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whypolar · 8 months

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Gundam Unicorn OVA 3: The Ghost of Laplace

Some of the most stunning visuals from these OVAs yet. What a beautiful piece of animation.

Choosing which screenshots to use for this post hurt me. If I had my way, I would include multiple shots of every sequence where something explodes. Many, many things explode.

I'm glad I don't have problems with flashing lights. The lasers in this one get pretty intense.

This post is very long. There's a lot of novel stuff I want to talk about. Let's get into it!

(Previous posts: Day of the Unicorn, The Second Coming of Char)

I won't lie, they got further into the plot than I thought they were going to. I was expecting more time in Palau and then Riddhe and Mineva arriving and doing stuff on Earth, with the confrontation in the ruins of Laplace being saved for the next one. If I'd paid attention to the title I could have realized they were going to go to the coordinates, but I obviously did not. It caught me pretty off guard!

I definitely feel like this one benefits from multiple watches. They all do, for sure, but this one had a lot of little moments that were much stronger the second time through. A lot happens very quickly! Taking the time to pay attention is rewarding, especially in terms of emotional stakes. It was easy on a first watch to just get caught up in the spectacle and not fully process everything that's happening-- and that's for me, who already knew the background context and plot beats going in.

The Obligatory Music Section

Some of these tracks were probably also in the last two, but I didn't link them so it doesn't count. Here are the standouts I'm highlighting this time:

Bring on a War -- I love the strings on this track. Guitar? The instrumentation for this entire soundtrack is so fun and complex. The intense drums! The woodwinds! The weird ghostly vocals! That repeated noise that sounds like a gunshot and breaking glass! So good.

Capture -- Equal parts jaunty and menacing. I like the bells at the start.

Merry-go-round -- The credits song. Pop music with lyrics about the inescapable repetition of history: it's a proud Gundam movie tradition.

Environments

You guys remember places?

We're spending time in and around a large colony again, so the sweeping establishing shots are back. The space port is so beautiful, and so alien in how you're expected to traverse it.

I definitely will be looking up the staff once I'm done watching these. For many reasons, really, but I'm very curious about who was doing the environmental art and design.

And while we're talking about environments--

Operation Billiard

The most important reveal: the glowing orb pillars in the purple palm tree lounge are low-gravity hologram pool tables.

It turns out that the vaporwave room was a billiards hall this whole time! I assume this is a nod to how the attack plan on Palau was named "Operation Billiard" in the novels.

We get a quick explanation of the plan in the OVA (separate the asteroids that make up Palau, seal the military port, rescue Banagher during the confusion) but they don't bother to explain the mechanics in detail. Why would they need to? When you see a bunch of explosions and a giant fuckoff laser, it is immediately obvious why that might be a problem for Neo Zeon.

Fuck that one Eye-Zack in particular

If you're curious about why it's "Operation Billiard": Palau is made up of four asteroids. They planned to use the force of the Mega Particle Cannon to knock them all into each other. This would obstruct the exits for the military port in the centre of the asteroid cluster, trapping the Zeon forces inside.

The manoeuvre worked as intended, but Frontal knew the attack was coming, so he was able to move all his forces off Palau ahead of time.

(A small number of other random Zeon-aligned soldiers were deliberately left out of the loop to act as bait, because the Sleeves didn't care about them. The way the guys that try to escape through the cracks get picked off one by one is kind of horrific. They might as well be marching single file into a mech-destroying meat grinder.)

I do think the attack on Palau is more harrowing in the novel. In terms of the combat, I'm not sure if that could be avoided. It feels inherently easier for me to remember that every mobile suit is a person while reading textual description than when there's a beautiful laser light show going off before my eyes.

That said, in some places the framing is just different:

I really love this scene, for the record.

In the novel, Nashiri is a perspective character during the battle. We are reading from his viewpoint inside the cockpit with his crew while they pick off Zeon soldiers one by one-- and then the Sinanju swoops into view, and they immediately know the plan is compromised and that they're going to die. They are burned and vaporized to dust, and then we switch to Angelo's perspective.

What I find memorable about the novel scene is the loss of life: how methodically they had been killing, and how quickly the Sinanju does the same to them. How they saw it coming but could do nothing. How living, breathing human beings could be reduced to literally nothing in an instant.

The OVA positions the camera outside, with the Sinanju. We see Frontal slowly and deliberately carving out the Loto's entire chest to make sure he got all of them. We do not see or hear any of the Loto's pilots. We see inside Frontal's cockpit, for a shot of him looking cooly down at his handiwork before moving on. What I find memorable about this scene is that Frontal is scary.

(Imagine me here getting stabbed with a beam weapon, saying "Wow! Cool Antagonist!")

It's not like death isn't thematically important in the OVA-- they absolutely remind you with dialogue that every mobile suit blowing up is a person dying. We see a shot of this same Loto and its partner after the battle as burned out wrecks, and it's clear Daguza and the other ECOAS guys are thinking about their dead comrades. Riddhe and Banagher both deliberately attempt to spare enemy pilots. The level of destruction is immense! The robots are simply too cool. It can't be helped.

This is one of the benefits of multiple watches. When you've already seen the cool robots once before, you can focus in more closely on what they're doing, and what that means.

There's another reason the battle loses some emotional charge: focus is drawn away from noncombatants almost entirely. We see very little of the regular people who live on Palau.

For all Riddhe assures Mineva that they have no intention of attacking the areas where civilians live, it is unavoidable that slamming the asteroids they live on together will have consequences.

The novel describes intense earthquakes. Two residential blocks collapse. Residents are rolling and tumbling around. Windows of the houses that stay standing shatter. You get a real sense of fear on the civilian level.

The OVA gives us a quick scene with Tikva. There's some dust and some shaking, but he stays standing easily enough. We don't see anything collapse on screen. We hear people screaming in confusion and terror, but none of them are visible. Likewise, the streets are totally empty of people and identical to their first appearance when Banagher is making his way to the space port. Civilians are basically not relevant.

The novel spends a lot more time on Palau even before the attack. We spend time with Gilboa's family. Banagher genuinely befriends these people! He plays with Gilboa's kids and fixes a machine they use to make a living. It's a bit sad to lose all that, but I get it.

There's also scene in the novel where a truck driver in one of the connecting tunnels gets blown back fifty feet by the force of ECOAS' bombs going off, slams into a wall, and passes out. He wakes up when he's discovered several hours later, after the attack is over. It's more funny than anything, because he's just like, fine, lmao. I was so sure he was done. Fifty feet just intuitively sounds like too much to be survivable, until you remember there's no gravity.

Anyway, you wanna know something that was appropriately menacing during the Palau attack? The Unicorn. The Unicorn was perfect.

The joy of a hunter.

Marida vs. Banagher

Oh... this sequence is so visually striking.

I was shocked by how quickly it all happened. This isn't a criticism. I guess I was expecting it to linger more, like the scenes with Amuro and Lalah in '79. The amount of concrete "information" conveyed here is so much more than that, and yet it covers it all in less than two minutes. You certainly get a sense for how instantaneously Marida and Banagher are communicating, and how overwhelming it must be for both of them.

I will likely revisit Marida's backstory in future posts, in relation to other scenes that happen later. For now, I'll just say I was surprised and impressed.

I'm admittedly very curious how this scene reads for people who don't already know the backstory going in. Hell, how does it read for people who aren't familiar with Gundam ZZ?

(I put on the dub for my second watch. This is the first time I heard how "Ple" is pronounced in English. Fucked up.)

I wish I'd taken notes on specifics, but I think they shifted some dialogue around between combat, the Newtype link, and the scene in the hospital room. It's not really important, but I think it's interesting how scenes with similar dialogue or themes can be folded into each other in an adaptation.

Some stuff cut from the hospital scene:

There's a CT scan of Banagher on the wall in novel. "You checked whether I was a Cyber-Newtype too, didn't you?" When I read the English translation, I thought they dodged telling the audience what the result of the test actually was. I thought that was a really interesting choice. Unfortunately, I don't think it's actually the case, having checked the Japanese. I can't be 100% sure, but I think the meaning of the line is that as far as the doctor could tell with the equipment they had available, he detected no evidence of Banagher being a Cyber-Newtype. 😔

When Banagher and the doctor discuss Newtype theory, they cut a line where the doctor suggests that a world where everyone knows what everyone else is thinking without obfuscation or deception might not be the magic bullet to end war, and could even be more violent. He's also a little more direct in the novel about implying that the emergence of Newtypes could create a divide between them and "Oldtypes."

The doctor points out that Newtypes are theorized to evolve in space, and how this would be a problem for Earth-Space relations. Banagher says that they should just make everyone evolve all at once. The Japanese line seems a bit vague, but the English translation interprets this as him suggesting they pull a Char / Mafty and send everyone into space. I think that's a fun way to take it, particularly because Banagher thinks it's a childish idea even as he says it. It's cute to me.

Full Frontal

In the novel, we see Frontal arranging his battle plan before the attack begins-- we see that he knows the attack coming, we see him move his troops off Palau, and we see him give orders to leave the Unicorn where Banagher will find it. In the OVA, we learn most of this in retrospect. I don't think the framing changes much, except insofar as it means less screen time for him and Angelo.

The big scene we lose is the one where they speak to one of their major sponsors in Neo Zeon, the guy who owns Palau. He tries to goad Frontal into officially admitting to being Char and taking off the mask, implicitly threatening to rescind his support if he doesn't. Frontal responds to this with "That's okay. I actually came by today to tell you we're leaving! How convenient. Bye."

Frontal speaks very differently to this guy than he did to Banagher, even beyond refusing to remove his mask. It's a fascinating contrast, and I like it a lot. Frontal is very good at being threateningly passive-aggressive in multiple registers.

A good and telling bit of dialogue from Frontal that we lose by cutting this scene: "Char Aznable is a man who lost."

I still don't understand what they're doing with Riddhe, and I'm getting increasingly concerned about it.

I cannot believe how many Riddhe opinions I apparently have had this whole time, just waiting to be revealed.

OVA Riddhe does not feel like much of anything to me so far, which is bizarre when his novel counterpart has so much going on. His blandness is even more noticeable when he's spending so much time with Mineva, who is a very strong-willed character with defined beliefs.

I would say his characterization has been made subordinate to hers, except she doesn't even gain anything from it? Cutting his screen time also cuts hers as well. He's the character that she's interacting with most for this entire section of the story, so making him less interesting just means she has a less interesting conversation partner!

Riddhe is a major character, and there are events later that hinge on the audience giving a shit about him. He needs to have substance, because the story is going to treat him like he has it. If he doesn't have it, it will fall flat.

Here are the key points I want to go over:

Novel Riddhe's values and beliefs are made very clear, while OVA Riddhe feels more ambiguous and flimsy.

Novel Riddhe's relationship to his family is far more complicated and compelling than anything we've been told about OVA Riddhe so far.

Novel Riddhe is shown to have strong emotional ties to the crew of the Nahel Argama.

Novel Riddhe has many clearly established reasons not to do what he does-- personally, professionally, and legally-- and chooses to do it anyway.

This scene was funnier in the novel, because it tells you they have a telephone for each member of the family, but they're all in the same room where they get answered by the same butler.

Novel Riddhe is thoroughly established as a person with opinions and a strong moral compass. He does more to help others, at greater difficulty than anything OVA Riddhe has been faced with thus far, and the negative consequences he knowingly takes on are made more explicit.

In the novel, there's a whole extra step before taking Mineva to earth. Mineva has been moved off the Nahel Argama to another ship, the Alaska, which was going to bring her to a be held at a base on the moon. Getting her out of there is a lot more convoluted than knocking out a single guard and then sneaking down some hallways when no one is looking.

Riddhe sets off a bunch of smoke canisters all over the ship to cause confusion, knocks out some guys, flees the Alaska in a shuttle, shakes the mobile suits tailing them by flying through a debris field, lies about his reason for returning so they let him back on the Argama, and ultimately sneaks Mineva back onto the ship and into his mobile suit. Since the battle has started at this point, it's impossible for the Argama to contact the Alaska or vice-versa.

It makes sense to cut this for time. It's an extraneous trip just to return to the status quo of them needing to sneak off the Argama again anyway. There are other ways to show Riddhe's determination without giving him a dramatic heroic sequence.

But here's the problem with removing it: Riddhe doesn't just rescue Mineva. Takuya and Micott are also on the Alaska. It is strongly implied that they're going to be disappeared.

(There are people from the Intelligence Department on the 'Alaska', so leave the prisoner to them. Don't ask any further.) "Then what about the civilians? They..." (Will be treated as those who violated confidentiality and dealt with as appropriate. You have no need to be involved with them.)

That's significant! Mineva is a person with obvious political importance, and Riddhe became emotionally attached to her before he even knew that. It is entirely possible to interpret rescuing Mineva through a lens of selfish motivations, especially in an adaptation where we aren't privy to his inner thoughts.

Riddhe has no special attachment to Takuya and Micott. He saves them because he has an obligation to do so, because leaving them behind would be wrong.

Are you wondering why the Alaska came to pick them up in the first place? It happened because Riddhe contacted his father at the request of Captain Otto, even though he really didn't want to, in the hopes that he could prevent more deaths by requesting additional support for the Argama.

But Riddhe's father didn't send the support Riddhe requested-- he sent a ship to pick up Riddhe and the prisoners. Why send military support when he can just remove his son from the battlefield that he never wanted him to be on anyway, right? He doesn't even respond himself, some random military guy does it for him.

... this admiral might not have even thought of him as a person. He was just looking at the shadow behind his back-- the authority of Senator Ronan Marcenas. Riddhe felt the emptiness of talking to a wall as he yelled, "WHY ONLY ME...!"

To me, novel Riddhe's frustration with his family is the single most important character trait he has. It informs every single one of his decisions. And so far, in the anime, it has not come up even once.

Riddhe is not just a bit distant from his family. He is repeatedly described as having run away from home. We are told he has not spoken to his father or his sister in some time. He literally refers to his 'family' in scare quotes while thinking about them.

Riddhe too felt repulsed by the fact he had to rely on the 'family' that he had been hiding from at this point, but there was no other way.

[...]

There’s no other choice. Riddhe returned back to his room and ended up spending 2 hours writing a mail to his father. He had never sent a phone call for the past few years, let alone a message. His body did not have a function to communicate with his father, and he felt a chill when he started off with ‘Dear Father’.

[...]

"Since I entered the army with the family's objection, I never intended to come back, but just this once, I have to do this."

The car ride with his father when they first meet and head back to the house is incredibly miserable. They casually drop that Riddhe's mom is in a nursing home, and then they sit in total silence.

Riddhe was looking in front silently, not looking at the greenery passing by outside the window. He was about as silent as the time when he piloted the “Delta Plus” into the atmosphere—no, he might be a lot more tense here. Sitting diagonally in front of him was Ronan, who had his mouth shut, not intending to look away from the notebook terminal. As for what they actually talked about on the limousine, there were only two lines, “Mom?” “She’s in a Nursing Home in Switzerland.” What was left was the heavy and unbearable silence passing between them.

Eventually, Riddhe starts speaking to Mineva while she's looking at the scenery, very obviously as a way of needling his dad. It's an insanely loaded conversation. He basically says "hey Mineva, have you ever read Gone with the Wind? Did you know it takes place here, in Georgia? Just thinking about wealthy white farmers enriching themselves by exploiting Black slaves as we drive to my rich politician dad's house, for no reason."

The dig is not subtle. His dad sarcastically responds to it by pointing out the comparison, as if pretending he isn't extremely aware that's why Riddhe brought it up in the first place, and then they go back to totally ignoring each other.

This is something I think is important: in the novel, Ricardo Marcenas-- Riddhe's great-grandfather and first Prime Minister of the Earth Federation-- is not white. He is stated to be mixed race both during his political speech, when he talks about his heritage, and later when Mineva sees his portrait.

It is an unbelievably pointed choice to have Riddhe and his father be white-passing and from the southern US while the dead great-grandfather with lofty ideals who was implicitly assassinated by his own government was visibly (and proudly) multiracial.

Between the family's politics and Riddhe's sister being in an arranged marriage for political and business reasons, you can guess that this is more than just a coincidence of genetics. Ricardo's descendants wanted to hold onto power, and power was disproportionately held by white people, so that's who they married. Fukui is hitting me with a big cartoon mallet labeled "racism and its consequences persist in the politics of the Earth Federation."

And this... just doesn't exist in the OVA, I guess. They cut the lines about Ricardo's heritage from his speech, and he looks like any other white guy.

The anime as a whole so far has a general trend of cutting anything that directly mentions real-world racial identity or politics, without exception (see also: Syam and Banagher). They've also been erring on the side of lighter skin tones across the board, even in cases where novel description says otherwise.

The doctor on the Argama is described as Arab, with light tan skin. They coloured him half a shade darker than Banagher, who is half a shade darker than Mihiro.

Gilboa is Black. He's still Black here, but they gave him the absolute lightest possible skin tone that still reads as brown. He's way more ambiguous than his wife and kids, and they also have light brown skin. He's described as dark-skinned in the novel!

Yeah, people can have these skin tones with those backgrounds. Obviously. But they've chosen to convey information that is clear in the original text ambiguously, and they've done it to multiple characters.

I'm going on a bit of a tangent here, but this felt like the most appropriate place to bring it up. IT BOTHERS ME.

Anyway. Do you know who is the first character in the novel to bring up the rumours that Ricardo Marcenas was assassinated by the Federation? Because it isn't Daguza in the cockpit with Banagher-- that's later. It's Riddhe.

Riddhe is the one who suggests conservative elements within the Federation might have wanted to a eliminate a more liberal and idealistic Prime Minister while also providing an excuse to root out separatists on the basis of anti-terrorism. Riddhe is the one who gives a scathing account of what his family did in the aftermath of the assassination, where Ricardo's son took advantage of the situation to gain power with the support of the same conservatives who killed his father.

Riddhe says all that directly in front of his dad, who yells at him for spreading nonsense conspiracy theories, tells him he doesn't know anything about politics, and says that he abandoned his family. Wrow.

Riddhe is ultimately ashamed of himself for provoking his father just because he's angry. He thinks it's selfish and childish for him to risk jeopardizing the relationship when he's relying on his father's power to accomplish his goals and protect Mineva.

Calm down, he's a Senate Council member who can deal with the army that will suck up to him. I have to put aside all personal feelings and tell him.

Riddhe took Mineva's line about her responsibility as a member of the Zabi family very seriously. He comes back to it repeatedly. He doesn't want to have anything to do with his family, but he knows there are things that only he can do to help, precisely because of his family-- and he has an obligation to try.

There's a very interesting tension, where Riddhe is only even able to survive and successfully enact his plan because of the otherwise unwanted privilege conferred by his father. It's made clear that even that might not have saved him if he hadn't gotten extremely lucky! It comes up again and again, at every step of the plan.

No matter whether the "Nahel Argama" survives or not, Ensign Riddhe's military career will be at an end.

[...]

"I'm risking my life here as well. I might even end up facing the firing squad if I mess up here, you know?"

[...]

If the situation had happened during a Parliamentary Session, the contact would definitely bounce around amongst the secrataries, and the "Delta Plus" would most likely be shot down without any confirmation of its identity.

Even after they manage to land safely by using the name of his family as a shield, the guards surrounding them when they disembark are hostile and keep rifles trained on them the whole way.

I feel like this element of luck is part of why they swapped his model airplanes for a good luck charm, but it's still so weird to me. His luck is important because of the risks he's taking, and they're not really playing that up as much as they could be. They could tell us in retrospect, but Riddhe knew the risks going in, and that's important.

One thing he knows he's going to lose, unavoidably, is all of his established social relationships in the military.

Survivor's guilt and having lost friends is something that comes up a lot in Riddhe's internal dialogue after the destruction of Industrial 7. I talked about it a bit in the last post. His crewmates are people he cares about, not only in an abstract sense of duty and obligation, but as people.

He's clearly deeply hurt by lying to the crew about his real intentions during the attack on Palau, especially as some of them are glad to see him back and praising his bravery as a soldier.

Does OVA Riddhe have strong relationships to anyone on the Argama? Maybe. He gets some advice from a superior officer. He banters with one of the other pilots for three lines or so. The doctor certainly believes that Mihiro is on edge specifically because of Riddhe's "death", but there are no particularly significant interactions between them to confirm it.

Riddhe's romantic interest in Mihiro is established very early in the novels, when he asks her out to a movie before launching for the first battle. He says he needs something to look forward to so he'll come back alive.

This comes back again when he's heading out for the Palau mission, when she specifically privately contacts him:

(Good luck, Ensign Riddhe. I haven't forgotten the promise to watch a movie.)

And he just has to agree, knowing that he's not coming back and she's going to be mourning him, thinking he's dead. Man.

When it becomes clear the battle isn't going to go as planned, Mineva can sense Riddhe's hesitation. She tells him to stay and fight, because otherwise he'll regret it for the rest of his life. While this works as a character moment for Mineva in the anime, I don't feel like it's a convincing one for Riddhe. What made it work in the novels was that we already knew this was an accurate assessment of his feelings. In the anime, rather than her resolving the conflict for him, it almost feels like he hadn't even fully realized he was having one until she told him.

Maybe I'm being uncharitable and nitpicky, and this all comes across just fine to people without my preconceptions. I just can't shake the feeling that too much scaffolding for his character has been removed, so now even big character moments are failing to stand up on their own.

Riddhe's latent newtype connection to Banagher and their Man's Promise is plot important, but on an emotional level it is nothing to me. I don't care about Riddhe's masculine pride. I care about him having a fraught relationship with his shitty rich dad who he has deliberately avoided for years. I care about social bonds. I care about sacrifice.

Banagher's trust in Riddhe in the novel is meaningful because the audience has reason to believe that Riddhe deserves that trust.

I really hope they can integrate at least some of this stuff going forward, but I also worry it might be too late. I can imagine it failing so easily-- like if they give me Riddhe yelling at his dad, but without all the established context it just comes off like he's a brat throwing a tantrum.

I'm pretty sure his crush on Mineva is going to start becoming relevant now, too, so I need them to give me something to work with as soon as fucking possible if they don't want me to become a relentless little hater. Please.

I want to believe they can still flesh him out enough to work for me, even if it's not perfect.

Micott's arc is altered by changes to Riddhe's arc.

This isn't a super dramatic change, since she's not a load-bearing part of the narrative like Riddhe. I do think how they shifted things around is interesting and worth talking about, though.

In my post on OVA 2, I mentioned that Micott is the one who snitches on Mineva in the novel. This was removed in the anime, where instead Daguza just recognizes her face himself. Now the reason becomes clear-- they moved it here, instead.

In the novel, the second part of the conversation they have in this scene happens on the shuttle back from the Alaska. Since the Alaska was cut, they obviously couldn't do that, but having the betrayal without including the resolution would defeat the purpose. Their solution was to combine the betrayal and reconciliation into a single scene, by having Micott consider reporting Mineva's escape but ultimately back down. I think that's a very clever way to handle it.

Micott is more emotional in the novel version. The circumstances are completely different, so the difference in tone makes sense.

"I know this isn't something I should be saying. But sorry, I have no intention of apologizing to you. Your army was the one that decimated our colony." ... "But, I want to apologize to Banagher. If I don't, I..." The rest of her words were vague due to her crying.

She apologizes to Banagher in the novel equivalent to the hologram billiards scene, when Takuya deliberately leaves them alone for a bit so they can talk. Banagher is puzzled by her apology, and they just kind of cyclically apologize to each other for a bit. It's cute.

The novel version of the conversation is very unsubtle about implying that Banagher implicitly believes Riddhe is trustworthy because they have a psychic connection. Micott's line in the anime, where she just comments on Banagher behaving differently than usual, is more vague.

Micott also sticks up for Mineva to Banagher, which I thought was sweet.

"But since you helped her out once, you have to bear responsibility and help her out until the end. That girl's feeling rather down inside despite making a strong look."

The Vist Foundation: Martha, Alberto, and Gael

God, I love Martha. I've been waiting for her desperately. I loooove her anime design. She looks so good. My evil wife.

The Vist Foundation is much less present in the narrative than expected, so far. I'm not entirely sure what to think, but unlike Riddhe's changes, it doesn't raise any alarm bells for me (yet). The Foundation itself is central to the conflict, what with 『The Box』, but all the individual people in it are minor characters.

Do you remember Gael, Cardeas' bodyguard? At this point in the novel, Gael is on the Garencieres. His interactions with Zinnerman and the rest of the crew are very tense and uneasy, but he's a key player in the plan to rescue Marida. He talks to Banagher briefly during the battle as well, just like Gilboa.

Gael wants to capture Alberto and force him to publicly reveal information about Martha, thus ruining her reputation. This allows him to have his revenge for Cardeas without killing her (since Syam objected to him doing so).

For Marida's escape-- rather than being blown out into space, the guys transporting her are gunned down by Gael, and that's when she takes the opportunity to slip out of her bonds.

Gael confronts Alberto about killing Cardeas, and Alberto has some interesting dialogue:

"THAT MAN ONLY CARED ABOUT HIMSELF! HE THOUGHT THAT HE COULD DECIDE EVERYTHING JUST BECAUSE HE'S STRONG! HE THOUGHT THAT PEOPLE WHO WERE WEAKER WERE JUST SLACKING OFF... BUT I'VE BEEN WORKING SO HARD!"

[...]

"Aunt [Martha] was very kind ... She was willing to recognize and accept me. Dad doesn't know about such things."

I could imagine Alberto having a conversation like this with Marida instead, since it's related to her reason for saving him in the novel-- she recognized his connection to Banagher. When Marida saw Banagher's mind, she saw the burden placed on him by Cardeas, and she sees the same thing in Alberto. She mentions that they both have the same sadness in their eyes.

(We still haven't seen Martha tell Alberto that Banagher is his half-brother, by the way. Is Marida going to tell him instead? Does he know? I need to know if he knows!)

Anyway. Alberto shoots Gael and more crew from the Nahel Argama arrive, having heard the commotion. Gael flees.

The scene keeps going, but I'm stopping here, since we might be getting into stuff for the next one.

Daguza has a lot of backstory that doesn't make it in.

Man, this guy is carrying around so much baggage. Banagher has no idea. Content warning for child death for this part. Scroll down to the screenshots if at any point you decide you don't want to read it.

After the conversation with Banagher in the tea room, we get a much longer conversation between Daguza and the other ECOAS guy. We learn about "The Sweetwater Operation", during which ECOAS murdered a bunch of children as collateral while trying to take out a group of terrorists. Yes.

Sweetwater was a refugee colony. The living conditions were terrible, basically a slum, and it eventually became a hub for anti-Federation activity. During Char's Counterattack, it was a working base for Neo Zeon. After the conflict ended, it became "a breeding ground for terrorist planning."

"Those terrorists ignored human rights and laws, so their crimes that went beyond the law should be punished by means beyond the law" -- gee, where have I heard that before? What could Fukui possibly be referencing here?

To summarize: intelligence failed to report the presence of a school bus, ECOAS blew up a bunch of kids along with the terrorists, 33 of them died, and the four who survived were disabled for the rest of their lives. Investigators covered up the incident and it was reported as an accident, but rumours still spread within the Federation special forces. ECOAS was nicknamed "The Manhunters."

Honestly, I think it's a kind of contrived scenario compared to the much more cruelly mundane way that kids and other innocent civilians get murdered during anti-terrorist raids and drone strikes in real life, but I see what Fukui was going for.

From that point on, ECOAS continued to be given dirty missions due to their reputation. I would bet those 33 kids are not the only children they've killed during their career.

They do a lot of justifying it to themselves during the conversation. "It was the intelligence branch's fault, we couldn't do anything." "Well, we were facing a group a group of people who would drop colonies and asteroids on the Earth. If we didn't take them down all at once, there might have been more children killed." "Yes, we have to allow a little sacrifice for the sake of the many." Again, all very familiar.

Despite his words, it's very obvious that Daguza feels guilty. His discussion of himself as a cog is a lot more charged when you know exactly what kind of violence he enacted as part of the machine.

Let me ask honestly, what is this order we have to protect even if it means killing children? [...] Despite understanding that, I still continue to kill myself off, telling myself consistently that it can’t be helped. Won’t I become a real cog gradually? I swallowed reality and sold out myself bit by bit. In this sense, I’m a foolish creature who’s sealed in this shell called an adult.

While they do talk about how Banagher is a child during this conversation, we don't get the line from the OVA here about never having had children and Daguza's implicit fatherly feelings toward Banagher.

The idea does come up later, with Daguza expressing that no matter what the box is, it's not worth exchanging for the future of a child like Banagher. It's pretty clear that this is the reason he's so ready to go to his death.

And what a death it was.

He wanted to hand his life to a child, a child who would think about the future. Of course, he did not think that he could wash away all his guilt after all the atrocity he did, but he felt surprisingly happy that he could do this. He, who only knew how to act on priorities to fulfil his duties, was leaving everything to a young life that had no blood relations or bonds with him ...

Holy shit.

I love the Sinanju with its busted face. Such a look.

Anyway, this death is one that I think is more disturbing than it was in the original text. The decision to let his rocket launcher float just far enough from the beam to survive and then splatter against the emblem is downright nasty. It allows for a person whose body has been totally vaporized to still look like they're leaving behind remains. It feels like a full body gore splatter, even if closely watching the sequence makes it clear it's not. That rules.

And that's when we get our second Destroy Mode activation.

A Gundam is a monster. A Gundam is a devil.

Do you ever think about how Frontal is tactically the single most important person on the battlefield for his side, but he puts himself at risk of burning to death to stop the Unicorn from killing Angelo? Because I do. I think about it a lot.

RIP Gilboa. It really hit me while watching that Banagher has multiple potential surrogate father figures who explode directly in front of him, much like his real dad did. So far, Otto is the only adult man to survive giving Banagher friendly paternal advice.

If you've read all this, thanks for indulging me. I hope it was interesting.

I'm really looking forward to watching the next one. I've heard good things, and that arc of the novel, uh... well, it's a lot. I'll have to think about how much I even want to get into it.

#remibloggue #gundam unicorn #gundam

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retphienix · 1 year

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(a lot of) Oberon stuff

I decided instead of using my stockpile of forma for farming more kuva and tenet weapons for mastery rank fodder, I'd dump them into oberon because...I mean, why not

tbh, I just kinda like them. They were one of my first faves years and years ago and I haven't really touched them in years because, surprise surprise, they are/have been/continue to be kinda "mid" as power creep and buffs have spread to other frames.

AT LEAST for a layman player. Some tuber with maxed arcanes and 30k plat can probably post some build claiming Oberon is the best because he can't die, as if the arcanes aren't doing the heavy lifting lmao.

Despite that, they have always been my favorite support frame on an aesthetic and conceptual level, and I've always been annoyed that the druid healer frame is pretty much the worst healer in the game with Trinity spamming free full heals with free DR, Wisp being BUSTED (love her), and now Citrine just casually giving everyone free DR- HoTs as a passive- and orbs (also LOVE her).

ANYWAY, I sat down and theorycrafted some stuff, I was THIS close to putting my stockpile of umbra forma into him and just making him a pseudo tank that kept up phoenix renewal (maybe another day, and a second oberon prime lmao because I'm not overwriting all my hard work).

The plan was to basically push his armor and health to the extremes and just kinda, exist. Okay, saying it out loud sounds boring, so I'm glad I didn't do it, but I did really want to push his power strength high as hell while tagging on Primed Flow and some basic eff/duration to keep renewal going alongside all the beefed defenses.

I deleted that build idea so here's a mock up that's clearly inaccurate since it's lacking the flow etc but that tasty Effective Health was the goal (I'd have definitely used some staples like rolling guard etc instead of like gladiator resolve):

At the last minute I decided to do some browsing for other ideas and I came across some niche steel path gimmicks abusing quadratic scaling from ragdolling enemies interacting with his Reckoning augment.

tl;dr, stack enemies, use reckoning augment, silly funny extremely good things happen.

Now at first I figured the build just wasn't for me, but the more I thought on it, and the more I tweaked it for my own enjoyment and not just copying the max/min setup, the more it sounded interesting to try.

So I did it.

He's not done just yet, obviously. No subsume because the intended subsume is Gyre's to grant better energy economy and abuse the whole "ragdoll + reckoning = broken" thing, so I'm not even utilizing the interaction yet.

Also few shards, needs more shards.

Also it's still a work in progress- I'd like to toss on at least 1 go-to survival mod on him, but I haven't decided what I want to axe to do that. I'm thinking rolling guard for more leeway since he's shield gating (my first real build to abuse the mechanic) but figuring the values out on this build was tight enough without thinking "Oh, one more mod!" so we'll see. He can currently survive just fine in steel path content owed mostly to the CC of the mass radiation, tbh, and that might not even be an issue if the gyre interaction works out to just making everything too dead to hurt him in the first place. We'll see.

But the gist of him, as he currently exists, is pretty simple.

He nukes with his 4 and uses his 2 to ignore status / the need for primed sure footed on steel path builds.

The augment for his 4 is fucking fantastic thanks entirely to it scaling off range.

Too bad this patch note isn't right and it's still bugged and can revert to the 3m starting range whenever it wants in online content :/

Regardless, I mostly wanted to ramble on the short design journey on making this new build because the mid-point-result has been EXTREMELY fun to play lately.

Sure, he's not getting much use out of his renewal, and he's not enjoying the silly fun of smite infusion, and he's lacking some core parts to his build (that subsume is like 2 days out), BUT! As is, as a max range shield gating nuker, he's having a lot of fun. You know, when warframe doesn't decide to remove the range mod effect for no reason.

I honestly hadn't ever thought of making him into a nuker before, so mostly the novelty is making it fun.

I have only ever tried making oberon a mass CC gardener who keeps renewal up for that armor bonus, or a mass healer with eff/duration to allow it, or a smite infuser to assist groups with being weapon platforms.

Nuker never appealed to me because his 4 never appealed to me, his 2 and 3 were my faves and his 1 (with augment) was a simple radiation buffer.

Using his 4 so much and to such great effect is honestly just fun lol

Good stuff.

#warframe #RetPlays

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solradguy · 1 year

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Might be an odd question, and I'm sorry if it's already been asked, but how did you come up with your fursona?

Not odd at all!! But it's a long story hahah I gotta start from the very absolute beginning. Minor warning for a mention of animal death.

So the first one was an orange and white cat with an olive green trench coat, glowing neon green eyes, a red bandanna (pirate-style, not ninja-style), and they had 7 stripes on their tail. They happened sort of on accident because I was actually 12 years old and couldn't draw humans in a way I was satisfied with and just drew people with cat heads instead. Idk where I got that idea from, probably Thundercats or Swat Katz or something lol. Eventually this character evolved from being based on my actual cat, Toby, to being a character I used to represent myself, 7oby. This fursona is what I refer to as 7oby v.1. They had a sword too, Excalon, that made a blade of frozen ice that was powered by the radiation that my fursona absorbed. I wanted to write a comic with them at once point and had a whole setting and cast fleshed out but this was right around when I entered a very dark period and self-criticism kept it from ever happening.

Unfortunately, Toby, the cat 7oby v.1 was based on, passed away in early 2013. I was really close to this cat, we'd been through a lot together. Around this time I was kind of falling out with the idea of having a fursona too and Toby's death made drawing 7oby v.1 feel... depressing. I tried mixing up their design a little around this time and decided it would be best to just retire them entirely.

This led to 7oby v.2, which was an android with a powerplug tail and 4 motorcycle exhaust pipes on his head lol. I was going through a lot of identity changes around this time (2013-2014) and had a falling out with a friend where they called me a robot and I got a little spiteful about it. I still kind of like 7oby v.2's design but he was a pain in the ass to draw. He didn't last long.

In 2015 I started missing having an actual fursona. I'd gotten a little back into the fandom and having a fuzzy guy I could draw hanging out with my friends' fuzzy guys is a lot of fun. But I needed to design a fuzzy guy again. I didn't know what species to go with and I didn't want to go with a house cat again so I asked my biologist friend for ideas and he suggested a spotted hyena. This was around the time I started realizing I was probably trans so I thought female hyena biology was especially humorous. 7oby v.3 was to be a hyena.

7oby v.3 has gone through a lot of changes haha

7oby v.3 from 2015 through 2017 was just a normal spotted hyena.

From 2018 on he had a robotic endoskeleton like a Terminator and could also make super heated holographic claws and stuff.

In early 2019 I got REALLY into Legend of Zelda and Ganondorf and was like "7oby v.3 is going to be a hyena/boar hybrid now." He still had the Terminator skeleton and laser hands but now he had tusks too. I think this was around the time I gave him lightning/fire magic and decided to combine him with my art mascot, the Somnivagrant, too. Somni's a genderless, amorphous, eyeless, dream demon. It kind of looks like a white dog/wolf and has a sun orb between its ears. The Somnivagrant hitches a ride on my fursona (like a ghost) for fun.

2021 7oby v.3 (the last redesign I've done) is pretty much the same as 2019 but I cleaned up his general anatomy a little and brought back 7oby v.1's Excalon as a giant laser gunsword. Of course.

I think v.3 has gone through more changes than the other two because I've also changed an incredible amount between 2015 to now, but I think, too, that on some level I just don't entirely vibe with v.3. Like v.1 was absolutely me, v.2 was honestly just a stepping stone, and v.3's just kinda... I dunno. I think it might be time for v.4.

#asks #v.3's been my fursona longer than the other two combined but I drew v.1 more by FAR #I redo my reference sheet every couple years and it's funny tracking my interests over time with them lol #I can post them all if anyone wants to see them

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erigold13261 · 1 year

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Haiii Eri!! I don't know much about your ocs but I'd love to hear about them!! Do you have any little fun facts for us? 🫶 any of them at all I adore each and every one

Oooh! Yeah sure! I can ramble a little bit! Don't know if characters like Ex-Jay or Doki Doki Mermaid Club count as OCs since at their premise I didn't create them, but I know some people count their version of Ex-Jay or DDMC as OCs.

So for this I'll stick with just OCs I actually made without a design from in game. (Also just gonna stick with NSR OCs as I don't even do anything with my other OCs I basically abandoned lol). Will also put pictures of each I talk about under a cut so I don't make this too long.

1). First up are my actual first NSR OCs known as Timbre Ocra and Hydrar Gyrum. They are one of the lower NSRtists that help power each district when Megastars aren't playing. Their band is called "Amarus Amares" and they play in the Metro Division district.

Timbre is a natural object head (she's like one of those LED photography lights but can change her colors) while Hydrar is fully human except for cybernetics she got when she was young from being in a car accident. Both of them heavily look up to NSR, especially Neon J which is why they are so happy to be playing in Metro Division and hope to one day play along side 1010.

I should have more for them but I honestly don't since I've been thinking about redesigning them for a while now. Keeping the same story they have but just updating their looks/colors.

2). I think next would be Egeg. She is one I use even less than Timbre and Hydrar, as I made her based off of another person's species. I am definitely going to redesign her as I have made more rules and stuff to how species work in NSR, but she is going to stay an object head as a space orb similar to DJ.

I had her as having a crush on Eloni and she was supposed to be my first ever OC x Canon character, but I sorta scrapped that. She is the manager of Amarus Amares and helps them create songs and manage shit otherwise the two would be missing deadlines every other week.

She had a rough breakup from an abusive relationship. That is when she met Timbre and Hydrar who took her in and she became their manager as a way to pay them back for helping her in her time of need.

3).

Oooh! Yeah sure! I can do that! I have quite a few NSR OCs that I can talk about! (since I have basically abandoned any OCs I have that aren't NSR related lol).

I need to make more of my OC content at some point, so I'm just gonna list all my OCs off and then give some fun facts about the more relevant ones! (and so if anyone wants more fun facts about specific characters I can give them).

-Hydrar Gyrum, Timbre Ocra, and Egeg (Amarus Amares) -Dew, Carna, and Maragold (younger siblings to 1010) -Martha and Aria (Neon's ex-wife and not bio-child) -Esther and Braam (Mama's parents) -Nova's parents (still working on their names) -Alyona and Matvey (Tatiana's Parents) -Ilma (Tatiana's 1st cousin once removed) -Bunny (Rei's girlfriend)

I'm sure there are more but these are the main ones I can think of. Now for the facts! :D

1). Hydrar and Timbre (with Egeg as a manager) are lower NSRtists that help power each district when Megastars aren't playing. They play in Metro Division most of the time, which works for them because Timbre and Hydrar greatly look up to Neon J. Hydrar because his cybernetic program is what allowed her to get cybernetics at an affordable price when she was a child in a car accident, and Timbr because he is a screen object head like her (though she doesn't realize he wasn't born like that).

2). Unlike the rest of 1010 and Dew, Carna and Maragold have no war bot code in either of them. The two basically "died" as kids so when they were brought back as MK-Kid Units there was no war bot code to combine them with. Which is different from 1010 and Dew who were all combined with a warbot's code when becoming MK-1 units.

3). Speaking of warbots, Dew used to be a robotic diver that would repair the hull of ships. The bot he was, wasn't the greatest but it was one of the sturdiest, so it was allowed to continue working during fights while the better ones that were more fragile only worked during times when the ships were in ally waters.

4). Dew is also really good friends with Yiruk and Kayane (actually thanks to you talking about Yiruk lol!). Him and Kayane were crushing on each other hard at first, but they quickly found out they would be much better as just friends. Yiruk is always dragging them into trouble or trying to get the two to join their band but they always decline. However, they do share and listen to its music whenever a new song comes out! Dew has been thinking about asking Neon if there is a way to get Yiruk and their band a good stage to play on one day as like a surprise.

5). Ilma does competitive sword fighting as a hobby and side job. She is pretty good, especially when she goes into higher skilled competitions that allow for natural powers to be used.

6). And speaking of sword fighting. That is how Alyona and Matvey met! The two were in a sword fighting competition and Alyona kicked Matvey's ass because it was a no-power competition and she is more skilled technically with a sword than Matvey is. He fell in love with her that day as she held her sword to his chest with him on his back.

7). Alyona also wanted to have a lot of children while Matvey did not. It was lucky Alyona was even able to have Tatiana, which was a surprise pregnancy. Unfortunately Alyona's health went downhill and soon she died leaving Matvey with a child he did not want.

8). Bunny has been doing her own piercings well before she ever got an actual job as a piercer. She is also the main piercer for Ex-Jay and any other friends they have (obviously they pay her, though Rei gets free piercings). As long as someone pays and is of age, she's okay piercing them wherever they want. She has done genital piercings before (Cyril lol).

9). Bunny is also thinking about either getting elf ears or permanent sharp canines one day as body modifications. She has her tongue split and wants to do more stuff like that.

10). Some more Bunny thoughts are the fact that she makes fun of Cyril's arm tattoo that is literally just a blank sleeve of ink. She finds it silly he just got a blank sleeve. He intended on putting white tattoo ink over it, but over time decided to keep it blank and just put white henna over it since he could never think of a permanent design to have. After seeing him with white henna over the tattoo sleeve she stopped making fun of him (especially if it was some of DK West's designs which she fell in love with).

11). Not so much a FUN fact, but Martha has been married 3 times. First to Neon, then to an abusive asshole who she divorced, and then to a third guy who ended up dying (probably in an accident). She regrets ever cheating on and divorcing Neon because he was the nicest guy that was ever in her life, but she stands by her decision because she could never truly love him like he did her after what was years of feeling neglected by him.

12). Nova's dad's head is actually a small black ball of like dark matter or something. The nebula around his head is just something that happens in everyday life which shows emotions. There are very few times where the nebula is gone and that is in extreme depressive episodes that sometimes occur. Otherwise, he always has some kind of nebula around his head!

13). And Nova's mom's head always has a scarf or something else at the bottom of her droplet tail. It's less for safety and more for comfort. Unlike a real Prince Rupert's drop, he tail is not fragile and won't explode her head if it gets hit. She can actually move it a bit and have it be fluid, but it is sharp at the end so to avoid poking people or herself she uses a scarf to hide the end.

13). Braam and Esther did their best to send Catherine to a good school. Once she showed talent and skill in music, she asked to go to a music school that was close by. It was more expensive but they were willing to do whatever it took to keep their little girl happy. Esther picked up an extra job or two outside of the farm and Braam did more side jobs for friends and townsfolk so that Catherine could go to the music school and hopefully play harp professionally.

15). And I guess as a final little fun fact. Neon's brother has stars for pupils! Kinda like Mayday's flower-like pupils, Neon's brother has stars. I still have to draw him, but both him and Neon had something going on with their eyes that had no connection to their parents which their parents hated. They wanted their kids to be perfect and conform to societal expectations, but couldn't really do anything about their kids' eyes.

That's all I got so far! Hope it's what you were looking for! I really need to make more content for my OCs. Actually I need to redesign a few of them, like Hydrar, Timbre, and Egeg since it's been a bit since I drew them and they could go for a retouch-up.

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goggles-mcgee · 1 year

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Hey, I heard that your a Dark Parables fan from someone I follow, and I has to ask. It's alright if ya don't want to, but I was wondering if you have any salt/ Hot takes for the series of Dark Parables just for fun.

Like how a plot could have been better, or how character detail could have been written to make sense for examples.

Thank you for reading, and glad to see ya back.

Hi! I have so many you don't even know my friend, I'm like legit in the middle of a re-playthrough of the whole series XD

I do gotta say one game that doesn't really feel like it "fits", feels off story wise and gameplay wise in the series to me and kinda throws off the flow of the games is Dark Parables: The Little Mermaid and the Purple Tide.

[SPOILERS AHEAD FOR DARK PARABLES: THE LITTLE MERMAID AND THE PURPLE TIDE]

I know it's weird to include gameplay mechanics in the salt list but (it sounds ridiculous I know) I have a degree in 3D Arts & Game Design so when I play games I tend to focus on game play as much as the story and graphics.

First off, I genuinely am always thrown off because for a game called The Little Mermaid and the Purple Tide....the Purple Tide had a minimal role. Like it was a thing but only in the first like 5 minutes of the game. At least with Ballad of Rapunzel, the flowers were a constant issue as well as the plant monsters. They made sense. Then we have the princess who annoyed me more than anything. Her reasons for being stand-offish or down right rude and somewhat a mini boss to get by were kind of....dumb. like usually the mini boss has a reason for what they did and why they fight the Detective until ultimately lending help, and the reason is usually sound (in the game Universe logic anyways) or good.

Of course you could argue that her reasons are the same as other game characters. Which,, yeah, but it felt weak in comparison. She wanted to find the last Elemental Orb to save her father, her father who was completely off his rocker. But she also thirsts to become human so like, she's doing it for selfish reasons and only after she basically gutted Pinocchio was she wanting you to save her and then willing to help you. If I could have left her to the piranhas or whatever they were....I would have.

That brings me to my issue with the godforsaken Elemental Orbs! They are supposed to be the King's only salvation after being cursed! Yeah? Yeah. Except they are also the treasures that broke the the curse on his daughters! Now you may be thinking this isn't really an issue or something to be mad about but for me it just infuriates me that the daughters broke their curses and yet the orbs were still powerful enough to cure their father....their father who they left so they could pursue their own lives. Like legit. They leave him even though they wanted to help cure him and his sanity but no. After they gained their legs they skeddadeled! Their stories were interesting! I give it that but the fact they left their cursed father and sisters to their fate never sat right with me.

Also it's never mentioned how the King got the orbs after the daughters broke their curses because it never says they went into the sea to take them back. So how does he have them???? If they used them I think they should be null and void and he should have just thought in all his delusion that one orb would be enough for him to experiment with. We're supposed to believe that this family is worth saving and I gotta say...I did not feel like helping at all during that whole game. I did it very reluctantly.

Then the mechanics are added in and yeah...least favorite game right here. It's honestly one that is very forgettable until someone asks me if there's a game I dislike from the series and then BAM! It comes rearing it's ugly head back in my face. The mechanic overall were very stiff, the accessing of your inventory to the change of locations all felt stiff and clunky as opposed to the others games in the series.

Also they didn't have to so Pinocchio like that. They really didn't.

Another point against the game was the fact we never got a scene hinting at the next game which was always part of the whole Dark Parables experience and to not have it really made the game not feel like part of the series. Maybe it's silly, but it was as much a part of the series as the collective parables themselves. Just having the statue in the Temple wasn't enough nor satisfying.

In the end all I have to say is I get why the Sea Goddess cursed everyone. I would have too. Both kingdoms were fickle people and honestly their whole backstop wasn't that intriguing. Like I'd get the tidbits of info and just be like meh.

I could rant about this game a lot but in doing so I just get more petty, especially stupid small things so I will leave this here.

In the end, all I can say is they could have made a better plot, one that was more engaging and made me care. Because I adore The Little Mermaid, in any font, but this font was my comic sans.

#dark parables #blue tea games #dark parables: the little mermaid and the Purple Tide #dark parables salt #goggles ask #goggles answer

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ifbench · 1 year

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So recently, I've been playing Ori and the Blind Forest, and I just finished the game today!

I've been liveblogging my experience of it with a few friends on Discord, and ended up writing almost 3400 words with my overall thoughts on the game.

Felt like a waste to just leave it all there, so I'm posting it here as per their suggestion!

Warning: Major spoilers for Ori and the Blind Forest below the cut!

(For context, I used to have an intense fear of lava, though I've mostly moved past it, and I feel extremely uncomfortable with post-apocalypse stuff, though I'm trying to increase my tolerance to it.)

General Stuff First of all, was not expecting this to be a metroidvania when I first started, but I was very pleasantly surprised! Only other metroidvania I remember playing was Metroid Dread, and I had a lot of fun with that one too, so it's nice to be playing more of the genre. Was also not expecting this to be post-apocalyptic, albeit a localized one. Was significantly less pleasantly surprised by that. To be honest, I was considering dropping it when I made it to the first ancestral tree and found out that almost everyone died, but I figured, I already made the thread, I already bought the games, I'm interested to see if it has a happy ending, I don't want to disappoint [Friends who watched me liveblog], and I'm trying to build up my tolerance to this sort of stuff, so I pressed on. Absolutely worth it.

Controls The gameplay was really slippery to start with, but as I got more and more used to it and got more abilities it became more fluid, versatile, and fun. Though I still occasionally had trouble with the controls, particularly with places where enemies were in areas I had to climb, and places where I had to bash, move around, and glide/climb/dash all in tandem. The keys for saving, throwing light orbs, climbing/gliding, and dashing are all on the left side of my keyboard. The keys for movement, jumping, stomping, and superjumping are on the right side of my keyboard. And I need to use the mouse for attacking and bashing. I do not have three hands. I think this game was designed for members of Ori's species, because it feels like it needs two hands on the keyboard and a tail on the mouse to play most effectively. Often I was wildly juggling the left keys, right keys, and mouse in order to make progress. Like, there's this one area in Mount Horu where it seems like it expects you to bash, move left and right, and glide in order to take out all the enemies and open a door. It was painful. For both me and Ori. I also often accidentally used the charge dash when I didn't mean to, especially after I learned the climbing skill. Other than that, the controls are pretty nice!

Skills The basic wall jump is very easy to get down and it's super fun to just leap up solid walls. The charge flame…I honestly didn't use much expect to break stuff with it. The basic spirit flame was a very unique combat tool! A mid-range homing attack as my main offense was very interesting and fun, and it was nice not really having to worry about aiming with it. The dash was super fun to use, especially once I acquired the air dash upgrade. I used the air dash a lot, and probably sequence broke with it a ton. Got a lot of collectibles with it that I'm pretty sure I was supposed to need glide or bash or such to get. The double jump is, well, a double jump. It's not too special or unique, though I loved the puzzles with it in the Ginso Tree. The triple jump was super useful when I had to juggle. Helped keep me in the air longer when I needed to attack in midair and such. The bash ability was my favorite skill in the game. So much fun to use, and so versatile! Being able to use enemy projectiles as an extra jump, as well as being able to redirect them at the same time, and being able to use that to counterattack? It's a smorgasbord of potential, and it's utilized excellently. I love the puzzles with it, and its tutorial in the Ginso Tree was amazing. A few puzzles to get you situated with it and its uses, before putting you to the test with it in the escape sequence. Master it, or die. Tangentially related, the light burst was really fun, too! An aimable projectile that can be used for both combat and puzzles. I honestly didn't use it for combat much, only in situations where enemies were too far away for the spirit flame and things weren't hectic, but I liked the puzzles with it! I also used it in conjunction with the bash a lot. I actually figured out you could bash off of them on my own, long before I got to the tutorial explaining that you could. Like the air dash, I'm almost certain that I sequence broke with it a ton. Tossing a light burst directly upwards and then bashing off of it was essentially a charge jump before I had the charge jump, and with it I made it to many, many areas I'm pretty sure were supposed to be accessed via the charge jump.

Taking a small break from the main skills that show up on the pause screen, swimming was surprisingly great! At first, I thought that I constantly took damage when swimming in any water, and that I needed the water breathing upgrade to access underwater collectibles without draining my health. Then I restored the element of waters, and nope! It said clean water for a reason! The swimming was super fluid, though it did often require me to pretend like I'm Ori IRL in order to juggle the spacebar, arrow keys, and mouse in order to fast swim and attack at the same time. Other than that, though, my only nitpick with it was the air meter was a bit anxiety inducing, but that goes away with the water breathing upgrade. Stomp was simplistic, but nice. Aside from breaking certain floors, it was a fun alternate way of attacking enemies, and a neat way of traveling downwards fast. Ground pounds are almost always fun in games.

Kuro's Feather was a skill that I got far more use out of than I expected. With the double jump, air dash, and bash in my grasp, it felt pretty useless, since it seemed like I could already go pretty much any horizontal distance. But no, it still had a ton of use other than that. For one, it's great at staying in midair. No more frantically jumping against a wall as I try to attack enemies, I can just hold shift and attack as I gently glide down. And it lets me double dip on bashing, too, letting me bash of a projectile, stay in midair while I wait for another one to be fired, and then bash again. And then the element of winds was restored, and updrafts appeared everywhere, turning it into essentially flight in certain areas. Climb was similar. I thought it was essentially useless at first, since I could jump up walls already. I thought it might have its uses in letting me climb up curved walls, but it doesn't do that, you can't climb up stuff that's too far past 90 degrees. I thought it was just for the flipswitch-style puzzles in the misty woods, where mushrooms appeared and disappeared when you jumped. But no, it still had its uses. For one, it further decreased the hecticness of attacking in midair. If there was a wall nearby, I could cling to it and attack from there. And beyond that, it made climbing up tricky walls a breeze. I didn't have to frantically jump against walls trying to adjust myself for making the perfect leap to the next section of wall, now I could calmly and precisely adjust my position, before making a controlled leap. And the last of the main skills, the charge jump. Well. I already cleaned out most of the map prior to it with air dash and light burst + bash, so it didn't see too much use aside from Sorrow Pass and breaking walls and ceilings that absolutely required it. At least until Mount Horu. Mount Horu used it excellently, requiring me to time it well with the hot floors, as well as the precision leaps that needed the wall charge jump. But then again, Mount Horu used all the skills excellently, even bringing back the wall jump with the hot walls, requiring me to jump up them instead of clinging to them lest I get burned. Now for the ability tree!

Ability Tree I juggled the purple and blue upgrade paths pretty evenly for a while with the occasional purchase on the red path, until I unlocked air dash on the blue path. Then I focused on the purple path until its completion, then the blue path, then the red path. I'd say the purple and blue paths rank about equally in terms of utility, with the red path a bit behind. Purple has a lot of useful stuff, I made significant use of every single thing on there. The spirit magnet and ultra spirit magnet made collecting pickups much easier, and I didn't have to go out of my way to pick them up. The life and energy efficiency upgrades were a lifesaver, making it much easier for me to stay alive and making it easier for me to save more often. And the map upgrades and hidden area vision were extremely useful in collecting everything. The blue path is a bit more varied in usefulness. Rekindle was a lifesaver, air dash allowed me to sequence break a ton, water breath reduced anxiety quite a bit, triple jump extended my airtime even further, and ultra defense pretty much doubled my health. Slightly less useful, but still very useful were the abilities that made me regain health when creating a soul link, and the one that made soul links only cost half an energy point. Essentially allowing me to save twice as often, as well as giving me the ability to passively regain health even with no pickups around. Significantly less useful were charge flame efficiency and charge dash. I pretty much never used the charge flame aside from when it was required, so all it really did was make me able to save slightly more often. Useful, sure, but not very. Charge dash…was pretty much an active detriment. After obtaining it, I constantly used it accidentally, wasting an energy point every time. And it's the only skill in the game to always use full energy points instead of half ones. I did eventually use it a few times purposefully in Mount Horu, particularly in the final escape sequence when I was in a rush, but for most of the game it was just a sap on my energy. Averaging it out, though, I'd say the blue tree's about equal to the purple one. Some extremely useful skills, some regularly useful skills, and a few barely useful skills compared to consistently quite useful skills.

The red tree isn't bad, the other two trees just dwarf it significantly, at least for my playstyle. Charge flame burn, ultra light burst, ultra stomp, and charge flame blast were pretty much null upgrades, since I almost solely used the spirit flame and later bash for combat with the occasional stomp and light burst. Quick flame, rapid flame, spark flame, cinder flame, and ultra split flame help you deal lots of damage very quickly, and split flame and ultra split flame let you attack lots of enemies at once. They do make combat so much more less hectic by decreasing the time it takes, but compared to the other two amazing trees, it's just "good". I do wish there was one final upgrade for after you completed all three main paths. At the end of the game, I had 5 ability points left over, and I feel like there should be some final upgrade for 4 points or something. What would it be? I have no idea. Maybe some sort of endure skill that lets you survive instakills with one half a health point. Seems like it'd be useful for that one-life mode I saw (which I don't think I'm ever going to touch). But that's just a very minor nitpick. Overall, I really like the ability tree! It's super fun and rewarding to try to get all the upgrades, and with you being able to find collectibles on the map that increase your spirit light by a large amount, with some even giving you a whole point, it was a great incentive to explore more. Oh, almost forgot! The purple path also had the spirit efficiency upgrade, which increases the rate you can get upgrades. I think that edges the purple path out against the blue path just a little bit, since it lets you climb the rest of the ability tree faster. Next up, map areas!

Map Areas The Sunken Glades were a nice beginning area. Not much to say about them, but they're neat, and I like that you can explore the area in the final opening cutscene, the one where a heartbroken Ori is limping along. Though I do kinda wish you could go back and explore the prologue areas, though I don't know where they'd fit on the map. Hollow Grove is another pretty simple area, though I consider finding the spirit tree the point where the tutorial ends, and you're mostly left to your own devices. The part where you need to figure out that the frog enemies can break the breakable ground is a great example of that, it's not taught to you directly at all, but it's not hard to figure out by accident or on purpose. But you need to figure it out on your own.

Thornfelt Swamp I consider to have two parts, the part before you enter the Ginso Tree, and the part after the Ginso Tree. The initial part was nice, for the most part. At the very beginning, there was a jump I needed to make up to a wall in order to climb up to the area with the Ginso Tree, and it was precise enough that I was convinced that I needed another upgrade to get there, leading to me starting Black Root Burrows (which I'll talk about soon) and obtaining Sprint before I managed to get the timing down for the jump. Other than that, though, part 1 was fun, introducing me to the enemies that pop out of the ground and lob gravity-affected projectiles at you. My favorite part was the area where you had to break rocks to free more of those enemies to break more rocks and free more of those enemies until one was close enough to break the wall blocking the next area. Part 2 was the swimming and stomp tutorial. It was also mostly nice, though like part 1 I got stuck on one bit of it for quite a while. You actually saw me talk about that part, where I had to use charge flame to break a ceiling that I thought was a stomp floor. It wasn't very intuitive, unfortunately. Moon Grotto was fun! The super long fall made me think, "alright, this is my first 'dungeon'". There's no going back until you clear it. It introduces the double jump, and puts it to pretty good use. It's also the first area I got over 90% explored, exploring that much on my first pass through! The Ginso Tree was fantastic! It probably deserves the dungeon title more than Moon Grotto, being a linear gauntlet that tests your skills. Like I said earlier, it has really fun double jump puzzles, and both teaches and forces you to master bash. And I don't think I'll forget that escape sequence, especially the beginning, seeing the little popup in the corner of the "Run for your Life" achievement, hearing the music get intense, then noticing the rising water and having the realization that I need to flee. Valley of the Wind is an area that…I don't have much to say about. There's two major exceptions, though:

The part where you reach the big open chasm and see Koru at the other side struck fear into my heart, and it was satisfying dropping a rock on her.

The stealth part in the ice area where you needed to hide from Koru. It was super intimidating and fun, didn't overstay its welcome, and prepared you for parts of the final sequence at the end of the game.

Misty Woods was really cool! It was like a lost woods sort of thing, and I love how the layout kept changing whenever you backtracked, really made me feel like the forest was playing tricks on me. I tackled Black Root Burrows in three parts, so I'll seperate it into three parts: Dark, Laser, and Seaside. Dark Black Root Burrows was easily my least favorite area of the game. The darkness made things extremely laggy, I moved very slowly while holding the light orb, and I had to wait for the moving platforms, making it a slog to traverse. Laser Black Root Burrows was interesting! I actually at first thought it was an area I wasn't supposed to be in here yet, and I needed some future skill to deal with the lasers, but I kept trying, persevered, and got light burst for my troubles, which I immediately proceeded to use to sequence break to all sorts of collectibles. Seaside Black Root Burrows is probably my favorite area of the game atmosphere-wise. It feels so serene and peaceful, and aside from the very top of Sorrow Pass, it's the only area with a clear blue sky. It felt like an area of respite, an area where things were ok. I wish there was more to the Forlorn Ruins. I absolutely loved the gravity-bending mechanic of it, and it made lugging around a light sphere actually super fun, compared to Dark Black Root Burrows. But it ended way too soon. I wanted more, I wanted to see what kinds of wacky gravity puzzles they could throw at me! Sorrow Pass was neat! I don't have too much to say about it, but its usage of the newfound wind was really fun, and the part where I had to bash off of falling rocks in order to climb around an overhanging cliff was quite memorable.

And finally, Mount Horu. I'm scared of lava. Not nearly as much as I used to be, but still somewhat. It was a really nerve-wracking area, but also a really fun one! Like I said, it tests you on all of your skills (the required ones, at least. No sprint or light burst puzzles, unfortunately), and you need to have all of them mastered to make it through the 9-room gauntlet it presents you with. And then there's the final escape, where it's just a mad dash away from Koru, trying desperately to make it to the spirit tree while avoiding her wrath, all in one go. It was an amazing final challenge to an amazing game. And with that, I think I've talked about all the gameplay aspects! Now, to finish things off, I'll talk about the story.

Story, Impact, and Final Thoughts It was a simplistic story, but a lovely one. A story of grief, love, and hope. Like I said, I was not happy when I realized this game was localized post-apocalyptic. But I pressed on, hoping to at least have fun. As I progressed father and farther in the story, my attachment to Ori grew, as well as the forest of Nibel. I wanted to see Ori succeed, I wanted to see Nibel saved. And it happened, through time, perseverance, and determination. It felt earned. I think it actually helped me up my tolerance to post-apocalypse a bit, and that's why I decided to get Hollow Knight, to try to continue on that path, after I finish Ori 2. I like that there's no true evil in the story. Koru just wanted to protect her last chick, and even gave her own life up in the end to save the forest. And I'm happy that Naru isn't dead, and that Gumo didn't die, and that at the end we have a found family. Overall, while it has some issues both major and minor, I can safely say that I love this game a lot, I'm really happy I played it, and I very much look forward to playing Ori and the Will of the Wisps. I still don't know why it's called the Blind Forest, though.

#ori #ori and the blind forest #long post #rambling

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hopper-miller-lvl6 · 28 days

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Looking at Headspace XR

youtube

This video is about 20 minutes of someone playing the new headspace XR. Its almost 30 pounds, so I couldn't justify getting it for myself but this game play is a good look into alot of the systems at play.

Style

Overall the style is thus type of surrealist simple look. I think it works, it dosn't seem that realism plays into immersion when looking into VR games.

Overall I think I can take some inspiration from this style, not only because it looks good, but it would optimization much easier, and really avoids that uncanny valley that some games trying to be realistic fall into.

The only problem I foresee is if I'm trying to teach proper techniques for tai chi or yoga, Ill need an accurate representation of the human form.

Progression

it seems as if they are using progression within this game. There are "levels" that are locked and one needs to complete things first before getting to them. However it dosnt lock entire catagories, just diffrent types of levels. Essentially its not restricity is just drip feeding content to make users stay longer

This type of progression seems the best to me as its not playing into steaks or making people feel bad for not doing the meditations, its more about giving an incentive to keep coming back.

Types of meditation

It shows that headspace is breaking up its types of mediations into emotions ie. (happy, bored, angry, sad)

There was (box breathing, some type of movement,

Gameplay

The first thing this gameplay shows is the energy dome which is closest to what I want to do and is very movement based. It had the user move orbs around with their hands and, collect trails of stuff through the air. It seems like a cool experience, but It didn't really explain what it the movements were or if they're were any significance to them

Overall I think I can learn from the engaging visual style as well as sound design to create a good movement experience

The next thing shown was a box breathing exersize, it was really visually engaging with the way it showed the box, however this is what I want to avoid, there was no need for this to be in VR and the same exprience could be achived putting a video on a TV infront of you.

Again I want to take away how they connected breathing to visuals aswell as the audio, it seems to really enhance an experience

Next was a slingshot type game. This was the futherest from meditation I think this app goes. its more of a fun minigame than a type of meditation it seems. The video shows what I think a normal person would do and throw a bunch of paint at a wall because they can not perfectly match their breath and take thier time

#fmp #t2 #Youtube

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eaglefairy · 11 months

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I think, at some point earlier in this liveblog, I said that I've never played a game that felt so dedicated to making me dislike it while I'm trying to enjoy it, and however many hours later I am into x*noblade 2, this is still 100% true.

I think the worst part for me is that it's not just the gameplay or just the story/worldbuilding/etc I have problems with. It's both. The map and the menus are both far worse and less navigable than the first game (I'm about to redo my equipment soon and I am dreading that), and everything is so horribly explained that I genuinely gave up during chapter 3 on my first playthrough. (To be fair, this game at launch had a lot more issues than it does now, and a lot of things got fixed with the dlc and patches. Speaking of which...)

I sincerely dislike nearly every single aspect of the blade system. It was DEFINITELY one of the main things that made me drop this game back in 2017. I was failing constantly in battle because I didn't know what I was doing, so naturally I wanted to get more blades. But it was Gormott in chapter 2: the only option available to me was the gacha. But again: 2017, so I didn't have access to all the crystals in the DLC, so I could barely summon any blades! Not to mention how the game completely betrays you, the player, by giving you Tora as the third party member when he can only equip the Poppis. One thing that is crystal clear is that the core gameplay loop of this game is built around chain attacks (which aren't unlocked until chapter 3, by the way). This game's combat is at its best when every Driver is equipped with 3 blades, and that is literally impossible for Tora until over halfway into the game! Not to mention Tiger Tiger, which is a minigame from hell (and didn't have easy mode at launch, just saying).

Oh, but that's only the gameplay aspect! There's still blade designs and lore to talk about! Blade designs...okay. listen. I don't like how a lot of the blades look, I will say that upfront, and it is because of the designs of the female blades being so sexualized. However, that isn't actually my only problem with Blade designs. Honestly, I'm more disappointed that there aren't more cool animal blades. Like, we got Dromarch! And that's about it. There are some other monstery rare blades like Wulfric and Boreas, but the vast majority are just Hot Anime Tiddie Women and frankly I feel like that's a failure of imagination. And blade lore. I know I've said this a lot before, I'm waiting to say my full piece on this until I have full context, but the pieces I have are not looking good. (Thinking about how the first thing the party asks Vess when they meet her is "Where's your Driver?" still eats at me tbh.) Bonus points for synergizing in the worst possible way with the gacha mechanic: one of the thematic cores of this game is that blades are people and not just weapons of mass destruction, which is why I've summoned and discarded at least 100 of them in the past few days trying to get the specific one I want to optimize my build. As for the combat, I will give it this: I have warmed up to it significantly over time. Now that I know how pouch items work, what the intended flow of combat is, and have enough blades on my characters that I can always switch to have new arts refreshed, I'm enjoying it a lot more. That doesn't mean it doesn't have problems, though! I feel like Torna really encapsulates what this game's combat should've been; I had much more fun playing through that than I did the base game, for sure. Even though the way they did chain attacks in this game is fun and interesting, it just takes way too long. For context, chain attacks are extended by breaking element orbs that you've placed on the enemy in preparation. Element orbs are placed on the enemy by completing combos, which require 3 special attacks done in a specific order of elements to complete. There are 8 elements in the game, which means if you want to use chain attacks to their fullest extent, you have to do 24 special attacks. In order. While relying on the AI to pull up the blades you need on the party members you aren't controlling. This means that a lot of unique monsters and bosses have these oceans of HP to slog through because they need that much HP to just survive to the point where you can do a chain attack. Regular enemies thankfully don't suffer from the same HP problem, but they have a different problem (that crops up in 3 as well). Chain attacks just...aren't useful to fight them, the most common enemies in the game. Chain attacks may have been unreliable in 1, but when the enemy being targeted died the chain attack would swap to focus on a different enemy. This gave them utility against both bosses and packs of regular enemies. They don't do that in either of the following games, meaning that for a lot of battles that are challenging in a different way from singular tough enemies, one of your strongest strategies is almost useless.

Edit: forgot about this while I was writing but came back to say: my brain is not big enough to account for both driver combos AND blade combos. It just isn't, that or I just don't have the willpower to sort through everything to make sure I have at least one blade of every element AND at least one of break, topple, launch, and smash on all my characters. It's not happening. Will my gameplay experience suffer for it? I don't know! Just add it to the list of mechanics in this series I don't fully understand and we'll be good.

As for everything else...I don't know, man. The pacing is slow and bored me to tears in the beginning, the main villains are either very interesting or very annoying, I want to punt Tora into the sun at all times (and not in the vaguely affectionate way I feel about Issun in Okami), and the game is addicted to splitting the party all the time when frankly it should know that its at its best when there are 3 members with 3 blades who can do chain attacks. Honestly, I think my feelings on the game can be summed up by the words of many other people. People who, when asked if x*noblade 2 is worth it, tell the asker "it has a slow beginning but it gets good starting in chapter 5." Which is true, but...the game only has 10 chapters. That's not just a slow beginning, that's literally the whole first half of the game that you're writing off!

#alrestposting #omg this is so long do not read this please #this is literally just me venting/ranting about the game for 1000 words #(that's why the name of the game is censored btw. this doesn't need to go into the main game tags)#also I'm probably going to write about some of the things I like soon just to balance out the negativity

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fayesdiary · 2 years

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List of reasons why I unironically think the best way to enjoy Heroes is to not play it:

(This isn't to shit on anyone who likes the game, just... read all the way until the end, please.)

You can get excited at every new banner without having to worry about powercreep, saving your orbs or other stuff;

You can enjoy the best parts of Heroes (the art, lines, voice acting and interactions) for absolutely free, right away;

You don't have to get a headache trying to understand paragraph-long skills;

You save a lot of space on your phone, seriously even the lite version is ridiculously huge. That, or I just have a shitty phone, or both;

You don't need to do every single monthly quest, arena, mode and whatever modes they added just to get more resources. As someone who played a bunch of mobile games before, this shit is designed to get you to sink a lot of time in tasks that might not even be fun in the first place. I remember I quit Heroes three years ago because I was about to do the high school finals and I realized just how much time I was sinking into it doing arbitrary thing that stopped being fun a long time ago, and just doing them to get orbs and have another shot at summoning another Hero, hoping it was the one I wanted. Almost all of the time it wasn't because the summoning is rigged against you, but I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that. And the worst thing is, I didn't realized how much time I spent playing Heroes and not even fun until after I uninstalled it. This is also why I never felt the urge to come back and it's such a shame because if this was a mainline title or at least not a gacha it would be my favorite. Huge crossover? You can customize units however you want? Sims-like minigame in the form of Aether Resort? Endless potential for character interactions and what-ifs? It would be the best thing ever! But still, the fact it's a colossal, mostly unfun time sink is one of the reasons I stopped playing it and never looked back. The other is...

Heroes is a gacha. Or in other words, gambling. Now, I don't care that it's a mobile game. It could have been a AAA(derogatory) title on the Switch, be the best FE title ever and the problem would still stand with its current monetization. Because make no mistake, gacha games are inherently predatory, and the players are subject to constant psychological manipulation to get them to spend as much money as possible. And there are several horror stories of people spending an unfathomable amount of money because of pressure by a limited time banner and what not, and the general attack to neurodivergent people who are more vulnerable to this sort of manipulation. This video by Jim Sterling really encapsulate the damage this does to people's lives and the truth behind shit concepts like "personal responsibility", "self-control" and "whales", I recommend you give it a watch. (And also subscribe to them because they're great and expose the gaming industry for the abusive shithole it truly is behind the curtain.) Hell, from personal experience: While I haven't spent any money in mobile games in general, I constantly felt the pressure as someone who loves minmaxing and is really vulnerable to FOMO, and the only reason I haven't caved in is because I never had a credit card enable to Google Pay so there was enough of a wall to get me to stop before it was too late. Because after you make the first purchase, opening the wallet again would have been much, much easier. And I still spent a ridiculous amount of time on the game doing henious tasks just to get those few extra orbs, to do one more summon hoping it's the one Hero I want and constantly being disappointed because the chances are rigged against you. My experiences with gacha games made me realize how vulnerable I am to develop a gambling addiction, and it's why I refuse to play another gacha ever again. Better safe than sorry. And still, if I was a parent I would be fucking terrified, because children are much more vulnerable to this kind of pressure. Having to check every single game they play to ensure there are no microtransactions, and still not being safe because they could always make a "suprise" update and add microtransactions and loot boxes that won't be notified in the boxart warnings, or when you've already bought it. Make no mistake, this is psychological warfare through and through, and it can't be fixed through "self-control" and "personal responsibility". This shit needs to be regulated.

#tw: gambling #tw: addiction #serious #fire emblem #fire emblem heroes #feh #this is a grim and serious post but i believe it needs to be said #because every time i see someone joking about spending money on a banner it brings bad memories #if you're currently considering spending money on a gacha #please think twice before opening the wallet #IT'S NEVER worth it #and if you fear you're starting to develop a gambling addiction #please seek help and remember it's not your fault

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marvelmymarvel · 5 years

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Promote Me, Love Me

Part 5/12

Ronald Speirs x Captain!Reader (Mainly)

Carwood Lipton x Captain!Reader (Kinda)

Synopsis: You have one goal in this war, to rise faster in the ranks than Ronald Speirs from Dog Company. The only problem, you’re hopelessly in love with the crazy man. Will it mess up your chance to be better than the arrogant careless man, or will it make you realize that ranks aren’t everything when it comes to love? But when you find out that your best friend Carwood Lipton has been hiding feelings for you, what will you choose in the end? Speirs, Lipton, or that Golden Rank you’ve dreamt of since you were a little girl, only war will make that decision.

“So you and Lip have sex yet?” Muck pressed in your ear making you choke on your beer. He and Malarkey chuckled behind you as you turned and slammed your hand down onto Muck’s shoulder hard. “You never ask a lady that” you hissed out quietly before looking around and leaning in closer. Opening your mouth to answer their question, you were cut off by Smokey calling out to everyone. “Guess you’ll never know” you whispered before winking and turning to Smokey who was on top of a chair. “I got us an announcement to make. This here is Carwood Lipton” Smokey called out and your heart raced a little as he yanked Lip over in front of him.

“He’s already taken Smokey!” Malarkey called out behind you before shoving you lightly, causing the men to laugh around you. You smiled bashfully before your eyes wandered around the men. Your smile fell as your eyes locked with Ron’s stone cold orbs that held nothing but jealousy in them. You pursed your lips before turning back and smiling at Lip who’s eyes were locked on you. “This here is Carwood Lipton. The new Easy Company 1st Sergeant” You cheered loudly as you smiled brightly at him. He was all that mattered to you. Not Speirs.

At least, that's what you told yourself to sleep at night.

You stood beside Car as they ran over the Market Garden plan that you helped design. You thankfully were now behind the scenes and didn't have to do any fighting or presenting. You just helped Lew with the plans and stepped back. It sounded easy, but the stress of sending Car into battle under your plans was enough to make you toss and turn till the wee hours of the morning. If you made one mistake, one tiny mistake, you could lose him. Your eyes wandered from Cars face to the men who were watching Nixon intently. You spotted Ron at the back as if he was watching over the men to make sure they were listening. He felt your eyes on him and his eyes snapped to yours. You sent a tight-lipped smile before turning back to the plans as Lew stepped forward to finish it off. Pacing in place, you didn't realize it was bad until Car grabbed your wrist, stilling you as he looked at you intently. Trying to read you. Trying to figure out why you were so anxious. You just shook your head before turning to leave the tent. No one noticed really, other than Car and Ron, it didn't matter though. You weren't fighting with them. But you couldn't stand the thought of you being the reason that you may not see one of their faces again. Leaning against a pole, you pulled out a cigarette with shaky fingers. “You know smoking is bad for you” Ron commented behind you. You turned and just shot him a forced smile before placing the cigarette in between your lips. “You gotta light?” you asked and he just nodded before walking over before pulling out his lighter. He lit your cigarette and pulled away as you breathed it in deeply. Exhaling shakily, you laughed coldly before scratching your temple with your thumb. “Why are you doing this to me Lieutenant Speirs” you shakily exclaimed out before putting the cigarette between your lips and inhaling once more. “God.. Shit!” you exclaimed out as you threw the cigarette down onto the ground, stomping on it, you began to pace. He never answered you, but he didn't need to. Instead, he gave you a reason to why you were so upset. “You’re fighting your feelings for me... That isn't my fault Captain” He stated as you stopped and just stared at him wide-eyed. He stepped forward and towered over you. “It’s yours” he whispered out before brushing past you, leaving you breathless.

Leaving you lost.

You hated Eindhoven. While you thought it would be fun, holding onto Car for dear life while woman pushed past you was no fun at all. “Jesus where the fuck is Lew” you hissed as the woman grabbed onto Lip. One girl even came up and kissed his cheek, and all hell broke loose. “EXCUSE YOU HE’S MINE” You screamed out as Car just wrapped his arms around you and drug you away before you attacked the poor woman. “It was just a thank you kiss honey” he reasoned and you just looked at him as if he was insane. “So if a man kisses me-”

“Different” he reminded and you just scoffed.

“Fine, we shall see then if it’s so different” you hissed out before pushing away from him and flying into the crowd of people. “Y/n!” you heard him call out but you just moved deeper into the crowd. You were just wanting to spook him a little bit. But you didn't mean for it to go this far. A man grabbed your arm and yanked you into him. “Oh no I’m good, thank you,” you said shakily as he just pulled you closer. His hands cupped your cheeks roughly and you tried to turn your head away from him but it was no use as his face got closer and closer to yours. You let out a high pitched scream for help and soon after you were yanked out of the man’s grasp. Seeing whos embrace you were in, your breath was knocked out of you at the way Ron was glaring at the man that was harassing you. It was split second as he pulled out his handgun and pointed it at the man in pure rage. “No!” you hollered out as you attacked his hand to lower it. “No Ron lets just go” you pleaded as his cold eyes glared harder at the man who touched you like that. “Ron please” you begged up at him, your eyes soft and lips quivering in fear of what just happened. You weren't afraid of Ron. His anger was correct. But what that man did had you shaken up and you felt so small in the crowd. If he wasn't there to help you at the last second, who knows what could have happened. Ron lowered his gun and looked down at you before cupping your chin to examine you to make sure you were okay. He wrapped an arm around your waist before dragging you away and towards an empty alley. Your back hit the wall as Ron crowded you. “How stupid are you?! Running away from Lipton like that?! ALl for what, to prove a point?” he snarled down in your face angrily, making you cringe away in fear. But something he said made you realize an important question to ask. “Are you following me?” you hissed out and he just chuckled darkly before leaning in closer. “Yeah. Yeah, I am following you. You know why? Because you get yourself into stupid predicaments like what just happened now. You know what that man could have done to you” he snarled darkly. You should be afraid of him. You really should...

But he was so damn hot.

"I knew you'd save me" you admitted. While you didn't really count on him fully, you knew in the end that he wouldn't let anything happen to you. He shook his head slowly at you before exhaling slowly. "You can't count on me to be there 24/7 to save you Y/n" he growled out finally. It made your heart pound and all you were thinking about, was doing something you've always wanted to do. "I know you'll catch me" you whispered out before wrapping your arms around his neck as you jumped forward, pressing your lips to his hastily. His arms wrapped around you tightly as he pushed you back against the wall. Pulling away, you were breathing heavily. Lust flowed through your veins.

"You're right"

You're hear snapped over to the opening of the alley to find Lip standing there with a heartbroken look on his face.

"It isn't different" he whispered out finally before turning to walk away. "CAR" you called out as you pushed past Ron who just stood there dumbfounded. "Carwood" you called out as you saw him disappear into the crowd. Running in, you pushed people away as you searched high and low for him. Screaming out his name, it seemed useless as it was drowned out by the cheering. You caught sight of him and you raced forward. "CAR-" you were cut off as an elbow slammed into your face, causing you to come crashing down. You stared up at the sky as the people danced around you. Everything was spinning. Your nose was bleeding as you felt your stomach turn over from the fall and the way the world tilted. You heard your name being called out but it was muffled. You felt arms grab your waist as you were hauled up and into warm arms. You tried to push them off, afraid of it being the man again. "Y/n it's me, honey" you heard and your eyes steadied so you could see who it was. Carwood. The blood oozed down onto your lips as they began to tremble. You wrapped your arms around him tightly. "I'm so sorry Car. I'm so so sorry. Please don't leave me again. Please." you cried out as Lip just held you closer to him, silently reassuring you that you were safe and sound while in his embrace. He glared at Ron who just then exited the alley, he blamed him for this.

He blamed him for all of this.

tags:

@hell-itwasyou @desired-love-

#ronald speirs imagine #ronald speirs imagines #ronald speirs #carwood lipton imagine #carwood lipton imagines #carwood lipton #band of brothers imagines #band of brothers imagine #band of brothers

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retphienix · 3 years

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Phasmophobia maps ranked (totally objective, no opinions here, super srs, psyche gottem it's all opinions)

Brownstone High School

I won't sugar coat it, I didn't even bother going inside for a screenshot for this entry because I hate high school.

Now to be fair, I'm down to play high school whenever, I want to get better at it and I believe that should speed things up a bit and make it more fun.

And HS is the map I think of when I think of running a full 4 man!

But beyond a full 4 man HS is too big, too boring, and too annoying to solve.

It's long hallway with a million rooms after long hallway with a million rooms after small reprieve of finding a science lab or gym followed by long hallway with a million rooms followed by going upstairs to do it all over again.

THERE ARE TOO MANY CLASSROOMS AND I KNOW THAT'S THE POINT

But when the gameplay revolves around finding the room where the ghost is hanging around having these many rooms AND hallways can really drag things out.

Now to be honest, when you have the room on lockdown it's a fun map to maneuver and solve!

So if you walk in the front door and hear something fall over in a specific direction it immediately becomes more playable!

But if you walk in and the ghost is being a quiet asshole then you're in for the least fun you can have in phasmo in my opinion.

Just a bunch of "PLEASE DO SOMETHING" shouting and holding your EMF or thermo practically begging for something to happen.

Bottom tier, worst map, don't like it.

It doesn't even have unique collectibles to make up for the fact that it's a big map so you won't find the bone!

Hardly necessary (though I argue all maps need those) but definitely worth dropping a mention on top of being hallway simulator.

Too many rooms and boring hallways out of 9

Edgefield Street House

Edge honestly doesn't deserve to be next to HS but someone had to be and Edge gets the dishonor purely because it's the most middling map in the game.

Edge is fine.

Edge is passable.

Edge is simple and clean.

Edge isn't exciting is the problem, but it is still a fun one.

The houses aren't renown for being the most interesting; Their job is to be middling and accessible and they get the job done just fine. Edge just happens to be the most middling.

With a first floor that's underutilized, I mean the ghost is in the kitchen if they are here at all let's be real.

Garage is meh, living room is a rare spot for anything to happen, there's a weird back exit area that is never used ever for anything?

First floor is clearly an afterthought for the ghost but it gets the job done.

I actually really dig the basement layout, but I've never once seen a ghost spawn there lol. It's mostly just a place to turn on the power and hide in the locker and that's fine.

The 'star' of Edge is the upstairs which has roughly 9 billion rooms and locations for you to hide, scientists are still counting the exact amount.

You want the blunt end of that?

It's entirely playable- it's safe as hell even since there's a closet every 3 inches- but it's not the most interesting thing for an entire map to be "Go upstairs, look at the 15 doors because one is probably about to open for you and that's the ghost room"

Runs of Edge are a bit too 'samey' since so much of the real-estate is upstairs and it's so dense.

Edge is fine. The most 'passable' map in rotation that I won't complain about but I'm never stoked to head to.

Passable out of 9

Asylum

I'll be honest and say I'm not being thorough with asylum.

It's among my least played, but that doesn't mean my least enjoyed.

It's got a really fun reverb on voices, it's genuinely fun to wander through, but it just feels some strange level of 'too big' while still being... not that?

I dunno how to say it.

But the 1st floor is annoying to clear out with its layout and sure that's inexperience talking-

While the bottom floor is fun due to the aesthetic but it's in a weird place of being overly simplistic.

The bottom floor is just a big hallway with rooms on either side.

That's not the most interesting layout- though it is fun to hide down there, with bathrooms and other makeshift spots to hide behind in most rooms which makes the hallway less threatening.

Asylum is weird, the layout goes between annoying and overly simple between the two floors and it feels too 'wide' for what it has to offer.

AND YET

I like aslyum.

I never play it, but I like it.

Shweppsi out of 9

Tanglewood Street House

Tangle we all know it and what's there to say.

A little bit, to be honest :)

It's the smallest map around and it's a great first map to learn the ropes.

Tangle's strongest feature is its layout- it's both interesting and fun to experience in multiple runs.

I love the little trio of rooms (and bathrooms/closet space) on the left side of the house, the way it's a little mini hallway for two of them (and a bathroom), then deeper in to the left of the living room is the master bedroom, I dig that.

I dig the garage too, the way it's connected to a laundry room feels really nice, but let's be honest every ghost ever in Tangle is in the kitchen.

Sure that's not literally true and I've had a ton in the first room on the left or the bathroom on the left, but that kitchen is where every run on Tangle ends up- with everyone hanging out asking for the ghost to show themselves.

Also the basement is lame, nothing ever happens there and there's no real hiding from what I can tell, just run upstairs to one of the closets.

All said, you take the good design with the bad of being so small every run feels about the same and you end up with Tangle.

I really like Tangle as a beginner map and to revisit for the layout, but I won't lie, kitchen ghosts here are lame and common.

Still not bad enough to outweigh the good, Tangle is a winner.

Tutorial out of 9

Grafton Farmhouse

Once upon a time Grafton was my favorite farmhouse but, well, it's here and the other hasn't been mentioned yet.

Grafton is one of those maps with few "locker" style hiding spots, but unlike a lot of the other maps that emphasize hiding behind things I just never feel comfortable hiding on Grafton- and not in a tense way, in a "The AI is gonna ignore this and walk around and peer out the window for no reason which will prompt it to see me anyway, won't it?" kind of way.

There are some lockers in the storage upstairs now which is nice because the ghost spawns there like 80% of the time.

First floor : Left is dining/kitchen/and a back room. Between those the kitchen is pretty popular for the ghost but also is a spot where orb ghosts can be assholes who hide their orbs for no reason.

Right side is a living room, two bedrooms, and a laundry room, these are some pretty nice spots for the ghost to be because there ARE hiding spots, but their accessibility kinda depends on where in any of these rooms the ghost decides to spawn, making the hunts pretty fun.

Genuinely this right side of the first floor is a win, I dig this area and when the ghost hangs out here.

Upstairs has a shitty terrible awful room where you die (far left), a bathroom where nothing ever happens, and a room with an attached back room/storage that the ghost LOVES to be in to an obscene degree.

Grafton is fine all around, a good hunt location, but really it's where the hiding spots are and where the ghost likes to be that make it just less fun for me.

It's almost always "Upstairs back room / Kitchen / Left Bedroom on first floor" and the repetition of my luck makes it less fun. (though, again, that bedroom is fine because that cluster of rooms is a fun one).

At least there's voodoo dolls out of 9

Ridgeview Road House

Ridge is cool!

It's easy as hell but it's just nicely divvied up, it's one of those maps that benefits from having a very nice layout that leads to games feeling very different depending on the ghost room.

I like the basement, but nothing ever happens there I swear.

The first floor as a whole has some nice spots, anything on the left can be hidden away in the garage lockers (which are at the far end which makes it a little tense which is nice!)

Anything on the right is a little less safe feeling because that back room is terrible, honestly safer to run upstairs to a closet.

And finally anything upstairs is standard house affair- a ton of hiding closets and a good amount of rooms but not 9 billion rooms like Edge.

Ridge is nice. It's small, easy, and well spaced.

Strong layout out of 9

Willow Street House

Willow really is small as sin, but I dig the look a lot.

I also like how hiding is a 'behind furniture' affair unlike a lot of the other houses with their plentiful closets.

My favorite area is the basement, which sadly makes for a less than stellar photo, but I love the multiple rooms in the basement and the lighting in those rooms.

Upstairs has a very different feel from the other houses which does a lot for making it feel fresh as well, definitely the most immediate thing most will notice when playing it since Tange/Ridge/Edge all feel the same due to the aesthetic they carry.

All in all it's my favorite house right now, but I'm curious on its lasting power for that.

It definitely helps that the map is built around hiding spots instead of hiding closets because it's a lot more fun crouching behind a dryer or cutting corners to get behind a dresser than it is to just hold a door shut and know you're effectively immortal as long as you don't talk.

Between the aesthetic and the unique layout it's come this high on my list WHILE being a bit buggy from being brand new, so that says something at least.

A joy to hunt on out of 9

Bleasdale Farmhouse

One of the two farmhouses and for a while my lesser fave, but it's grown on me the more I've played it.

Bleas doesn't emphasize lockers as much as hiding behind changing 'curtain' deals and after giving it a shot, it grew on me a lot- probably my favorite form of hiding spot because you can often still see the ghost as they come right up to you and walk away.

The highlights of Bleas will always be the immensely safe back room where the breaker can spawn- there are lockers here and it makes a fairly safe cut away for most events on the first floor because most events on the first floor are in the kitchen/dining area anyway with the rest of the first floor mostly being dormant in my runs.

The terrible terrible terrible attic which I hate and love at the same time.

it has hiding spots but whenever I have to use them it's highly unlikely I make it to them in time.

It's just a terrible place to be.

And the second floor is a pretty great one tbh! Mostly because there's a nice central hiding spot and the entire area is divided up pretty nicely for ghost stuff- unless you get hallway, fuck when it's hallway. It's the WHOLE hallway as far as I can tell and that's just stupid!

Bleas is a winner for sure, definitely beats the likes of Edge with ease, there's never a dull time hiding behind the privacy curtains- oh and this map has voodoo dolls! I firmly believe all the maps need more collectibles so this one having some is a boon for sure

"We got fingerprints on all the windows in the kitchen!!!" out of 9

Prison

TIME FOR THE BEST BOY!

PRISON!!!!

How to explain it.

When I started Phasmo my least favorite maps were the bigger ones, I hated feeling lost and like the ghost took too long to find all while the houses were fast and easy to understand.

But then I tried Prison and everything changed.

Talk about a beautifully laid out big map!

The sounds, the various hotspots, the fact that it's somehow big as hell without ever feeling too big and empty- I love prison.

Gushing aside, Prison is basically split up into 3 segments.

Main building, A block, B block.

And the unfortunate truth of prison is that the Main building is where most action seems to happen... doubled down with the truth that if the ghost IS in either block then they are significantly more dangerous to occasionally unfair degrees.

Yet despite that it consistently ends up being the most fun map for me to play through!

It all comes down to layout. The main building has a lot of little 'segments' which encourage you to run during a hunt differently, and the blocks are intimidating in their own way because going upstairs in them feels like signing your will.

I'd love to say more, but it's just the most fun one, so that's that.

Best map out of 9... I heard a cell door open, let's get towards A block.

I know it's just a random post of mine and all but hey, what's your take on the maps?

I'd like to hear what some arguments for other faves might be- especially if someone is a die hard HS fan, lol.

#RetPlays #Phasmophobia

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