Damage Down for three turns, making her Magia even more protective. Lastly, she has Skill Quicken as part of her Spirit Enhancement, meaning it’s an excellent idea to equip memoria on her that you want to use more often than the cooldown let’s you.
Manaka Kurumi: Manaka is fucking incredible. Like Kako she’s a heal-type, but don’t be tricked into thinking that’s all she can do. She has one of the highest Attack Up connects in the game and her Magia/Doppel offers an excellent amount of Attack Up to all allies for three turns. This gives her the role of being the buffer-- if you’re facing a tough enemy, use Manaka’s Magia/Doppel first and then use the other Magia after. She has two Accele MP Gain Up passive nodes and an active that gives her more Accele MP Gain Up, so don’t be afraid to use her Magia/Doppel often.
Other Good F2P-Friendly Units
Now, you’ll probably notice that I only included four up there, but that you can use five in total for your team. If you need to use a Magia Stall Team, then I recommend using all five spaces so that you have more room for potential Magia/Doppels. The fifth slot can be swapped for anyone in particular, but if you’re looking for a F2P-friendly character then I’d recommend one of these girls.
Umika Misaki: Personally this would be my most recommended option. Umika is another healer, which makes your team even more protective than before, and she can fill a very protective role. First, her connect won’t just heal someone but it’ll also give them Damage Cut and almost 100% Defense Up-- making her excellent at protecting someone. Her Magia/Doppel act similarly to Kako’s, restoring health to all allies and also removing Status Ailments. Her SE is similarly useful-- like Emiri, she has passive 15% Skill Quicken, so she’s a good choice to equip active memoria you want to use often on. Like Oriko, she has a chance to Skill Seal on attack-- not enough to be reliable, but enough that it should still be good. Her SE active is MP Damage for 30MP-- situational, but it can be extremely helpful if you’re not able to kill an enemy before they can Magia you. Her DEF and HP make her solid, not as much as a proper tank, but as someone who can stand in for one.
Hotaru Yura: A bit of a bold choice, but Hotaru can be good. She’s another healer, but she has some excellent supportive capabilities. First, you don’t need to worry about her dying, unless she can’t Regen HP-- her SE Active gives her 100% HP Restore (with the cost of Attack down on self, but no one is using Hotaru for damage). She has passive HP Regen, Defense Up, and Status Ailment Resistance so she can take a bit of punishment. Her connect is a generic heal, and her Magia has a generic HP Regen, but what makes her really shine is the MP Regen from her Magia-- this means you can use her to keep your party having topped off MP gauges.
Haruka Kanade: If you have Haruka, she can be a good choice as a tank. Despite being a Support, she has a ton of tanking capabilities, and she can protect your team through a variety of methods. She has passive Provoke chance, meaning she can draw aggro away, Skill Quicken (you want to probably use her active slots for taunt memoria and for defense up/damage cut memoria though), and HP Regen. Her active lets her taunt the enemies while also inflicting a 52% chance of Charm onto them-- it’s a long cooldown, but can serve as a panic button when things are going wrong. Her connect gives Charm as well, meaning you can protect the party from hits. Her Magia/Doppel is also a good defensive panic button of sorts-- the target will deal less damage, Haruka gains Provoke and Damage Cut (and hp regen), and she can protect your team for that turn.
Sana Futaba: Sana has decent DEF and HP stats, so she will do well as a tank. She has a passive Provoke and a passive Endure-- meaning that she can draw hits and also stay alive past one potentially fatal one. Her SE gives her Accele MP Gain Up and MP Gain Up nodes, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to get her to Magia/Doppel. Her Anti-Debuff SE active is situationally useful. Her connect gives 100% Damage Cut, making it a good way to protect the user, and her Magia gives Damage Cut/Defense Up to all allies, again making her a good way to defend her team. Her Doppel has a chance of being very defensive or of inflicting Status Ailments (Burn, Darkness, Bind). This does make her more tricky to use if she gets to 150 MP as opposed to 100-- you can’t guarantee if she’ll protect your team or inflict ailments on the enemy.
Good Four-Star Units to Use
There are too many good units to list here-- believe me, I tried to actually do that and after the first twenty characters I realized I’d have to tackle this in a different way. However, here are some extremely notable characters, who you should bring even if they only have one slot:
Madoka & Iroha
Madoka Kaname
Mikage Yakumo
Outside of that, if you have someone with a few slots and you’re wondering if they’re good to bring, ask yourself these questions:
Do they have good disks? Characters with two or more Accele disks are better than ones with only one.
Do they help with MP generation in any sort of form? It’s not a must-have, but it’s a plus.
What do they provide to the party-- do they have a protective role, a defensive one, an offensive one? For example, you can swap out Emiri for a slotted Mifuyu since they share similar roles, or a Sayuki for a Manaka.
Last Notes on Choosing Characters
Here are a few last things to consider when choosing some characters.
First off, you don’t always fight every element. You might not know who you’re fighting, but you can know what element they’ll be-- you can then use your characters accordingly. For example, it might not be worth it to bring an Aqua-element if you could use another Forest type here. Just make sure that you don’t miss important team roles!
You can always try to use memoria to fill in missing character gaps. For example, some fights might have you face teams that build up MP to use on deadly Magia. You could try to get your one-slot Touka to work... or you could just use Magia Damage Down or MP Gain Down memoria instead.
Tanks can be really helpful here but also sometimes not. A tank really needs 3+ slots to work properly so that they can have enough defensive passives plus an active that grabs aggro. However, you don’t need to choose a proper tank-- any character with a passive Provoke or Guardian can work if they have the right memoria for it. Just make sure you keep them alive.
Three healers on a team might seem excessive, but personally I find it to help cover bases. This way you don’t run into a situation where your healer needs help but no one can help them, and you also are able to use Magia more strategically-- Manaka can heal, sure, but you don’t need to waste her Magia on someone when you don’t need the Attack Buff right then as long as Kako has her Magia up still. This is also really helpful if you don’t have any tanks on your team.
When it comes to filling in the fifth member of the F2P team (Oriko, Manaka, Kako, Emiri), I prefer aqua types so that you can fill in all elemental slots. Again though, make sure you check what elements you’re fighting first!
The formation you use can be important too. This one for example gives increased Status Ailment Resistance and HP Regen. Additionally, make sure you place your characters with consideration. Characters closer to the front will be targeted more than characters towards the behind. If you have a tank with Provoke memoria, then make sure whoever is horizontal and vertical with them can also take some hits when the enemy uses a blast attack.
Equipping Your Team: What Memoria to Choose?
Okay, so you’ve chosen your characters. What about memoria? Do you need top of the line stuff here?
Nah. You can do this with event rewards easily!
Going through a list of everything that could potentially be helpful would be extremely long, so the above provides some examples. Let’s go over some notes:
For passive memoria, I prefer to do one Accele MP Gain Up/MP Gain Up memoria paired with one Attack Up/Damage Up/Damage Increase memoria. That way your units can get to Magia easily and still deal decent damage when they get there. If your characters are fragile, then using memoria with Defense Up/Damage Cut are good ideas too. Memoria with passive HP Regen aren’t a bad idea-- you probably have a lot of good healers on your team, but a character who can passively heal themselves means you can use those Magia for more offensive purposes.
As for Actives, your choices are expanded. I mentioned above that memoria can fill in missing gaps that you couldn’t fit characters in for. Actives are part of that. Accele Draw memoria are always a must, and memoria that help increase your MP Gain is always a plus. The biggest key though will be Attack Down / Damage Down memoria. Memoria like Mito Rain are the best thing possible for a F2P-- it has a low cooldown, effects everyone, gives a ton of its percentage, ect. You’re actually better off keeping five separate copies of Mito Rain instead of max awakening it to one, because then you can give each character one copy-- this means you can use a Mito Rain on every turn. This will protect your units and keep them safe in addition to all the healing you can do, and it also will help you deal increased damage thanks to its Defense Down.
One memoria that can inflict MP Gain Down is generally a good idea.
Characters with passive Skill Quicken should be given memoria that you want to use more often-- Mito Rain is a good idea on them of course, but so are other debuffers.
Tailor your memoria to your needs. If you find that all your characters are constantly at 150 MP but you’re never in a good place to use it, try decreasing the amount of MP Regen memoria you’ve got going on and replace them with more damaging effects.
DON’T OVERLOOK THREE STAR MEMORIA. They can be extremely helpful and even better than some four-star ones! For example, Leila Rain is an overlooked hero and definitely worth considering! Three-star memoria are easier to max awaken too, so in some cases, a max awakened three-star memoria is going to be better than a single copy of a four-star one!
If you’re a newer player, then chances are you’ll struggle with having good memoria along with having good units. Memoria can be just as much an investment as characters can be-- so make sure you’re getting 3* Over Limiters from your events and spend them wisely.
Don’t forget you can negate Evade through Status Ailments-- memoria can be extremely helpful with that.
Actually Fighting
So now you’re fighting. Cool! What now?
First you want to build up your MP for everyone. If you have an Accele combo without needing to use an Accele draw memoria, take it!
For your first wave, try to build up MP slowly across everyone. Use your Accele Draw(s) here and prioritize Accele combos-- even if it means using an Accele disc for someone who already has max MP. For example, if I got an acele disc option from Umika, Manka, and Oriko, I’d still use Umika’s to get all of that MP.
Remember that the order the Accele disc goes in determines how much MP they get! The first character gets the least amount of MP with the last one getting the most. Using the previous example, I’d use Umika’s disc, Oriko’s disc, and then Manaka’s disc. Don’t forget that the characters get a flat +20 MP boost too.
Choose your target enemy wisely. For example, you can generally count on Touka featuring some sort of anti-MP gain/MP Gain on self, and Nemu to inflict a status ailment onto your team. Here, the Rena hits harder than her Rena-chan self. You can’t always predict who is going to use what, but general familiarity with the characters helps.
Some enemies are better for generating MP against than others. You can’t always predict who you’ll get and what they’ll do, but if you come across easy enemies, take advantage of the situation to farm some MP.
There are lots of tricks to getting more MP out of situations. For example, all characters will gain more MP after they hit 100MP than before they do-- so using an Accele disc before a Magia is an easy way of regaining your losses.
Using an Accele disc before any others will increase the MP gained by each subsequent disc, even for Blast. If your disc selection is bad, try to make the most of it with squeezing out what you can.
Additionally, if you’re confident a Magia will kill a target, use the Magia last. You can put two potential accele discs in front of it to get even more MP out of the thing.
This line of thinking can go with charging up connects. You don’t actually need to use the disc (if the enemy dies) to get the + for it, so if you’re confident a Magia will kill a target, pick discs that will give you a connect on your next turn.
This is a little overkill, but personally I like to go into the last wave with as many Doppels and Memoria up as possible. Don’t stay on any character too long-- you can only use three doppel a turn after all, and using one of your five to finish someone off isn’t a bad idea-- but also don’t be afraid to sit for a bit either. Just make sure you’re under the 40 turn time limit. It’s possible that whatever you face in the final wave will need more than three doppels to die.
It’s time. It’s the final, toughest wave. You’re here! You’ve got all the Doppels ready and a bunch of memoria ready too. So what order do you do this in?
In general a safe bet is to go Manaka > Emiri > Oriko. This is so that Manaka will buff the entire team, making each Doppel hit harder, Emiri can inflict Bewitch (possibly making Oriko hit harder if she counters the element, though it doesn’t work in this scenario) and use your main damage dealer (Oriko) last.
If your characters have some lingering status ailments, or if the enemy has an annoying buff, Kako’s doppel might be a good idea to go first instead. It’s not a bad idea to save your defensive doppels/healing doppels for a potential second round though.
And that’s it! You did it! Congratulations!
Other Advice that I Don’t Have Screenshots For
You’ve got at least two healers who can heal through connects, magia/doppel, and one through her SE Active. Don’t blow a Doppel when a connect will do just as well.
If you don’t have enough debuff memoria to “blanket” the enemy every turn, then use Emiri’s connect to try and blanket them with Bewitch instead.
Connects in general are a tricky thing to use. You want to save them for times when their effects are needed, but sometimes you also want to give someone an Accele disk to get their MP up. Don’t get too greedy, but conversely don’t hoard them.
If you mess up and want to redo a wave, forcefully exit the game. When you bring it back up, you’ll have an option to go right back to the beginning of that wave (the answer “yes” is the right button).
Try not to overcap on effects. For example, don’t use two active Attack Up effects Oriko, have Manaka use her Doppel, then have Manaka connect to Oriko. Attack Up has a cap of 100%, and anything over that is completely wasted. Space stuff out over turns, or use a variety of different memoria to provide different buffs.
Conclusion
I hope this helps! I think I covered everything...? You might notice that some of these screenshots come from different events because I was lazy because this took a little while to write.
There are lots of strategies you can use for this challenge. But this one is for new players/F2P players who don’t have a lot of good units/memoria yet. Eventually you’ll outgrow this team and have better characters to use. There are all sorts of cool strategies one can employ with the right characters; lots of people will try to finish the Hundred Evil fights with as few turns as possible using Charge strategies for example.
But, if you need a tried-and-true method of defeating the Hundred Evils with easy-to-aquire characters, then the above method is for you. Good luck out there, you can do it!
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Fire Lord Ozai: A blood thirsty monster or the less fortunate “Zuko” of his generation?
Hello again and thank you as always for clicking and allotting some of your time to read my humble post! Since I’ve happened to notice quite an increase in posts lately regarding the controversial character and nature of the former Fire Lord, the now imprisoned fallen prince Ozai, and I’ve personally promised in my previous post that I will share my own analysis on him if people asked me to do so (which actually happened), I am here to deliver my own take on this very intriguing man’s character, while also building a potential past for him based on stuff gathered from the show’s cannon.
I would like to start this essay with what I find to be my favorite quote ever: ”Monster’s aren’t born, they are created.” ~ Naruto Uzumaki (Naruto) What I like about this quote soo much and find very inspirational is the truth it holds within its short, yet powerful message. We are often fast to judge a “book by the cover”, to reduce others to what we assume of them by their appearance or latest actions that we’ve seen them do, but never actually take a moment and wonder where they come from, if this person we soo harshly look down upon really has been this way since their very beginning?
I’ve come across many comments on social media related to ATLA, especially on YouTube videos on which people would throw with harsh comments such as “Aang being a coward for choosing to spare the villain just because they saw a dumb baby pic of them” or “Ozai is the essence of evil and even as a baby he’d been a monster”. I can’t help but wonder who hurt these people to make them be so cruel? Like, how messed up must you actually be to say that a baby, a friggin baby, is the embodiment of all evils? Or that a child was a coward for choosing to see his opponent’s last bits of humanity and opted to spare them?
Aang was soo morally conflicted about the idea of killing Ozai not only because it contradicted the morals of his people, but because he himself understood that this man hadn’t always been the cruel beast he came to met in their first and final showdown. It’s important to note here the fact that upon finding that picture, Aang was actually convinced it had to be Zuko as a baby since it looked so innocent and cute and was actually surprised to learn it was Zuko’s father. And that’s the thing, Ozai was born like us all as an innocent and sweet baby. Babies aren’t in any way evil or twisted, they don’t even have the notion of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ defined in their small, still developing minds. In fact, the very choice of the creators to add this picture in the show is meant to tell us this very thing: this man wasn’t always like this. But if he wasn’t always like this, then what happened to make him become this way?
Well, in order to find out the reason, we must go back in time to the very beginning: Ozai’s childhood and upbringing. For this next part I am going to solely focus on the show cannon, as the comics aren’t the products of BryKe and have a lot of inconsistencies to the source’s cannon (you can go and read my other post on why they fail when it comes to Zuko’s character and his family).
From what we know and can easily deduce by ourselves just from their appearances, Ozai and his brother Iroh have a huge age gap between them (somewhere between 10 and 15 years). This has to be our first red flag: isn’t it soo odd that this family opted to have their children at such a long distance between pregnancies? It almost feels as if Ozai hadn’t actually been part of his father’s actual family planning... In other words, he was a ‘mistake’ child (I actually hate having to use this terminology, but it will become relevant to when we expand on Azulon’s relationship with his sons). Sure, some may argue that Azulon actually decided to have two sons in case something were to happen to his first born, but wouldn’t it have been more logical to have his second born at 2-3 years max distance from his first? Why choose to have your second child when you are much older and thus risk having a baby with issues, if your sole purpose of this child is to serve as an insurance that you don’t ‘run out’ of heirs? It just doesn’t make much sense, so let’s go for the moment with the possibility that Ozai was an unplanned pregnancy.
This perspective actually gives way to another very interesting aspect: remember the infamous “Born lucky...Lucky to be born” quote? What if I tell you that there is a possibility that this quote wasn’t Ozai’s personal wicked invention, but actually something he himself heard from his very own father? It had been puzzling me for a long time why he choose to say “You were lucky to be born” to Zuko, which implies that Zuko wasn’t supposed to exist. I mean, it’s soo odd that Ozai went with something implying that Zuko was an unplanned pregnancy, since Zuko was the first born. So my theory is that maybe Ozai wanted to convey a different message to Zuko when he said that quote, but due to his anger he ended up replicating the same line he received from Azulon at some point in his childhood. We never got the exact flashback when the line was delivered from Ozai to Zuko, so we don’t have the exact context that lead to it (remember, we are excluding Yang’s take on the matter from the comics).
I mean, this feels like something that wicked old Azulon would have said to his least favorite child. Okay, so let’s go with the scenario that Ozai was an unwanted child, to which we could also add the possibility that Ilah’s health deteriorated after the first birth, which makes plausible the family’s initial decision of stopping at 1 kid.
Moving on, we know from the old ATLA character wiki’s that Ozai’s character design was made with Zuko in mind, being meant to be a grown up version of Zuzu, without the scar. An interesting choice indeed and even Iroh’s letter to Zuko on Ozai from one of the ATLA books describes Ozzy in a similar way to teenage Zuko in book 1: stubborn, feisty, determined and with a volcanic personality (easy to anger and competitive), so it means that these were intentional choices to imply that Zuko and his father are more similar than we were led to believe at first glance. Maybe Ozai was the “Zuko” of his generation. Also, in one of the interviews on the royal family, BryKe stated that Ozai worked very hard to get where he is in book 3, referring to his firebending specifically (we all know how Ozzy got the throne, so clearly, he didn’t “work hard” for that), so maybe he wasn’t always the strongest man alive, with the most exceptional firebending skills out there, like Azula who showed ease in her learning, but rather someone closer to Zuko’s weaker performance as a child, building his way to success through endless hard work until he became the prodigy we know today.
Continuing with our theoretical scenario, after his birth, the second child show’s lesser skills compared to his brother Iroh (by that I don’t mean that he wasn’t gifted at all, but that maybe Ozai wasn’t as fast and great of a learner like his big bro), so Azulon opts to just ignore him and continue focusing solely on his golden child. In my headcannon I actually think that Ilah survived the birth and so she was left in charge of the younger child’s education and upbringing. At this point Iroh is already 10 or older, so he is forced to focus on his development, which prevents him from spending time with his lil brother, but just for the sake of being positive, let’s assume that Ozai still had both his mother and his big brother to keep him sheltered from Azulon’s darkness for a small portion of his childhood.
I choose to believe that Ozai had his mother’s love for a small bit of his childhood due to his willingness in the show to allow Ursa (who mind you, as the granddaughter of Roku was considered a treacherous individual) to spend a ton of time with both Zuko and Azula and share her philosophy with the children, as seeing his wife playing with their children probably reminded him of his own bitter-sweet memories he had with Ilah. They also probably spent a lot of their time near the turtle-duck pond since that pond’s existence prolly dates long before Ozai and Ursa married and had their own children.
Unfortunately, Ilah dies and little Ozai remains all alone, to be influenced negatively by his father (and even by his grandpa Sozin, we don’t really know for certain when the old man died, so he prolly was there for a short time when Ozzy was still a child). Azulon most likely blames Ozai for his wife’s death as the second birth might’ve really had a huge toll on Ilah’s already fragile body, bringing her closer to death, so he still neglects and ignores the child, if not straight out bullies and abuses him for not being on par with Iroh. This prolly leads to Ozai becoming jealous of his brother since Iroh has their father’s love, pushing them further apart. I headcannon that this jealousy between the siblings led to Ozai complaining to his dad when he finally had too much of their father’s discrimination (at a similar age to when Zuko prolly did and got the infamous line, if not younger) only to get the “Iroh was born lucky, you were lucky to be born!” line with the sole purpose of hurting him since now the child knows that he was never wanted.
When Azulon scolds very furiously adult Ozai in Zuko’s memories for daring to ask to be named crown prince, he literally says something like “What, you dare ask me to betray MY own son?!” (this is like red flag number two), line that pretty much testifies how Azulon chose to pretty much treat Ozai as if he wasn’t his son too, showcasing how much he despised his second born and favored the first child over him. Since we are on the topic of their last conversation, the punishment Azulon gave to his son alone proves this man’s level of sadism, which leads me to be believe that Ozai’s childhood was full of this type of punishments for bad behaviors that could be easily corrected trough a long serious lecture or a lesser punishment focused more on teaching him an actual lesson.
The old wikis also mention on the page about the hall with portraits of the previous Fire Lords that it was the place where Ozai chose to spend most of his time in his youth, seeking advice from his ancestors. I mean, seriously now, if he had a good and supportive father and a present brother in his life, would Ozai had chosen to seek guidance from the dead instead of his living family? That piece of information that was easily overlooked by many proves how lonely this man was in his youth.
So for the most part of his life, Ozai grew up under the toxic influence and abuse of his tyrant father who refused to acknowledge him. Yet he managed to grow up still full of determination to one day prove his worth to Azulon and gain his acceptance (just like we saw with Zuko in book 1, who was desperate to regain his honor and be accepted by his father). But unfortunately, no matter how strong he became or how good of a firebender he was, Azulon was unmoved and unphased by his second son’s performance.
From what we could gather from the little info we received in the show, it seems that Ozai was never sent to the battle field to aid his older brother, being kept as a stay home prince, with the only occasion he actually left home being to search for the Avatar (I don’t think Iroh was sent to do his part on searching the Avatar since he strongly believed that there wasn’t going to ever be one, so it’s safe to assume Azulon assigned Ozai with this mission just to get rid of him for a few years) and the only purpose he ever served to his father was to become part of the old man’s genetics experiment in order to create strong unparalleled firebending offspring (which I am pretty sure were meant to be ‘biological war machines’ used by Azulon in the war, as he didn’t really seem to give a shit about Ozai’s children compared to Lu Ten). So just imagine the level of disappointment and dishonor Ozai must’ve felt as a man and young aspiring soldier to find out that he was going to be used like a ‘non-bending daughter’ in a strategical marriage and never get to serve his country in what he’d been taught was the greatest and most important war for their Nation.
All in all, this marriage didn’t really end up that badly because it seems he and Ursa were actually very compatible. The old wiki for Ursa states that she was a noble woman and the perfect match for Ozai, which leads me to believe that show Ursa was intended to be a very strong willed and determined woman who earned his respect. The show never stated that Ozai never wanted his first born or that he was disappointed with Zuko from birth like the comics say, so it’s safe to assume that Ursa and Ozai actually ended up falling in love at some point since they had not one, but two kids with relatively a short time in between pregnancies.
There are actually many signs in the show that actually prove that these two loved each other and Ozai didn’t abuse his wife: from the fact that they went every year to see Ursa’s favorite play despite Ozai hating the poor performance of the Ember Island Players (I mean, what man would do such a sacrifice as to endure the same torture every single year just to make his wife happy if he never loved her?), Ursa’s undeniable and sincere love for their children (in the show it was never stated that Ursa saw Zuko and Azula as someone else’s children, so if she were indeed an abused woman who was forced to have these children, she wouldn’t have ever loved them to such an extent, especially Zuko who resembled his father the most physically), the fact that Ursa had equal rights in their marriage and raising of their children (her even scolding and grounding Ozai’s favorite child without hesitation), to the most significant scene to the Urzai ship in Zuko’s flashbacks: Ozai sitting troubled all alone in Ursa’s favorite spot by the pond, in a sad and brooding atmosphere, after he lost her, instead of celebrating what had to be the happiest day of his life since he was finally crowned Fire Lord (it’s clear who had more importance in his heart: Ursa meant more to him than the throne, so losing her outshined his achievement). In fact, Ursa must’ve been the only thing that still kept him outside of the darkness that threatened to swallow his heart and once he lost her, Ozai had nothing else to keep him on the right path.
And even as a father, it seems that Ozai wasn’t always cold and distant to his children, as his true self depicted in Zuko’s memories on Ember Island shows him caring for both of his children, even holding Zuko close to him with a protective arm on the boy’s shoulder. Except the Agni Kai, there don’t seem to be any instances in which he was physically violent towards his son before the banishment (Iroh literally let Zuko in to join that faithful war meeting willingly. Would’ve he done that if he knew his brother to be very violent towards his children in case they disobeyed? If yes, then it would make Iroh actually very questionable on a moral standpoint) and even on an emotional level, I don’t really think that he was actually abusive to him (at least while Ursa was there) because from Zuko’s conversation with Zhao, he’s adamant that his father will take him back and even states "You don't know how my father feels about me. You don't know anything!", meaning that the father he used to know showed him a level of respect and genuine affection (if Ozai were to bully Zuko since the boy’s very early childhood, do you think this kid would grow up to be so sure that his father wants him around and would he defend this bully when someone badmouths them in front of him?).
Even with Azula, despite people demonizing her from early childhood and saying that she was manipulated since birth by Ozai to become a war machine, I do believe that she shows genuine love and affection towards her father. I do choose to believe that back in the good times when the family was happy, Ozai spent quality time with his daughter, filling in the gap left by Ursa’s neglect. I theorize that the reason why kid Azula badmouthed her grandpa and uncle was because she was being very protective of her father: since she used to like spying and eavesdropping, it’s safe to assume that she prolly witnessed many instances in which the old man bullied or insulted Ozai, favoring Iroh over him. It’s a bit harder to see it that way since her snarky comments involve dark topics, but since they live in a society governed by power and war, I see them as something similar to if Azula would’ve said “Uncle sucks and he will surely be fired from his job!” or “Grandpa is old and weak, he should leave the family business to dad!”. Even the fact that the only thing capable of shattering her to pieces was her father leaving her proves how much she cared for him. Ty Lee and Mai’s betrayal was a big blow on Azula’s control and sanity, but she didn’t breakdown until Ozai discarded her after his coronation as Phoenix King. There’s nothing more painful in this world than to be left behind by the person you loved the most and was there by your side your whole life, whom you wanted to follow to world’s end and back. That was the moment Azula finally realized that the father she used to know and love was actually gone and had been in fact, long gone for years at this point.
But if Ozai cared for his family what made him change? Easy, it all comes back to the fact that his father never acknowledged him. The throne doesn’t seem to be his ultimate goal in life since Ozai discarded of the Fire Lord title very easily, tossing it to Azula without any remorse or hesitation. It was more about the meaning behind getting the crown: replacing Iroh in the line of succession was the ultimate proof of his father’s acceptance, that he wasn’t only a “mistake” and “failure” in his father’s eyes, but since Azulon ended up saying and doing what he did, backfired Ozai and made him understand that no matter how hard he tried, the old man will never see him for what he is. So yeah, for a proud man like Ozai this was a hard defeat to swallow, which in turn sparked his strong desire of winning the war and becoming the king of the world: if Azulon wouldn’t accept him even in death, then Ozai will prove to the whole world that he was above his father and his “perfect” brother by accomplishing what they never could and even better and no one was going to stop him, not even his own family.
This is what differentiates Ozai from Zuko: while both had similar upbringings, Ozai never broke away from his obsession of gaining his father’s admiration, allowing himself to fall prey to the darkness left by Azulon in his heart and abandon his true self, only to become the copy of his abuser, while Zuko stood up to his dad and chose his own destiny. If Aang were to come back around 20 or 30 years earlier, then he might’ve actually been able to save Ozai just like he saved Zuko, but unfortunately it wasn’t this way.
Do I think that Ozai could still be saved and redeemed even after the events of book 3? Definitely! Since he’s actually a broken man and still has a tiny bit of humanity left within, I think he still has a chance to change his heart. The only thing is that it’d be a long lasting process: first off he needs to spend a long time in solitude and reflect on his life’s choices and his past, understand where he went wrong and that what happened to him in his childhood is called abuse, which he ended up replicating on his own children. After he understands his wrongdoings and becomes willing to rediscover his true self, he needs to understand the truth about the war, that everything he’d known was fake propaganda and that there was nothing glorious in what he, his father and Sozin did under the excuse of “sharing their Nation’s greatness with the rest of the world!”. But most importantly of all, the only remedy that could possibly save him is love. It sound cliche, but by responding to hatred with more hate like Zuko did in the comics would never change the world “for the better” or bring it “to reality”. The only way to save both Azula and Ozai would be trough showing them the power of love, hope and empathy, how they don’t have to struggle alone and push everyone away. And especially by redeeming Azula, she would be a very important piece in Ozai’s redemption: since he had a closer parent-child relationship with Azula and cared for her the most when he did care, realizing how much he made her suffer through his actions, that would probably break Ozai enough to make him admit that he was wrong all along.
So yeah, this is my analysis on Ozai’s character using the cannon information from the show and old wikis and why I think he is just the product of a very bad environment and an abusive parent who never showed him love (if there’s a reason for why Ozai might be uncapable of showing a healthy parental love to his children is because you can’t show what you’ve never learnt yourself), being the Zuko of his generation who never got to experience the positive influence of an “Uncle Iroh” to guide him on the right path.
You can agree with me or not on this one, but this is what I choose to believe. Maybe I am way too good by choosing to see any potential good in anyone, but I feel it’s a better way than to counter hate with more hate like Yang did in his monstrous portrayal of Ozai in The Search.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments and if you agree with anything I’ve said, feel free to leave a like and to reblog this post.
See you next time and stay safe! Bye-Bye!
Saby out.
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Please don’t forget: Supernatural is a Camel
This is gonna be a long, rough thing to write.
Where to start....
Stories Are Logical, Except When They’re Not
I keep seeing meta posts from Supernatural fans arguing Cas will/has to come back and Dean will/has to reciprocate his love somehow because it’s the only thing that makes sense! Followed by paragraphs of very coherent, insightful analysis drawing on tons of perceived foreshadowing (in episodes like “Fan Fiction”). It is all very logical, using substantial evidence and piecing it together in a very compelling way. Your college English teacher would be very proud.
And I’m not here to take a firm stand on whether Cas will come back or Dean will somehow reciprocate. I can say, with all honesty, at this point I truly have no idea (about either).
But I do want to take a firm stand on something else -- just because a plot line or an ending in a story makes sense, just because it draws on a ton of foreshadowing, just because it follows beautifully narratively and thematically from what came before it, does not mean that’s what’s going to happen.
I wish we lived in a world where that was true. But as Game of Thrones taught us (and Lost, and HIMYM and Dexter, and, and...) stories can fail to live up to their promises. They can violate all of their emotional build up and all their internal logic. They do it all the time, in fact. Stories are faulty, human-made things, and TV most especially, by virtue of its production by committee, is particularly subject to mediocrity and misguided choices because of that.
Which leads me to something I think we as a fandom need to reckon with before the finale airs. One of the glaring faults with the meta of the Chuck storyline is that it traffics in the fantasy that Supernatural (and it’s main characters) are now ‘free’ of the sinister Powers that Be intervening on their lives and making them shitty. And believe me, I actually think it was a stroke of genius making The Author the final big bad in many ways. But the truth is, while Chuck may be rendered powerless now within the story of Supernatural, the Powers that Be were still intervening on the finale of the TV show Supernatural. The Author within the narrative of Supernatural may be impotent, but the The Author(s) of Supernatural are still very much pulling the strings here. And in some ways, it’s even worse than I’m making it sound.
Who (Actually) IS Chuck/God/The Author?
One thing a great many of us have failed to acknowledge or properly grapple with, in our understandable haste to revel in the Chuck-as-Bad-Author storyline, is the fact that TV shows have vast committees of authors and authorial influences. And often the badness and mediocrity of a TV show can (in part) be traced back to this collective and therefore heavily compromised nature of its production. TV shows are camels, and Supernatural may be the most camely camel of them all.
So, who all is on this vast, camel-making committee?
At one level, it is the group of writers who actually script the show, and do so (to some degree) collectively. But there is also the production company (Warner Bros.), the network (The CW), the constellation of production people who have significant authorial influence (directors, producers, editors, production designers, etc.), the actors, and yes, to an extent, the fandom/audience. We are part of this committee too, in the broadest sense. (We KNOW we’ve influenced the content of Supernatural)
And even beyond THAT, there are non sentient forces also exercising power on Supernatural’s production and content. COVID-19, actor contracts/availability, the current and transitioning TV landscape (the 20+ episode season mandate of traditional broadcast TV, reduced ad revenue from traditional broadcast distribution, differing incentive structures in the streaming marketplace, global market distribution making up a larger share of entertainment profit margins in than in pervious eras, etc.).
TV production is an exercise in epic compromise with all kinds of human and non-human/non-sentient powers and forces, exactly none of which does anyone unilaterally control. We are all in and part of this process, and we are all constantly compromising with one another as the process happens. There is no singular person or even singular committee pulling the strings here. No one (in particular) is Chuck, and everything is Chuck.
I am Spartacus, and so are you, and so is Dabb and Berens and Bucklemming and Singer and Peter Roth and Jensen Ackles and Misha Collins and Mark Pedowitz and COVID-19 and, and, and, and, and...
Chuck as a singular Big Bad (Author) works in the context of narrative. But at the meta level, what makes “Chuck” such a bad author is not bad writing ideas (necessarily), but more the fact that everything happening is happening via contentious committee. Everyone is compromising with everyone, and the result is, well, this sometimes beautiful, sometimes lame, sometimes infuriating, sometimes genius, sometimes offensive, sometimes endearing, sometimes just plain fucking weird camel:
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
As much as I enjoy reveling in the idea that one could rob the conditions of production of their negative influence, that one could overcome the power of The Machine, you can’t. That’s literally impossible. TV shows just have conditions of production, always. There is absolutely NO getting outside of that.
And the horror we all need to face is precisely the fact that there is no Deus ex Machina that one could kill, or cajole, or disarm, or come to an understanding with. There is no God in the Machine. There is no specific, singular, namable person or entity who is the ultimate arbiter here. There is just the massive constellation of interconnected forces pushing and pulling against each other until the compromise is manifested.
I’m not trying to be pessimistic. Sometimes things made by committee, manage, against all odds, to turn out great. But that’s more the exception than the rule. (Why do you think the vast majority of TV is mediocre to bad?)
All I’m trying to do is remind everyone that the meta Chuck is still alive and kicking and capable of ruining the story, or at least keeping it from being particularly satisfying, regardless of what makes sense narratively.
Who knows, maybe Thursday night will bring us a unicorn, or at least a really nice horse. Just don’t be too surprised if what shows up is a camel.
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Do you have any personal headcanons about Celebrimbor's mother and her relationship with Curufin? I always thought that it's weird we don't have even the barest information about that considering Celebrimbor's unique position as the only next gen Feanorian. (Sorry if you already talked about this somewhere!)
thanks for the ask! i have, but i'm not going to pass up an opportunity to blather on about my ocs for several paragraphs
curufin's wife (she lacks a name because i hate giving characters names and will delay it until i absolutely have to) is noldorin, she lives in valinor in the years of the trees. i haven't thought much about her family, but i suspect they're middling nobility at the highest the did-valinor-have-social-classes debate is a whole different rabbit hole. she's a metalworker like her husband (she probably specialises in a slightly different subcategory but idk enough to say what) and is a member of the same tirion artisan guild. it's in that context that they meet and begin their Intense Crafting Rivalry
you know that trope where a pair of rivals are so obsessively devoted to one-upping each other it's blindingly obvious that what they actually want is to kiss? that's them, that's their relationship. their specialties are just similar enough they do a lot of the same stuff but just different enough their approaches tend to be radically divergent. what starts as the two of them trying to prove the superiority of their own artistic circle or whatever evolves into them trying to show up him/her specifically, s/he's wrong about x and i know i can do better, why does my family keep asking if we're dating yet????? their competition gets absolutely ridiculous in ways only a pre-scarcity society can get, like building an entire fountain out of solid silicon specifically because he said she couldn't do it (he actually said shouldn't but screw him (not literally cousin oh my valar))
but yeah. their relationship grows an undercurrent of the-only-one-allowed-to-push-around-my-archnemesis-is-me, and they find themselves fighting back to back (occasionally literally) when tirion guild politics takes a turn for the tirion guild politics. they just slowly come to trust each other, more than anyone else, and soon there comes an appropriately dramatic moment for them to suddenly kiss. they're still always trying to out-craftself each other, celebrimbor grows up in a house that's about 70% forge to the background noise of his parents insulting each other's work, but they're comfortable with each other in a way neither of them could have imagined in the early days, and when things get rough they always have each other's backs
things do, in fact, get rough. maglor won't meet his wife until beleriand, caranthir's relationship with his spouse slowly falls apart along with the political situation in tirion, but curufin's wife is loudly team fëanor. she suffers from an acute case of finwean spouse disease, she thinks going to middle-earth to build their own world is an awesome idea, she's deeply embedded in the tirion artisan scene with an entire social circle as think the same way, and when the inevitable civil war flares up she'll probably be even more eager to fight the fingolfinians than her husband. she goes with him and their-still-pretty young son to formenos, and when the trees get eaten and fëanor does the speech she prepares for the adventure of a lifetime
then, alqualondë. i stand by my conviction that nobody on the noldorin side walked in planning to steal the boats, let alone murder the teleri, but it was dark and the world was ending and everybody had sharp things. like everybody else involved in the first kinslaying, curufin and wife got caught up in the battle because somebody shouted 'they're attacking us!' in the distance. she is at first more trying to stop them from stabbing her, obsidian fishing spears glancing off ornamental steel, but then she lashes out and she hits someone in the chest and -
there was this recurring trope in her and her husband’s endless mutual critique. she’d create something beautiful, artfully devised and elegantly constructed, showing off a whole ton of design principles and doing things with the material no one had ever done. he would look at it skeptically and go ‘okay, but what use is it? what is it for?’
red liquid running down the fuller of the exquisite sword she forged herself, light guttering out of another elf’s eyes as he coughs up blood, she knows, sure as once were the light of the trees, what the piece of metal in her hands is for
the next few moments are a blur. she threw the sword into the water, she knows that. somehow she wound up running out of alqualondë, tears streaming down her face, as buildings burned and people screamed behind her. she found a concealed spot by the road, tore off her armour, peeked outside, and watched. when the fires were dying down and the boats were clearly gone, she mustered her courage and went to save her family
in the centuries to come, very few people believe celebrimbor when he tells them his mother tried to get his father to come back by, among other things, appealing to his better nature. nobody believes that it almost worked. but curufin was still only starting out on the road to hellbeastery, and his wife was his eternal partner-in-crime. right there at the beginning, staring out over a burning city, she saw where the road the noldor were walking would eventually lead them, no matter how much they tried to deny it. no dreams could be worth that, she told him. no ideals. and she was always the idealist, wasn’t she?
she was. maybe that’s why he, who had so very few ideals to mark his path, refused to abandon this one. their discussion rapidly devolved into a screaming argument half the camp could hear, much like curufin’s last argument with celebrimbor, centuries later. soon enough, though, it became clear that he wouldn’t turn back, and she refused to go on, and neither of them could change the other’s minds. the only thing left between them was celebrimbor
celebrimbor was eight (-ish in elf years), and completely freaked out, and eight, and knew almost nothing about what was going on, and eight, and had grown up listening to his grandfather’s dreams, and eight, and was surrounded by adults who very loudly thought going to middle-earth would solve all their problems, and eight, and couldn’t tell why his mother was abandoning them. panicking, on the spot, he buried his face in curufin’s smock to wipe away his tears. when he looked up, she was gone
so yeah, curufin’s wife went back with finarfin, that’s why she didn’t go to middle-earth. she initially stayed with nerdanel because almost everyone else on both sides of her extended family remained by (and later burned) the boats, i’m only just realising the horrible curufin argument probably wasn’t even the only one she went through that night, jeez. also she really needed a hug. the sun rose, alqualondë started rebuilding, and she ended up head of her and her husband’s former mutual craft guild, mostly because nobody else with the skills to do it was left. decades turn to centuries, news slowly filters back from beleriand, and her worst nightmares are proven so awfully right
probably the biggest emotion she feels towards curufin in the aftermath is betrayal. they were partners, in every sense of the word, they took on the world and they did it together, using their constant competition to drive each other to ever greater heights. they listened to each other, they trusted each other’s judgement, and she knows he understood the point she was making. him continuing on anyway, and diving face-first into the void - the elf she thought she knew would never have done that. as time passes by, the grief and the loneliness get subsumed by a deep abiding rage. if she ever sees the thing her husband let himself become again, she’ll throw a welding torch in his face
but that anger, that heartbreak, none of that applies to her son. when the hosts of valinor began gearing up for war - she’s the leader of tirion’s most prominent metalworking guild, she can’t not go. while they’re unloading supplies and siege equipment and stuff onto the isle of balar, she happens to pass by this relatively short dusky-skinned noldo hauling some smithing equipment about. as soon as he gets a proper look at her, he gasps. she looks back in confusion, and then she meets his eyes
later, she’ll hear his tales of his adventures in the hither lands, all of the hardships, yes, but also all of the brilliance. later, she’ll learn about the person he’s grown into, someone she can be unreservedly proud of in his choices and works. later, they’ll talk about the future, about his ambitions of making his grandfather’s dream come true, but with open hands and a light to be shared with all the peoples of middle-earth. for now, though, she wraps celebrimbor in a massive hug, and lets the tears flow down her face, because no matter how much they’ve lost, no matter how deep the darkness around them, right here and now, her son is alive
#my terrible ocs#ask#minkasartyplace#curufin#celebrimbor#assorted textual ghosts#noldor#look with all the shit that's gonna happen to tyelpe the least he deserves is a hug from his mum#i was gonna write that he ~never saw her again but then i realised there's no way she wouldn't join up with the war of wrath army#she was aware of the possibility that the nargothrond thing was a front and he'd been as corrupted as his father#she was studiously ignoring that possibility until if and when it became relevant#which it didn't#i feel like seeing the person celebrimbor became softens her opinion on the exiles#probably makes up with some members of her own family#anyone who's involved in the later kinslayings is still bad people though#she glosses 'feanorian minions' as 'target practice'#she's a reasonably prominent leader of the noldor what stayed behind#specially the ones who would have been feanorians if they'd gone#which is a proportion of the population that shrinks and shrinks as the ages roll on. by the third age she's middle tirion's craft granny#in the kidnap-dads-all-the-way-down au she's perfectly happy to mother celebrimbor's sisters#sometimes i think about making her part-telerin but i feel that undermines her choice after alqualonde#half wanna write an au where baby tyelpe stays with her now#jk i do not have the time#but i had a lot more to say about her than i expected. thanks for asking!
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Lore/Meta Analysis Time
So, after watching all four of today’s streams, I’m left wondering and theorizing about a few things. Mainly, why make the choice to have c!Dream fake an escape? Why not, a) go through with it, or b) leave off on c!Techno escaping back to the Syndicate HQ?
Personally, I think that the whole point was to get the audience familiarized with the protocols of what would happen if c!Dream escapes -- like what the alarm sounds like for example, as Quackity continuously brought up Sam’s alarm even outside of complaining about the volume -- that way when c!Dream does escape -- whether or not c!Techno breaks him out -- there will be doubt about it, and the audience will have context needed to make the moment more impactful.
I think it was smart to tease the escape, that way the audience knows what an actual escape will look like and that way the prison arc is pushed back into relevancy after three months of no lore. It’s a brilliant segway on the cc’s part to get things heating up again without chucking a huge escape on an audience who has been in a lore drought for so long, and it also opened up a lot of possibilities for future lore for many characters. As of right now, c!Dream’s escape might stay limited to the Las Nevadas crew, or the news might just spread to others if c!Sam keeps his word not to spill about c!Dream’s actual whereabouts, which can pull in other characters like Tommy, Ranboo, Wilbur, and hopefully also people like Niki and Eret and Sapnap who haven’t really dipped into the prison arc at all (and I know cc!Eret wanted back into lore and this could be a good opportunity!)
Bouncing off that, I think it’s super interesting that c!Dream does not want c!Quackity to know he is alive and contained. While he says he is afraid of c!Quackity killing him, I doubt that’s why. I think that c!Dream knows how to play to c!Sam’s weaknesses a lot better than he does c!Quackity. c!Quackity is much more resistant to c!Dream’s tactics, or at least better at recognizing them. He also has less weaknesses that c!Dream can exploit verbally, whereas c!Sam has made it clear that he still harnesses a lot of guilt and anger about c!Tommy and what c!Dream did to him. c!Quackity has also exploited this guilt before to manipulate c!Sam into letting him bring weapons into the prison -- it works well. With c!Sam isolated away from c!Quackity’s influence, he is much easier for c!Dream to manipulate, and he might even start falling back into his previous, more detached Warden persona, which would be even better for c!Dream. With c!Quackity out of the picture, c!Sam has succeeded in isolating himself both to c!Dream and also to the responsibility of keeping c!Dream in check. While his resilience seems strong so far, likely fueled by anger about c!Tommy, only time can tell whether or not that will hold true.
But what does c!Dream want from c!Sam in that scenario? I think it’s literally to go to the courtyard like he asked. He pitched it in a way that made it seem like he was yearning for the sun again, and he exaggerated the isolation by bringing up the other inhumane protocols of the prison like the food of choice. While c!Sam called him on his bullshit, c!Dream admitted that he didn’t think he’d end up in the cell, which I think is true. I think that he predicted he might need to get out of the prison somehow, but not that he’d end up in the maximum security cell, and that that failsafe is planted in the courtyard that c!Sam shut down because of a vague “security issue.” We also know that c!Dream left c!Techno coordinates that lead to a chest containing blueprints and a note. These are likely c!Dream’s original blueprints, as this stream it was stressed about c!Dream’s immense involvement in designing the prison. And it likely contains an escape route linked to the courtyard, or something of the other. I doubt it’d be something like a stasis chamber, as that’d be kind of lazy. Not to mention that that would also eliminate the use of actual blueprints. If c!Techno goes forward with busting c!Dream out, I think it’ll be after c!Dream whittles down c!Sam’s resilience and pleads his way into the courtyard somehow. It’s simply been teased too much both on Twitter, by c!Quackity as he tried to get out of the prison, and c!Dream himself. I’m willing to bet that c!Dream either called in his favor, or exploited c!Techno’s firm belief in absolute reciprocity in order to get c!Techno to break him out, as the favor was mentioned by either c!Sam or c!Quackity (can’t remember.)
And then let’s move onto to c!Quackity, who’s dead set on c!Dream going after Las Nevadas once he’s out. And while I have no doubt that that is one of c!Dream’s priorities -- he is very good at exploiting specific weaknesses, and he knows that c!Quackity has lost basically every home he’s ever had -- I think that c!Quackity’s paranoia was a massive red herring as to what c!Dream actually will make his first priority. cc!Sam mentioned that Logstedshire would become plot-relevant again, and c!Tommy was brought up a lot during the stream, and so I think that while the narrative may paint it in a way that seems like c!Dream and c!Quackity are going to have some sort of war (or battle, if c!Quackity’s “battle log” is any indication), I think that that is just smoke and mirrors for the actual outcome. I have no doubt that c!Tommy is definitely about to be targeted, especially as c!Sam continues to bring up c!Dream’s treatment of c!Tommy, which he can likely spin into c!Tommy’s fault for him being subject to that in the first place. This would likely drag c!Wilbur back into the mix if c!Dream goes after c!Tommy, because the whole “Dream is my hero thing” has been set up to get challenged, and without c!Tommy blantantly dropping the details of exile onto c!Wilbur, I can’t see what would be a better challenge then c!Dream literally being out and c!Wilbur having to deal with that as well.
But yeah, this is basically my predictions as to where the SMP is going from here, at least involving Las Nevadas and the prison arc. Hopefully we’ll see many other arcs and characters get intertwined with this. It’d be a cool parallel to the end of the Disc War finale, and hopefully the Syndicate won’t erase all of the characters’ development in order to make it some epic Dream & Syndicate vs. Tommy, Las Nevadas, and etc. It would be cool though for c!Phil and c!Techno to go through with breaking c!Dream out and then regretting or seeing why they definitely shouldn’t have done that. Maybe we can even have some Bedrock Bros content since there have been tons of parallels and contrasts with c!Techno being imprisoned with c!Dream and c!Tommy being imprisoned with c!Dream (like the dog, for example. Also the motif of hope being inside of Pandora’s vault/box). Also please give us some exile arc details reveal or Dream’s mega evil plan for server control reveal (to Techno + Syndicate specifically) because I have wanted this for monthssss. c!Techno you want to realize that c!Dream literally wanted to take Carl from you soooooo bad.
TL;DR: This lore stream was epic and I think it’s a huge setup for some other major events and it also gave us so much character insight that I am actually vibrating with theory overload as I write this.
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