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zosonils · 3 years

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Crossover you say 👀

OKAY SO. SONIC COLOURS/MEGA MAN CROSSOVER

i don't have much in mind story wise, but i'm thinking it takes place under the same conditions as worlds collide, which i insist on believing also happened nearly identically offscreen in the game timeline because nobody can tell me otherwise. fairly basic setup of eggman and wily teaming up to cause problems on purpose and sonic and rock working together to stop them, and now there's wisps in the mix >:O i'm sure i could think up a fun excuse plot for why sonic colours happens twice and also mega man is here now, but mostly this was just an excuse to put the special interest in the hyperfixation and come up with some fun weapons for rock based on my first and favourite sonic game

each robot master is based on a wisp from either version of the original colours, which causes a little confusion given that you end up with two burst men and drill men but these ones have different EWN-XXX serial numbers and are entirely unrelated to their canon mega man counterparts. i haven't actually drawn the robot masters yet or thought up designs or personalities, just come up with their weapons and what stage they'd inhabit, but maybe i'll do that sometime. the robot masters are something like this

EWN-010 BURST MAN - weak to drill dash, gives bursting blaze, sweet mountain stage

EWN-011 ROCKET MAN - weak to cubic satellite, gives rocket jump, terminal velocity stage

EWN-012 DRILL MAN - weak to spike spin, gives drill dash, tropical resort stage

EWN-013 HOVER MAN - weak to rocket jump, gives hovering shockwave, starlight carnival stage

EWN-014 LASER MAN - weak to frenetic void, gives prism laser, aquarium park stage

EWN-015 CUBE MAN - weak to prism laser, gives cubic satellite, wii game land stage

EWN-016 VOID MAN - weak to bursting blaze, gives frenetic void, asteroid coaster stage

EWN-017 SPIKE MAN - weak to hovering shockwave, gives spike spin, planet wisp stage

i wrote up some really detailed information on how all the weapons work but i'll put that under a cut to prevent this post from getting too long! if you don't feel like reading massive paragraphs of game design ideas, here's the microsoft paint scribblings i did of all of them [sonic is there too]

BURSTING BLAZE

a chargeable attack that blasts out a sphere of fire to deal damage. charging it longer sends the fire out further and increases its damage output, but costs more weapon energy. without any charging it's a pretty standard low-range attack, but at maximum charge it functions as a screen nuke on par with the likes of rain flush, tornado blow, or astro crush. if rock takes damage while charging bursting blaze, he'll automatically release it at whatever charge level it was at when he got hit. in addition to the obvious usefulness of a fucking screen nuke, a less- or uncharged bursting blaze can be a handy way to quickly get some personal space in a tight situation.

cost: 1 unit when uncharged, 7 when fully charged [28 uses uncharged or 4 fully charged from a full gauge]. has five in-between charge levels costing 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 units from least to most powerful.

i came up with this name first because i wanted it to have blaze in it because i fucking love blaze the cat.

ROCKET JUMP

an explosion that launches rock much higher than a normal jump would take him, about the height of one screen. in addition to the explosion at the bottom dealing damage, rock's body deals contact damage until his upward momentum stops, which tears through enemies with low health or a weakness to rocket jump but doesn't protect him against bulkier foes or stage hazards. while he can still move left or right while rocketing upwards, the only way for rock to stop moving upwards is to either naturally run out of momentum, hit a ceiling, or take damage.

some platforms can only be reached by using rocket jump.

cost: 3 units per use [10 uses from a full gauge]

obviously a joke based on the rocket jump technique in a lot of video games, lmao. rock blows himself up and ragdolls so hard he clips out of the interstellar amusement park and sonic watches as he falls past every kill plane and into infinity forever

DRILL DASH

a dash attack slightly faster than the slide going straight down, sideways, or diagonally down-left or down-right, similar to the pile driver but shorter and without upwards reach. has fairly low attack power, equivalent to two mega buster shots, but pushes surviving enemies back, allowing them to be hit again and again with a chain of drill dashes. underwater, it moves significantly faster and further, and can be fired up as well as down, unlocking eight-directional dashing.

if rock hits a solid wall he'll bounce off of it, but if he hits certain types of dirt-like walls he'll drill into them, which can uncover helpful items like health and weapon refills and occasionally 1-ups or e-tanks [probably in scripted locations].

cost: 2 units per use [14 uses from a full gauge]

i've never played mighty no. 9 but i've seen footage of like the dash thingy he can do? because it probably looks kinda like that.

HOVERING SHOCKWAVE

fires a shockwave that doesn't hurt any more than a standard mega buster shot [unless the enemy in question is weak to it], but stuns most enemies and has a fairly decent range. if you fire it in midair and then hold down the attack button, rock's falling speed will decrease dramatically, and he'll continue to float until either he hits the ground, the attack button is released, or he takes damage. hovering will cost additional energy, and if hovering shockwave is used in midair it can't be used again until rock hits the ground at least once.

cost: 1.5 units per use [19 uses from a full gauge], plus an extra 3 units per second of hovering, for a total of a little under 9 seconds of hovering taking the initial shot into account.

this one's pretty directly lifted from the hover wispon in sonic forces.

PRISM LASER

a laser projectile that either bounces off or goes through anything it hits a set number of times, maybe three to five. if it destroys an enemy its movement is unchanged; if it hits a wall or an enemy that doesn't immediately die to it then it bounces instead. can be fired in all eight directions, but once fired its trajectory is out of the player's hands. basically imagine gemini laser, then imagine it being obscenely better in every conceivable way. best used in enclosed rooms where it can bounce around a lot and doesn't have much opportunity to get lost offscreen.

some rooms have prisms in them like the ones in colours that automatically redirect prism laser, guiding them to destroy enemies blocking paths and the like.

cost: 6 units per use [5 uses from a full gauge]

cyan laser was my favourite colour power when i was a little baby because haha bright colour funny sound go wheeee. prism laser is probably overpowered because of this bias lmao.

CUBIC SATELLITE

summons four [?] orbiting cubes that shield rock from one hit each. they deal damage to enemies they touch unless said enemy is immune to the power. standard shield weapon, blue cube is a lame overly situational gimmick and i couldn't think of anything better. rock can still fire and charge his mega buster while shielded, but obviously can't use any special weapons. every time a cube is destroyed, the remaining ones spin faster, looking something like the tubinaut badnik from sonic mania. that's just a visual effect i don't know what else to write here it's a shield weapon.

cost: 3.5 units per use [8 units from a full gauge]

i think i'd like shield weapons more if i knew how to use the attacking ones to actually attack. i used leaf shield about 3 times in mega man 2 and every time i flung it in the wrong direction and got hit anyway.

FRENETIC VOID

sucks in any enemies that rock is facing for as long as the attack button is held down, drawing them to a point just in front of him. when released, the blasters on his arms [which in this form morph to look like the purple frenzy mouth] crunch down in front of him, dealing slightly more damage than a charged mega buster shot to anything that's been pulled in close enough and knocking back anything that isn't destroyed. rock can't move while using frenetic void, and if anything hits him while he's vaccuuming he drops the move without the finishing bite or knockback. this move can also draw in most types of bullets, which are absorbed and disappear if they reach the void, or continue in whatever direction they were pulled in if the move ends before they get there.

cost: 3 units per use [10 units from a full gauge]

i thought it'd be cool to combine purple frenzy and violet void somehow. i used void for the robot master name because i believe in sonic colours ds port supremacy, but the decision was ultimately pretty arbitrary.

SPIKE SPIN

what top spin wishes it was. a close-range attack where spikes emerge from rock's body as he does a speen, giving him a somewhat bigger hitbox. when he hits an enemy, he bounces off of it in a manner similar to the way sonic bounces off of everything he hits. the move lasts as long as the attack button is held down, draining weapon energy over time, and rock can still walk and jump while speening. some projectiles will bounce off of spike spin [generally small bullets like those from mets or sniper joes will bounce off while anything stronger will still hurt], and holding the move makes rock immune to spikes, allowing him to walk over them safely until his weapon energy depletes.

some items may be tucked away in places that are difficult or impossible to reach without walking over spikes, requiring the use of spike spin to reach them.

cost: 4 units per second, for a total of 7 seconds of spinning from a full gauge. the first unit is depleted the moment the button is pressed so the move can't be scummed into lasting longer.

honestly now that i'm thinking about this i might change spike spin to act a little more like how pink spike spindashes, but i was overcome by a desire for justice for top man.

i don't know how to end this post lmao but i've been thinking about this crossover for days on end. i know damn well it's a pipe dream but right now i'm in just the right mode of hyperfixation that if sega and capcom announced a sonic/mega man crossover in a video game that isn't smash lmao i would ASCEND

#i had so much fun drawing those shitty microsoft paint mega men lmao #just fucking whatever #mega man #sonic the hedgehog #sonic colours #mega colours #that's what the .txt file i'm writing this all down in is called so that's what i'm tagging this crossover as in case i post about it again #i have a whole bunch of other miscellaneous ideas for how this'd go but the main thing was coming up with funni weapons #i could apologise for making such a long post but i am not going to i think. i used a readmore i have no excuse to feel bad about dash clog #can't wait for all the speedrunners to go for drill man first and spam drill dash for the entire game #sonic forces me to answer questions #aprofessionallurker

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kareofbears · 3 years

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plainly in truth, chapter 3/5

"Without you around, it's sorta like stuff is just kinda...bleh."

—

Or: hiding, confiding, and misguiding.

read on ao3 or below the cut :)

Ryuji grips the letter like it was silver and he was a werewolf in the full moon.

He picks it up, skims over the first line before putting it down beside him, feeling worse every time he does it, only able to read the fine-printed lettering from the flickering lamp post above him. The constant change in light would normally bug him, but he doesn’t really care about it now; it’s not like the words would change in his hand, and he’s long since needed to actually read it to know what it reads.

His feet dangle over the canal, enjoying the way a rush of adrenaline would go through him when he looks down into the deep waters. It’s late enough in the night that even with the city lights around him, he can’t gauge how deep it goes.

Soseikawa Park was only a five minute walk from Odori Park, but with the narrow river and steeped hills, Ryuji found it secluded enough to let himself sit. Breathe. Not exist, even for just a few minutes. It’s like having his own bedroom, except it smells faintly like a sewer and there’s an intersection about ten meters above where he sat underneath the overpass. If he can ignore the never-ending rumble of cars and trucks driving above him, it can almost be considered peaceful.

He lets himself fall back, the grass tickling the back of his neck and his spine screaming in relief. They’re heading out again in two days, which means more days of being in an inescapable RV surrounded by his best friends who are keeping an eye on him because they’re good people who don’t know how to mind their own fucking business.

Idly, he lets his hands pull and brings it to his face—blades of grass. He lets it get taken by the wind. After brief consideration, he shoves the letter back into his pocket before he can do the same thing to it.

He is so tired.

Blindly, he hits the vague area of where his pocket is and fishes out his phone, hitting the first speed dial before he can talk himself out of it. As two rings go by, he stupidly hopes that she doesn’t pick up, as if she hasn’t ever missed a phone call from him even when she’s at work.

The third ring gets cut off halfway through. “Ryu!”

Despite himself, he grins. “Hey, ma. Checking in for the weekly call.”

“I was just thinking about you,” she says, and he can hear the laundry machine run in the background. “I was wondering if you had eaten today.”

“Ma, you ain’t gotta worry about that kinda thing anymore. I’m a big boy now.”

“You’re breaking my heart!” He can almost see her, phone tucked in the crook of her neck, work-worn hands folding her laundry as fast as she can so as to not hold up the next person in line. “It doesn’t matter how big you are, you’re my boy. How can I not think about whether my boy is eating or not?”

“All I’ve done on this trip is eat, ma.”

“Oh, and Akira! How’s that handsome boy doing? Still taking the world by storm?”

That pulls a genuine laugh from him—he never needs to hold back when it comes to talking about Akira, at least. “You know it. He’s the only guy in the world who can stand toe-to-toe with me in chowing down. I swear, he’s slipping some of it under the table ‘cause he’s so damn fast. Forty seconds! Forty seconds to inhale an extra large beef bowl! Blows my mind, seriously.”

“Could never do anything in halves, can he?” she chuckles, before the quality of her voice shifts. “And are you enjoying yourself?”

He hesitates. “Yeah, of course. It’s a roadtrip across Japan, how can I not?”

“Good.” There’s some crackling over the receiver, and he guesses she’s probably adjusting the basket full of clothes on her hip. “That’s all I want to hear. As long as you’re happy, Ryu, I’m a happy old woman.”

Ryuji opens his mouth, ready to console her.

I’m always happy!

You worry too much, ma.

There’s nothing to worry about.

“Sorry, but,” he swallows thickly. “I think they’re calling for me? So—”

“Alright,” she says, and he might be imagining the disappointed tinge to it. “Call back when you can, okay sweetheart? I miss you.”

“I miss you too,” he clears his throat. “I love you, ma.”

“I love you too, Ryu.”

He hangs up, letting the phone slip out of his fingers. It lands hard on the flat grass

For a long moment, he just lays there, listening to the gentle lapping waves and cars honking with impatience of people who have somewhere to be. He tries to meditate for half a minute, with all the information he had learned from a couple of YouTube videos, and gives up, because of course he does. Squeezing his eyes shut, he can’t do anything about the creeping dread that’s in his stomach getting stronger, squeezing and squeezing until he feels sick. It’s like his insecurities are having this huge fight against each other, feeding off of one another until it gets too big for him to handle and all he can do is breathe and try to do something about it.

And he’s fucking sick of it—breathing. He’s sick of the stupid breathing techniques, sick of counting down from ten and waiting for his own heart to chill out because his brain won’t stop reminding him of everything he did wrong, of shit he’s still doing wrong because at least this way, nobody knows what he did was wrong. It’s just him that can point and laugh at himself, and that’s way better than having the world do it for him.

He doesn’t cry, because he’s not a crier. He’s the type of guy to throw a fist through drywood before shedding a tear, and he hates that about himself. Rather than do something that will actually help, Ryuji lays there, perfectly still. Listening. Waiting for a meteor to fall on him, or for the overpass to crash its entire weight on top of him.

Instead, he hears footsteps.

His heart rate slows by a fraction, and opens his eyes to meet gray ones. “Hey.”

“Hi,” Akira says, a smile in his voice. “How did you know it was me?”

Ryuji almost feels offended. He would know Akira by sound alone, the way his heels would click in the Metaverse. The way the balls of his feet would strike the earth, hardly muffled by grass or cheap sneakers or anything else as trivial. Ryuji would know he was there; no matter how blind he was with hatred for himself, his love for Akira would always guide him back to where he needs to be.

“Lucky guess.”

“One hell of a guess.” He plops down onto the grass and Ryuji lifts his head, allowing Akira to wiggle until he could use his lap as a pillow. “Your turn,” Akira says.

“My turn to what?”

“To ask me how I knew where you were.”

“Oh.” He lets his eyes slide shut again. “I kinda just assumed you could do that.”

“You assume too much of me sometimes.”

“I assume the right amount.” Ryuji refuses to shiver when he feels long fingers start to card through his hair. “You’re giving me goosebumps,” he sighs.

“That’s a good thing, I think.” The fingers pull away and he’s about to complain when he feels something gets thrown over his torso. “Here. You always end up forgetting to wear an extra layer when you go out like this.”

Ryuji rearranges Akira’s jacket over himself. “Sap.”

“You know it.” He resumes combing through his hair, and Ryuji lets himself relax, just a little. It’s strange—it’s hard as hell being around other people nowadays, and even though Akira can make him feel that sometimes, mostly it helps the eternal twisting of his stomach to settle.

“You’re good at that,” Ryuji mutters.

“Thank you. I’ve had plenty of practice with Morgana.” And just to make it worse, he uses a little bit of nail on his nape, sending electricity running down all the way to his fingertips.

His mouth twists unhappily. “Don’t do shit like that while talking about the cat, for the love of god.”

Akira does it again, like the little shit he is. “You still have that weird thing with your neck?”

“Quit it!” Ryuji slaps his thigh and he can’t muster much anger when he can feel Akira’s shoulders shake from silent laughter. “You’re not as funny as you think you are.”

“You’re right.” Gently, softly, like the world’s lightest feather, he feels lips brush his temple. “I’m funnier.”

His eyes open, and his entire vision is obscured by curly black hair and tender eyes. “You’re right,” he breathes. “You’re funnier.”

Akira bends down again, and Ryuji catches his lips, overflowing with something soft but unafraid, and it’s so good that Ryuji reaches for his cheek just to make it last a little bit longer.

When they break off, Akira kisses his temple again, this time on the left side. “Do you know what day it is?”

“Uh,” he scratches his head, brain a little fuzzy. “Tuesday?”

“It’s Wednesday, and I meant the date. It’s August tenth.”

“Okay?”

Akira thumbs at his collarbone. “I know this might be a little lame that I know it by heart, but I left Tokyo on March 19th. That would mean it’s been—”

“One hundred forty-four days since you moved away,” he finishes. “I know.”

Akira blinks, and then laughs, and Ryuji knows it’s an especially good one because sound actually comes out this time. “Yes,” he says, elated. “Exactly what I was thinking.”

“I told you dude, we’re really on that telepathy shit.”

“We really are.” A pause. “I miss you.”

He’s about to joke—I’m right here, you big dummy—but find that he just can’t. “I miss you too.”

They can’t say what they mean: I will miss you. Summer vacation doesn’t last forever, and two months will always be a hell of a lot shorter than the rest of the ten months that they’ll be apart. Somehow, he dreads seeing Akira gone, and he’ll dread seeing Akira back in Tokyo because it would mean that he’d actually have to see what Ryuji’s really like. Actively pushing away his best friend just so he doesn’t have to see his failures; doesn’t that just make him the worst piece of shit in the world?

There’s a gap, though. A little loophole. A crack in the timeline. A place where maybe he’s allowed to be a hollowed out version of happy; the now.

“Tomorrow’s our last day in Sapporo?”

“Yeah?” Akira replies, surprised at the change in tone.

“Which means Jail stuff is done, right? All your grocery shopping and Sophia Prime’s been ordered and packed up?”

“Yes,” he says, a lilt in his voice. “It’s all done.”

Ryuji sits up and faces him, reaching for his wrists, relishing in the heartbeat thumping against his palms. “Let’s do something. I don’t care what, but let’s do something. Eat at a diner, go to a museum, rob a bank, whatever.” He runs his thumb along the veins there, long since those bumps have been ingrained in his brain. “Let’s do something, just you and me.”

“Are you asking me out on a date, Sakamoto?” He has a cocky look in his eye, and Ryuji’s half-tempted to kiss him again just to wipe it clean off his face. “You know I’d follow you anywhere.”

He knows. That’s the scary part. Would Akira still follow someone he doesn’t know as well as he thinks he does? “I’ll get us lost,” he jokes.

Akira doesn’t laugh. “I’d rather be lost with you than learn to lose you.”

It’s been ages since he’s been flustered at anything Akira does, but he feels a rush of heat crawl up his neck. “I’ll—” Ryuji shakes his head, willing his embarrassment to go away. “Shit, uh—”

“I’ll pick where to go,” he interrupts, a little too smug for his liking. “I’d say I’ll pick you up at your place, but…”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re a comedian,” Ryuji rolls his eyes. “I’ll be ready whenever.”

“Fantastic.” Akira checks his phone, wincing. “It’s late.”

He grips his wrist tightly. “I know.”

Thankfully, he’s never needed to explain much to Akira. “Okay,” he says softly. “Ten more minutes?”

“Yeah.” He lets his eyes slide shut once more, letting out a breath. The world will keep spinning. His stomach will keep twisting. Time will keep marching on, but at least he has this. “Ten minutes sounds good.”

—

The first words that Futaba says as she enters the RV was: “Oh, hell.”

“Hello Futaba-chan, Yusuke-kun,” Haru greets cheerfully from the booth. “How was your shopping trip?”

“...Fine,” she replies, stepping aside to let him in, lugging a four-foot tall canvas in his arms that accidentally hits the ceiling. “Got a new Featherman action figure.”

“I got a canvas,” Yusuke answers from behind the wall of white. “Though I assume you can see that.”

“I can.” Her smile doesn’t falter, and it’s making the hair on Futaba’s nape rise like a nervous animal. “Quick question, since you both are here…”

Haru pulls a tote bag from underneath the table, and it’s so heavy that when she throws it on the table, her teacup nearly topples over. “Would you like to take a guess of what’s in this bag?”

A billion jokes pop into Futaba’s head, but both of them stay silent, terrified and confused. They both knew this was coming, but they didn’t expect her to be so forward about it.

“I suppose that’s a pretty strange question, I’m sorry. Let me try again.” She reaches in and pulls out thick, heavy textbooks, all brightly coloured and consist of beaming, diverse students on the front cover. “Care to tell me why you were both looking at cram books while we’re on our fun roadtrip?”

Yusuke pushes Futaba aside, eyes on the books and wide with shock. “You bought them?!” he exclaims.

“Wait—” Futaba hops repeatedly, trying to catch a glimpse from over his shoulder. “You bought all of them?”

“Of course.”

“But why?”

She thinks about it for a moment. “Hmm, think about it this way. If Akira’s in charge of the group as a whole, and Makoto’s in charge of the more analytical aspect of things, think of me as a somewhat stern yet loving parent who doesn’t quite know how to mind their own business.”

“I thought that was Ann’s job,” Futaba mutters, heart hammering in her chest.

“Now,” Haru leans forward, and as if to prove her role, speaks in a gentle tone. “I’m not mad at you. That would be ridiculous. But I saw you two looking at these books, and I know how expensive they can be, so I’ll give them to you.”

She blinks. “You would?”

“Absolutely!” Haru smiles wide. “On the condition that you tell me why you need them.”

Futaba and Yusuke exchange a glance, before Futaba makes a T with her hands. “Timeout!” she yells, dragging Yusuke by the collar out of the RV.

“What do we do?” he whispers once the door is shut. “It’s not as if we can tell her.”

“I don’t know, maybe we should?” she pushes up her glasses. “Damn, the things money can buy you. Our vow of silence is getting thrown out the window for two handfuls of yen.”

He looks her dead in the eyes. “I would tell the world my deepest secrets if it meant having lifetime access to a grocery store.”

“Don’t say that, you sellout!”

“I’m not selling out. My art already reveals the deepest portion of my soul, it’s not my fault that the common observers cannot pick up what I’m putting down.” He squints against the setting sun. “She’s waiting. What do we do?”

“Okay, okay, okay, just let me—” her mind whirrs rapidly, and for a second she really feels like Sophia. “Give me a second.”

“I have a suggestion,” he points at her. “If we’re not averse to lying, let’s tell them that you need them for school. You’re struggling with academics, you need a bit of outside help, so we took a look at the textbooks.”

“Good idea! Wait.” She frowns. “They’ll never buy it. Let’s say that you need them.”

“I’m at the top of my class!”

“But they don’t know that!” She balls her fists together, determined. “Okay, let’s do this.”

“I didn’t say yes to this.”

Futaba kicks the door open, making Haru pause wiping her spilt drink mid-stroke. “Inari’s struggling with his classes!”

“I—“ Yusuke stammers. “Yes,” he confirms. “I’m struggling with my classes. They’re mighty indeed, and even I find them difficult. I am...struggling.”

Haru looks at them doubtfully. “Yusuke is?”

“I am,” he answers as Futaba says, “He is.”

“Yusuke,” she repeats, gesturing to the neatly-stacked pile of textbooks on the table. “Is struggling with precalculus?”

They stare at her. “Yes,” Yusuke says, slowly. “I am struggling with previous calculus.”

“Out of curiosity, Yusuke,” Haru scratches her cheek. “Do you know what a parabola is?”

“Of course I do,” he replies with the wisdom of a thousand monks. “It’s a self-contradictory statement.”

“That’s a paradox,” Makoto corrects from the steering wheel.

“What the heck?” Futaba jumps a foot in the air. “Why are you here? Why were you hiding?”

“I like to sit here a few hours before we start another road trip,” she says, before glaring at them. “You two. Does this have to do with Ryuji?”

“T-timeout!”

Futaba makes a beeline to the door again, but Haru’s faster. She slips past them, standing in their way, perfect smile still in place. Sometimes Futaba forgets how strong she is in negotiations; her and Yusuke were probably tutorial levels compared to the upper management of Okumura Foods. “Answer her question, please.”

Yusuke sighs, tired. “You know what you’re asking for, don’t you? If we tell you what’s happening here, it would be breaking the trust of one of our teammates.”

“Yusuke!” Futaba hisses. “Are you really thinking about telling them? It’s not even our secret to tell.”

“No, it isn’t.” He makes eye contact with Makoto. “But she made a point. What would make us better friends: if we kept a secret to the grave while letting him suffer, or tell someone who can help even if it means being some sort of tattletale?”

“But…” she trails off, resolve crumbling. “Dude. It’s going to suck so much.”

“I know.” He pats her head, before moving to Ryuji’s backpack once more. “Don’t worry, I’m willing to take his anger if need be.” Yusuke gestures to the booth. “Everyone, take a seat. It’s about time this finally gets cleared up.”

Smoothing out the envelope in his hand, even more crumpled than when they had it last, he clears his throat, takes one last glance at Futaba to make sure. At her tentative nod, he begins to read its contents in a loud, clear voice.

When he finishes, they sit there, staring at the thick paper in silence.

“Oh my god,” Makoto breathes. “I knew it was bad, but—”

Haru shakes her head. “Not this bad. And he talked about it so much, but we didn’t even…” she glances down at the textbooks, idly rubbing its spine. “I didn’t think much of it.”

“None of us did,” Yusuke says. “But does that make it any better?”

They fall in silence again, but Futaba can hear the answer loud and clear. Hell no.

The door opens forcefully, pulling them out of their stupor.

“What’s up, my beloved friends!” Ann calls, shopping bags in tow. “God, I’m gonna miss Sapporo. Things here are so cheap compared to Tokyo, sheesh!” She sets them down, laughing when nobody says anything. “Jeez, what’s going on? Did I miss something?”

“Ann-chan,” Haru says carefully, all sense of cheer, for intimidation or otherwise, gone. “Take a seat. There’s something you should know.”

—

The Ferris wheel looms over them, blocking out most of the sunset behind it. “Nice,” Ryuji grins appreciatively. “I should’ve seen this one coming.”

“You should’ve,” Akira agrees, tugging him into the open carriage. He goes in willingly. “It was staring at you the whole time we’re in Sapporo. And besides, every romantic movie has a Ferris wheel scene, doesn’t it?”

“Oh yeah? Name one.”

“Death note.”

Ryuji makes a face, and Akira laughs. “Yeah, I know. Bad example.”

It’s a tight squeeze but they sit next to each other, ignoring the bench in front of them. The seats are hot, and even though it’s nearly evening, the heat barely eases up on them. Still, he finds himself pressing himself against Akira. He runs cold, much colder than Ryuji; narrow wrists are ice, prominent collarbones frost.

The two of them lean over the window, pointing out random scenery as if it were the first time they were seeing them. Restaurants, statues. Weird looking cars and flower beds. Decorated high rises and insects that fly by. It’s like they were tourists, or a retired couple who just want to travel the world. He’s never wanted to be old before, but Akira always has a way of making him change his mind.

Like clockwork—Ryuji makes a joke. Akira laughs. His heart feels lighter.

When he finds himself leaning against him, feet up on the bench, Akira wraps his arms around his shoulders unhesitatingly. Ryuji wonders if he can hear the way his heart thuds inside his bones. He wonders if he knows it's for him. The Ferris wheel stops, right at the very top, gently swaying like it were a giant cradle. They’re not very high up, but it’s far enough that he feels like he’s left the entire world behind.

Ryuji presses his lips against those wrists, relishing in the way he can feel the heartbeat increase. “You nervous?”

He can feel his head shake behind him. “I’m happy, I think,” Akira says in a hushed voice, like it was a secret, like it was a sin.

A breeze flows through, and Ryuji closes his eyes when lips press against just below his ear.

Would it be worth it to have a Palace? A Jail? Would it be worth it to lose himself, just to be in this moment for the rest of time?

Carefully, he flips himself sideways, just so he can press more of himself against Akira. The carriage rocks gently, and the metal bench underneath them is sharp and uncomfortable. Arms tighten around him. Chest to back, knee to knee, they couldn’t be closer, but Ryuji leans back, wanting nothing more than to bottle the rhythm of his breathing and the smell of his soap.

I’m happy, too, I think, he wants to say. If we stayed like this for the rest of our lives, until our skin is permanently tattooed into the hot steel and our bones are the only thing they take out of this bench because the rest of us had already rotted, then I’d be pretty damn happy.

Craning his neck backwards, Akira is already staring.

Then he’s kissing him—once, twice, again and again, and Ryuji realizes that something’s different. This wasn’t the kind of kiss he was used to. There was a desperate air to it, an urgent edge from both of them that neither was ready for. Stealing each other’s breath and giving it back; the cycle continues, the clock keeps ticking.

Ryuji pulls himself up, not breaking the kiss, cupping his cheek and soaking him in like a flower to the sun; an endless yearning, like he’d shrivel up and suffocate if it vanished. The sun framed Akira, and for a split second, he feels like he understands what Yusuke sees on a canvas.

When they part, foreheads leaning against each other, Ryuji lifts a trembling hand to wipe the tear that rolled down Akira’s cheek.

“What’s up?” he asks softly. “Is something wrong?”

“I feel like you’re a miracle, Ryuji.”

How do you respond to that? When the person who said it feels like they’re the one who’s magic, who’s too good to be true?

“Fuck miracles,” he says, pulling Akira in again.

—

The circuit felt like it ended too soon, but it’s night when they finally stepped off, holding hands and faces flushed. He hopes the ride operator doesn’t hate them, but he’s in too good of a mood to really complain.

Ryuji stops in his tracks when he sees who’s in front of them.

“Ann?” Akira questions, taken aback. Eyes dark and brows pulled close together, clutching her purse like a weapon of war—she looks like she’d just seen someone set an orphanage on fire.

Her voice is shockingly deep, gaze fixed on Ryuji. “I’m borrowing him for a second.”

Before either of them can say anything, Ann takes him by the bicep, and he can only glance at Akira before he’s dragged back into the Ferris wheel.

“Did you even pay—?”

“Don’t start,” she hisses, pushing him on the bench, hard. “Don’t you dare start, you damn liar.”

His blood runs cold. “What?”

No. That’s impossible.

“Don’t play dumb with me.” She shoves her hand in her bag and throws something rubber at him. “Do you know how long it took me to find a good one here? I spent my entire day in the shopping district—not looking for clothes, or shoes, or whatever the hell I thought would be fun. No, I spent our last day in Sapporo looking for that.”

Ryuji looks down at the hot compress in his hands, a lump in his throat.

“Because you weren’t doing anything to your knee,” she continues, jaw tight. “Despite me trying my best to help you get better. I thought that you must’ve been really fan-freaking-tastic at hiding the pain that you told me about. That I trusted was the truth because you’re one of my best friends and I trust you. I trust you with my life, my secrets—” Ann grits her teeth. “What the hell?”

“How did you find out?” he asks hoarsely.

She knows. If she knows, they could know. If they could know—

“Damn you, it doesn’t matter how I found out!” she throws her hands in the air, voice so hurt that it twists his insides impossibly tighter. “You think I would care? You think that this is important enough to lie to me about? Dammit, I don’t care that you—”

“Don’t say it,” he begs. “Please.”

“I don’t give a single shit that you failed second-year, Sakamoto!”

Her words ring against the steel walls, deafening.

Bile crawls up his esophagus, and he readies himself for another attack. But for some strange reason, his vision doesn’t blur. Instead, anger kicks in like it always does.

“You don’t care?” he asks, incredulous. “This doesn’t even have anything to do with you!”

“It does when you lie to me about it!” she yells back. “Do you not care about me? About your friends who would go to hell and back for you?”

“How dare you—!”

“You lied to me, you hid it from everyone else, you ignored our advice because it doesn’t mean shit to you.” She points a finger at him. “And look where that got you.”

“Shut up.”

“We all noticed, you know! Each and every one of us noticed that something was up, even the literal robot—”

“Shut the hell up, Ann.”

“And for what? All you accomplished was hurt our feelings, hold in yours, and keep it from the love of your life—”

Ryuji stands up, rocking the carriage and nearly toppling Ann off her feet.

“It’s because I fucking hate myself!”

She grips the barred window, eyes wide. They stare each other down for a few long moments, before the ride comes to an abrupt end. The door swings open, allowing a cheery greeting from the oblivious employee.

And then Ann sighs, shoulders deflating. “Come on,” she jerks her head to the door, before stepping out herself. “Let’s go.”

“What?” he asks, puzzled. “Where?”

“If we’re going to delve into the psyche of Sakamoto Ryuji, we might as well do it with some food in front of us.”

—

The cafe Ann takes him to is bright, filled with pastries and crowded with people—stools are pastel blue, baristas are wearing cute bowties, and each cup of coffee comes with an alarming amount of whipped cream on top. Sojiro would have a heart attack if he walked three kilometers of this place, but Ryuji’s glad that the resemblance is far and away than that of Leblanc.

The booth is pressed into the corner of it all; up against the window and far enough from the main bustle that they’d have to really put their all into it if they wanted to take their order. On one side sat Futaba, nervously tracing shapes on the window while Haru sits beside her. The opposite end has Yusuke and Makoto.

They all look up when they hear the bell chime, and Ryuji almost laughs. “It’s been a long ass time since I’ve seen you guys look so serious,” he remarks, sliding next to Makoto while Ann sits next to Haru. “Where’s the food at? Come on guys, food’s good for you.”

He raises a hand. “Excuse me! We’re ready!”

“Ryuji,” Futaba’s voice is brittle. “I—”

“Hold on shorty,” he reaches to pat her head, voice coming out soft. “We’ll get to that. I promise.”

A waiter comes, takes their drink order, and leaves. When he does, Yusuke places a heavy hand on the table. “I was the one who told everyone.”

“That’s not true!” Futaba cries out, and everyone jerks back in shock. “That’s bull! I’m the one who told him to go through your stuff ‘cause he was worried about you, but I’m the one who actually—”

“No, I’m the one at fault here,” Haru casts her gaze downwards. “It was really none of my business, but I forced these two to tell everyone here. I’m so sorry—”

Ryuji sighs. “Guys, it’s fine.” He’s met with an incredulous look. “Okay, it isn’t, but none of this is your fault, you know? I’m not mad.” His gaze shifts to Ann. “But you’re allowed to be mad at me. I know I shouldn’t have hidden it.”

She gives him a weighted look. “Then why did you do it?”

“Ann,” Makoto warns.

“No, I’m not budging on this.” She leans forward. “He lied to me. Lying doesn’t get you anywhere good. That was really stupid of you.”

“Ann!” Futaba cuts in, horrified.

“You’ve seen what happened with Shiho.” Ryuji flinches back like he’s been hit. He knows. Ann knows he knows. But she keeps going anyway. “She lied to me about what was happening, and I lied to her back. It kept going and going, and—” she snaps her fingers. “She’s gone from my life. For how long? I don’t know, maybe until we graduate. Maybe until her rehab ends. Maybe longer. Who knows? All I know is if we had just—talked, or—” Ann shakes her head, frustrated. “From the start. Tell us what happened. And afterwards, let us help you, or I swear to god I’m going to cry, and I know you can’t stand it when people cry.”

The silence is deafening, even with the clamor of people and voices around them.

Ryuji lets out a breath. “Yeah, alright.”

She raises an eyebrow. “You will?”

“I will,” he repeats, idly checking his pulse. Heart rate is a little quick, but in no danger of having another breakdown. “I’ll tell you everything.”

The waiter chooses that time to drop off their drinks; all cold except Haru, nursing a hot cup of tea. They definitely didn’t buy enough to justify the god-knows-how-long they’re going to spend here, but they’re just gonna have to suck it up.

“Alright,” he starts when they’re alone again. “We going from the start?”

“The very beginning,” Ann confirms.

With one last glance at his friends, he sighs, sits up straight, and flashes them the biggest grin he can muster:

“Hi,” he greets. “I’m Sakamoto Ryuji, and I failed my second-year of high school.”

No one’s expression shifts, not even an inch. He can’t help but be a little impressed. “You guys know that I’ve never been the greatest with books. Shit, screw greatest—I’ve ranked bottom five ever since I started middle school. Didn’t help that my leg got fucked to high heaven and everyone started hating me. Nearly dropped out a couple times. Had no one, really. Worst time in my life, hands down.

“So imagine this dumb little kid, middle of April, running into this guy.” Without meaning to, the grin shifts into something more genuine. “Good-looking dude, super smart, real charmer but you wouldn’t be able to tell just by lookin’ at him. And that guy saved my life. Ten, twenty, thirty times over. He was so great that the dumb kid obviously fell in love with him. But what’s even crazier is that the guy fell in love with the dumb little kid, too.

“Crazy, right? Sounds made up, but I promise it’s true.” He catches Futaba’s expression shift to exasperation. “I know, I can’t believe it either.”

“That’s not what I meant, you sap,” she says.

“Yeah, but that dumb little kid,” he explains. “Couldn’t believe it. Literally couldn’t believe it. Thinks that he struck the lottery, struck by damn lightning. I mean—” Ryuji laughs a little. “How can someone so amazing and cool be in love with such a moron? What made it worse…”

He gestures at all of them. “Was that the guy had so many people in his life who was also amazing. His social circle was made up of, and correct me if I’m wrong: a successful journalist, a politician, some dude from the mob, a random child who breaks gaming records on the daily, and I’m not even counting people from this goddamn table. So dumb little kid knows, he fucking knows that somehow, someway, he tricked the cool guy into falling in love with him. The kid sucked, no, sucks,” he corrects. “At everything. Can’t do anything worthwhile.”

“Ryuji…” Haru whispers.

“Almost done, I know it’s running on kinda long,” he promises. “So the dumb little kid became kinda obsessed with the group’s ‘activities’, and it’s obvious why he would, right? If he knows he’s not good enough for the guy he’s in love with, then he can at least try to be. But since he already sucked at school to begin with, dummy over here completely bailed on school and ended up flunking so bad that he failed an entire year.”

An entire year. An entire year.

It’s becoming harder and harder to breathe, but he’d rather get hit by a truck than lose it in front of so many people. Gritting his teeth, he does what he knows is bad, what every google search and YouTube video says you should not do—he pushes his feelings, far and hard away from himself, so far that it’s like it doesn’t even exist.

It works surprisingly well.

“And, uh—” Ryuji clears his throat. “He hid it. Because you know the one, single thing that’s worse than realizing you’re not good enough for the other person?”

No one answers. “Waiting for the day that they realize that you’re not good enough for them.”

“And that’s pretty much the bulk of it.” Reaching for his mug, he takes a sip of his lukewarm lemonade. Damn, he really did talk for a while. “I didn’t want to tell the rest of you because one, it’s really fucking embarrassing that I failed, and two—”

“Akira can’t know,” they all say in unison.

“Exactly, you guys get the point by now.” He drums his fingers against the table, trying to ignore the blatant gloom cast on all of their faces. “Question time starts now, if anyone wants to ask anything.”

Makoto opens her mouth, but he beats her to it. “If anyone even thinks about feeling pity, or be all ‘no, you’re smart actually!’, I am walking out of this cafe and I am not looking back.”

“What about summer school?” Makoto asks immediately. “If you didn’t want us to know, then you could’ve taken that without even telling us.”

“Summer school was never an option.”

“And why not?” she slaps her hand against the table. “It would’ve solved this entire situation!”

“Because Akira was coming home for the summer,” he says simply. “And I wanted to enjoy my time with him without this hanging over my head.”

Her jaw drops open. “But...that’s…”

“Stupid?” he offers. “Idiotic? Really dumb? Potentially throwing away my entire future? Yeah, I gotcha. Another part of it was that the thought of staying at Shujin for another minute makes me want to jump into traffic, if that helps make me look a little better in your mind, miss prez.”

Makoto’s expression of confusion freezes, taken aback by the harshness of his words. Ryuji cringes at himself. “Sorry.”

“No,” she says finally. “The fault is mine. I have no right to judge your actions, or to pretend I know what kind of stress is burdening you.” Hesitating, she asks, “May I request another question?”

“Shoot.”

“What were you going to do when we eventually go back to Tokyo?”

As expected of someone who went head-to-head against the ace detective in front of the entire school; her questions are brutal. “I don’t know, honestly. I was planning on ignoring the problem for now and just sort of,” he gestures vaguely. “Enjoy the summertime sun?”

“A moment,” Haru goes through her bag. “It’s a long story, but I have these—”

The second the books peek out of her tote, he recognizes the cover immediately. “Cram books? You bought some?”

“Yes!” she answers, mistaking his reaction for eagerness. “It’s a very small gesture, but I’d love for you to have them.”

“I—” he leans away from them, breath catching in his throat. “No.”

“No?” she blinks.

“Not now, senpai.” Trying out his new trick again, he forces his heart to slow down, forces his breathing to regulate again without any of the techniques, and forces himself not to feel any of the fear that he’d normally have to go through. It works, but barely. “I’m not—I don’t think I’m ready to deal with that yet.”

“That’s fine.” Haru puts them away, and as hard as he tries, he can still see how dejected she was. “I’ll hold on to them for you.”

“Thank you.” He glances around. “Any last takers? Q&A is almost up.”

“I have one,” Yusuke pipes up.

“Go for it.”

“How are you?” he asks genuinely.

Ryuji can’t help it—a laugh gets pulled out of him. “How am I?” he repeats.

“Yes. How are you?”

“Uh,” he laughs again. “Not good, man. Not good.”

Everyone startles when Ryuji stands abruptly. He slams down the rest of his lemonade, relieved at how it helps his parched throat. “Alrighty, that took a lot out of me! Let’s get out of here, I’m sick of being surrounded by fake coffee and poser cafe fanatics.”

“I’ll take care of the bill,” Haru says, following his lead and scooting out from the booth.

“What? No, come on. I don’t care how rich you are, at least let me pay half.”

“Ryuji.” She looks him dead in the eye. “I’ll take care of the bill.”

“...Yes ma’am.”

Slowly, they all start filing out, some exiting the cafe while Makoto goes to the till with Haru. Ryuji reaches for Ann’s elbow before she can leave. “Hey.”

Turning her head, it’s as if her lips were permanently stitched downwards. “Yeah?”

“I’m really sorry I lied to you,” he says, somber. “That was shitty, and it doesn’t matter what I’m going through—you can’t deal with lies. I get that. I won’t put you through that again.”

Ann kisses her palm before slapping it against his forehead. “You better not,” her voice drips in affection. “You said not to console you—”

“I did, and I meant it.”

“But I’m here for you,” she rubs his skin harder, and he winces at the chafing. “You know that, right? No matter how crazy the shit inside your head gets, I want you to talk to me.”

“I know it,” he says, not just because he wants the friction to ease up. “I know it now, for sure.”

“Good.” Ann releases him, and goes to join Haru and Makoto up front. “You might want to head out. Someone’s starting to make a fuss.”

“What?” he turns around, making direct eye contact with Futaba, nursing a blank expression on her face. “I see.”

The bell chimes once more when he steps out, relieved at the cool summer air that hits him. “Shorty,” he says in lieu of a greeting. “What’s good?”

“Here.” Ryuji glances down at her, who’s holding a familiar, now very-crumpled envelope between her fingers. It’s weird seeing her hold the letter announcing his failure like a bomb, but he understands the sentiment. “I had to show Ann because she wouldn’t believe me until I got some proof.”

“Thank you,” he says, shoving it in his pocket. “I’m not mad at you, you know.”

“I know you’re not.” She swallows and stares down at her shoes. Her laces were covered in little beads and stars, something he had bought for her during a weekend hangout once. “This isn’t me pitying you, or showering you with some kind of boohoo potion.”

She swallows again. “I failed my first year of high school. It was for a completely different reason—guilt for who I thought I killed rather than wanting to be something else. But I know. I know so much about what you’re going through.”

Futaba looks up, and his heart wrenches when he sees the tears in her eyes. “I’m so, so sorry if I made you sad, or that I kept calling you stupid back then,” she sobs. “I don’t mean it, and I’m so mean to you all of the time but I don’t mean any of it. I told everyone your secret because I wanted to—” she hiccups, and she pushes her glasses to the top of her head. “I wanted to give you your own version of what the Phantom Thieves did for me, but I reached out to you guys back then. No one forced me to do anything, but I took that choice away from you.”

He pulls her in his arms, and her tears are hot even through his shirt. “I know, Futaba,” he says, patting her head. “Thank you for taking care of me.”

She hits his chest weakly. “Me taking care of you?” she sniffs. “I’m literally the one crying right now.”

“Just for now though,” he shrugs. “Next time I cry, you’ll be the one handing me tissues, I swear.”

They stand there, the two of them standing in the middle of Sapporo while people give them weird looks—Futaba, unable to stop the tears from flowing down her cheeks, and Ryuji, refusing to ever let his emotions make things worse for everyone else again.

—

When they get back to the RV, each of them emotionally exhausted, Ryuji goes to kiss the top of Akira’s head. “Hi.”

“Hey,” Akira looks up from his card game with Morgana and Sophia. “You look like you had a wild night. Ann take you all somewhere fun?”

“Totally,” he says, sliding the letter back in his backpack. “Best night ever.”

“Take me next time. Sophia’s kicking our ass.”

“She is not!” Morgana denies, tail swishing. “Just a little,” he relents.

“I’m gonna get ready for bed,” Ryuji announces, hiking his backpack on his shoulders and heading out, before running into Ann outside.

“Oh my god,” she says, disturbed. “He really, really doesn’t know.”

“Yup,” he moves past her. “And we’re keeping it that way.”

#p5 #p5s #mine #fic tag #plainly in truth #ryuji sakamoto #akira kurusu #akiryu #pegoryu #ann takamaki #futaba sakura #persona 5 #persona 5 strikers #chapter three! *thumbs up*

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thelastspeecher · 4 years

Text

Spirit Touched - Chapter 4: Baby Badger-Viper

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 AO3

I actually updated on AO3 yesterday, but I was too lazy to post the new chapter here. So here’s the new chapter now. Chapter 5 won’t go up until after I move next week, though, because I’m going to have to focus on packing and whatnot.

Again, this fic is inspired by @muffinlance‘s fic Salvage and fanart that @agent-jaselin did of it. A component of this chapter is thanks to this art that jaselin did.

——————————————————————————————

Hakoda should have known that whatever Tuluk had to say was trouble. The crewman had come into his cabin while he was responding to letters from the Northern Fleet – without knocking.

“Chief?” Hakoda set his pen down.

“Yes?” he asked.

“The kid’s up the mast again.”

“The-” Hakoda’s eyes widened. “Zuko climbed the mast?” Tuluk nodded. “He’s four!” Though, now that Hakoda thought about it, Zuko’s current age wasn’t as much of an impediment as it would have been to someone else. This was, after all, the boy that had managed to bruise multiple crewmen while battling hypothermia. Hakoda got up from his desk and followed Tuluk onto the deck.

“You need to wear something!” Toklo called. True enough, Hakoda could just make out a very young boy, sitting on the crossbeam of the main mast.

“Tui and La, how did he get up there?” Hakoda breathed. Much of the crew had stopped to watch the spectacle of a toddler up very high, in a very precarious, very dangerous situation. Even those who were taking longer to warm up to Zuko were visibly concerned for his safety. The crewmen that had bonded with him, like Toklo, looked like they might have heart attacks.

“No!” Zuko shouted down to Toklo. His voice was petulant, but not in the way a prince would speak. He sounded every bit the toddler he was. “I won’t wear it!”

“It’s the only thing in your size, Zuko,” Bato argued. Hakoda walked to his second-in-command’s side.

“What happened?” Hakoda asked. Bato sighed and uncrossed his arms.

“The little brat won’t put on a coat.” Bato looked up the mast to shout again. “Do you want to get sick again?”

“Yes!” shrieked the small firebender.

“Son of a-” Bato rubbed his forehead.

“Why won’t he put on a coat?” Hakoda asked.

“The one he likes is still drying,” Toklo said. “We had to wash it earlier.” Washing it was the right move. The last Hakoda had seen of the coat, it was covered in messes that only a clumsy toddler could make.

“We got him another coat last time we docked,” Hakoda pointed out. Panuk snorted softly.

“Yeah, and he hates it.”

“Are you talking about me?” Zuko shouted. “That’s not nice!” Scattered snickers came from the crewmen.

“I’ll get him,” Hakoda said wearily.

For the second time, he climbed up the mast to retrieve a stubborn firebender. When he arrived at the crossbeam, Zuko glared at him.

“Zuko, you can’t stay up here.”

“Yes, I can!”

“No, you can’t.”

“Yes, I can!” Zuko said stubbornly. Hakoda sighed. He’d forgotten how difficult toddlers could be. After all, it had been a while since his children were this young, and up until now, Zuko had been on his best behavior.

“It’s not safe for you,” Hakoda said, forcing calm. Zuko glanced down at the deck uncertainly, then met his eyes again with that distinctive glower. But Hakoda had seen the brief flash of fear across the boy’s face. Zuko didn’t want to be up here any more than Hakoda wanted it. “You’re coming down with me.”

“No.” Zuko fidgeted. On a crossbeam. That a fall from would cause serious injuries. Hakoda fought the instinctual urge to grab the boy. He waited. Zuko clearly had more to say. “…I’m scared,” Zuko finally whimpered. “It’s taller than before.”

“Well, you’re shorter than before,” Hakoda pointed out. Zuko fidgeted again. “I’ll carry you down, okay?” After a moment, Zuko bobbed his head. He scooted closer to Hakoda, who scooped him into one arm, stifling a sigh of relief. Zuko buried his face into Hakoda’s shirt, hiding from the height or the eyes of the crewmen, Hakoda wasn’t sure.

Once back on the deck, Hakoda set the boy down. This incident with the mast was vastly different from the first; for one, the boy shivering in the cold wind looked nothing like the proud prince they’d fished from the sea. With his blue clothes drying, Zuko was in his green Earth Kingdom attire again. His hair, which Hakoda felt certain grew faster than normal, was tied back in the traditional wolf’s tail. It took the shortest amount of time of any hairstyles the crew knew, and Zuko was too fidgety to sit still for a longer one.

No, Zuko didn’t look like a prince. He looked like a refugee. Like one of the orphans that picked up a heritage from any adult willing to help them, and as a result, blended many backgrounds into one.

It wasn’t entirely inaccurate, Hakoda considered, to think of the former Fire Nation Prince as a refugee.

“Put on your coat,” Hakoda instructed Zuko, pushing away his musings. Zuko scowled.

“N-n-no,” he said, his teeth chattering from the cold.

“Wearing a coat you dislike is preferable to catching your death,” Hakoda said shortly. Zuko opened his mouth like he was going to argue, but closed it again. He nodded reluctantly. Toklo, who had been standing nearby with said detested coat in his hands, moved forward and draped it over Zuko’s shoulders.

“I can put it on myself,” Zuko whined as Toklo busily dressed him.

“I’m just helping you with the buttons,” Toklo chirped, buttoning up the coat. He pulled the hood over Zuko’s head. “There! Now you can stop shivering.” Now that the coat was on, Hakoda could see why the boy hated it.

“It looks even better than I thought it would,” Bato said, not bothering to hide the glee in his voice. “We’d better keep you away from the birds. They might think you’re a predator.” Zuko scowled.

“Of course you like it, you bought it,” he mumbled. Bato grinned. The coat was one made for children that enjoyed dressing up in costumes. It had ears on the hood and a tail on the back. Overall, it brought to mind a simplified version of an animal Hakoda had heard of, but had not seen.

“You make quite the fierce pygmy puma,” Hakoda remarked.

Zuko pulled the hood further down his face, pouting.

-----

“He’s here, Chief,” Aake rumbled as he walked onto the deck, carrying Zuko over his shoulder.

“Put me down, put me down!” Zuko shrieked, kicking his legs ineffectually. “I don’t need a nap!”

“You sound just like Sitka when he gets overtired,” Aake said. “That’s a sign that you do need a nap.”

“No!” Zuko whined. Aake handed the squirming toddler to Hakoda.

“Zuko, we’ve been over this,” Hakoda said wearily. Zuko wriggled fiercely in Hakoda’s arms. A few sparks burst into life, meeting Hakoda’s skin and causing him to instinctively drop the toddler. Unlike the first time he’d fallen to the deck, Zuko didn’t stay quiet. He burst into tears.

“What is going on with him lately?” Panuk muttered.

“He’s overtired, for one thing,” Aake said. Hakoda picked Zuko up again and brought him to the infirmary, ignoring the boy’s crying. “Toddlers always get worse when they need a nap.”

“Yeah, but he’s been acting out even when he’s not tired,” Toklo pointed out. Aake shrugged.

“Maybe he’s given up on pretending to be a teenager.”

-----

It took a long time for Zuko to calm down. The moment he did, he fell asleep, exhausted from his temper tantrum. Kustaa shook his head.

“It’s back to being the baby badger-viper you were when you first joined us, huh?” he asked the sleeping boy. Zuko snored in response. A thin line of drool dribbled down his cheek. “At least you’re too small to bruise us every time you throw a fit.” Zuko snored again.

Satisfied that his young charge wouldn’t wake up for some time, Kustaa took out the book he’d been given by Healer Yugoda. It was a record of every known instance the Northern Water Tribe had of someone being spirit touched. Hopefully, he could find something in it to illuminate what had happened to Zuko. He sat down at his desk and began to read.

Yugoda’s book was very, very detailed. It included names that Kustaa half-remembered and others that he had never heard before, tales from both poles, ancient legends, and even recent instances, such as the Moon Spirit saving the life of a Northern Tribe Princess.

The reasons spirits intervened in mortal affairs were varied, but a common one was for personal growth. Spirits, despite being immortal, could be impatient with the pace of human development. Any human that had been marked as having a significant destiny was watched closely. Should that human dawdle on their journey, a spirit might intervene.

Kustaa wasn’t too familiar with Fire Nation customs, but he had heard that the royal family were thought of as being blessed by the Sun Spirit, Agni. Zuko, a Fire Nation Prince, would undoubtedly have a destiny the spirits might take interest in. It seemed most likely that Zuko had been reverted to a child as some manner of speeding his journey. After all, the other frequent cause of a spirit intervening – to save a life – didn’t apply. Zuko had been hale and hearty the day before he woke up as a toddler.

Unfortunately, there were no records that Kustaa could find of spirits returning someone’s youth. Which dashed the hope that he might be able to figure out whether Zuko’s change in behavior was as troubling as it seemed. Zuko didn’t seem to notice, but the rest of the crew had picked up on the firebender’s increasingly frequent meltdowns, immature speech patterns, and juvenile reactions.

He could be upset about something, and slipping into more age-appropriate behavior as a coping mechanism. It could be a delayed effect of this specific spiritual intervention. Or even an effect that only happens after being in a spirit touched state for an extended period of time. Maybe it’s as some crew are suggesting, that he’s given up hope of returning to his proper age, and as such, opted to give up acting as if he were that age.

With a soft sigh, Kustaa closed the book. There were too many possibilities, and he wouldn’t be able to narrow them down unless Zuko opened up.

Fat chance of that happening. There was faint stirring from Zuko’s furs. Kustaa looked over. A small face popped up.

“Did you enjoy your nap, nephew?” Kustaa asked pleasantly. Zuko yawned widely and stretched. He nodded. “Good.” A sudden stricken look crossed Zuko’s face.

“Um…” Zuko fidgeted. “Can- can I stay in here for a while?” he asked sheepishly. Kustaa raised an eyebrow. “I…I behaved poorly earlier,” Zuko mumbled. After he’d let Zuko wallow for a moment, Kustaa nodded.

“I have some herbs that need sorting. If you’d like, you can do that.” Zuko beamed. Kustaa fought back a smile in return.

The kid was a beast when he was upset, but far more endearing than he had any right being.

Like most young children.

-----

Hakoda browsed the selection of the store, in his peripheral, keeping an eye on Zuko. The first few towns, he hadn’t been the only golden-eyed child, but as they progressed down the coast, his obvious Fire Nation heritage turned more and more heads. Luckily, any glares sent Zuko’s way were replaced by sheepish looks once they saw his scar. The fact that Zuko preferred warm clothing, and thus dressed in Water Tribe attire more often, helped as well. But Hakoda remained on edge.

Someone tapped on Hakoda’s shoulder. He turned.

“Excuse me, sir, but is he your son?” asked the woman who had approached him. She pointed at Zuko, who was ogling a display of exotic spices. Hakoda nodded. “Ah.” A sympathetic expression settled on the woman’s face. “It was very kind of you to keep him.”

Hakoda knew what the woman was implying. It was the lie he’d given over and over, that Zuko was a war bastard. But the lie suddenly tasted bitter. He’d seen the golden-eyed street urchins. He knew that war bastards weren’t always kept. Still, Hakoda couldn’t shake loose the dirty feeling that had come over him, at the suggestion that a mixed-blood child growing up in a home was an anomaly, not the norm.

“Of course I kept him,” Hakoda said softly. “He’s my son, regardless of his parentage.” The woman smiled. Zuko stood on his tiptoes, reaching for a bright red spice. “Nuktuk.” Zuko spun around. The woman Hakoda was talking to let out a soft gasp. “If you want to get a closer look at something, ask and I’ll get it for you.” Zuko scowled. “We can’t have you knocking things over again.” Zuko nodded reluctantly. Hakoda walked over. “What did you want to look at?”

“That,” Zuko mumbled, pointing out the red spice. Hakoda handed it to him.

“This?”

“Yeah.” Zuko stared intently at the small bottle. According to the label, it contained ground chilis and fire flakes. “I like this.”

“Do you want it?” Hakoda probed. After a moment, Zuko nodded. “Then ask.”

“Can I have it?” Zuko asked quietly. Hakoda raised an eyebrow. “Please?” Hakoda nodded.

“Since you asked so nicely…” Zuko handed Hakoda the bottle, already brimming with excitement. “You can keep looking around, but remember to be careful.” Zuko nodded. He toddled over to a wall of jars containing pickled vegetables. Hakoda turned to the woman he’d been speaking with. Horror filled her eyes.

“I’ve seen burns on refugees before, but never something that bad on someone so young,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.” Hakoda paused for a moment, trying to figure out how to respond.

“Thank you. But it’s something we’ve done our best to move past. Dwelling on it only makes it worse,” he said diplomatically. The woman shook her head, still visibly disturbed. She walked over to Zuko and crouched next to him, speaking to him in a low voice.

Hakoda watched for a few moments, nervous that Zuko might say or do something that made it obvious he wasn’t a regular toddler. But the woman didn’t seem perturbed, so he resumed shopping. The woman eventually left Zuko’s side and went up to the register. She stopped by Zuko again on her way out of the shop.

Hakoda brought the supplies up to the register. Zuko sidled over to him, a large stuffed animal turtle duck in his arms.

“That thing’s almost as big as you,” Hakoda remarked. Zuko scowled and hugged the toy tighter. “I can’t buy it for you, you know.”

“Not a problem, sir,” said the cashier, counting out Hakoda’s change. “Lily got it for him.”

“The woman that was in here earlier?” Hakoda asked. The cashier nodded.

“Yup. She’s got a soft spot for refugee kids.” The cashier shook his head. “It’s a shame what good people like you and your family have to deal with. Leaving your life behind, taking only the barest of necessities…”

“It’s war,” Hakoda said dryly. The cashier handed Hakoda his change.

“That it is.”

-----

Zuko’s poor behavior began to die down after that stop. His stuffed turtle duck came with him almost everywhere. It reminded Hakoda of the blanket Sokka had been overly attached to as a child.

“Who would’ve thought the kid just needed a toy?” Bato remarked. Some of the men were training on the deck. Zuko was watching, heckling those he thought could do better. His sharp words were undercut by how tightly he hugged his stuffed animal.

“A complete stranger in a store,” Hakoda said softly.

“You mean the woman that bought it for him?”

“Yes. She was under the impression we were refugees whose only real possessions were the clothes on our backs.”

“Huh. Well, with Zuko, that’s actually pretty accurate.”

“Exactly.” Hakoda watched Zuko tease Ranalok for losing a sparring match. “I don’t think Zuko qualifies as a refugee, but he’s pretty close to one. His world’s been turned upside down multiple times. I can’t believe I didn’t think of giving him a toy or blanket or-”

“Hakoda, he’s been trying to act like a teenager for most of his time as a kid,” Bato pointed out. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. The good news is that the kid’s finally calming down again.”

“We never did find out why he started acting up.”

“Don’t look a gift ostrich-horse in the mouth,” Bato said with a shrug. Hakoda didn’t respond. Zuko yawned widely. Hakoda walked over.

“Zuko, would you come with me?” Hakoda asked softly. Zuko nodded. He followed Hakoda into his cabin. Hakoda lifted the boy onto the chair opposite his desk, then sat down. Zuko looked at him, his eyes getting slightly bleary from tiredness.

“What is it, Chief?” Zuko asked. Hakoda steepled his fingers.

“I want to talk about your behavior.” That shocked him out of any sleepiness he might have had. Zuko straightened, eyes wide with fear. “Before you say anything, I’m not punishing you. You’ve been very well-behaved since we last docked.” Zuko relaxed slightly. “But for a rather long time, you were not.”

“I’m sorry,” Zuko mumbled.

“I don’t want an apology. I’m just wondering if you could share with me the reason,” Hakoda said. Zuko squeezed his stuffed turtle duck. “After we parted ways with the Northerners, you began acting in ways you hadn’t before. Why?”

“Why are you asking me now?” Zuko mumbled. “You should have asked while I was misbehaving.”

“Do you remember how you refused to cooperate with something as simple as taking a nap?” Hakoda asked. Zuko reddened. He nodded. “That’s why I didn’t ask then. I’m not going to judge you. But if you know why you were behaving so poorly-”

“I was upset,” Zuko blurted out. Hakoda waited. The boy didn’t say anything else.

“Why were you upset?” Hakoda prodded gently.

“Uncle,” Zuko mumbled. He squeezed his toy again. “I…miss him.”

“Do you want to see him?”

“Yes. No. I-” Zuko looked away. “The spirits cursed me, and I don’t know why, and Uncle cares too much, and he’d ask questions I don’t know how to answer, and-” Hakoda held up a hand. Zuko fell silent.

“You were conflicted,” he said. Zuko nodded. “You want to see your uncle, but you’re worried how the reunion might go.” Zuko nodded again. “You could have told us.”

“No. I’m already four. I don’t need any more indignities thrust upon me.”

“Zuko, when something troubles you so much that it affects your behavior, it’s something you need to share,” Hakoda said patiently. Zuko scowled. Hakoda felt like he was back in time, trying to convince Sokka to talk things out before escalating to a fight. “Are you better now?” The young firebender blinked in surprise, clearly taken aback by the apparent change in topic.

“Sort of. I mean, I still miss Uncle and feel…conflicted,” Zuko confessed. “But it’s not as bad now.” He looked down at his stuffed animal. “I had one like this before. Lu Ten gave it to me.”

“Lu Ten?”

“My cousin. He- he died during the Siege of Ba Sing Se.”

“Ah,” Hakoda said softly. Zuko looked at him expectantly. Hakoda raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”

“Am I excused?” Zuko asked. Hakoda nodded. Zuko hopped off the chair and rushed out of the cabin. Hakoda leaned back.

Despite all his protests to the contrary, he’s just a boy. A boy that feels a bit safer when he has something of his own to cuddle. Hakoda grimaced. I can’t tell Toklo and Panuk that toys are apparently the key to getting Zuko to open up. They’ll bury him in stuffed animals.

-----

“Zuko.” Zuko sat bolt upright. He looked over at Kustaa. The healer was still fast asleep. Wondering if he’d imagined it, Zuko laid back down. “Zuko.”

Who’s saying that? Zuko fought free of his pile of furs. He slipped on a coat to protect himself against the night wind and snuck onto the deck as quietly as possible. The night shift did their chores, not paying any attention to the toddler padding past them. Something guided Zuko’s feet to the edge of the ship. He clambered onto the railing, ignoring Hakoda’s voice in the back of his head telling him to stop climbing things.

The full moon shone in the sky. Its mirror image on the still ocean was just as bright. Zuko cocked his head curiously at it. Normally, he could feel the influence of the moon decreasing his bending capability. But tonight, he didn’t feel stifled.

It’s probably because my bending is even weaker than usual right now. Zuko tilted his head back to look up at the stars. A memory flashed in his mind: the first time he’d seen the spirit lights in the South Pole. Uncle had been thrilled and dragged Zuko out of bed to watch. He blinked, and the memory faded. No colorful ribbons split the sky in two. Stars scattered across the heavens like they had been spilled from a jar. The moon hung heavy. Zuko sighed. I should go back to bed.

“Not yet, Prince Zuko.”

“Just Zuko,” Zuko said instinctively. His eyes widened. A figure began to form out of the moon. A young woman, about the age he’d been before the spirits cursed him. She smiled sweetly.

“Not cursed, Prince Zuko. Blessed,” she said. Her voice echoed across the waves. She floated closer. “And why would I not call you Prince? It is your title.”

“Not- not anymore,” Zuko stammered. He resisted the urge to fidget. Clearly, he was in the presence of a spirit. He had to be on his best behavior. The spirit settled next to him on the railing. Zuko winced slightly; her bright glow hurt his bad eye. Her eyes widened. The glow surrounding her dimmed from the force of the full moon to a soft foxfire.

“I apologize,” she said. “This is the first time I’m really acting as a spiritual intermediary.”

“But…you’re the moon spirit,” Zuko said, having finally recognized her. She smiled sadly.

“Not always. You can call me Yue.”

“Yue.” Zuko looked down at his hands. “Yue, I- I can’t be the prince anymore.”

“Why not?”

“I just- I can’t.”

“Hmm.” Yue looked out across the water. “If you want to renounce your title, it might behoove you to wait until you have a firm reason for doing so.”

“…Maybe,” Zuko mumbled. He took a deep breath. “Why- why are you here?” he asked. To his displeasure, it came out as a weak squeak. Yue smiled fondly at him. Her white hair billowed behind her, despite the complete lack of breezes.

“It’s time you were told why the spirits have intervened with you.” Zuko whipped his head up to stare at Yue in shock.

“That doesn’t happen very often.”

“The general consensus is that you might not pick up on it on your own,” Yue confessed. Zuko flushed in embarrassment. “Prince Zuko, your personal journey, one that the spirits have been invested in, is unlearning what you were taught by your father.”

“Like what?” Zuko asked. “Give me an example.” Yue’s mouth twitched.

“They’re all examples.”

“What?”

“Children your age wear their hearts on their sleeves and don’t hide their intentions,” Yue said, changing the topic. “They have no difficulty accessing the emotions that you grew up learning to stifle. If you wish to be a kind, just ruler someday, you must relearn how to be vulnerable and open. You must abandon the idea that rage and fear are all that will make you strong.”

“But that’s where firebending comes from. Anger.”

“Is it?” Yue asked, cocking her head. Zuko blinked. “Do you understand what I am telling you?”

“It sounds like you want me to stop being Fire Nation.” Zuko rubbed the back of his neck. “Which…I sort of already have.”

“No. The Fire Nation is no more inherently bad than any other creed.” Yue put a hand on Zuko’s back. “It has a rich culture whose good aspects have been masked by the bad ones for a hundred years.” She began to fade. “Our time is coming to an end.”

“What? But you didn’t- you didn’t tell me anything!” Zuko protested. Yue began to float away.

“I did.”

“No, you-” Zuko huffed. “What am I supposed to do? Am I even going to return to my proper age?”

“That’s something only you can control,” Yue said softly.

“Wait!” Zuko shouted at the spirit. She was growing smaller, moving away from him, back to the moon hanging in the sky. “Wait!” He got to his feet clumsily. “That’s not a real answer, it’s-” His already precarious balance on the rail failed as the ship hit a rough wave. Zuko toppled forward, falling overboard.

Again.

At least he was rescued quicker this time. Ranalok had seen him lose his balance and fished him out of the ocean immediately. Tuluk stood ready nearby with a towel.

“Kid, you have to think of some new ways to drive us up the wall,” Tuluk said as he removed Zuko’s dripping outerwear. Thankfully, he didn’t take off all of Zuko’s clothes, even though every stitch was drenched. The crewman allowed Zuko some of the piddling amount of dignity the former prince had left. He wrapped Zuko tightly in the towel and dragged him to the infirmary.

When Kustaa awoke and saw the soaked boy, he merely raised a silent eyebrow.

“The baby badger-viper fell overboard,” Tuluk explained. Kustaa sighed. “Hopefully he won’t get sick this time.”

“Hopefully,” Kustaa repeated. Tuluk left. Kustaa turned so that Zuko could undress and dry off. “You realize what this means, right?”

“…No,” Zuko said warily, scrubbing his hair with the towel.

“Your clothes need to dry again.” Zuko froze. “Including your favorite coat. So…” Zuko scowled as the coat he did not like one bit was tossed at him. “Time to dress up like a pygmy puma.”

#Spirit Touched #ATLA #Zuko #Hakoda #Bato #Yue #my writing #my stuff #fanfiction #speecher speaks

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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years

Text

THE ANATOMY OF VC BE A STARTUP

If in the next couple years. Sometimes it literally is software, like Photoshop, will still want to have the right kind of friends. Where the work of PR firms.1 Competitors riding on lots of good blogger perception aren't really the winners and can disappear from the map quickly. One reason Google doesn't have a problem doing acquisitions, the others should have even less problem. Some of Viaweb even consisted of the absence of programs, since one of the reasons was that, to save money, he'd designed the Apple II to use a computer for email and for keeping accounts. They want to know what is a momentous one. How do you find them? Suppose it's 1998. The big media companies shouldn't worry that people will post their copyrighted material on YouTube. Once someone is good at it, but regardless it's certainly constraining.

Gone with the Wind plus Roots. This is extremely risky, and takes months even if you succeed.2 At most software companies, especially at first. Their answers were remarkably similar. I use constantly?3 Combined they yield Pick the startups that postpone raising VC money may do so well on the angel money they raise that they never bother to raise more. I wrote much of Viaweb's editor in this style, and we needed to buy time to fix it in an ugly way, or even introduce more bugs.4

Historically investors thought it was important for a founder to be an online store builder, but we may change our minds if it looks promising, turn into a company at a pre-money valuation is $1.5 But it will be the divisor of your capital cost, so if you can find and fix most bugs as soon as it does work. Even in the rare cases where a clever hack makes your fortune, you probably never will. You may not believe it, but regardless it's certainly constraining.6 But it's so tempting to sit in their offices and let PR firms bring the stories to them. Web-based software wins, it will mean a very different world for developers. I think we're just beginning to see its democratizing effects. But this is old news to Lisp programmers. If 98% of the time.7 It might help if they were a race apart.8

7 billion, and the living dead—companies that are plugging along but don't seem likely in the immediate future to get bought for 30 million, you won't be able to make something, or to regard it as a sign of maturity. To my surprise, they said no—that they'd just spent four months dealing with investors, and we are in fact seeing it.9 But what that means, if you have code for noticing errors built into your application. The number of possible connections between developers grows exponentially with the size of the group. We think of the overall cost of owning it. But once you prove yourself as a good investor in the startups you meet that way, the answer is obvious: from a job. Your housemate was hungry. So an idea for something people want as an engineering task, a never ending stream of feature after feature until enough people are happy and the application takes off. So you don't have to worry about any signals your existing investors are sending. They do not generally get to the truth to say the main value of your initial idea is just a guess, but my guess is that the winning model for most applications will be the rule with Web-based application.

It's practically a mantra at YC. You probably need about the amount you invest, this can vary a lot.10 If you lose a deal to None, all VCs lose.11 Plenty of famous founders have had some failures along the way. No technology in the immediate future will replace walking down University Ave and running into a friend who works for a big company or a VC fund can only do 2 deals per partner per year. For insiders work turns into a duty, laden with responsibilities and expectations.12 In addition to catching bugs, they were moving to a cheaper apartment.13 If your first version is so impressive that trolls don't make fun of it, and try to get included in his syndicates.14 VCs did this to them.15

Most people, most of the surprises. So the previously sharp line between angels and VCs. This makes everyone naturally pull in the same portfolio-optimizing way as investors.16 And there is a big motivator.17 These things don't get discovered that often. Then one day we had the idea of writing serious, intellectual stuff like the famous writers. You need investors. The mud flat morphs into a well. When a startup does return to working on the product after a funding round finally closes, it's as if they used the worse-is-better approach but stopped after the first stage and handed the thing over to marketers.

Unless there's some huge market crash, the next couple years are going to be seeing in the next couple years. And yet when I got back I didn't discard so much as a box of it. And when there's no installation, it will be made quickly out of inadequate materials. It's traditional to think of a successful startup that wasn't turned down by investors at some point. But that doesn't mean it's wrong to sell.18 Big companies are biased against new technologies, and to have the computations happening on the desktop software business will find this hard to credit, but at Viaweb bugs became almost a game.19 Plans are just another word for ideas on the shelf.

I wouldn't try it myself. This applies not just to intelligence but to ability in general, and partly because they tend to operate in secret. Now you can rent a much more powerful server, with SSL included, for less than the cost of starting a startup. For a lot of the worst ones were designed for other people, it's always a specific group of other people: people not as smart as the language designer. We're not hearing about Perl and Python because people are using them to write Windows apps. But if you look into the hearts of hackers, you'll see that they really love it.20 I am always looking.21 But you know perfectly well how bogus most of these are. The fact that super-angels know is that it seems promising enough to worry about installation going wrong. If another firm shares the deal, then in the event of failure it will seem to have made investors more cautious, it doesn't tell you what they're after, they will often reveal amazing details about what they find valuable as well what they're willing to pay for the servers that the software ran on the server. Why can't defenders score goals too? If coming up with ideas for startups?

Notes

But if they pay a lot of people who need the money.

A Bayesian Approach to Filtering Junk E-Mail.

Unless you're very docile compared to sheep. Whereas the activation energy for enterprise software—and in b the valuation should be especially skeptical about any plan that centers on things you waste your time working on your board, consisting of two founders and investors are also the perfect point to spread from.

Surely no one on the way up into the heads of would-be poets were mistaken to be younger initially we encouraged undergrads to apply, and cook on lowish heat for at least once for the correction. I know it didn't to undergraduates on the y, you'd see a clear upward trend.

The hardest kind of method acting. Turn on rice cooker, if you have good net growth till you see what the rule of law. But there are no discrimination laws about starting businesses. In fact, this seems empirically false.

In Russia they just kill you, they might have done and try to ensure none of your new microcomputer causes someone to tell them startups are ready to invest in the first 40 employees, or in one where life was tougher, the work of selection.

The best kind of kludge you need to, but except for money. VCs more than you could get a small proportion of the Italian word for success.

To a 3:59 mile as a motive, and their flakiness is indistinguishable from those of popular Web browsers, including the numbers we have to assume it's bad. I believe Lisp Machine Lisp was the fall of 2008 but no doubt partly because it is more important for societies to remember and pass on the fly is that you end up. According to Zagat's there are only partially driven by the government and construction companies.

One great advantage of startups have elements of both. Not least because they're determined to fight. The quality of investor behavior.

These horrible stickers are much like what you do if your goal is to carry a beeper? Acquisitions fall into in the angel is being unfair to him?

Which OS?

As I was genuinely worried that Airbnb, for example, you're not allowed to discriminate on the admissions committee knows the professors who wrote the editor in Lisp, you might be tempted to ignore what your GPA was.

Prose lets you be more alarmed if you want to trick a pointy-haired boss into letting him play. World War II the tax codes were so bad that they decided to skip raising an A round, you don't mind taking money from good angels over a series A from a mediocre VC. The dictator in the US. Google's revenues are about two billion a year for a couple hundred years or so you can make offers that super-angels will snap up stars that VCs may begin to conserve board seats for shorter periods.

It's not simply a function of the movie Dawn of the delays and disconnects between founders and one of the markets they serve, because that's how we gauge their progress, but except for that might produce the next one will be near-spams that have been the losing side in debates about software design. Japanese.

There were a first—9. Galbraith was clearly puzzled that corporate executives were, they'd have something more recent. Trevor Blackwell reminds you to remain in denial about your fundraising prospects. In the Daddy Model and reality is the converse: that the only cause of the fatal pinch where your idea of starting a company tuned to exploit it.

A few VCs have an email being spam.

The late 1960s were famous for social upheaval. Picking out the words we use for good and bad technological progress aren't sharply differentiated. Letter to Oldenburg, quoted in Westfall, Richard.

So you can fix by writing library functions.

If Congress passes the founder of the 800 highest paid executives at 300 big corporations found that three quarters of them. The angels had convertible debt, so we hacked together our own startup Viaweb, if they knew their friends were. But be careful. The original Internet forums were not web sites but Usenet newsgroups.

The only people who had been with us if the quality of production. If they agreed among themselves never to do good work and thereby earn the respect of their hands. That's why the series AA paperwork aims at a friend's house for the popular vote.

Galbraith p. And so this one is harder, the median VC loses money. European art.

Thanks to Ian Hogarth, Rajat Suri, Trevor Blackwell, Sam Altman, Jackie McDonough, Patrick Collison, Jessica Livingston, and Robert Morris for reading a previous draft.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #sup #friends #people #founder #funding #idea #li #Plans #executives

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evilisk · 3 years

Text

English Commentary on a Chinese LuaSTG Tutorial Pt 3

This part is about the remaining videos.

= = =

Video 4: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1st411N7Kg?p=4 tl;dr Some bits are unclear but from what I can tell, there are sections about symbols, infinite loops and sound

Content: There's about five parts / sections to this video.

The first part / stretch from 0:00 - 1:29 seems to be about symbols you can use in LuaSTG. If you've read the other posts, you'll know that the subtraction sign can be used to signify negative number, but it can also be used as a subtraction sign in formulas.

The other symbols are exactly as you can see.

+ is addition

*(asterisk) is for multiplication

/ (slash) is for division

Circular brackets are... circular brackets. In case you've forgotten high school maths, it's related to that "order of operations" stuff. I think it's also brought up to establish "this program uses circular brackets and not square brackets (that other programs might use)

I'm not too sure what ^ means, however. Likewise with %. My maths knowledge is pretty rusty... this unironically might be my first application of the topic since finishing high school ;\

I do remember (vaguely) something about percentages really being fractions. Maybe % is related to division in that case? I think ^ also means "to the power of". To the power of what? Dunno, just look it up. I told ya, I don't know maths.

= = =

The second part starts at around 1:57. I actually don't know what's happening in this part, so I'm skipping over it. A gentle reminder that the complicated setup in their example is because they're using the legacy LuaSTG editor. The Sharps editor can replicate the same thing wiht far less hassle using the "Create Simple Bullet Group" node (a node missing from the legacy editor)

= = =

At 03:00 (part 3 of the video) they bring up infinite loops. I'm not gonna make specific commentary on this because this is very basic level stuff. Here's a very useful link that can explain the concept better than I can. It's specifically for Danmakufu but the concept remains exactly the same. tl;dr don't make the game shoot bullets infinitely without pauses in between, and don't make the game wait infinitely either.

= = =

At 4:00 is part 4 of the video. I'm not actually sure what the topic is. I was certain it was about interval (reminder that interval doesn't exist for Repeat nodes in later editors, so it'd be about Wait nodes), but I actually really don't know. I will just comment on interesting stuff in the examples given.

At 4:52, you can see a formulas used in place of a value (i.e. increment 360/15. 360 divided by 15 is 24. If you put in 24 instead of 360/15 you'll get the exact same result).

At 5:40, you can see the Repeat node + Variable being used to determine the bullet spawning position. You have x%384-192 (value/position x on the grid) then 120 (position y on the grid). It looks like this:

(x%384-192,120)

It's basically taking the same concept from the last video (using Repeat + Variable) but instead of applying it to angle, it's being applied to the horizontal position of the bullet).

At 5:55, they use the Repeat with a Variable to increase the velocity / speed of each subsequent bullet in a bullet group. This is an example of another easier feature in the Sharps editor, as the Create Simple Bullet Group node has a Velocity begin + Velocity end feature.

At 6:01 is something interesting. They've placed a Repeat with a Variable instead of a Repeat with a Variable. You have a Bullet node, inside of a Repeat Node, inside another Repeat node. Take a closer look at the Variables; the second Repeat node's variable is ANOTHER variable [i.e. a2's initial value is a1's initial value]

I don't actually know what the tutorial is trying to explain but this process of putting a Repeat within a Repeat seems to be necessary when trying to use a Variable within a Variable. I've actually tried replicating the example with only one Repeat (i.e. use 1 Repeat Node, set Number of Variables to 2, Variables A1 and A2) but this just caused an error.

It seems that if you're going to use a Variable within a Variable, you will need at least two Repeat nodes; one establishing the first variable (A1), and a child node establishing the second variable (A2) that will make use of the first variable.

At 7:05 they go into adding sound. I don't know what else to add, this is pretty simple stuff. The video does conveniently mention which sound effects are the actual "bullet" sound effects (i.e. tan00, tan01, tan02, kira00, kira01 and kira02).

= = =

Video 5: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1st411N7Kg?p=5 tl;dr it's about RNG

They go into some Random Number Generators. This has been covered in Ryann1908's tutorials already; one in his longer tutorial (where he uses the function to mimic Sakuya's Eternal Meek spellcard) and one in his shorter tutorial (when it's been used to randomly pick a color for Marisa's stars shot). I've also mentioned Ran:Sign before; Ran:Sign is probably the least useful of these, because unlike Float or Int, where you can put a minimum and maximum value, Ran:Sign can only generate two values: either a positive 1 or negative 1. There is one parameter that actually benefits from this: throw it into a Bullet's Rotational Velocity parameter and see what happens.

This is all so basic that even the sparse LuaSTG Wiki has info on it.

= = =

Video 6: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1st411N7Kg?p=6 tl;dr The tutorial recreates two attacks from Touhou 7

This one was actually hard to understand until I recreated the pattern for myself. I don't know if this is exactly what is being said, but for the Chen section of the video:

When they're highlighting the slowest bullets, I'm 90% sure it's to say that these are the first bullets to fire. No, you read that right. The slowest bullets are the first bullets generated in the pattern. The secret sauce to this pattern is that each bullet has a higher velocity than the previous one, thanks to the magic that is Repeats and Variables.

When they're highlighting the fastest bullets, I think it's to mention those are the last bullets spawned. This should be true if we apply the logic from the previous section; if each bullet has a higher velocity than the previous one, the last bullets to spawn HAVE to have the highest velocity / be the fastest moving.

When they're highlight a single wave / barrage, I think it's to mention how the repeats work. With the way they've used Repeat, each wave is 15 bullets each, and the waves are fired 6 times (in 6 different angles).

You can recreate this by copying the same setup, just make sure you add a 2 frame Wait as a child of the first Repeat. It should go:

>Repeat 15 times >>Wait 2 frames >>Repeat 6 times >>>Create Simple Bullet

The Youmu recreation is a bit different. The "slowest bullets being the first bullets spawned" are the same. Unlike the "15 bullet barrage fired in 6 angles" with Chen's attack, it's actually "4 bullets fired from 16 angles" which definitely confused me (when I first saw the video, I assumed it was "16 bullets fired in 4 barrages). Note how they use Repeat + Variables again to decide the X and Y coordinates of the pattern.

There's a small section after the Youmu recreation. I do not know what it's explaining.

In the final section of the video, they show off a button that no longer exists in the Sharps editor that used to be in-between Pack Project and Run Project. From the design of the symbol, it seems to have been related to the Stage nodes?

= = =

Video 7: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1st411N7Kg?p=7 tl;dr ...I don't know what this video is about. It also doesn't need a tl;dr since it's only 30 seconds long...

Content: I really couldn't tell you what this video is trying to say. The first part uses some sort of "If Else" node which is something I'm especially out of my depth on. All I know about the "If Else" node is that you can use it to do multi-phase spellcard attacks (like most Stage 6 final spellcard attacks a la Miko or Shinmyoumau).

The rest of the video seems to be about making the Chen recreation more complete. They make two Repeats of Chen attacks (the first repeat is the one we saw before, with Orange bullets; the second repeat has Green bullets and fires in the opposite direction by changing the increment to a -7 instead of a +7). The attack also seems to have more RNG, as a Ran:Float has been added into the formula (a=Ran:Float(0,360), increment 7 -> a1=a, increment 60)

= = =

Video 8: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1st411N7Kg?p=8

tl;dr ...dunno. I think it's about running multiple tasks? It's a shortie. It's also the last tutorial in this series...

Content: The last video is a bit confusing. Considering the example shown at the end, where Mokou is firing two streams of bullets (the green bullets moving in a counter clockwise direction, and the blue swords in a clockwise direction), my guess is that it's about running two separate Repeat + Variable streams of bullets.

I read this in a different tutorial, but you can basically run multiple tasks at the same time. This knowledge can be very helpful if, for example, you ever wanted to make a boss use the Move To / Move By node while also firing bullets. I *think* that they're saying "you can do these two streams at the same time if you run them in different tasks". But I'm not 100% sure that's the case.

And to be honest, I don't think that, if that is what they're saying, that it's necessary. At least it's not for newer versions of LuaSTG. I know for sure that you could run those two streams (purple and cyan) in the same Repeat node if it was the Sharps editor. All you'd have to do is establish two Variables in the Repeat node, then give the separate Bullets / Bullet Group a specific node. Put both bullets as the child of a Repeat node and bam. That's it.

The last thing I'll note is that this video was last made in 2019. So the chances of a continuation seem slim...

= = =

Conclusion

So that was one tutorial down. There are actually three other Chinese tutorials, though this tutorial is the only one that is in a video format. The other tutorials, especially the one about coding in LuaSTG are harder to follow just bc of this difference.

If I get the time, I'll try to do commentaries on the other tutorials. I at the very least, plan to cover ONE of the other Chinese tutorials, since I've been able to follow that specific tutorial very easily (it's this one. It has animated gifs and while it goes into some complicated concepts, it's been more rewarding to follow than the others).

You can find the other Chinese tutorials on the LuaSTG Shoutwiki. Note that while it shows 2 video tutorials, it's actually only 1 (the one we just covered) since the other video tutorial is no longer available on Bilibili

#luastg #game dev practice #not a reblog

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angedemystere · 4 years

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My Rewatch of Les Miserables, 1998

Ah, yes, I have decided to revisit that much panned film version, directed by Bille August and starring Liam Neeson, Geoffrey Rush, Uma Thurman and Claire Danes (and Hans Matheson and Toby Jones thrown in for good measure). This movie holds a complicated place in my heart by being the adaptation that introduced me to Les Miz, inspiring love for these characters and spurring me to look into the musical and the Brick itself .... only to then earn my distaste for all the inaccuracies from the original text.

So, now that I’ve revisited it with fresh eyes and a barometer by which to compare it to other adaptions, is it as bad as everyone says?

Well ... it depends.

Let’s start with how this stands as a movie.

First, the cinematography. In terms of setting and sets, this film is gorgeous. It starts with nature scenes (opens early on with a shot of the river ~ooohh~ foreshadowing) and provides a strong sense of location and space. Now I think in certain urban scenes, especially when the story moves to Paris, there’s a lot of washed-out grey that kind of blends together. It does have a purpose: to portray the desolation plaguing the poor that’s stirring l’ABC to action. Even so, it can be harder to focus on the details when color blends too much. Other than that (and some not necessary close-ups), the filming is dynamic, easy to follow, and overall really nice to look at.

Next, the script and pacing. The scenes within themselves are for the most part effective at getting across character and important information and making interactions feel natural. (The one bench scene between Cosette and Marius might be the exception - can no one write romantic banter well? Or is this true to how awkward romantic banter is in real life? Tell me, I have no idea). Of course you’re dealing with characters like Javert (and lovestruck teens) who make natural dialogue a challenge, but in the movie’s first half, there’s a strong reliance on exchanges from the book itself to make it work.

Pacing within scenes keeps at a steady clip while giving time for important moments to breathe. But then the movie has to deal with time jumps, which can be awkward since we the audience are forced to reorient ourselves. The first jump works better because we’re meant to feel some suspense about what’s happened to Valjean between his encounter with Bishop Myriel and his being mayor. We instead meet Javert and follow him to his new post in Montreuil-sur-Mer I’ll ... get to that later. When he’s introduced to the mayor, we realize it’s Jean Valjean! That’s pretty satisfying. This movie most succeeds in the first half in giving us enough about Valjean, Javert and Fantine to get who they are, what their situation is and why we should pay attention.

The next time jump brings us to 1832 and teenage Cosette. This time we’ve missed out on seeing Valjean and Cosette’s relationship grow, and not a whole lot is shown to solidify what their relationship has been like in the convent and what they stand to gain or lose by leaving that environment. We do get some insight, just not as much as I would’ve liked.

Now, how are the actors? Everyone does at least a decent job, even sometimes a brilliant one. Liam Neeson brings warmth, shy awkwardness, and humanity to the character in ways that feel genuine. The awkwardness is most endearing when he’s interacting with Fantine, which is a deviation from the novel that I really don’t mind because, damn it, they’re just so cute! Speaking of which, this addition of a mild Valjean/Fantine romance (don’t worry, it’s as raunchy as kindergartners holding hands) actually plays a role in how Valjean handles Cosette and Marius’s romance. There’s a bit of lampshading when Cosette acknowledges that she has pretty strong feelings for a guy she’s known only a few weeks and it’s not rational, but her feelings are no less real. And Valjean respects those feelings because he experienced them in his own way with Fantine.

Hang on ... hang on a sec ...

Okay, I’m fine. BBC 2019 miniseries, eat your heart out.

Uma Thurman captures Fantine’s vulnerability without overselling it. She pleads for her case while flip-flopping between honest frustration and appeasing servility. But I must ask this: when her hair was cut, why wasn’t it cropped shorter? Maybe a clause in her contract? Also, no tooth removal. The filmmakers probably wanted Fantine to still look attractive enough for the little romance budding between her and Valjean. Points off for accuracy but still effective in pathos.

I remember not being a fan of Cosette when I first saw this film, not through any fault of Claire Danes or the writing but because I cared more about the Valjean-Javert dynamic than her romance (not predictable of me at all). And she can be pouty, but that poutiness is often justified by her cooped-up existence and a desire to live more freely. I also have renewed appreciation for the fact that Cosette 1) stood up to Valjean when he slapped her, especially given her abuse at Mme. Thenardier’s hands, 2) stayed fairly calm while lying to Javert’s face, and 3) held Javert at gunpoint while she freed Marius. For her sheltered upbringing, girl’s got nerves of steel.

This Marius, while still foolish (slipping out of the barricade that he’s supposed to be in charge of to visit Cosette and being not at all subtle while stalking her), has more sense than book!Marius. Granted, he’s undergone a fusion with Enjolras, but I understand the decision, which I’ll address shortly.

And Javert .... Javert is probably the hardest major Les Miz character to pin perfectly in any adaptation. This is for a couple reasons. One, because films have limited time, certain scenes that can establish an otherwise unseen facet of a character are often cut. This frequently happens with Javert’s later scenes: the police station (where he burns his coattails) and the Gorbeau house (twice - one when he’s disguised as a beggar, the other when he jokes about offering his hat and rebuffs Mme. Thenardier’s assault with his “claws of a woman” comment). Two, his frequent run-ins with Valjean are altered from being coincidences to international face-offs orchestrated by him, making him much more fixated, even downright obsessive, about catching Valjean. On both fronts, Rush’s Javert suffers from these cuts or alterations. But when it comes to the performance he delivers?

This is the silhouette of a man who makes criminals wet themselves.

Is he my definitive Javert? Oh no. That dream has yet to come true for me. But I rank him in my top five preferred Javerts. I do have issues with some of his actions, like toppling the mail coach (just .....why?), smacking Fantine, and pointing a gun in Cosette’s face. That’s the wrong kind of asshole or creep for him. I do think it interesting, on this rewatch, to be reminded that this Javert’s mother was a prostitute, and when Fantine is harassed by Bamatabois and then retaliates, he first holds back from interfering (and stops the captain from interfering) and then “takes care of this” by slapping Fantine when she tells him the gentlemen started it. I don’t see Brickvert doing any of these things, but the purpose of this moment is to give us a glimpse into the depth of his hatred for the class of people his parents came from. We don’t know why he hates them so much apart from his overall moral and philosophical perspective, but you can’t help but wonder about what he experienced in his early life that would make him act violently toward a woman with the same occupation as his mother, but ONLY when she lashes out (understandably) at a member of good society. This outburst could also explain why he fixates on Valjean, a thief like his father. It’s not just his commitment to his ideals; he’s living a morality play with his parents as the criminals he needs to punish in order to prove he’s not one of them, that he’s risen above them, that he will not and CANNOT fall to their level. The fact this movie captured that nuance and had it carry out in subtext is a credit, even if I don’t agree with all the actions this version has him do.

No surprise that, given how much attention has clearly been given to Javert’s character by the film, this adaptation chooses to keep the center of narrative focus on Javert and Valjean, sacrificing a lot of other characters in the process. Eponine? Gone. The Thenardiers overall, gone in the second half once Valjean has rescued Cosette (except for Gavroche, but you wouldn’t know he’s a Thenardier in this). The Les Amis exist as a collective but have no individual identities apart from Marius and, arguably, this movie’s Enjolras, who is reduced to a team lieutenant and stripped of all other book!Enjolras characterization. Again, a good chunk of Enjolras’s charisma and commitment to the cause is lumped into Marius. The writers were likely interested in making Marius a more dashing love interest. This doesn’t always jive with the moments he’s actually Marius: stalking Cosette, writing her pages of love letters, ducking out of meetings early to see her when he’s supposed to be heading the planning of the uprising. The clash can be distracting. Still, Matheson tries to balances these two sides as well as he can.

This is where a lot of Les Miz fans have or will have problems with this version. If you’re anything other than a fan of Valjean, Javert, Fantine or Cosette, you’re going to feel deprived. I don’t actually consider this a major flaw of the film because the filmmakers were at least consistent in their focus, preferring to develop a few characters than stretch too thin with more characters who would have ended up with shallow portrayals anyway. But I will highly suggest that if you’re a diehard Les Amis or Eponine fan and are annoyed when adaptations reduce those characters, you might want to skip this version.

Now that the issue of character omissions or reductions has been dealt with, let’s get to what I have problems with that are actually on screen:

Valjean’s outbursts toward Cosette - this aspect of his character isn’t as prevalent as I remember, to be fair. There is one scene where he snaps at her as a child (and he immediately apologizes) and two scenes where he yells at her as a teen and/or hits her. Nonetheless, the notion that physical assault was necessary in his character toward Cosette of all people--please no. There’s no reason for it. In fact, there’s better reason to go against it to show contrast with how Valjean reacted to stressful situations in the past. Yes, those knee-jerk reactions can be hard to shake, but Cosette’s presence in his life is meant to show how much he’s grown. Granted, Cosette acknowledges that his outbursts are out of character, that he’s “acting so strangely,” and we do see tenderness between them most of the time. Still, it taints the relationship when his and Cosette’s book relationship, while plagued by secrecy, is entirely wholesome. Any hint of violence makes me wary of when Cosette says she needs to be there for him after learning about his past and plans to flee the country.

Javert’s suicide - again, more on Valjean’s end. Obviously this version is different from canon; Javert makes it seem like he’s going to murder Valjean and let his body fall in the river, only to free him and do it to himself, and Valjean is there to watch. And he fails to attempt saving him, which, given his actions at the barricade and the kind of man he’s become, comes across painfully out of character. So does the glee he expresses when a man has killed himself in front of him only a minute ago. Maybe if Javert had said something or done something to make saving him impossible or clearly against his wishes, Valjean’s inaction would’ve been more understandable. I do also question Javert’s wisdom in killing himself in front of a man who tried to save him mere hours ago. Why did he not consider that Valjean might try rescuing him again? Well, he seemed to make the right call.

Both of these choices point to an attempt to make Jean Valjean more flawed. This is a conversation the fandom has had before, and the question of slipping in a sharpness to redeemed!Valjean has come up in other versions, even some actors’ portrayals in the Broadway show. I see the argument on both sides--he’s human, he suffered years of conditioning that turned him hateful and willing to harm others. But it should be noted that, while Valjean is physically capable of throwing someone around like a sack of potatoes, he’s never demonstrated an inclination to do so, not even from what few details we have of his life in prison. The movie adds that violent edge to Valjean’s narrative, from when he first hits Bishop Myriel on the head to smacking Cosette in the face. Javert gets some of this treatment, too--never shown violent behavior in canon, smacks around Fantine and manhandles Cosette in the film. Maybe the filmmakers were worried a modern audience wouldn’t find a nonviolent ex-con and a non-violent policeman believable. Yeesh.

All right, some minor issues:

The changing of names - Montreuil-sur-Mer becomes Vigau. Fauchelevent becomes Lafitte. Champmathieu becomes Carnot. What’s going on? Were they scared of pronouncing French names longer than two syllables? Oh, and Valjean as the mayor never has a name. He’s just “monsieur le maire” wherever he goes. You think his alias is M. Maire? So he became Maire Maire? No wonder he was pushed to take office.

Child actors - they aren’t great. Hardly any get dialogue and it’s no surprise why. For those who do, it’s obvious they’re being prompted offscreen. The kid playing Gavroche is the exception and there’s too little of him.

Illiteracy - eh, I kind of give this a pass. It’s not book canon that Valjean is illiterate post-Toulon, and I don’t remember if book!Fantine is illiterate, but it gives them a little bonding moment and gives Neeson the opportunity to show off his first-grader-concentration face when he practices his cursive.

Having addressed the big (and not so big) problems of the film, were there good parts in terms of adaptation? Yes--I think Neeson and Rush have a scintillating Valjean-Javert dynamic. I like how they have some understated snark jousting in the Vigau scenes. The 2019 series wishes it could achieve that level of sniping. But then, Brickvert wasn’t very subtle when he brought up how he knew only ONE man, one CONVICT, who could lift the cart, and Valjean is trying to deflect or ignore him while Fauchelevant is being crushed. Maybe not book-accurate, but entertaining as hell.

Also, while I don’t ship them, the Valjean-Fantine scenes were cute and made my heart squeeze. I know it was gratuitous. Their bond provided a little spot of light in their miserable (hah!) lives.

Also also, I like Javert’s informant in the 1832 scenes. He’s funny, cynical (he complains how nauseating Cosette and Marius’s romance is and swears off having daughters), committed to his job (he catches a cold from watching Cosette and Marius in the rain on Javert’s behalf), and respects Javert without being afraid of him. They even walk together to the barricade so Javert can get in and not draw suspicion. And for some reason he doesn’t have a name! Guys, if you like Rivette from the BBC series, let’s give this unnamed informant some love. I want a buddy cop series with him and Javert.

To wrap this up, I’ll say that Les Miserables (1998) is certainly flawed as an adaptation. Jean Valjean and Javert get injected with violent tendencies, Fantine stays prettier than she should, Marius and Enjolras have undergone fusion, and 80% of the book characters have vaporized or barely exist as bit parts. But I wont say stay away from this abomination because it’s not abominable. It’s ... ok. It’s serviceable in capturing the main plot arc of Les Miserables and a couple of its crucial themes. I think Les Miserables is one of those books where you’re probably not going to get the screen adaptation you want, so maybe watch a bunch, pick a few that least offend you, and fuse them together into your own imagined adaptation. With luck, the components are more cohesive than those of Marijolras.

#les miserables #les miserables 1998 #jean valjean #javert #geoffrey rush #liam neeson

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thehanniecorner · 4 years

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Yes, I realize that this post is coming out nowhere near January, but I have been finding it difficult to keep up with blogging lately, so it is what it is, right? Hopefully, things have calmed down enough in my life that I can get back to writing semi-regularly, but no promises yet! Regardless, I read a lot in January and am eager to share my thoughts with you. Let’s get started!

I hope this reaches her in time – r.h. Sin

Rating – 1 Star

Unfortunately, I started off my year with what may turn out to be my least favorite title of 2020. I hope this reaches her in time is a poetry collection, and while I like to pick up poetry once in a while, I didn’t connect with this collection at all. First of all, it felt like there should have been a little more editing, as I found a number of sentences and word choices that I think might have just been typos. Beyond that, the poetry itself reminded me of the “Tumblr style” where poets just break a normal sentence into multiple lines to make the words feel deeper than they really are, which is not a style I enjoy at all. The good news is, however, that my reading can only get better from here, right?

Emergency Skin – N.K. Jemisin

Rating – 5 Stars

After reading an incredibly underwhelming title, I decided to give N.K. Jemisin’s Emergency Skin from Amazon’s Forward collection a try, figuring that an author this popular couldn’t possibly let me down. Thankfully, my instincts were right and I loved this short story so much. Given how short this experience is, I don’t want to give too much away, but I will say that this is a phenomenal science fiction story with the best usage of second person narration that I have ever seen in literature. This was my first title by Jemisin and I can’t wait to read more of her work in the future.

Randomize – Andy Weir

Rating – 3 Stars

Since I loved Emergency Skin so much, I wanted to give another short story from the same collection a try, which led me to Andy Weir’s Randomize. This wasn’t bad at all, but I didn’t love it to nearly the same degree as Jemisin’s work. The hardest part for me is that the central premise, involving the security of gambling machines and whether they can be hacked or not, felt both flimsy and info-dumping in its setup. The ending was pretty satisfying and I had fun reading this, but I came away from the story feeling like not enough had really been done with the universe. I’m hoping to get to more of the Forward short story collection a try in the coming months, so I hope I enjoy the others more than I enjoyed this one.

Interview with the Robot – Lee Bacon

Rating – 4 Stars

I decided to pick up an Audible subscription recently in order to read more audiobooks, and Interview with the Robot was one of the Audible Original productions available one month, so I decided to pick it up. This short audiobook with a full cast follows a robot who looks like a young child. She gets apprehended by the police and has to tell her strange life story to a social worker in charge of her case.

While listening to this story, I had a smile on my face from beginning to end because it was just so charming and adorable. That said, however, there were a few pretty good twists and turns that I didn’t see coming and definitely made me feel a lot of empathy towards the protagonist. Overall, my main complaint is that it was just too short, at around three hours of listening. I want more from this world in the future, so I hope some sort of sequel comes out eventually.

The Last Wish – Andrzej Sapkowski

Rating – 3 Stars

2020 is the year that I work my way into adult fantasy, and other than reading Game of Thrones last year, reading The Last Wish is one of the first titles that I have ever picked up in the genre. This series follows Geralt, a witcher, which is a type of mutated human that fights monsters, as well as the many people that surround him. This specific book is a short story collection that follows, for the most part, Geralt as he goes from contract to contract, killing monsters.

I love the lore and world of the Witcher universe, but I’m not totally convinced that I appreciate the writing style. It’s hard to tell if this is because of the translation or this is the intention of the original author, but there was a lot of distance between the narrator and the events happening, which made me feel disconnected from the story. I still intend to continue on, especially after I completely fell in love with the TV series, so I hope that I will connect more with future books and get used to the writing style.

The Outsider – Stephen King

Rating – 4 Stars

Stephen King is an author that I should read way more than I do, because I only pick up one or two of his books in a year, but I almost always enjoy them. As it turns out, The Outsider is no exception. This horror novel follows a group of detectives as they investigate the death of a young boy in a small town. The obvious suspect is the town’s little league coach, as the evidence is quickly mounting up against him. As the case opens up, however, conflicting details emerge and the truth becomes more difficult to grasp.

Overall, I really enjoyed the mystery and couldn’t stop reading for the entirety of this 600-page tome. Stephen King has a way of making long books feel like they go by in an instant. Unsurprisingly, however, the ending was incredibly underwhelming. Additionally, The Outsider is connected to the Mr. Mercedes trilogy, which I didn’t know, and I got pretty spoiled for the events of that series, which is unfortunate. On top of all of this, I would like to take a moment and point out that the graphic depictions of the child’s death did not really need to be so detailed, much less have those horrific details brought up at least a dozen more times over the course of the book. It just felt gratuitous after a while. I enjoyed this book immensely, but the details I mentioned above kept it just barely out of five-star territory.

Every Heart a Doorway – Seanan McGuire

Rating – 4 Stars

Since The Outsider was quite a lengthy read, I wanted to pick up some shorter titles again, leading me to finally pick up the start to a fantasy series that has been on my radar for a long time: Every Heart a Doorway. This series follows a group of children that found doorways to their own personal versions of Narnia and Wonderland. At some point, however, their newfound homes kicked them back into the normal world and they have to learn how to cope with returning to their own life. A halfway home of sorts was founded for children struggling with this task, and as it turns out, bringing a bunch of children together who have all gone to vastly different worlds can cause some pretty crazy antics and disagreements.

I love the characters, but didn’t find the plot of this overly engaging. Given that my rating is still high, it’s clear that my disinterest in the plot wasn’t a deal-breaker by any means, but I just struggled to stay interested, especially given that I guessed the big plot twist almost immediately. Since these books are so short, I will definitely be reading the sequels. In fact, given how late this wrap-up is, I can say with great certainty that my February wrap-up will have a lot of news regarding my progress on this series.

Outer Order, Inner Calm – Gretchen Rubin

Rating – 3 Stars

I like to try reading books that push me out of my comfort zone, and it has been a long time since I read anything that might be considered a part of the self-improvement genre. Therefore, as a chronically messy person, I thought reading Outer Order, Inner Calm might be an interesting adventure, given that the whole book is dedicated to getting rid of unwanted junk to keep life peaceful.

This was an incredibly easy read. The writing style was simple and easy to digest. Reading it was actually a pretty pleasant and relaxing experience. That said, however, I’m not sure how useful I actually found the book, as the advice felt like it was playing it pretty safe. For the most part, the tips went like “Get rid of things you don’t use anymore” and “Clean your house” with about 75 different variations, each. I’m glad I read it, but I don’t think I got much out of it.

Everything My Mother Taught Me – Alice Hoffman

Rating – 4 Stars

My final read for the month of January was another short story from an Amazon collection like the Forward collection. This is Everything My Mother Taught Me, and it’s my first attempt at reading Alice Hoffman. This follows a young girl who is living at a lighthouse and trying to navigate coming of age with her dysfunctional mother around her. I can’t say much more than that given how short the story is, but I did really enjoy this. This is a common complaint for me with short stories, but the main reason it didn’t get five stars is because it just didn’t feel fully fleshed out. When I read Emergency Skin, I felt like Jemisin did a phenomenal job of packing a full story into a short amount of pages, and Everything My Mother Taught Me didn’t manage this as successfully. I’m still quite eager to pick up more books by Hoffman, however, as I enjoyed her writing style.

Well, now that it’s almost March, I have finally shared what I read in January. What did you read in the first month of the year? Let me know in the comments below!

January 2020 Reading Wrap-Up! Yes, I realize that this post is coming out nowhere near January, but I have been finding it difficult to keep up with blogging lately, so it is what it is, right?

#books #reading #tbr #wrap-up

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dear-trashpanda · 4 years

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Slightly longer incoherent post instead of five separate shorter incoherent posts

So like I wanted to point out a couple things.

1, I was in an earlier post talking about how my parents used to tell me to pull it together when I was younger. And I realise that from that post without context it might seem like they have been emotionally abusive towards me or something. And I just wanted to point out that this is not at all the case.

Basically my dad is a poster boy for undiagnosed Asperger's syndrome, he was abused and neglected as a child and he has lost 3 out of his 4 children, and my mum is a half-orphan who grew up with no mum of her own and a dad who never got over having lost the love of his life and so he couldn't really be there for my mum when she needed him most. Looking at them through this lense, yes they are two incredibly damaged people with their own respective plethora of psychological issues, but they have honest to god tried their best to raise me in as loving and caring of an environment as possible. What caused most of the troubles is that I was a special needs child and they were most likely not equipped with the skills required to fulfill those needs. Basically, no matter how hard they tried, what they could offer in terms of caregiving was not aligned with my needs as a child. Probably, someone of a different temperament would have turned out perfectly fine, and it is an unlucky coincidence that in my case, this turned out to be severely traumatising. I do have some repressed memories, so I can't speak for this with a 100% certainty, but as I remember it, our trauma didn't come from direct abuse, but from a series of way more subtle, but nonetheless traumatising events, that involved being physically sickly, having been in painful accidents in early childhood that required long periods of hospitalisation and frequent isolation, having difficulties setting and understanding my own boundaries, social isolation, cultural context (e.g. no availability of child psychiatry, obtaining a diagnosis, mental hygiene professionals etc.), the misalignment of my and my parents' love language and like a ton of other shit that one by one seems like small crap but in total it managed to fuck me up for life.

2, I keep thinking about system roles. Like, the thing is, for the past 5 years I locked myself away from all information on OSDD/DID and on other systems' experiences, because I know how suggestible I am and I didn't want to accidently make things worse for myself by adding a layer of maladaptive daydreaming and pseudo-symptoms to my preexisting condition. But by now we're relatively stable as a system, so I thought, what the heck, let's see what the literature and the people of the internet say. And while I'm still trying to figure out the popular terminology and stuff, what I've learnt so far has provided me with enough context so I could start overthinking analysing my own situation and thinking about ourselves in a whole new, systemic approach. (See what I did there? What I DID there? Holy fuck Brain, go to sleep.)

So yeah, different roles. And like, what the fuck is even going on with our other alters because ACTUALLY while we're trying to pretend that it's a very small and neat system of two people, that's very much not true and in general, we're like a fucking mess. So I guess quick system rundown follows:

The Actives

Fox - Host/primary. Xe's what we call a fighter/survivor. Fox is the product of some extreme stress and xe represents the part of us that fought xyr way through all the life-or-death crap we've gone through and that's what xe thrives on. Xe has a hard time these days because life is lovely and stable and it's kinda giving xem a full identity crisis... So I guess in a way xe could be considered a protector?

Bunny - our very own little, and an absolute cinnamon bun. She is a soother, and while she never fronts alone, she's the only one of us who can co-con and she mostly comes out when I'm in distress and she just hugs me until the world is all better.

The Dormants (these guys don't have animal aliases so I'll just use their real names)

The Demon/The Bitch - she's a terrorist, or what people call a persecutor, if I understand it correctly. She used to be able to co-con and apparently had all of our memories, and her sole role was to torture and threaten us, sometimes actually breaking into front and making a very bad job of pretending to be one of us to confuse/manipulate our loved ones, but she couldn't resist making a mock version of us, so it wasn't super effective. She's been very active for a while, but mostly dormant for the past years. Maybe we just realised she was just a scared little girl and hugged her to death...

Emily - she used to be some weird form of a protector. Like, the kind that threatens you with the coconut she wields as a weapon because that was the first object she could grab and she shuffles into the bathroom to barricade herself in just so she can call it job done and go away again. She was kinda problematic and one-dimensional, and while she has been fully dormant for the past 3 or so years, I definitely "inherited" her jumpiness and way of getting startled by literally anything and everything, so I guess we kinda fused together accidentally or something...? Like, did I eat her? Ugh...

Dylan - she was a short-lived one, and mainly a reaction to a certain life situation, where we lived in deep poverty, starvation and extreme daily stress, so her singular goal was to have fun. We basically denied her a chance to front because... Well, because that was what seemed to be the right thing to do at that moment.

Alice(?) - I actually don't know anything about her, I'm not even sure she ever really existed, I just found some clues in a journal (that's where the name is from) and some stuff none of us claimed afterwards, so I suspect someone was there at a point but I'm absolutely unclear on any of the details.

The Confusing Shit

Brain - I was recently told that not everybody's brain is talking to them and that Brain might actually be some sort of system-related stuff, but basically it's just there to entertain me with horrifying, but kinda endearing and/or absolutely hilarious shit. And to torment me with anxiety voices but you know...

The Chorus - just a bunch of jumbled internal noise that keeps screaming static at me every time I'm too stressed.

The Hollow - it describes itself as a sort of autopilot, or rather, "whatever remains when you strip all personality from the body. It's a collection of physical functions and its goal is to keep us going when noone's fronting. It keeps us fed, hydrated, safe, and periodically puts the body to sleep so maybe one of us can re-enter front.

TP (myself) - so yeah, as far as roles go, I'm like... What, part protector-part persecutor-part trauma holder-part little-part host like wtf am I even?! I know that everybody has a blind spot for themselves, but like does any alter ever know what the fuck their function is supposed to be?! I'm just so fucking confused pls someone explain my system to me?!

3, about the excessive posting today. I dunno. I really just cannot stop, but I'm also more out of it than I have been any time in the past like ever, and occasionally I'm not even sure it's me or who am I so I'm deeply sorry for the verbal diarrhea. I guess I'm partly doing this because I'm sure I won't remember any of this later, like I keep "waking up" and it's been like 50 years and it's still the SAME MOTHERFUCKING DAY AND IT'S BEEN LIKE 5 SECONDS since the last post I've written the day before yesterday, so I guess it's also like my sense of time is absolutely fucked, but seriously I've just lived a lifetime of incoherent torment this day, like, did I just die and go to hell and this is what hell is? Seems plausible.

#long rant #did life #did questions #actually did

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skammovistarplus · 5 years

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Culture and Translation - S01 E06

This is a bit of a weird episode, in that it feels like not much happened. Because Skam España switched a few things around, it seems like episode 6 shouldn’t be the episode in which to hang out with the characters for a while before shit goes down. But one thing that got me hooked to Skam almost straight away was the way you got to “hang out” with the characters even in small, drama-free moments, and this episode has a couple of clips I really like.

CLIP 1: Monday blues

Es que le metiste un corte (You were razor sharp with him): “Meter un corte” is really hard to translate. It basically means to be really cutting with someone when they aren’t expecting it, in a way that shuts the conversation for good. Which Amira did, over and over, but the dude wasn��t getting the hint.

I do think Nora feels a little bad for the guy, but only because Nora is extremely empathetic with everyone in the world, to the point where it’s surprising when she’s not empathetic.

Viri is a great liar. We will come to find out much of what she says in this scene is a lie, but she has no tells. This is why I think the Selena Gomez shoe line thing was Viri teasing the girls, because she broke character almost immediately. If Viri wanted the girls to believe it, we can see here that she would’ve managed.

Nora’s shirt says, “No means no.” ‘No es no’ was first a slogan for an awareness campaign, promoted by several Spanish city halls, which aimed to curtail sexual abuse and rape during local festivals, such as Sanfermines. There’s also an Axel, Soledad song. And it has of course been slapped on all sorts of merchandise. Like shirts!

The sides of the mirror are tagged with graffiti, by the way.

And also, Eva and Nora are late for first period! They end up skipping it entirely.

CLIP 2: Lucas has feels; Eva’s are stronger

Eva and Lucas are listening to Molly Svrcina’s Fallen Angel. I think the point of the song was lost in how incredibly random the song is. This is a song Lucas recommends Eva listen to. It’s about Lucas, not Eva. Lucas is trying to give a hint to Eva about himself, but Eva’s too focused on the Jorge drama.

While this clip dropped during recess, Eva skipped school. Not sure if Lucas did as well, though.

It’s Viri who shares a birthday with Paris Jackson, as I already wrote in the post for last episode.

Alejandro Reina does a nice bit of acting with his eyes at the 5:22 mark. Lol, Lucas is so fucking tired of the Eva/Jorge drama carousel.

Y tú me caes de puta madre (“And I think you’re fucking great”): Lucas is not just saying that he thinks Eva’s great. He’s saying he really fucking likes Eva (as a friend, that is!).

Es que sigo enfadada (“‘Cause I’m still upset”): This is a sentiment that will be expressed often this week by Eva, Jorge and Lucas. I’ve seen subs that translate it “enfadada” as “angry” and it’s not wrong, but I feel Eva and Jorge are both more upset than angry during this week. Your mileage may vary, though!

CLIP 3: Ship wars

Cullera: Cullera is a beach city in the Valencia region that has been taken over by tourists (or guiris, if you will!). There are some nice sights, but people visit for the beaches. Many Spanish familes own some sort of apartment by the beach, but Cullera is a step up from the usual, which is Torremolinos. A hint about Inés’ parents’ economic status! Cullera means “spoon” in Valencian language, by the way.

Easter break: The 2019 Easter break runs from the 12th of April to the 22th. Coincidentally, there are some rumors that s2 will premiere after Easter break 2019.

Tú no te líes, que el viaje importante es el de Mallorca, ¿eh? (Okay, but don’t lose sight of the important trip, the Majorca trip, huh?): A closer translation would be: “Don’t get sidetracked, the important trip is the Majorca trip, okay?” Which is actually a shorter line, so we should maybe change that, lol.

Que parezcamos ahí dos lapas como estas parejitas que están por ahí (For us to look like two barnacles like those couples you see everywhere): The literal translation would be, “for us to look like two barnacles like those couples that are around,” but that sounded like shade towards Eva and Jorge, who are also broken up this week. It’s not meant as shade, and in fact Eva has no reaction to it, so I reworked it.

Viri’s economic background is hinted through her confusion with job titles. In Spanish, she doesn’t remember if Alejandro’s father is a “director” (which could be translated as director, manager, and even principal, but also CEO) and “directivo” (executive or CEO). I settled for initials salad.

There is a bit of dialogue at the end that was cut from the episode version. The girls present their final arguments in the Viriandro vs Aleviri debate… which ironically, foreshadowed the Norandro vs Alenora shipname wars. It appears as if most of the fandom has settled on Norandro, at last.

Viri: It’s that, it’s like a Greek god.

Cris: What are you, Voldemort or something?

Viri: It’s like, it’s funny because it’s like a Greek god, like Viriandro is a Greek god sort of name. Yeah, it’s super neat.

Cris: It’s a gladiator name, dude!

Almost totally off topic linguistics note: The girls use the English loanword “ship” in the fandom sense. The verb had obviously crossed language lines in fandom spaces years ago, but it became part of mainstream Spanish culture (yes, really) when Operación Triunfo became big last year, and everyone was shipping couples from the show. The interesting part is that Spanish speakers came up with two declensions for the Spanish form of the verb: “yo lo shippeo” (I ship it) and “yo lo shippo” (again, I ship it). People who had been in fandom longer leaned towards “shippeo” (and so do I!), so I find it aesthetically pleasing that the girls favor that declension.

CLIP 4: Eva shoots his shot. It doesn’t go well.

I was certain Jorge’s secret would have to do with one or both his parents being unemployed, so at the time I made note of the fact that one of the apartments he walks by is up for sale. It’s the reddish orange sign at the 10:06 mark.

The song that plays at the end of the clip is Zahara’s El Frío, but it has been edited. These are the lyrics that have made it to the clip: “I didn’t expect that the one who started all the fires would also be the one to put them out. How did you let the cold inside you, it has destroyed everything.”

CLIP 5: Speederman

This has to be a change from my high school years. I did the Cooper test in 3º ESO (the equivalent of 9th grade in the US) and never had to do it again through high school.

More info on the Cooper test, in case you care. Not only was I not tested on a standard 400 m tartan track, but we were also not trained to perform it properly. Ah, high school PE!

Venom premiered in Spain the 5th of October. This clip dropped the 19th of October.

Yes, that is actually how we pronounce Spiderman in Spain.

I love that Nora is into Viri saying she loves anything that has to do with saving the world. Nora is so earnest, lol.

¿O qué vas a hacer, tía? ¿Quedarte en casa llorando? (“Or what do you have in mind, dude? Staying at home, crying?”): Another translation could be, “Or what are you going to do, dude? Stay at home and cry?” but I went with the line in the subs because I thought it flowed better.

Cómo jode que te dejen, ¿eh? (It sucks to be dumped, doesn’t it?): “Sucks” is a lot less charged than “joder,” which is the word Inés actually uses. I guess you’d have to say “fucking sucks” to get the intensity across. You’ll have to make do with Inés’ line delivery.

CLIP 6: Ride of the Valkyries

As it turns out, Alba Planas is also a fan of og Skam, so I’m going to pretend Eva’s string of sorries is also an homage to Tarjei’s delivery.

This scene was shot right outside of Cine Paz.

Pero no me seáis pavas (“But don’t be silly”): Viri says “pavas,” which is hard to translate. Essentially, Viri’s afraid the girls are going to embarrass her in front of Alejandro, either unintentionally or (not unlikely given this group) intentionally. I.e. they’re not going to behave maturely in front of him.

Madre mía (Good heavens): Okay, so I already talked in the post for episode 5 about the way Amira uses interjections that aren’t swear words, and this is an example of it. “Madre mía” literally means “mother of mine” and it’s basically meaningless as an interjection. What matters is the tone you add to it. In this case, Amira’s impatient that the girls are getting distracted chatting about whatever, instead of going into the theater. I don’t love “good heavens” as it has Christian connotations. On the other hand, “geez” feels too short for how impatient Amira sounds.

It took me a while to realize this, but this clip actually has an og equivalent. This would be the clip where Vilde notices William and Sara hooking up, and looks devastated. Skam España chooses to go about it in a totally different way, with the girls backing Viri up as they walk in.

CLIP 7: Tout le monde veut devenir un cat

Sí, hija, sí (“Yeah, girl, yeah”): Jorge actually calls Eva “daughter,” lol. Much like with tío and tía, we might call anyone “son” or “daughter.” I’ve even caught myself using it on my own parents! If I have the right info, this is also common in Latin American countries, except they use “mijo” and “mija,” instead. “Hijo” or “hija” is more affectionate than “tío” or “tía,” although, much like with “madre mía,” it’s used to express a variety of emotions. Here, Jorge is dismayed that his chocolate romance went awry.

Pretty sure those are knockoff peanut M&Ms. Most likely from the Spanish grocery chain Mercadona.

The song that plays at the end of the clip and through the credits is Bely Basarte’s Mariposas. You can find a translation here.

Tomás Aguilera, who plays Jorge, has managed to be almost impossible to find online. However, his instagram bio makes reference to the French version of the Aristocats song Everybody wants to be a cat. It’s adorable.

Social media:

The girls talk about the Zaorejas random again, Cris notes that he looked young enough as to be in ESO, or MSE, Mandatory Secondary Education. MSE runs through the equivalents of 7th to 10th grade in the US.

#culture and translation #skam españa #skam spain #skames #skamesp

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cowplant-pizza · 6 years

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Ok listen, I love those clothes you got, are you going to do a little review of them all? They legit look sooo good on you!! Your gorgeous!!! Did all of the clothes come from new look of are they all from different places? Would it be too much to ask where? I love sweaters so much and those are some nice ones!! Anyway have a good day/night!! Ily

from misguided

send noods tshirt - 4/5

super cute idea and graphic but hangs very loose and isn’t well fitted. probably needs to be worn tucked into some jeans or skirt in order to look cute! maybe with some trainers or doc martins

black crew neck - 3/5

this was a lot shorter than it looked in the picture which kinda upset me aaa. also it wasn’t in my size so i got a size smaller. its a nice material but really does ride up short so if ur self concious like me u’ll need to wear high wasted stuff or just wear it as a pj top lol

tennessee nashville sweater - 5/5

ok this is super soft and comfy and is super cute too

mustard colour block jumper - 5/5

material is super soft and thick. could imagine myself wearing this with skinny jeans and brouges and feeling hella cute. i was worried that it would ride up short but it doesnt!

black stripe tshirt - 4/5

this is perfect apart from the fact that the material is sorta weird?? like i can imagine getting really sweaty in it on a hot day lol

green tartan hoodie - 5/5

in the sale which makes it even better!! super light and comfy. fits perfect!! hood makes it even more stylish and the red and green complement each other really well. it’ll be awesome for when im in my more masculin moods

brown borg jacket - 3/5

i think its not worth this much money tbh. its very nice but in the pics u can see its the least flattering. its like a puffy, fluffy blazer and i think it would look nice with some outfits but not really that much with others yano? its also not fluffy inside too which is a shame

denim jaket with collar - 3/5

if you get this, defo get a size smaller. its very very baggy and oversized which i sorta dont like with denim jakets cause it makes me look fat lol. but its still very stylish! i just hate the way it sits on my shoulders

from new look

camel grid coat - 5/5

i was super torn between this colour and the grey one tbh but i just fell in love with the outfit the model was wearing in the picture of the camel one. it’s so cute!!! fits amazingly, makes you look nice and slim and has a really nice cut at the bottom. the material is soft but not fuzzy like some of new looks clothes are. im v happy with this one!!

burgandy teddy jaket - 5/5

this was sort of an impulse buy. i didn’t need any more coats at this point but i saw it an i was like omg thats cute!! the material is super soft like i could literally lie on it. it also sorta doubles up as a cardigen, coat and jumper all at the same time cause it zips up really nice and still leaves lots of room!

black borg denim jacket - 3/5

i desperatley wanted a borg denim jacket but all of the blue denim ones were sold out or werent what i was looking for so i decided to go for a black one instead. it sits sorta funny at the minute but im sure once i wear it long enough it should look ok! the material is very stiff and the wool is sort of a funny texture

yellow chevron jumper - 4/5

i so depseratley wanna give this 5/5 but it arrived with a few pulls in the threads aaa!! but it looks very nice on and is sooooo soft i wanna live in it

cream teddy coat - 4/5

this is the entire reason why i even went shopping lmao?? i like it a lot but it is veryyy oversized. i personally like that but some people might not. it also feels very bulky on so i think you’d have to wear skinny jeans or something with it so you don’t look massive lol. while looking for the link i actually found this one which is a super cute version of it and id recommend getting it instead tbh!!

stripey crew neck - 2/5

very very horrible material against ur skin. looks super cute i will admit!! but it is super tight which is a shame because i have a big belly aaaa. also the neck comes down a bit lower than in the picture so.. yea. im disappointed

navy sweatshirt - 5/5 (no link im sorry! i think it might’ve sold out?)

super comfy and has a high neck to hide my double chins lol

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arlenservice · 3 years

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mynameistori · 6 years

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entry 2 (aug 16)

Hello everyone!

I’ve been meaning to write something but I think writing too often sets me up for failure and I’d like this blog to live for a while. Though I think my cyclic mental state will act as motivation for me to continue to write. Let me update you on what I’ve been doing and thinking about!

Wonderland

Yesterday I went to Wonderland (an amusement park about 40 minutes away from my house) with my nephew Little Bear (literal translation of our nickname for him haha) who’s 11 years younger than me. Fun fact: Little Bear is 11 years younger than me and my next cousin up is 11 years older than me (who we’ll call Melon in case he shows up in a future entry). I had tons of fun, even though we were only there for about 5 hours. I don’t think I’ve ever spoken so much Chinese in my life before! And what’s weird is that I probably could’ve used Shanghainese more (since I’m definitely more fluent in that) but I think I was more comfortable using Chinese with him?? Totally weird. We got there around 5 pm originally because my mom said the tickets were cheaper (they weren’t that much cheaper -- we still spent like 90 bucks for the two of us -- should’ve bought them from Costco) but I also hate being out in the sun (I hate tanning and it just makes me a grumpier person). Luckily the wind was cool and the longest line we were in was for about an hour (for the best ride, so it was reasonable). Only downside was probably going on a ride involving water first (Riptide) and getting moderately soaked such that my foot got a blister from my shoes within the first hour, which caused me to painfully limp for the rest of the night.

I enjoy going to amusement parks like Wonderland because they force physical reactions out of me. Sound weird, but let me explain. My mental control is so strong (or my soul is so dead -- it’s pretty much the same at this rate) that I don’t experience feelings most of the time. My emotions are heavily guarded! So high thrill rides make me feel fear, adrenaline, excitement, as well as a different kind of control (because restraints make rollercoasters safe and conquerable, it feels like I’m letting myself go on an enjoyable ride from a mystical animal friend).

@_torigram

I know I linked an Instagram account and I’ve been thinking a lot about it (@_torigram in case you missed it at the top of this page). It’s mainly a place where I can post random dance videos because there’s a lot of dances I want to learn but I don’t want to post them on my main account because I’m self-conscious about my dancing and I hate watching myself dance. However, I think that having an account dedicated to this stuff will help me get over my insecurities. To maintain my privacy I’ll be wearing a hat and one of those mouth mask things and I’ll try to keep my outfit as plain as possible (or at least not wear something that someone can notice as mine).

It’s also where I’ll post my “Challenge Videos”! The story behind this is that I wanted to challenge my friend (let’s call him Cover Boy for now, but he’s also involved with the “two nights ago” story I was talking about in my last entry so I might as well just call him Pretty Boy) to do one cover a week. For those who don’t know what covers are, they’re just copying (and sometimes changing up) an original artist’s work and posting it online. So if I were to do a dance cover of someone’s choreography, I’d learn from a video of theirs and post it on my Instagram. The Challenge would go like this: I’d give Pretty Boy a song and he’d have a week to learn as much of the dance and any part of it he’d like and then post the video to Instagram (or at least send a video to me through Messenger). I think this was something I wanted to do myself for a while, and after seeing him do something like this casually on his Instagram (he’s done two) made me want a buddy to do this with. He’s been extremely stressed recently though, so I told him I would hold off for a little longer before presenting him with this. Hopefully he’d be down to do it, but I’m pretty sure I’d continue without him. It’ll mostly be kpop dance covers, so sorry to those who hate kpop! As for vocal covers, they’d be in English because I’m not confident with my Korean pronunciation, haha.

I’ll post on the Instagram before the summer ends (likely sometime next week, when I head back to Waterloo for my last few part-time shifts for the term), so keep an eye out~ I’ve got a couple of dances ready but I’m not good at learning from videos (I’ve learned from teachers pretty much all my life so dissecting videos frame by frame is so tedious -- props to y’all who do this on a regular basis) so hopefully I can keep a good pace with releasing the videos. We’ll see how everything works out!

Meteor Garden

I recently started watching Meteor Garden 2018! I’ve always been a huge Hana Yori Dango fan -- I think i’ve watched the whole thing at least 3 times and refused to watch the taiwanese and korean versions because to be honest, the japanese cast looks the best and the manga is Japanese. Also, Matsuda Shota was in it and Liar Game (which he’s also in) is one of my all-time favourite dramas. It might be my top actually… I decided to watch the Meteor Garden remake mainly because it was on Netflix and because it takes place in Shanghai. It takes me back sometimes because I always try to guess where this is taking place and how hard it must’ve been to shoot some of the scenes because of how populated Shanghai is, haha.

This drama also helped me feel a lot better because it made me think about something other than my own shitty life and it made me laugh a lot. It also made me think about my ideal guy I suppose. I think I have a better idea as to what kind of guy I’d want to date next or even settle down with. I don’t know if I should type some traits out for you… hahaha. Well, I guess I might as well since this place is pretty private and I shouldn’t be so uptight (?) about this stuff. Sorry for the organization of this next section, it might be a bit wonky. I’m trying to work it out in my head but it’s still pretty messy. Let’s call him IB for Ideal Boy.

LOOKS: I don’t think I’ve ever been picky about looks with my previous boyfriends, but I’d like IB to be more of a pretty boy (not referring to Pretty Boy in any way, haha though he does fit the description) with a lean build. Someone that can turn heads when dressed up. I would like him to be taller than me (I’m pretty tall to begin with at 167 cm), but I’ve dated shorter guys before. I think I haven’t been picky about looks in the past because I don’t consider myself to be beautiful. I don’t think I’m ugly per se, but I think I’m pretty darn average when it comes to looks (though others call me pretty).

INTELLIGENCE: I’ve been involved with (dating/friends with benefits) 6 boys in the past and 4 of them were/ended up as engineers (it would be 5 but he got kicked out of engineering, good riddance because he was a rude dude), so I guess I like smart boys. I don’t think having a university degree says anything about how smart you are. I’d just like someone to exchange opinions with, someone who can hold a conversation and be curious about my life (because I’m unfortunately not that talkative), and someone who’s just as clever, crafty, and witty as me. I’d like IB to be knowledgeable about what he likes/dislikes as well as “street smart” I suppose. I would want him to be able to show me all of his favourite spots and go-tos in whatever city we’re in.

HUMOUR: I think my humour is pretty dark? I don’t know what to say about humour but I’d like IB to have a similar sense of humour to me (or at least get my humour) and to know when to stop joking around because I’m generally quite serious and hate it when people don’t take me seriously (thanks mom and dad).

ROMANCE: I like pet names (call me sweetheart, babe, and princess, IB) and stealing his clothes (why are boy’s clothes so darn comfortable???). I also like eating nice food and sharing everything we eat so we can try more dishes. I like holding hands in public, forehead and neck kisses, and back hugs. I like cuddling, making out in bed for hours, and getting touched all over (okay except for my left ribs - scoliosis problems - and my knees - they’re sensitive but in a bad way). I like receiving and giving hickies because I’m kind of possessive? And I’d like IB to be slightly possessive as well. Let’s not move to more intimate topics, sorry internet maybe some other time :)

TRUST: I’d want him to be able to listen to me without judgment and to always be truthful with me. I don’t want him to hide anything from me (especially when it’s people talking shit behind my back) and to trust me to deal with problematic situations well enough (this is the main reason why me and my most recent boyfriend -- let’s call him Balloon Boy -- broke up, aside from being long distance and being too similar in our introverted-like traits).

PERSONALITY: Loud but quiet. I’d like IB to be more outgoing than me because I’m quiet and shy in general (especially around strangers) and am socially anxious, so I’d want him to hold my hand and lead me out of my comfort zone I think IB should be passionate about something in his life, whether it be a hobby or career-related. Extra points if he sings or dances, because then we’d have something in common. I don’t want IB to be nonchalant (more nonchalant than me is a nono) because it gets tiring being the one in charge all the time. Some spontaneity is good, and taking risks is nice too because I’m a rebel at heart though it seems like I’m super uptight all the time.

AGE: to be honest, I don’t really care much about age. So far, I’ve gone 3 years older and 2 years younger. I like mature boys though because I’d want to have serious deep talks and be able to ask them for their opinions on life and whatnot.

I don’t know how to continue on from that rough list, so I guess that’s all from me for now. I think the next ones will be about Pretty Boy and Balloon Boy, so get ready for some angst? Until then, be merry :)

Tori

#entry 2 #wonderland #Little Bear #Melon #_torigram #dance challenge #Pretty Boy #Meteor Garden 2018 #Ideal Boy #Balloon Boy

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xseedgames · 6 years

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2017 End-of-the-Year Q&A Extravaganza Blog! #5

It’s time for our last Q&A blog of the year. It’s been a fun time answering all these questions--you guys had some seriously good ones!--but now it is time for us to chill out and celebrate 2018. Hopefully we can give you guys good reasons to celebrate 2018, too!

For our final Q&A blog, we have answers from:

Ken Berry, Executive Vice President / Team Leader John Wheeler, Assistant Localization Manager Ryan Graff, Localization Lead Liz Rita, QA Tester Nick Colucci, Localization Editor Brittany Avery, Localization Producer Thomas Lipschultz, Localization Producer

Question: Does working on a game affect your enjoyment of it in any way? Do you anticipate playing the full package after it is done or do you play through it beforehand anyway? Have you ever been spoiled on a game through work and if yes how severe was it? - @MizuUnNamed

Brittany: It definitely does. It's like the difference between babysitting a kid over the summer vs. giving birth to that kid and raising them till they leave the house. Even the most frustrating things about a game will somehow become something you love in a weird way, because it’s your kid and it's your responsibility to raise it right. When you're localizing a game, you're choosing every single word, and every single decision you make for that game will shape the experience for the thousands of people who play it. Characters I'd normally hate as a player become characters I love because figuring out their dialogue is a joy, and stuff I never thought about in localization are now very particular to me because I want my kid to go out into the world looking its best.

I will always play the games I work on. Sometimes I play them in Japanese beforehand, but there are days where I edit a file while playing line-by-line just so I can look at a character's expression and match the line written to the face. Then I replay it a few time as the English builds come in, tweaking it bit by bit, because it feels different to see the English on a sheet compared to seeing it in-game. It takes a ton of time, but I'd rather have a final product I can be proud of than to give up because something requires extra work.

Liz: When I started working here the first thing I tested was Corpse Party PC. I played it for like 200 hours and that game is much shorter than that haha. I loved every second of it, and recently got to test it again for the Linux + SteamOS release. Oh boy, that was a treat <3 I also got to work on Cold Steel II and at the time I didn't have the consoles the first released for, so I just watched playthroughs online... bless Cold Steel PC! I don't think I've ever been spoiled on a game through work before.... except maybe for Book of Shadows? But I don't even remember that spoiler so does it really count?

Nick: This is going to vary widely from person to person. For me...admittedly yes, working on a game does impact the enjoyment I’m able to derive from that game as a finished product. I understand, going in, that simply by virtue of working on a game, I will know its plot from beginning to end, see all the character development (including optional stuff that you might not even be able to view in a single playthrough), and in general become a subject matter expert on its world and lore. I’ll have knowledge of all the optional events and the items it’s possible to get – and sometimes, even a few that exist but were never implemented.

Working on a game is usually a months-long endeavor, during which we often end up playing the game in various stages of beta (or even alpha) readiness. We experience bugs we hope you never will; all the times text isn’t displaying correctly, voice or music isn’t playing right, or the battle system is falling over foaming at the mouth. By the time a game is ready to be sold, we’ve spent more time with it than would probably be considered healthy from a consumer perspective.

Outside of post-launch support/tweaking I’ve done for games like Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection, I’ve never picked up a game I’ve worked on here after it launched. They’re good games, and I’ve been proud of each project I’ve worked on so far – it’s just that I’m someone with a low tolerance for repetition. You know – the sort who would get sick of even my favorite movies if I watched them every day for a week straight. As cool a game as Trails of Cold Steel might be, I’m in no hurry to sink 80 hours into an RPG that I focused all my attention on for the better part of an entire year.

While it IS perhaps a bit regrettable that I “ruin” my ability to enjoy a game in a normal-player context by working on them, I feel it’s a small price to pay if I can help deliver something that players will really enjoy their time with.

Question: When you brought over Rune Factory 4 to Europe, what difficulties did you encounter? How was the process? - @Marower

Brittany: Hey! This is perfect for me! We really wanted to bring RF4 to Europe, but with the developer now shut down, it wasn't possible. We spent ages looking for a programming team who would be willing to help us that also had Marvelous Japan’s blessing, and then it became my little pet project. I had zero experience with the process, so it was a lot of learning and guidance from my boss, Ken. We were able to update the text a bit to fix typos, but because we would never be as familiar with it as the original team, we wanted to touch the game's code as little as possible since we didn't want to risk breaking the game.

I tried to reproduce this one rare bug that causes the game to crash at the end of arc 2 (this is present in the Japanese, too, so it wasn't introduced in English), but it was impossible. I started the EU version from scratch and went up to that point. There were rumors that soft resetting the game caused the issue since it really wasn't programmed to handle soft resets too much, so I did that as often as I could. Nothing. Oh, man... I wish I could've found the pattern that caused such a weird crash. It's rare, but no one wants a crash in their game.

NA only has one rating, but Europe requires several different ratings, so that's an interesting process. The store pages all require various languages, too, depending on the region. I learned that because you could palette-swap character models to simulate gay marriage that the game had to be 18+ in Russia. 18+! For a Rune Factory game! All of the processes take a bit longer, but it was mostly a lot of communication, paperwork, confirmations and such. All worth it to finally get that game out there!

Question: What process leads to additional content in localized releases? Things like additional voices for Trails of Cold Steel on PC. How do you decide which titles get "a little bit extra"? - @Baust528

Brittany:

Me (messaging programmer on Skype: hey are you up Sara (programmer): Yeah. What's up? Me: lmao wouldn't it be awesome if we could put x in the game Sara (ten minutes later): It's in the game.

That happens a lot. As a more serious answer, since we try to localize games we're personally passionate about, it's easy for us to see what we'd want as a fan, too. So we'll sit around and go, "Wouldn't this feature be nice?", and we'll see if it's doable. If it is, we'll do it.

The extra voice acting in Cold Steel PC came about because we wanted to do it for PS3/Vita, but it wasn't possible. I asked if we could put the games on PC one day, the boss worked out the numbers, and we realized that avenue was perfectly possible. We thought adding new voices would be great, because the English cast was very well received in English. Turbo Mode and ultra widescreen were both Durante, though. Those were awesome.

Generally, if our programmers have an idea they'd like to add to the game, we allow it. They're programmers! They know if it's possible, and if it makes the game better, who are we to say no? That's how the Sky games have gotten so many improvements over the years, too. We're incredibly fortunate to have Sara as a programmer, because she takes each project very personally and still finds ways to improve them years after launch.

Tom: There are a lot of factors that go into things like this, but one that's come up a couple times now has definitely been our inability to license the Japanese voices. We figured, if we can't offer dual voice to players, why not use whatever budget we may have set aside for that to give them something a little extra? It may not be exactly what they want, but it's at least something we can offer them to show that we truly did put our best foot forward with this release

Nick: As weird as it may sound, it starts with just someone asking, “Hey, could we do this?” Sometimes, what we’ll want to do is evident due to what’s perceived as a shortcoming in a game. Trails of Cold Steel had a lot of voice acting, but weirdly left protagonist Rean silent in a number of scenes where all the other characters were voiced. That was the initial impetus for us wanting to get back into the studio for the PC release and record all the voicework we couldn’t for the PS3 release (in which we could only supply voices for lines that were voiced in the Japanese version).

Similarly, when I was planning out the recording for Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection, I thought, “We’re having people in to record these battle voices and we’re gonna pay them a minimum session fee anyway, so...why not add some story scenes onto that?” So in the end, we managed to include a solid amount of voice acting in there for a game that, in its original version, had very little.

Question: Have you ever considered localizing otome games? It would be nice if you can bring us some handsome boys. （*＾＾*) - @NymphNayade

Brittany: Hmm.

Question: Can you comment on the difficulty in trying to get Japanese developers to support same-sex couples/marriage in games like Story of Season or Rune Factory? - @atelier_michi

Brittany: XSEED's always been very openly supportive of adding that. I don't know what difficulties there would be in Japan, but I try to think of how much progress we've made to be able to openly ask for same-sex couples/marriage in games. It wasn't long ago that the idea was ludicrous. I remember when Ellen DeGeneres came out in the '90s and it affected me very strongly, especially since my parents would actively tell me, “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” So even if it's not in the current SoS games, I'll ask for the feature every time I visit Japan, because I think being open about it is an important factor to making progress on that front. Nothing will happen if you don’t fight for it.

I'd really like a whole variety of relationships in the SoS. Gays, lesbians, bisexuals, pansexuals, or even a unique relationship outside of sexuality like dating a single parent or supporting your partner as they transition. It's that sort of variety that makes life interesting and great, and I think introducing these concepts in a series as darling as SoS normalizes them and helps children to perceive them as innocently as heterosexual relationships and concepts. It's very educational. Normalizing it more would teach people to ask more questions, too, instead of rejecting any type of orientation or relationship that seems foreign to them.

I remember for the first SoS game we published, Hashimoto-san said he had animals die in the game because he wanted children to be introduced to the natural process of life and death. It wasn't meant to be a bad thing, but something we should be comfortable with because that's part of what it means to be alive. Something to that, lol. Anyway, I'd like for just as much heart to be taken to represent more kinds of people in life, too.

Question: A rumor is going around that you guys are avoiding publishing fanservicey games outside of Senran Kagura. This came in wake of you guys seemingly passing on Valkyrie Drive. Is there any validity to this rumor, and if so, why? - @WaywardChili11

Brittany: did people forget we did a game with literal strawberries and a banana as a costume

That's a weird rumor. It’s also dumb. We've done fanservice games in the past, and we'll decide on whether or not to do them on a game-by-game basis. We're not necessarily passing on them because of fanservice, but I also don't think fanservice is core to the XSEED brand, so it shouldn't be a given for us to do fanservice titles just because we’ve done them in the past. Many of us enjoyed Onechanbara and we have some SENRAN KAGURA fans in the office, so we published those because we originally liked them as games that happened to contain fanservice.

We’re also not big on censoring games, so I’d rather pass on a game than work on it after it’s been censored. If I were to localize a title and actually choose to censor it, I’d piss of people who don’t like the fanservice content, I’d piss off the people who want that content, and then I’d be pissed off because if I felt something was so horrible that it needed to be censored, then I probably didn’t want to work on the game.

That doesn’t mean every fanservice game is off the table for me, but I would need to evaluate it to see if the game is for me, as I would any other genre. Like, Lord of Magna is overall a super-cute game, but it also has an out-of-nowhere hot springs scene. I felt that scene detracted from the game because the rest of the game was adorable and innocent. That said, I didn’t remove the scene, and I still loved working the game. It’s a game with fanservice I would still happily play again.

Meanwhile, SENRAN KAGURA sells on fanservice, but the gameplay is pretty good. I admit that I prefer the older titles for DS/3DS which were more ridiculous titillation with a good story than the more overt modern titles, but again, that just means the series is no longer for me, and that’s fine. We still have SK fans in the office, and they enjoy working on the series.

Another factor is gaming trends and our overall rep as a company. Fanservice games weren’t always as hot as they are now, and XSEED started off with a variety of genres, with our niche eventually falling to RPGs and such. Every trend has a rise and fall, and if we pick up every fanservice game regardless of quality just because it’s hot now, we’re alienating the audiences that love us for action, RPGs, and so on. We may even alienate retailers or future marketing opportunities for the games we license outside of that genre. We’ll have shot ourselves in the foot if the fanservice trend falls when we made it our bread and butter. I like having a job.

Tom: We certainly don't have any problems with fanservice, as I think we've proven quite thoroughly at this point. But we also don't ever back a game simply BECAUSE of its fanservice. When we release a game, we do so because (1) we like it, and/or (2) we see some really good potential in it. If it happens to have fanservice, great! If not, also great.

On the flipside, we also turn down games for a variety of reasons. Maybe we hated the story. Maybe we hated the gameplay. Maybe we felt it took its themes a bit too far, or that it had a lot of wasted potential that it never quite lived up to. Maybe we put in an offer on it but were outbid, or the developer appended unusual terms to the license that we weren't willing or able to accept. Maybe the developer simply didn't want to work with us for some reason, or we didn't want to work with them. Maybe we didn't have time to work on that title, or maybe we simply felt someone else would be able to do a better job with it. Tl;dr version, there are a LOT of factors that go into licensing decisions!

Our reasons for turning down a game aren't really something we can ever outright tell you guys, due to the NDAs we all signed when we got hired. But suffice it to say, it's never simply because of fanservice. Fanservice may potentially contribute to a larger tapestry of reasons for passing on a title in extreme cases (though they'd have to be pretty extreme!), but rest assured, we'll never say no to a game simply because it shows a lot of skin. Good games are more than skin deep, after all!

Nick: Here’s the Nick take: Most of us here don’t mind fanservice. It’s fun, it’s saucy, and folks can have a good time with it. If you look at our lineup, you can see we don’t shy away from games that have fanservice (Oneechanbara!), and games that push the boundaries, as Senran Kagura sometimes does, certainly aren’t out of the realm of consideration. A boob, a bulge; it’s all fair game here.

But here’s the thing. The games a company releases become part of their oeuvre. We have a reputation for quirky Japanese games because we’ve released enough of them that it’s a noticeable trend. The same would happen if we opened our gates to every fanservice-laden game that came knocking. Speaking personally, I don’t want us to have a reputation as a publisher whose stock in trade is mainly cheesecakey fanservice or smutty games. That kind of pigeonholing doesn’t help us as a company, and at worst, might even preclude some future licensing opportunities.

I think a lot of people get the impression that we turn down fanservice-laden games for some sort of censorious or moral reason, but that’s not especially true. There ARE cases where we might think, “If we licensed this, the ESRB wouldn’t let it through without forcing us to censor enough that the primary audience we were licensing it for in the first place would be upset,” and there are times when a game might simply be in bad taste and we decide we don’t like how it handles sexuality.

Sometimes, iffy material gets through in spite of all that. The SENRAN KAGURA series has done well for us, so we continue to publish those games even though a number of us in the office have concerns about how each new game seems to push the boundaries further and further in terms of what’s allowable (either by the ESRB or by common decency). We keep a close watch on that, and we’ve communicated our feelings to Takaki-san and his team. We strongly dislike having to alter content in this way, so if a game is so stridently sexual that we think we’d probably be forced to do so by the ESRB (as was a going concern with Valkyrie Drive, iirc), that factors into our decision-making process.

More often, the mundane truth is that we’ll turn down a game of this type because our evaluation play-tests show it to not be very fun to play. It’s not uncommon for games in this vein to just focus on piquing prurient interests or trading in tawdry titillation while the actual game underneath feels janky to play, or has no depth once you get past ogling your favorite waifu. That’s something that can’t be conveyed through a screenshot or even game video, which leaves hopeful players confusedly thinking we passed on a game for reasons more related to its content.

There’s a solid balance to be struck between acknowledging and publishing content for a mature audience and turning down projects that don’t jive with us, and I want you guys to know that we DO put a lot of thought into keeping this balance healthy.

Ken: When we first published SENRAN KAGURA Burst in late 2013, it was a much stricter retail environment so we had to approach the title with caution. We needed to see if there was a market for the series in the West, and even if there was the absolute worst thing that could happen would be to start manufacturing only to hear that retailers suddenly don't want them or want to return their units because of a complaint they got. Due to the success of the digital-only release of SENRAN KAGURA Burst we were able to release the next few games in the series physically at retail (so the "no physical no buy" people really need to thank their digital-buying colleagues), but that doesn't mean that we get a free pass to release anything in the future. As each new iteration seems to push the envelope further and further, we need to be careful exactly how far we push - at some point if we push too far and the whole levee breaks, it could have repercussions for games that have already previously been released.

Question: Who is best girl and boy? - @MizuUnNamed

Brittany: Can I get Crow Armbrust and Crow Armbrust for $500?

Tom: Narcia and Pietro, of course. But only for each other.

Liz: Rottytops and Ludus! What did we do to deserve them?

That’s all, folks! It’s been a wild ride, but hopefully we answered your questions well enough.

#XSEED #Q&A #Localization

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