#during the festive season and there is at least one reference in dialogue (when a neighbour mistakes Spinell's plastic wrapped mannequin
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Dates or Time of Year for Each Nancy Drew Game
whatamagicalplace made one of these charts last year. Those efforts gave me a starting point but I wanted to tweak it after doing my own research. I decided to share my final result since my version differs from hers in several ways. My reasoning for each game is discussed below; but if you have any evidence to add, feel free.
SCK: Nancy says in the opening letter she took a semester off school to visit Eloise in Florida. The banners for Senior Prom are still prominent throughout the school and the event is scheduled for May 23. Game takes place in a single day but that day could be any time in late spring semester prior to May 23.
SCK2: Homecoming banners are prominent and the event is scheduled for Sept 23. A flyer with Jake’s secret messages has a date of Sept 05, so let’s assume Jake was still alive then. The game says Nancy is there to investigate after Jake was murdered “last week.” That could mean three to seven days after the murder since it happened on a Thurs. Thus Remastered takes place in a single day but that day could be anywhere from Sept 08 to 22.
STFD: Nov 13 (confirmed with calendar). Game takes place for as many days and nights as player needs.
MHM: “Winter Festival” and Charlie studying for finals indicates late Nov to early Dec. Newspaper about the lost gold at the end is dated Mar 03; it could’ve been published after money settlement and the renovations completed though. Game takes place for as many days and nights as player needs.
TRT: December. The Spanish letter from Lisa’s friend is dated Nov 30 and acknowledges that Lisa is already in Wisconsin. By now, time should be well into Dec.
FIN: Possibly Nov (game’s release) but there are no confirmed dates on anything. It’s likely during the school year since Maya is doing the interview for the student newspaper. Game takes place over three days.
SSH: Calendar on Henrik’s desk is for the month of April. The book version takes place during the DC Cherry Blossom parade which usually occurs last week of March or early April. Game takes place for as many days as player needs. (Early April timeline would match with end of game trailer and dates for DOG.)
DOG: Jeff’s calendar is open to April. Culprit’s log book says Sally is due to move in to the cabin on April 19. Sally says she spent four weeks at Moon Lake, implying the game starts May 18. But I really don’t see Jeff’s character forgetting to change the calendar, so either Sally moved in early or she means four weeks total including seeing the property, bidding, and the final sale plus moving in. And let’s remember there’s no safe water source, so it’s unlikely Sally could live there for four weeks straight. Sally says the dogs howled a full week before they attacked the house and then they appeared every night since; maybe Sally lasted 9-14 days with the ghost dogs. The game could likely begin anywhere between Apr 28 and May 18. Then continue for as many days and nights as the player needs.
CAR: Culprit’s emails with black market dealer date from May 23 through June 04. Harlan’s appt book opens to June 09-13 with the significant clue on June 10. Game is a single day, likely on June 10, but could be as early as June 05.
DDI: June 17 (confirmed with calendar). Single day of gameplay.
SHA: Sept 15 to 17. Nancy’s airline ticket confirms arrival date in AZ. Timeline of the game takes place in three days. (Tex’s b-day is Sept 16!)
CUR: This is anybody’s guess. Hugh and Linda were married Aug 22. The lawyer’s letter to Mrs. Drake states Linda must live at the manor for another three months to fulfill the “six-month-habitation-clause” and those six months must be consecutive in the first year of marriage. Game could be late Nov at the earliest. However, frogs are chirping when Nancy arrives at the manor which is a spring thing and Bess and George say they are attending sailing camp. The fact that no one is suggesting that Linda can leave due to health reasons and start the six months over when she’s well again makes me think the year is half gone already. So the game could also be taking place in April or May at the latest.
CLK: May 07 (confirmed with calendar). Single day of gameplay.
TRN: We see snow in Copper Gorge, but it’s in Colorado and snow can be any time of year there. Frank and Lori are wearing the puffy vests and everyone else has jackets and sweaters. Fatima says it’s the off-season now and summer is the busy season. Makes me think winter is my best guess.
DAN: Game takes place for as many days as player needs. The newspaper on Day 1 is dated Aug 28. Newspapers continue to appear through Sept 06, which publishes that the journalists are negotiating for raises and the sounds of the impending strike are occurring outside JJ’s apartment. Day 11 (Sept 07) and onward have no more newspapers appear on the kitchen table. Let’s say Aug 28 to Sept 07 for simplicity.
CRE: Mike’s calendar is set to March. Quigley’s tape recorder log updates as of Mar 28. Craven’s shipping records say his latest sample was sent to Aikens Biotech on Apr 09. Game takes place in a single day, probably Apr 09 or 10. (Mike just hasn’t turned over the calendar yet)
ICE: Newspaper in the lodge is dated Jan 13. Elsa’s resignation letter is dated Jan 15. Lodge computer says Lupe checked in on Jan 15 and she noticed the lack of maid services for days. Game likely takes place that same week, starting maybe Jan 18 at the earliest, and lasts over several days and nights.
CRY: May 31 (confirmed with calendar). Single day of gameplay.
VEN: Newspaper in the Ca’ terrace says chalice was stolen “this morning” and the police records say the theft happened Jan 25. When Nancy nabs Nico on the stakeout, the next day’s newspaper is dated Feb 03. Since game takes place over several days, it likely plays from Jan 25 to Feb 03.
HAU: Night of May 28. The wedding is set for June 01. The end dialogue says Kyler and Matt couldn’t stop saying “I love you” from when the rocket launched to four days later, which was their wedding day.
RAN: The float plane pilot says resorts like Dread Isle shut down in the summer for “hurricane season” in the Bahamas. And the game was released in July. Since we see the map that charts all of Nancy’s past cases (including HAU) so the game is after the wedding on Jun 01. But there is no reference to the current date aside from “summer.” Single day of gameplay.
WAC: The essay Mel receives from her teacher with the plagiarist comments is dated Nov 21. Since two more nights of sleep are required to trigger events in the game, we can figure that the game takes place from Nov 21 to 23.
TOT: Scott’s calendar is open to May and filled in with code until the 19th. The log book of precipitation is filled out until May 24. Game likely takes place from May 20 to 25.
SAW: The TE-Japan brochure in Nancy’s teacher tote says her exchange program runs from Jun 01 to Sept 15 with different durations of 2 weeks, 3-4 weeks, and 5-8 weeks. With no specific date in the game and the player taking as many days and nights as needed to solve the mystery, we have to settle for saying it takes place in “summer.”
CAP: Karl’s daily calendar is on page March 12. When Nancy finds the final forged email from “Markus” she remarks that it has tomorrow’s date, which is Mar 13. Game is a single night of play on Mar 12.
ASH: Newspaper and police report of Nancy’s arrest say the game is done in a single day of August 18. The fire took place on Aug 17.
TMB: It’s the desert and there are no dates on any clue in the game. Since Lily is a student and Abdullah and Jon are professors, perhaps the game takes place in summer between any busy semester/class schedules.
DED: Ellie’s notepad in the control booth says she gave the coil demo to Nancy on Oct 29. Nancy arrived in daylight hours but since Ellie is on the night shift, the demo could have taken place on either side of midnight which means the game could start on either Oct 28 or 29. (Nancy arrived 10/28, night fell and midnight passed, then Ellie gives demo 10/29 OR Nancy arrives 10/29, night fell and it’s not midnight yet, then Ellie gives the demo still on 10/29.) Game continues for as many days and nights as the player needs.
GTH: Jessalyn’s phone recorded her bachelorette party antics from the night of Oct 27 to early morning of Oct 28. Addison says Jess had vanished for the second time after sun-up. It is unclear how many days Jessalyn has been missing before Nancy arrives on the island. Nancy was deep asleep when Savannah calls her for help, which means Jess has been gone at least a full day. Then Nancy arrives on the island at night which either means it’s evening on the same day of Savannah’s call or another day has passed by the time Nancy gets there. Oct 29 is the earliest possibility. Game takes place over three nights. Likely set between Oct 29 and Nov 01.
SPY: The newspaper reports that July 14 is near and it will be the eighth anniversary of Revenant’s first attack. Alec’s letter documents that his sister was kidnapped on the first of the month and has not been seen since. Game takes place between Jul 02 and 14. While Nancy cannot sleep or change the time of day, it is hard to believe that traveling back and forth throughout Scotland’s towns and the different phases of the spy operation all take place in a single day.
MED: Summer in the southern hemisphere, so datewise it’s set between Dec and Feb. Again there’s no sleep or time of day transitions but the elimination rounds likely take place over several days.
LIE: Employee timecards are recorded through July 05, the artifact exchange log is filled out through July 06, and the packing slip on the open crate says received July 06. Game is a single day of play, likely on July 06 or 07.
SEA: Soren’s winter guest log says Nancy is visiting in January. Game takes place for as many days and nights as player needs.
MID: Minion’s plane ticket TO Austria where the game begins is dated Oct 26 and the game goes into Halloween.
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'wtFOCKDOWN: the first Flemish quarantine fiction has arrived'
Translated interview about the behind-the-scenes of wtFOCKDOWN
- Source: Knack Focus (16/04)
Scenes in FaceTime, dialogues in WhatsApp and a director who gives directions in Google Hangouts: the youth series wtFOCKDOWN is the first Flemish fiction series in lockdown mode.
The candidates of 'Blokken' play from home, soaps 'Familie' and 'Thuis' get an early season ending, 'Dagelijkse Kost' has a director at distance, 'Topdokters' sends out corona diaries, 'De Ideale Wereld' does telework. Just about the entire TV world has had to adapt to the new reality in recent weeks and find creative solutions. Usually with the help of FaceTime. Or Skype. Or Google Hangouts.
There is a striking amount of video out there.
However, no Flemish series had to go as far as wtFOCK. The youth phenomenon - in good weeks 450,000 unique visitors go to wtfock.be - always strongly focused on real time and the current living environment of young people. If a character experiences something during the lunch break at school, the video goes online in the afternoon on a school day. For example, if the elections are coming or GOT has its last episode, the characters will refer to it.
Which also means that when the schools suddenly closed indefinitely, all plans for the upcoming fourth season couldn't go through. If all your viewers are home, it makes no sense that the characters still go to school. wtFOCK's solution: the first 'social-distancing drama' in the world, as production house Sputnik, which makes the tv series for SBS and Telenet, calls it. Fiction that not only takes place in quarantine, but is also turned into quarantine. On April 1st, the first video went online, a video conversation between characters Senne and Zoë. Since then, the experiment seems to get more interesting every day.
wtFOCKDOWN is the most far-reaching TV answer to the lockdown yet. How did you come up with a 'social-distancing drama'?
Rutger Beckers (producer at Sputnik TV): As soon as the government closed schools, we knew we had to throw all our plans overboard. It was clear that this wasn't just for two weeks: the lockdown would take much longer. Quickly, we started thinking about a plan B within the team, a very young team, and there were some very long video calls. The term 'social-distancing drama' had fallen quite often. Everyone is in the same situation, everyone runs up the walls. Especially young people. In one weekend, their reality has completely changed and their lives take place between four walls. It seemed interesting to adapt the fiction to that new reality. Plus, we hope it can also be a support or refuge. Everyone is in the same boat: that kind of feeling.
We then put together a small team to see what was possible. A few practice scenes have been written. We tested things with the actors. What works? What not? After a few tries, everyone was very enthusiastic. They were also immediately involved with Telenet and SBS. This was much more than a little plaything or filling a gap in the schedule. It soon became clear that, with the right storylines, this was something fundamentally new. Something no one had ever done before us.
The lockdown was announced on March 16th, on April 1st the first video of wtFockdown went online: that is impressive.
Beckers: Especially in the world of fiction. It helps that we were already very tight regarding film schedules of wtFOCK. The recordings are made four or five weeks before the broadcast, which is short for fiction. Even on set, we continued to adapt storylines to current events.
With wtFOCKDOWN, we can plan everything even closer. The circumstances compel us to do so. Nobody can get together - we are very strict about that. So no locations have to be sought, no extras have to be collected or soundcrew have to be booked. We also have to make it with a very small team. wtFOCKDOWN is shot with the actors, a director and someone who does social media. Everyone is also at home and is available. What makes that you can switch very easily. Simply put: tonight we will decide what things we have written today, will be played out tomorrow.
The videos all start from the home screen of the characters' laptops and cell phones. The story is told in WhatsApp conversations, video calls and video messages. A kind of found footage, but in real time. That is cleverly done.
Beckers: Because it also makes sense: for most young people, the screen of their laptop or smartphone is their only view of the outside world these days. Then it makes sense that you tell the story like that.
Moreover, it is the technology that we really use to create the series. The actors act in their own room with their own laptops and mobile phones. First, we rehearse in a video call, while the director watches. When a scene is right, the actors video call each other and record the scene. It also doesn't matter if the quality of image or sound is a little less: that just increases the authenticity.
wtFOCKDOWN has been running for two weeks now, but as an experiment in mobile television it is interesting to say the least. Real-time WhatsApp conversations set to music, where you see the letters typed, for example, turn out to provide good scenes.
Beckers: That is also something that we ourselves are happy with: that these storytelling techniques work. wtFOCKDOWN was a leap of faith. There were no examples, no anchor points. When we put the first videos online, we had no idea what the response would be. But you feel that our enthusiasm after those first tests, is now also the same as the viewer.
That is also exciting as series makers. It started with a few tests. Then a few videos that came online. Then we started building bigger storylines. And it just keeps getting bigger. Every day we are faced with new surprises and new problems to solve. But that feeling that we are creating something new, something that can be valuable in the situation that young people are living in today, only increases enthusiasm. Especially with the people of eighteen or nineteen years old in our team: you feel that they now want to go for it. Maybe this could be the start of a new kind of genre. Real-time fiction, played decentralized. Who knows.
You're sure no one has ever done this before you?
Beckers: I certainly haven't come across anything. We also noticed that countries abroad have been interested in the concept. In the meantime, we're in contact with the Norwegian public broadcaster NRK, who made Skam (wtFOCK is one of the many remakes of Skam internationally). They were very intrigued by our plans and went to show it to Spain, Germany, Italy and France, where local versions of Skam are also running.
While wtFOCKDOWN explores new horizons, a large part of the Flemish television world seems to be on hold. 'Familie' and 'Thuis' must finish their season early. It is unclear what will happen for programs such as 'Mijn keuken, mijn restaurant' and 'The Voice Kids'.
Beckers: Today the situation is very strange for the TV world, especially with the commercial channels. The ratings are going up. Much more TV is watched than in recent years. Only: there are far fewer advertisers.
It is indeed striking that programs such as 'De Mol' hardly have any commercial breaks.
Beckers: Many brands do not want to advertise now and have postponed their budgets until after the summer. Which will soon cause another strange situation. Autumn normally gets very busy, but hardly any production houses are making programs right now. Almost all productions have been shut down. Running a normal fiction series is simply impossible today.
Will we get a lockdown version of the soap 'Familie' soon?
Beckers: I think that chance is slim. (laughs). With wtFOCK, the new technology is just a bit more in the DNA of the program.
The main thing is that no one currently knows. Everyone is waiting for the situation to normalize and to get up again. It only starts again, when there is insight into the matter.
You are in a precarious situation with wtFOCK, I just realized.
Beckers: Why?
When the government announces that schools remain closed, doesn't it mean that all the plans and footage from the fourth season will be thrown away?
Beckers: That's also the disadvantage of the time limited fiction: the time. All of the references to the end of the school year, or festivals, will be tossed. These caught up with the reality. But we'll see how we are going to get around that. We don't have anything meaningful to say about the future. If I have learned one more thing about the past few weeks, it's that you constantly need to adapt to the new realities and to find new solutions. So it's not just about the wtFOCK.
#wtfock#wtfam#behind the scenes#wtfockdown#wtfock bts#skam#skam remakes#skam bts#skamverse#skam belgium
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“Green Book” Movie Review
Green Book is a new film from director Peter Farrelly, who is most well-known for directing comedies such as Dumb and Dumber and There’s Something About Mary, the latter of which he co-directed with his brother Bobby. This movie stars Viggo Mortensen as an Italian-American named Tony Vallelonga who works as a bouncer and pseudo-enforcer for the Copacabana in the 1960’s. After the Copa is shut down for renovations during the Christmas season, Tony needs to look for work, and gets wind of a job where he can make some real money, as a driver and security for African-American classical pianist Dr. Don Shirley. Dr. Shirley is about to embark on a concert tour in the deep American south, and given the time period, it’s safe to say he’s going to encounter some resistance wherever he goes to there. Tony is hired on, and thus begins the journey of two men from two very different walks of life, and the friendship that came to be.
Early reviews had this film pegged as a major awards contender, with Oscars in immediate conversation, and as soon as the trailer dropped, it was easy to see why. Two of the screen’s most acclaimed stars, including one fresh off an Academy Award win, in a movie about race relations and friendship set in the 1960’s around Christmas time, releasing at Thanksgiving? This was bound to be a hit. And, come festival time, it was. In fact, it was (and continues to be) a heavy favorite for a Best Picture nomination from the Academy. Unfortunately for it, though, the Academy’s membership has also been changing in major ways thanks to a massive diversity push after 2016’s #OscarsSoWhite fiasco, and many critics of color (perhaps some Academy members as well) see this as the Driving Miss Daisy of this year – a harmless enough, even moving film on the surface, but accompanied by a subtext that betrays some troubling philosophies which some may consider racist in themselves.
And this film is pretty much exactly what it’s purported to be: a pleasant and relatively easy-going film about race relations in the 1960’s that doesn’t put out much more effort than what is required to simply be a decent movie at surface level. If it weren’t for the sheer level of talent involved, this would probably by just a grade C attempt to make an “Oscar movie,” but alas, they mostly pulled it off. To start, Peter Farrelly handles this film surprisingly well given his previous efforts’ being so wildly different from anything like this. Directionally, the movie is a genuine pleasure, with Farrelly pulling one of the better Christmas-set movies in recent memory seemingly out of a back pocket of stories we didn’t know he was capable of telling. He navigates the surface of the film so expertly you might think he was skipping a rock on water, and the way the beats of the plot play out has a very natural progression, with a smoothness not often found in films like this. That may rub some people the wrong way in terms of what Farrelly omits from the landscape of the time period in order to maintain a PG-13 rating, but for the most part it keeps the film on an evenly stretched tonal playing ground, allowing the stars to get comfortable with the way this world works.
And the stars do seem comfortable, not just with the way this world operates, but with each other. Mortensen and Ali are both at the top of their game as actors with this film, displaying an easy-going chemistry so charming it practically belongs in a Linklater film, with the former in particular being so well-suited to New York mobster archetypes one would never have thought that this same man once played Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Mahershala Ali certainly isn’t outshone, and continues to stretch the range of roles he’s been asked to play just in the past two years alone to yet another corner of his continually impressive resume, but it’s really Viggo Mortensen who gets the big moments in the particular film. Both he and Mahershala Ali will be up for performance awards at the Dolby theater in 2019, but it’s more likely that Mortensen would take home the gold should but one of their names be called to the podium.
Where the film’s problems arise are in its writing, as alluded to earlier. The script isn’t, per se, bad (after all most of the good parts of this movie wouldn’t work with a bad script no matter how much talent you throw at it), but it is deeply flawed in some respects. I certainly would count myself no expert when it comes to race relations or the attainment and maintenance of civil rights in the United States in relation to people of color, but something about the way this film portrays the landscape of the deep south in the 60’s just didn’t sit right with me, and it took me until I was walking out of the theater to realize what – it feels sanitized. Yes, despite the fact that there are multiple racially-fueled altercations in the film surrounding Dr. Shirley’s character, including one that directly involves Tony’s reaction to the N word, the film still feels sanitized. It feels a little bit like (to use a term we all should be familiar with by now) whitewashed history, in order to either maintain a PG-13 rating, or keep white audiences in their seats, and sanitizing a film set in this time period in order to appeal to a particular racial sensibility not only doesn’t help anyone, it actively hurts the landscape we find ourselves in today.
There are also some problematic aspects to Dr. Shirley’s dialogue that I found a tad troubling once I began to dig into their subtext. Of course I don’t know what the real Dr. Shirley was like, and there have certainly been many people of color, some of whom I know and respect greatly, with this same philosophy, but one of the lines the character is given in the film is as follows: “you never win with violence – you only win when you maintain your dignity. Dignity, Tony…” I forget the rest of the line, but I do remember it was something to the effect of dignity being the only tool one can use to affect great change, another notion often used by white people (most notable in reference to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.) to pacify people of color and trick themselves into believing that the only real achievements in the civil rights movement were wrought by peaceful black people, which is simply not the case (MLK was, to my understanding, non-violent, but that is not the same as peaceful). The character of Dr. Shirley is a complex one to portray, and Mahershala Ali does the masterful job he always does with complex roles, but somehow those words felt unnatural coming out of his mouth, and it’s likely because they were scripted by three white men. This is not to say that white people are not allowed or unwelcome to tell stories about race, but it is a delicate line to walk given this country’s history, and this particular aspect of the writing, at least to me, seemed poorly handled.
Green Book is a fine film, even a good one, and a pleasant watch to boot. But that doesn’t mean it’s a beneficial one; even as the surface of the film pens a much-lauded message, the subtext betrays something which may do more harm than good. It’s a tricky thing to navigate race relation stories set in the 1960’s, and some can make it look as effortless as modern-day Disney live-action remake (which isn’t actually fair to say, making any movie takes a lot of work). But some others, such as the writer Peter Farrelly, still have a ways to go towards that achievement, despite sincere and valiant efforts in that direction. The performances are top-notch, and the direction is unexpectedly solid, but the script’s major issues cannot be overlooked or ignored. It’s a Best Picture nominee for sure, but don’t look for a win on Oscar Sunday.
I’m giving “Green Book” an 8.5/10
#Green Book#Movie Review#The Friendly Film Fan#Viggo Mortensen#Mahershala Ali#Peter Farrelly#2018#New#Movie#Film#Review#Oscars#Oscar Race#Oscar Race 2018#Oscar#Academy Awards
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{ Plegian Society: Customs and Heritage }
A majority of these ideas and concepts come from established lore, developer’s notes, and from the societies which Plegia was based off of. Please keep in mind that this is not a utopian society, as no place is in the series, and therefore there might be some potentially grey areas that these headcanons tread on.
For those who just want to read specific parts, I have divided the post up into sections which are discussed in this order:
Dance
Music
Clothing
Family
Food
Religion
Magic
Language
DANCE
Plegia is a kingdom which places a large emphasis on art, music and dance in its culture, and consists of various ceremonies which take place throughout the year, for various reasons. Religion also plays a key factor in this as well, as a majority of the celebrations which are implemented are ones which originated both within the Grimleal cult, and another umbrella religion which shall be discussed later, serving as temporary moments of freedom, where the members could rejoice and forget about their hardships so that they might be distracted from what is going on in the world around them. Ceremonies celebrating the shift from one season to another, to religious rituals, to the first blossoming of a specific desert flower, to occasions celebrating family, or other values within Plegian society are all things which every citizen knows off by heart, and looks forward to. During these events, specific dances and songs are played which do not serve the sole purpose of entertainment—rather, they are in the kingdom’s native tongue, and tell stories that have been passed down verbally from generation to generation. If there is something that can be celebrated in life, they have a specific dance and ceremony for it. While dancing groups were separated by gender, and certain groups could only perform certain dances, both were regarded with as much respect as the other, as it requires a significant amount of training and devotion in order for one to make a respectable career out of dancing within Plegia.
That being said, the traditional style of dance in Plegia is belly dancing, and it is where such a style originated from, though the use of veils is not.
MUSIC
Just like dance is highly respected in Plegia, so is music, and to become a musician requires decades of intense training, regardless of what instrument one chooses to learn. The main instruments used in traditional Plegian music are arghuls, castanets, ney, sistrums, mizmars, and other ones within the percussion family. It is written specifically for dancing, and thus has a large emphasis on rhythm, using a variety of strong, syncopated beats which vary from sounding quite light and warm, to harsh and intimidating depending on what the song represents, or why it is being played. Music is performed on the streets, in festivals, or even during rituals and ceremonies. Aside from this, hymns are the next most common form of music in Plegia, and are almost exclusively used for religious purposes, with every member of the faith being required to memorise them by heart.
As Plegia has quite a verbal culture, songs are also used to tell stories, and are the most common way a parent will teach their child about religion, life lessons, or historical events. Almost no legends or myths are written down—they are exclusively passed down through verbal means; only familial records, spells, hexes and religious scriptures are written down, though Plegia does eventually decide to keep a written record of their kingdom’s history as they begin to trade with foreign continents.
CLOTHING
When it comes to the style of clothing in Plegia, however, their view differs greatly from that of Ylisse or Valm, as the naked human form is not considered to be provocative, hence why most, if not all, Plegian classes in-game do not cover much skin, regardless of gender. They do not see anything wrong with how they dress, nor consider someone else to be seeking attention by exposing skin—an idea supported by Tharja’s summer scramble conversation with Cordelia. That being said, copious amounts of jewellery are worn by the people not in an attempt to flaunt their wealth, though some do, but rather because most precious metals and jewels are believed to have certain healing or protective properties associated with them. For example, gold is believed to purify the soul, and lessen the feelings associated with trauma, whereas something like topaz is believed to ward off evil spirits. This extends to phases in life such as pregnancy, where women would be given charms or jewellery which have gemstones such as amazonite and carnelian—things which they believe promote fertility, and ease back pain respectively. Gold is also quite readily available in Plegia, and therefore the kingdom is quite wealthy—or, at least, wealthier than Ylisse and Regna Ferox--, as supported in-game through Basilio’s dialogue.
Colour also means just as much as metals and jewels, and almost all Plegians dress in certain colours deliberately, as there is a great deal of symbolism behind most of them. For example, red would be worn as it is associated with both regeneration and danger, white would represent purity or sacredness, black represents death and the afterlife, therefore life, yellow for indestructibility, and blue for rebirth, with colours such as purple bearing both the meanings of red and blue.
The wearing of slightly transparent material is also considered to be a sign of wealth in Plegian society, as it is hard to produce, and quite expensive to buy. Thus, only the rich can afford this sort of material, and one can easily discern the sort of background someone comes from by the transparency of their clothing, and how much of it they wear, though wearing gold is also an indicator of wealth as well.
An example of how these aspects ties together is how a majority of the soldiers in the Plegian army dress—with red, yellow and black clothing, along with golden accessories or gold-plated armour.
FAMILY
Family is a core component of Plegian culture, however the term can be used to refer to more than just one’s blood-relatives. One’s entire village in the kingdom is considered to be family in the sense that they expect everyone to help the others in times of strife without asking for something in return—that the generosity and kindness one would show to blood-relatives extends to those who live in the same village. Due to this, there is also an intricate system in place when it comes to marriage, where every third generation, a person is required to wed someone in one of two partner villages—something which is done not only to strengthen relationships between villages, but to also allow their populations time to influence variation. Hence, certain areas of Plegia have people which possess certain characteristics, such as skin colour, eye colour, hair colour, and blood.
The nuclear family is something which almost every single person in Plegia takes an immense amount of pride in, regardless of their position in society. Lineage is tracked through both parents of a child, regardless of gender, and extremely detailed records of each bloodline are kept within the family’s respective area. A child will often be trained in the field which a parent of the same gender currently follows at as young as five-years-old, though in the case of a single child, they will often be trained in both areas, so that the skills of the previous generation might not be lost. When the parents grow old, the children are expected to care for them—specifically, mothers, as they are often the main carers, though this is not always the case. Thea idea of Plegian families being important to one’s identity is supported by Tharja, who still writes to her family back in Plegia while she serves Ylisse—something which is mentioned in her and Kellam’s support.
In regards to raising infants, wet-nursing is very frowned down upon unless the child’s mother has passed away, abandoned them, or falls extremely ill. In fact, this mindset carries over to the higher members of Plegian society, and has worked its way into the Grimleal doctrine, commanding that the mother of the vessel is to raise the child without the aid of a wet-nurse. It is believed that if someone has a child, they are solely responsible for raising it; not handing them over to someone else.
FOOD
As said by Henry in a conversation with Gaius, Plegia does not have bountiful harvests, and this is due to the harsh environments within Plegia. That being said, this does not mean that they are starving or malnourished—rather, they rely on different crops for food as opposed to Ylisseans, simply because their climate cannot grow the same sort of vegetation. Sugar is obtained solely through trade, and therefore sweet foods are a rarity in Plegia, with the recipes for desserts being ones adapted from those of other kingdom's. Therefore, a majority of their food is savoury, which has encouraged people to look for means to improve the taste of their food, and create a variety of distinct flavours. The use of herbs and spices is extremely common in order to create dishes that can use the same vegetables, fruits or meats, but taste completely different from one another. There are also specific dishes which are made as offerings to gods such as Grima during rituals, as said by Henry, though these often do not taste that nice to humans at all, as they are made specifically to appeal to dragons.
Due to the fragility of balance in regards to food sources, Plegians have also developed extremely specific and convoluted rules which dictate what can be hunted or harvested, when and where. These times are indicated by natural cues, such as the blossoming of certain desert flowers, the presence of a certain native animal in a specific area, or the growing of another specific plant, and are enforced so that they have a sustainable food source that will last for as many generations as possible. Killing an animal, or picking a plant during a time when it is forbidden is considered to be a punishable crime.
RELIGION
The concept of having a board, polytheistic religion present in the fire emblem universe is something which is confirmed by Kaga himself in the developer’s notes for fe4, which talks about there being lower-tier gods, such as the twelve Crusaders, and then higher ones, which are “eternal ones indicated by the primal religions as world builders”. Due to the fact that the Jugdral games take place in the same world as awakening, this lore would also apply to their continent. In fact, Plegia having an overreaching, polytheistic religion is supported by the fact that Grimleal like Aversa, Tharja use the word ‘gods’, there are citizens within Plegia that do not worship Grima, and the concept of ‘fate’, which devout Grimleal like Validar clings to, is always mentioned and talked about as being a separate idea from Grima. There is also the fact that another Grimleal in-game, Chalard, refers to Grima as the ‘god of annihilation’ rather than being one which encompasses every aspect of life and death, implying that there might be other god-like figures which represent something else.
With all this in mind, Plegia is a theocracy which was originally founded on a broad, polytheistic religion which may or may not have been an amalgamation of various lands’ religions, as it is clear by awakening’s time, the inhabitants of Plegia are mostly like not descended from its indigenous people, and that a sect unknown during Marth’s era, but apparently existed before the fall of Thabes, has become the main faith of the kingdom, meaning that the religion within the land has changed drastically. This umbrella religion would consist of various gods which represent or are in charge of various aspects of the universe, whether they are dragons like Naga or human-like figures such as Yudu(Gran?), and would have been made to include Grima when the Grimleal made their way into whatever Plegia was at the time, and started gaining influence amongst the people, giving the fell dragon the title of the ‘god of annihilation’. This truly makes the Grimleal reflect their status as a cult or sect, as it is a branch off of the main religion which focuses solely on one of the many gods—an occurrence which has actually happened in the same society Plegia was based off of, where cults dedicated to a specific god or family of gods arose and controlled cities. The main faith of the kingdom reflects the cult which the ruler associates themselves with, and due to the fact that we can assume Validar and his ancestors have been ruling for a while, due to the ‘rightful king’ skill, this explains why and how the Grimleal managed to gain such an enormous amount of power in Plegia, and why it is the main religion, despite the fact that a term like ‘gods’ exists there, and that outer villages are unaffected by the cult’s influence. Likewise, this also means that there are other sects in Plegia which worship the other gods within that umbrella religion, though they would be miniscule in number due to the fact that following those faiths would be heavily frowned down upon if it is not the same as the ruler’s own. One belief which carries itself across every sect of this umbrella religion, even the Grimleal, is that dragons are superior to humans in every way possible.
In regards to the umbrella religion’s view on Grima specifically, the title given to them is self-explanatory—they are the deity whose revival will bring about the end of the world. That being said, however, it most likely does not stop there, as all Grimleal display a distinct lack of fear when it comes to death, which implies that there must be something in it for them after they pass away. Given the fact that Plegia is heavily based off of Ancient Egypt, we can assume that there must be some sort of life after death which is waiting for them—some sort of eternal utopia they will be reborn in, where the negative things in the world simply do not exist. When one then takes into account the fact that Risen exist, and despite their origins, are assumed by every character in awakening to be linked to Grima, it’s highly likely that the belief behind Grima is that they will bring about the end of the world, yes, but so that a new one can be made, and that its followers will be reborn alongside them. In reality, this is just Grima destroying everything, and creating Risen from the corpses of their followers—sacrificed or otherwise— as they please, but that is not something which is known to any of the people in Plegia. This gives the Grimleal a more believable reason to follow Grima, explains their intense devotion to them, and explains why they will gladly follow them, despite giving them names like ‘god of annihilation’, ‘evil dragon’, ‘fell dragon’, ‘breath of despair’, and so on.
MAGIC
Both dark and anima magic is taught in favour of other weapons simply due to the history behind it—of a divine dragon, Gotoh, being the one to teach humans how to wield such a thing, even if it partially goes against his original intentions sharing this knowledge in the first place. As dragons are held in such high regard within Plegia, an ability to wield magic of any kind immediately places someone higher on the social hierarchy than someone with little or no talent in the area, hence why a majority of the land’s army is composed of classes which utilise magic. It is also for this reason that most advancements in Plegia are magic-related, as utilising it for practical purposes is greatly encouraged, and is trusted more than other approaches to things. Most magic-wielding people are taught how to create talismans for a variety of purposes, supported in-game by Tharja on various accounts, whether it is for removing or replacing an aspect of someone’s personality, granting good luck, healing a wound, or other reasons. Curses and hexes fall into this category as well, however that is more geared towards finding other practical applications of dark magic, and while most have negative effects on their target, methods to produce ones with beneficial outcomes have been created. For example, why there are ones which will seriously harm or even kill people, ones to cure minor sicknesses, swap bodies, communicate with the dead, turn the caster invisible, evoke happiness, reflect curses back onto the curser, and alter memories have also been made. There is a catch, however, and it is mentioned by Tharja in her supports with Gregor—a curse cannot stick unless the curser knows the other person’s true name. Due to this, most Plegians will either introduce themselves with a fake name, or will only give their first—the full name of someone is almost never known by anyone other than family members, and someone speaking it another is considered to be the greatest expression of trust. This is why, despite wiping her memories completely, Validar gives Aversa a new name, and kills everyone who knew her—so that even if someone figured out what he did, no-one would ever be able to reverse the curse or reflect it back onto him, as not a single soul would know her true name.
There are also rituals and traditions one has to adhere to when training someone in magic, as they act like a rite of passage to the person learning them. One such tradition is mentioned in the game by Henry when he attempts to teach Ricken dark magic—where the mentor shares their energy with their protégé by taking their hands in their own, though this applies to all kinds of magic; not just dark. Due to the significance behind this, and the idea behind sharing power with another person, this is also a gesture that has gradually started being applied to many other events in life—such as a couple during the wedding ceremony as they recite their vows, which is a mandatory part of the event, a family or lover bidding a loved one farewell before they leave for war, as a wordless way of saying ‘I love you’, or as a means of wishing someone good luck. This is also where the concept of bonds in Plegian culture originates from, as it is believed that this gesture creates an unbreakable connection between two people. This is why parents and children, teachers and students, or couples who all specialise in wielding magic are often of the exact same power, or only differ slightly.
As to why dark magic is so closely related to the Grimleal cult, that is simply because it is brings about a sort of energy and power which closely relates to death and despair, which Grima represents, thus it is believed to be the only way, other than worship, to be close to that specific god.
LANGUAGE
Due to the size of Plegia, the varied backgrounds of those who formed the realm, and the number of sects born from the umbrella religion, the kingdom has one language, but a multitude of dialects—so much that someone from the south would not be able to understand anything aside from a few words when in the north, and vice-versa. The first-formed language of the kingdom is used in Plegia’s capital, and at the palace, being the trade language of the kingdom, and thus a common tongue for people regardless of their birthplace within the realm to use for communication. Still, a majority of dialects are very smooth and melodious, however are spoken at incredibly fast paces, making it hard for a non-native speaker to understand straight off the bat. While it is a primarily syllable-timed language, the dialects used in the far south, especially on the islands, are slightly more stress-timed, while the ones in the north are slightly more mora-timed, and it is for this reason why someone from one part of the kingdom will find it incredibly hard to understand someone from another, aside from the differences in words and pronunciation.
That being said, only those near the palace, or villages which act as trade ports for their overseas trading partners, know the language which Ylisseans and Valmese people primarily use.
#fire emblem#fire emblem awakening#plegia#grimleal#fe13#♛⊱⦃ ❝أقسى من الحجر❞ ⏤ {headcanon.} ⦄⊰♛#{Plegia heacanon}#{grimleal headcanon}#{okay to reblog}
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CanvasWatches: My Little Pony the Movie
Well, I’m obligated to write about this film, aren’t I? I like animation, light fantasy, world building, overthinking children’s entertainment, and I am a Brony of waxing and waning interest, so, sure, better actually get out to a theater for The Movie.
Luckily for my brother and I, my advice to attend a later screening (21:45) not only granted reprieve from children young and old, but also literally anyone else. We had the theater to ourselves.[1]
So I got to riff the commercials and talk during the movie. I… don’t know if my brother appreciates me doing that, or if he’s resigned himself to it just being how I am, because I do it constantly whenever it’s just the two of us watching. He’s never asked me to stop, though, so oh well.
Anyways, I went in with as little (non-show) information as possible, skipping commercials, early released songs, and the Prequel Comics, because I wanted to make sure the movie held up by it’s own merit as much as possible.
So, first, a quick overview of Canvas in relation to ponies!
I watched the first episode because the creator of El Goonish Shive had remarked about liking it, and I heard there was a reference to Doctor Who in the show. So, I downloaded the first episode off iTunes, because it was free, then bought the second because it wasn’t free, but the pilot’s story was incomplete. I thought it was okay, and would’ve left it there, but then Vulpin kept going, and I got swept up. We caught up to the release dates with Owl’s Well that Ends Well and have clung on since.
I wrote a couple fanfics, my first and only serious efforts in the field, and lovingly gazed upon the fandom as it grew.
In general, I say the show was at it’s best with Season Two, and has otherwise been uneven since. Some amazing episodes came later, but some luster was lost with the departure of Lauren Faust. I keep watching because nothing’s made me rage quit, and it’s been relatively easy to keep going through momentum.
Scootaloo is best pony.
Now I can talk about the movie.
My initial impression was ‘Oh boy, this is a little too well animated’. An odd complaint, but the improved lipflaps, more varied movements, and 2D animation on CG backgrounds was disorienting for my Flash-adjusted eyes. However, as I starting watching out for the many cameos[2] front loaded into Canterlot, I grew accustomed, and once the plot really kicks off, I was used to it.
The plot was essentially that of a Season Opener or Closer, with a couple points of character development carefully rolled back to allow conflict and reduce continuity lockout for parents and others unfamiliar with the franchise as it currently stands.
The movie opens with Twilight planning a “Friendship Festival” taking place in Canterlot. All the ponies are excited, it’s being headlined by Songbird Serenade, a character freshly introduced as if we’ve always known her, and voice by Sia, a performer I literally never heard of until she was announced to be guest starring in this movie, but she is apparently supposed to be some kind of draw?
Actually, I don’t know any of the big-name stars for this film, which I’m okay with, since I prefer ability over recognition.
Anyways, Twilight attempts to approach the other three princesses to get them to use their personal magics to improve the festival, but the other three are all “Look, Twilight, none of us have done anything of substance on screen, and we’re not going to start now.”
So instead Twilight goes and checks on how her friends are doing on preparations and give us a song.
It’s a nice song.
Then the Storm King’s forces invade!
Who is the Storm King? What is his motivation? How does he relate to ponies?
So this invading force is lead by Tempest Shadow and…
Look, I don’t know the deal with The Storm King, okay? I haven’t read the prequel comics yet, and the movie gives no direct backstory, only implying how things kind of are? And that would’ve been fine if they kept the Storm King off mic more often. But he’s given a presence, and is equal parts amusing and threatening.
Which puts him in an awkward position, narratively speaking, because he has too much personality to be a force of nature villain and too little history to be a strong narrative villain. Besides, Tempest does a good job of being the narrative villain, so the Storm King is just kind of poorly executed.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I liked his dialogue. He had some very funny lines, but it was poorly implemented. Maybe those lines should’ve been moved to Grubber to transform him from bad comedic relief (in both senses) into Tempest’s leash, reminding her about the bargain she and the Storm King have.
Tempest, meanwhile, was the actual looming threat, and was well written and given motivations. You understand, within the context of the movie, why she’s doing what she’s doing, and fans of the show know how devastating it would be for a unicorn to lose her horn.
Now, would I perhaps prefer they move away from the ‘rejected as a young pony, so screw everyone’ narrative they keep using to oppose Friendship? Sure. Maybe have some backstory where Tempest was part of a Celestia-sent brigade to combat the Storm King, only to be abandoned by her fellow soldiers. Bam! Reason to turn on Friendship, child-appropriate darkness, and a different narrative. Plus, that puts her in the hands of the Storm King within the scope of the movie and gives an opening for Celestia to offer a bit more exposition (and thus have an actual narrative role.)
Grubber is a bad character, and outside of the above recommendation of altering his and Tempest’s dynamic, I wish they’d drop him off the side of an airship. He’s just your usual ‘Minion who likes to eat’ character, with nothing added. Which is unfortunate, because My Little Pony’s been pretty good about taking old character tropes and spinning them into something new and interesting.
The Mane Six (plus Spike) are on their usual form. Pinkie Pie, being the pink one, acts as a sort of backup protagonist, pulling the narrative weight Twilight can’t. Rarity also gets her moment, as does tomboy Rainbow Dash, as a sort of spectrum of showing how you can be valuable regardless of your personal femininity. Applejack and Fluttershy are just there for support, which works. Not every pony needs a big song and dance.
Twilight is still uncertain about herself and her role as a princess,[4] and she nearly ruins everything by trying to steal a Macguffin while using Pinkie and the others as distraction. This is, of course, to set up the third act ‘Everyone mistrusts the hero’ conflict which the formula demands.
However, speaking to the skillful twisting of tropes, we get an onscreen acknowledgement with the great line of ‘It’s about time we talk to Twilight.’ This lampshades the cliche plot point, implies everypony was merely taking a moment to cool off and collect themselves, and justifies the event.
Of course, Twilight’s been captured by Tempest, and the villain tries to use Twilight’s sudden loneliness to turn her against Friendship, but Twilight never believes she’s been abandoned. It’s strongly implied that she knows her friends were always coming back, and they all just needed a healing moment.
So that’s a strong point in the movie’s favor.
The set-up for act three is full of good lampshade hanging. Applejack identifies Capper’s elegant speech as a means to hype the ponies back up, and once the full strike force is assembled, Spike makes a pointed comment that all their new friends are there, so they should stop waiting and get planning.
When the writing’s on point, it’s really on point.
That doesn’t mean I don’t have my usual complaints. This time, it’s in regards to consistency in world building.
So, the world of My Little Pony has drifted over the years, which is broadly fine, because art needs space to breath and transform, but at the same time, there are still boundaries and rules that the audience will pick up on and which need to be obeyed.
When the current generation started, Equestria was a quasi-medieval fantasy world, with limited technology. Lights were provided by fireflies, books appeared like parchment, trains had to be pulled by teams of ponies. This has been progressively dropped, and the Equestria we see is much more modern with a thin coat of pulp fantasy. I’m fine with this change, because it was gradual and occurred as a means to open narrative options. And computers still aren’t a thing, so that’s still a nice, subtle limitation to justify the use of magic.
Another gradual change I’m less happy with is allowing sticky hooves and prehensile tails. Originally, there was a strict ban on ponies being able to just pick things up with their hooves, and use of other bodies parts at least had to look reasonable. Then pegasi started to use their wings like hands, tails gained increased dexterity, and so on. Which means we lose a significant portion of the neat background details that showed how ponies make their technology operate.
Even Pinkie, who can be granted allowance for her Looney Tunes shenanigans, has also seen a drift in her abilities to keep up with these changes.
However, one (admittedly vague) law had remained intact until this movie: the nature of the sentient fauna. There are no humans in Equestria, and presumably the rest of the world (the actual nature of Equestria, geopolitically, is a headache I can’t begin to broach. Ponies, for the longest time, were the dominate species, the builders of society. Those creatures that were sentient outside of Ponyhood were either also hoofed creatures (who enjoy a confusing second-class citizenship that is rife for pondering), or classical mythological creature: Griffins, dragons, and the like. Those are the society and culture builders, and most are still quadruped. Hands are still an alien concept[5], and all other animals are as they are in our world (with a little cartoon intelligence for gags.)
But in the Movie there’s Capper, an anthropomorphic cat that stands at human height. No mythological origins, and capable of speech in opposition to Rarity’s own Opalescence and other cats we’ve seen in the series. He’s given no explanation or origin, and our main characters just accept him as is. And he has hands.
In fact, exploring the world beyond the Badlands just raises so many questions that don’t even get a cursory nod. Most of the residents (also vague anthropomorphic animals) seem broadly unaware of ponies which… fine, maybe Equestria has a closed borders policy, but their royalty literally raise the sun and moon. Equestria controls their own weather and nature.[6] Luna’s profile was literally shoved on the moon for a thousand years! How aren’t ponies a well known thing?
Then we meet some griffins, and they turn out to be bipedal, which not only breaks the implied canon of sentient races, but established canon on a preexisting race.
Now, I liked the plot and dialogue of all these characters, but the world beyond the Badlands shakes our preconceived notions of what this world is like. Which is bad. The regular audience has occupied the fiction’s world for seven years now. Like it or not, they’ve picked up on how things are supposed to work, and the movie’s breaking the rules.
Which would be okay. Rules exist so you think before you break them, but the movie isn’t thinking. It just tosses the rules aside without giving narrative weight to the act. Neither Twilight nor other ponies are confused by seeing a cat man suddenly fast-talking them. He looks out of place - and no other cat people are shown - so even in the context of the movie he looks alien, but nothing about it is explained.
I think that’s been the true reasoning behind my gradual deflating love of the franchise. The individual stories have been good, but the worldbuilding been breaking itself, and I dislike that inconsistency.
In summary: I liked the story of the movie, Tempest is an interesting character, but the worldbuilding shown makes me wish it were non-canon.
Guess I’ll just have to wait to see how it plays out with future episodes.
Kataal kataal.
[1] What do theaters do if no one comes to a screening? Do they still play the film to keep the system running, or do they let the projector rest?
[2] I, admittedly, cheered a little upon seeing Sepia Tock[3] hanging about.
[3] I am clinging to this interpretation until I die, try and stop me!
[4] As is everyone else, quite frankly. Why is Twilight a princess?
[5] My editor would like to point out Spike has hands, and Griffons use their fore talons in a hand like manner. However, those are referred to as claws and talons, and, besides, dragons are a rarity and Griffons are still quadrupedal.
[6] Which is why the Everfree Forest, which maintains itself, is such a scary oddity. It’s wild magic!
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Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns Localization Blog #6
Howdy, everybody! This is John with our final localization blog for Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns. The game comes out next Tuesday (2/28). Don’t miss out on your chance to preorder the game from select retailers to get the adorable capybara pocket plushie bonus, which I have had a lot of fun posing for our little “Capy and Bunny Adventures” comics over the past month. (Okay, sometimes it was a little embarrassing getting those photos.)
We just released a new trailer showing off the four Super Mario Bros. costumes that you can unlock in the game. We’ll also be streaming the game on our Twitch channel from 2:30 PM PST today. Stop by and ask us some questions.
youtube
Before I bury the lede any further, I’d like to update you all on the DLC for Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns. For more information on the patches released for free over the course of six months after launch in Japan, as well as our dilemma about whether or not to localize this content, see my previous blog.
We were really overwhelmed by the feedback we received from it. The patience and support of those who responded was encouraging to say the least, and we were grateful to hear all of your opinions, however you felt about the situation. One issue that came up on our forums that I’d like to address quickly is about the bug fixes that were included in the post-launch patches in Japan. Those fixes are all already included in the core game that we are releasing on February 28.
Now then, on to the big news: I’m happy to report that we have decided to localize and release the DLC in North America. I don’t have information on a release timeline or costs for you yet, but we’re eager to dive into translating and editing the text for this massive update. Stay tuned for updates in the months after the initial release.
Thanks again for all your feedback. It made our decision much easier. While the DLC is a ways off, until then we hope you enjoy Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns. Even without the post-launch DLC, it is still the biggest game in the storied history of the farm/life-sim series.
As this is our final planned pre-release localization blog, I wanted to give some of the other members of the XSEED staff who worked on Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns a chance to give their comments on the game. As I mentioned in our very first blog, this game had a massive amount of text that we spent months and months focusing on.
Here are our questionnaire respondents:
Danielle: QA tester and editor
Nathan: QA tester
John: Project lead
1. Who were your favorite character(s) to work on and why? Have any lines in particular made an impression on you?
John: It’s hard to choose, but I will say that I love the dynamics between all the Lulukoko characters. Some of my favorite text in the game are the conversations that will take place between 3-4 characters during certain festivals. The normal groups (Zahau-Caolila, Lotus-Mithra, Iluka-Siluka-Ludus) are great, but funny conversations happen when you mix those characters together. There’s a really great exchange between Lotus and Tototara.
2. What were your favorite changes and/or additions made to the game?
Danielle: Streamlined farming. Unlike in the previous game, harvested animal by-products and crops go straight into your inventory.Another feature I really like is the addition of actual dog/cat breeds. The previous game had about 4 different "breeds," and were mostly reskins. SoS: ToT has about 16 unique different breeds of dogs, and I have no idea how cat breeds work, but trust me when I say there's a lot more variety there. And last but not least, there's the new--and adorable--capybara!
3. Which of the three towns do you like the most, and why?
Danielle: Lulukoko hands down for me. I absolutely love locations with tropical and/or oceanside settings. The music for Lulukoko is one of my favorites in the game as well.
Nathan: Lulukoko. Generally speaking it had my favorite bunch of characters, shop hours that matched my playstyle, and the most expensive stuff on the ground for scavenging.
John: Tsuyukusa has my favorite music and some really beautiful scenery. The homes and shops are jam-packed with interesting decorations and knick-knacks from Japanese culture. All of those cultural references were difficult to localize, but I think they make the town so interesting for players.
Many of the decorations in Tsuyukusa are explained by the characters in dialogue.
4. Favorite bachelor/bachelorette? (Minor spoiler about a secret marriage candidate)
Danielle: Ludus. (Ford is pretty great too, though.)
Nathan: For the bachelors, I like Ludus, as he's a good dude that works hard and helps directly. As for the bachelorettes, it's a toss up between Siluka and Inari, though I may be biased as I spent a good deal of time with Siluka. Meanwhile, Inari is a god, so...
John: It’s a little weird seeing Inari referred to as a “bachelorette,” as we tried to keep the Tsuyukusa guardian’s text as gender-neutral as possible. (Though, ultimately, Inari will call him or herself your “husband” or “wife” in some scenes depending on your character’s gender. This is accurate to the Japanese text.)
Anyway, here in the office, Ludus is sort of everyone’s favorite because he’s so attractive and kind-hearted, but for me Ford is the funniest and sweetest bachelor. His response if you dump him just about broke my heart.
Iluka is a treasure. Komari was my choice when I originally played through the game in Japanese, and she’s definitely more my “type.” But Iluka’s sass just turned out so well in English.
To be fair to Iluka, most characters ask you to come back later if you talk to them while they’re eating.
5. Do you have a favorite non-farming SoS activity?
Danielle: Decorating my farmland (or house) is always fun. I also really enjoy creating all the different outfits.
Nathan: Mining for sure, GIVE ME ALL OF THE MONEY.
John: I love fishing in these games. There are so many different fish in Trio of Towns too; it seems like it could almost be its own game. Also, you no longer have to mash the A Button to reel your line in, which is gentler on my hands and my 3DS.
Fish alongside Lulukoko’s master angler, Zahau.
6. Which aspect of the game do you tend to focus on? The social or the farming?
Danielle: I'd say I probably focus about 60% on the social and 40% on the farming.
Nathan: I tend to do an equal amount of both, as I try to set up my farm to require as little attention as possible (and by that I mean planting trees). I do enjoy taking care of the animals though, especially my prize-winning cow: Horse.
John: I’m usually more interested in the social side. I’m always impressed by players who really micromanage their farms. (Like Nathan, who quickly became a fruit tree tycoon during his QA playthrough.)
7. Which festival would you most like to participate in IRL?
Danielle: The Beverage Bash. I like cooking (making drinks counts as cooking, right?), and I love tea even more, so getting together with a bunch of people to try and create a new drink concoction sounds like a ton of fun. I just hope people in real life have more common sense than to bring mayonnaise as an ingredient.
Nathan: Westown's Goddess Festival, because, let's be real here for a second, there's a giant pizza. Giant. Pizza.
John: The “stargazing” events in Westown and Lulukoko are nice. In Westown, you go up in a hot air balloon to look at the stars. In Lulukoko, you go out in a boat to admire bioluminescent “sea sparkles” in the ocean. (Tsuyukusa has a similar event based on the Japanese festival Tanabata.) The prospect of going up in a hot air balloon (Westown) without a trained pilot is less appealing the more I think about it, however.
The “Beverage Bash” event.
8. If you were a character in Trio of Towns, what would be your number one most loved and hated item?
Danielle:
Loved: Pumpkin Pie
Hated: Pickles
Nathan:
Loved: Black Coffee
Hated: Mushrooms, of any type
John: There are over 1,100 items in this game, so it was hard to decide.
Loved: Curry (all types)
Hated: Olive (Who even likes these?)
You would also lose friendship points with me if you shoved a cat in my face (allergies).
9. What features or changes would you like to see implemented in future games?
Danielle: The biggest feature I'd like to see the return of is the multi-floored mining system (as seen in some of the Wii-era games), as opposed to just the mining points.
Nathan: I'd love to see something along the lines of expeditions or fishing trips for rare fauna as pets, plants, or fish.
John: I would like the developers to bring back larger wilderness areas and even caves/mines to explore. That was the thing I missed most in Trio of Towns.
And, of course, it would be nice to finally have same-sex dating options.
Don’t swing too far back, now.
That’s all from us. We really hope you enjoy the game. Look for another entry starting with “Howdy, everybody” on this blog in a few months’ time.
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advent, power, and bodies that matter
an opening introduction to a series of Advent contemplations leading through Christmas, into Epiphany.
I have been thinking a lot about bodies this year. Bodies have been all over the headlines, so maybe you have been thinking a lot about bodies also. Maybe you have watched shaky phone footage of unarmed Black bodies being gunned down in the street. Maybe you have heard a lot about how powerful men have sexually assaulted bodies of women in their lives.
The human body is a site of great tension. Firstly, there is something sacred about human bodies. We frequently intuit that bodies are precious, deserving and requiring care, and it pains us so much to see bodies around us so disgracefully violated or brutalized. Secondly, however, there can be something really terrifying about bodies – bodies, which are capable of enacting this type of violent dominance over other bodies. Nuclear weapons are the result of human bodies as much as hospitals and schools are.
If one takes seriously the claims of rigorous science, then we can recognize that bodies were shaped by the time and space within which they evolved. The environment over thousands and millions of years have yielded human beings capable of great love and nurturing, but also human beings capable of great brutality and violence. The notion of ‘falleness’, to my mind, is an honest recognition of this human capacity for violence and cruelty, particularly in circumstances of highly unequal power.
Beyond the last million years of hominidal evolution, human bodies exist along an even larger timeline of cosmic processes, within an unimaginably enormous universe whose outer limits are accelerating farther and farther away beyond any distance we are likely to be capable of probing in the near future. The magnitude of time and space possibly gives us the impression that maybe there’s nothing much to fuss about when it comes to human bodies. Maybe we’ve just gotten carried away, and maybe our fixation on human bodies is a form of narcissism that simply has yet to be overcome.
But I think this is a failure to recognize that human bodies are a mysterious thread within an even more mysterious tapestry, which is biological life on this Earth. Sure we may speculate that biological life does likely exist elsewhere in this universe. But the fact that we have found it so difficult to encounter in the short time we’ve been exploring space as a species, does reveal that biological life is somewhat rare, in the sense that it composes a very tiny almost negligible proportion of the universe. Does its negligible size signify its negligible importance? Marilynne Robinson beautifully wrote:
“Say that we are a puff of warm breath in a very cold universe. By this kind of reckoning we are either immeasurably insignificant, or we are incalculably precious and interesting. I tend toward the second view. Scarcity is said to create value, after all. Of course, value is a meaningful concept only where there is relationship, someone to do the valuing.”
The “puff of warm breath” is tongue in cheek reference to James 4:14: “Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” Yet even with the demise of the human species in sight, or biological life as we know it, it is beautiful to contemplate that the miracle of biological life (including the emergence of human bodies) ever happened at all. In contrast to Ray Brassier’s sort of nihilism that believes that because nothing will endure, nothing is worth our time, John Caputo’s ’nihilism of grace’ sees nihilism as a gift, the very precarity and fragility from which life derives its value. It’s important precisely because it is so finite and rare. This finite nature of life provoked me to contemplate death last Advent.
So maybe what is often cynically mislabelled as anthropocentric narcissism is in fact touching on something important. Beyond just biological life, maybe the temporality of our solar system, in whatever duration it lasts for, is beautiful nonetheless. In all its imperfections as a mere blip in the vastness of time, it still permitted something as tiny but precious as human love to flourish.
But its not all roses out here. There’s a lot of suffering too. And if human love, in its tiny negligible existence within the vastness of the universe is radically precious and dare I say important, so then human suffering may be thought of as immensely important also.
For some people of faith, the portion of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun we currently inhabit is recognized as Advent. It is a time of waiting. Waiting in anticipation. An anticipation that dares to commit an act of imagination, and to host a world other than the one that is before us. To believe that another world is possible. This is a time that some people of faith contemplate Incarnation. That is, the embodiment of God’s love, peace and justice, on Earth. Both in the past, and in the future.
Yet ‘incarnation’ can be a sensitive topic. It’s of course not the place of Christianity to set the agenda for seasonal spiritual contemplation, nor to translate its religious grammar into the language of other faiths, as a way of explaining other faiths. There’s always a risk of subsuming another faith’s distinctiveness into the supposedly ‘universal’ meta-narrative of Christianity. I do feel though that what Christianity refers to when it speaks of incarnation is deeply related to themes of other faiths, particularly Judaism. (I have yet to read John Hick’s “The Metaphor of God Incarnate”, though I intend to read it next Advent. But I hope to avoid the approach Hick is known for in interfaith dialogue.) Incarnation more generally is about this rather old idea of God dwelling with us, an ever present theme in the Tanakh. So too, the ‘coming of the Messiah’ is a central theme in traditional Jewish faith.
Elie Wiesel, in his memoir “All Rivers Run to the Sea”, recounted a joke told by Martin Buber (although there seems to be some agreement that it’s an interfaith moratorium formulated by Wiesel himself that he projected back onto Buber):
“My good friends, what is the difference between you and me? Both of us, all of us believe, because we are religious, in the coming of the Messiah. You believe that the Messiah came, went back, and that you are waiting for Him for the second coming. We Jews believe He hasn’t come yet, but He will come. In other words, we are waiting. You for the second coming, we for the first coming. Let’s wait together.” After a pause, he said, “And when He will come, we will ask Him, have you been here before?” Said Buber, “I hope I will be behind Him and I will whisper in His ear, please do not answer.”
I don’t mean to place this fanciful story here to downplay the coercive force other faith groups often feel during the so-called ‘holiday season’. Slapping a new label on the festivities of this time of year (’happy holidays / ‘holy days’), does little to address the fact that Christianity (at least in its shallowest form, as a dominant cultural force of empire) has been allied with coercive power for centuries, and that the global economy in many ways is still largely structured around the Western Christian calendar. Tomoko Masuzawa has even shown how the category of ‘world religion’ has its roots in the fairly racist philological work of Christian supremicists, and continues to shape academia today.
Hauerwas and Willimon, in their seminal book Resident Aliens, write about one of the notable shifts away from this government-mandated Christianized culture:
“Sometime between 1960 and 1980, an old, inadequately conceived world ended, and a fresh, new world began. We do not mean to be overly dramatic… When and how did we change? Although it may sound trivial, one of us is tempted to date the shift sometime on a Sunday evening in 1963. Then, in Greenville, South Carolina, in defiance of the state’s time-honored blue laws, the Fox Theater opened on Sunday. Seven of us—regular attenders of the Methodist Youth Fellowship at Buncombe Street Church—made a pact to enter the front door of the church, be seen, then quietly slip out the back door and join John Wayne at the Fox… That evening has come to represent a watershed in the history of Christendom, South Carolina style. On that night, Greenville, South Carolina—the last pocket of resistance to secularity in the Western world—served notice that it would no longer be a prop for the church… Before the Fox Theater opened on Sunday, we could convince ourselves that, with an adapted and domesticated gospel, we could fit American values into a loosely Christian framework, and we could thereby be culturally significant. This approach to the world began in 313 (Constantine’s Edict of Milan) and, by our reckoning, ended in 1963.”
Hauerwas has been a prominent opponent of Christianity allying itself with what he perceives to be all illegitimate power. This movie theatre opening on Sunday offered a new opportunity for the Christian faith to divorce itself from the power of civil religion. The practice of Sabbath must be an intentional task, not one mandated by a coercive force from above (i.e. the civil religion of government). December 24-26 as a ‘Public Holiday’ and consumer capitalist festival might better be left as ‘Happy Holidays’, than as a festival bearing the name of poor peasant refugee child from the Middle East who grew up to speak of flowers clothed more beautifully than Solomon and critiqued the power systems of his day. Many Christians are rightly embarrassed that this time of year (full of rampant consumerism) is associated with Jesus. Jesus is the reason for this season of holiday and Boxing Day shopping hours that keep minimum wage employees away from their loved ones and Western consumer habits burdening more of our planet’s ecosystems? I really hope not.
Christmas has been co-opted by the powers that be, both governments and MNCs. One of the things that initially attracted me to Hauerwas was that he was a theologian that engaged seriously with the work of Foucault. Foucault was profoundly life-changing for me, and his theory of power-knowledge dynamics gave me a framework for understanding my religious upbringing. It critiqued not only my faith’s regimes of truth, but also the regimes of truth of ‘scientific rationalism’ and ‘secular modernity’. Hauerwas, in engaging with Foucault, has immense sensitivity to power. He wrote:
“From Foucault's perspective, the Panopticon is no less a disciplining of the body than torture. In some ways torture is less cruel because at least when you are tortured you know who has power over you. In contrast, the Panopticon is a machine in which the one whose body is subject to such an unrelenting gaze becomes the agent of their own subjection. Accordingly, the body so subjected becomes disciplined to be what the gaze of those in power desire without their power ever being made explicit.”
Associating Jesus with what has become the holiday season is a deeply contradictory endeavour. Colossians 2:15 reads: “And having disarmed the powers and authorities, [Jesus] made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”
This sensitivity to implicit power relations and disguised oppression is growing. There is an exciting level of consciousness emerging around us, and victims are gaining ground on publicly showing how their bodies were so unjustly violated and the disarming of oppressors is a continuing and arduous journey. The shift in political views I experienced in my own life is the result of many hardworking people who took the time to talk openly with me about these important problems of power.
The opening up of countless numbers of sexual-assault cases this year is a sign that there is an important growing awareness of the sacredness of our bodies. The feminist theologian Jane Schaberg, in her book The Illegitimacy of Jesus, made a carefully researched proposal that Mary was possibly raped by a Roman soldier, and Gospel writers like Matthew and Luke were aware of the so-called ‘illegitimacy’ of Jesus as they delicately put their texts together. As Jesus is often associated with Moses as leading a sort of Exodus from slavery, Schaberg’s speculation slightly resembles Freud’s theory that Moses’ father was Egyptian in “Moses and Monotheism”.
I have not read Schaberg’s book on this topic, but encountered a summary of it in the end-notes of a book by Peter Stevenson and Stephen L. Wright called “Preaching the Incarnation”. I want to be careful treading around an issue of such immense sensitivity, especially for my evangelical friends. Someone apparently lit Schaberg’s car on fire one night over her book, so this is obviously very controversial terrain.
Before even going into Schaberg’s argument, I want to point out that I believe, like many today, that historically Christian notions of ‘virginity’ are problematic in many ways, which I will not get into here. Contemplating the term virgin this week, I was thinking we would mind our language well and use the right words, to say: if Mary was raped, she did not have sex. She was raped. That is not sex, it is rape. Rape is not sex, it is violence.
In any case, it’s fairly well known that the original Hebrew word ‘almah’ in Isaiah just means ‘woman’ and not ‘virgin’, and the Septuagint translation brought in the ambiguous Greek term ‘parthenos’ which more often means ‘virgin’. Wright and Stevenson (in Preaching the Incarnation) point out that the citation of Isaiah 7:14′s “Behold a [parthenos/virgin/woman] shall conceive” should have an original meaning, even according to standards of Conservative theology, before it takes on its prophetic meaning as pointing to Jesus. So if one interprets the verse literally, in its original meaning, then Jesus’ ‘virgin’ birth could not be considered unique. Anyways, R.T. France (in his commentary on the Gospel of Matthew) suggests there is no clear semantic distinction between ‘almah’ and ‘parthenos.’ For example, after Dinah is raped in Genesis 34:2-4, she is still referred to as a ‘parthenos’ in the Septuagint.
Anyways, Schaberg’s case begins with Celsus, a second-century anti-Christian Greek philosopher whose work survives through excerpts cited in Origen’s refutations against his work “The True Word”. Celsus claimed that some Jews identified Jesus’ father as a Roman solder named Pantera. Schaberg’s proposition is that maybe Celsus was right. But for Schaberg, it’s unlikely that Mary’s encounter with the soldier was an affair (as Celsus puts it), but rather, given the colonial power dynamics, Mary was likelier raped by that Roman soldier. Schaberg explores an allusion Matthew makes to Deuteronomy 22:23-27, a law concerning the rape of a betrothed virgin which would have required Joseph to either distance himself from Mary or stone her. Schaberg, however is not rejecting the account of the Gospel writers, but interprets Isaiah 7:14’s “Behold a virgin shall conceive” to mean that a woman who is currently a virgin, will eventually become pregnant by natural means, and then conceive a son.
For more of Schaberg’s observations (including the four ‘disreputable’ women mentioned in Mary’s genealogy - e.g. Bathsheba, the reference of Jesus as the “Son of Mary” in Mark’s gospel, the parallel language between the Magnificat and Deuteronomy 22, and the silence from Paul and John’s gospel concerning the virgin birth) this Slate article written by the Episcopal priest Chloe Breyer is worth checking out.
While I understand that the majority of historical scholars believe Schaberg’s speculations to lack substantial evidence to bear any significant weight, I do think her work still functions as a wonderfully creative site for Midrashic contemplation.
Celsus claimed that Mary was convicted of adultery. It may very well be possible to imagine a young Jewish woman garnering a reputation as ‘seductress’ after being raped by a Roman soldier, finding herself being victim-blamed like so many of today’s survivors of rape and sexual assault. Can you picture the media pundits of Nazareth saying: Mary was obviously seducing this Roman soldier by wearing her shawl in this particular way, or was irresponsible for walking around a certain part of town at a certain time of day, or she could have resisted if she wanted to, she could have just kept her knees together, or she deserves sympathy but there’s nothing we can do but face the fact that she is ‘less valuable’ a human being now and does not deserve to ruin the reputation of a respectable man like Joseph. Even if one takes the traditional interpretation of the virgin birth at face value, one cannot deny that the talk going around town would not have been as much concern over Mary as a possible victim of rape, but rather over her ‘chastity’.
Jesus was raised by a mother who may have faced a sort of victim-blaming stigma all her life with the suspicious conception of Jesus. There was a meme I saw floating around feminist social media communities that fits so well with this idea that Jesus would have learnt well to be suspicious of victim-blamers, being raised by a mother of disreputable status. The meme said something along the lines of: Jesus didn’t blame women for their objectification by telling them what they should or should not wear, but he told his disciples that if their eye causes them to sin, they should pluck it out.
Jesus must have eventually understood the fear and trembling that his mother Mary felt as she faced potential stoning while carrying a baby she believed to be the Messiah. Kierkegaard called Mary a knight of faith because she could not explain her situation to anyone. It would just come across as absurd in such a patriarchal society. Sound familiar? How many victims of rape and sexual assault have felt like a Kierkegaardian knight of faith, resigned to silence, unable to explain the terrible burden they carry because it is beyond the comprehension of a sexist patriarchal world around them, yet still believing that they could one day do something to help other women never have to face the trauma they were confronted with in their own life. The #MeToo campaign has opened up something very important, though there’s still so much pain and hurt out there and so much more that needs to be done.
Advent to me is a yearning and expectation that all oppression shall cease. In a series of posts this Advent, I wish to continue some theological contemplations on incarnation. What implications do Advent and Christmas have for the way we treat bodies? What does it mean for Jesus to be a victim of state-sanctioned violence, as the Maccabean martyrs were, whom Jews remember during Hanukkah? And how does the expectation of Resurrection by Jewish martyrs tie these two faiths together in such a way by which sites of solidarity can be fostered in faith communities resisting the ways of empire, which so often degrade marginalized bodies? In yearning for a future where all oppression shall cease (i.e. all the sins of the World will be taken away), what ways are Incarnation and Atonement deeply entangled? What do the anthropomorphic sketches of God in the Tanakh have to do with incarnational ideas hanging around first-century Judaism?
I hope to explore some of these questions in the coming weeks, leading up to Epiphany. Please join me if you have a chance, and call me out on anything you feel is problematic. If anyone has read this far, I owe them a lot more than a fair hearing.
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