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randomcanbian · 3 years

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(re: Fandom Meme) B, D, N, P, R, Y ??? (also if you feel like answering T again about anything else pls do (. ❛ ᴗ ❛.) (also let the record know that your first answer was *chef kiss* wonderful and should've been canon imo (╯▽╰ ))

B - A pairing you initially didn’t consider but someone changed your mind

Felix x fem!Byleth from FE3H... I thought it’d be the same as f!Dimileth (the fandom version of it at least) where the man is like ~~ohhhh I’m a monster I’m so broken ahhh I push people away and go on berserker rages because of my tragic backstory~~ and the woman has to be gentle and kind, the epitome of femininity (despite being a mercenary who had been trained to kill since she was 11...), basically put himself above her on so many levels and the onus is on her to ~~fix him~~~...but apparently not??? The fancontent is so gorgeous and has them as equals, both lonely people who’ve had their childhood taken away from them, both who’ve closed themselves off from the world (or in Byleth’s case, has never known how to open herself up to it), both of them seeing themselves in each other, both taking it upon themselves to meet each other half-way and from thereon help each other process their past and walk forward into the future...damn man, the kinship and the partnership in this ship... (also it really helps that 1. Felix is awed at Byleth’s swordsmanship and tactical mind and pushes himself to surpass it, forming a foundation for a healthy rivalry 2. the fandom does not forget that Byleth is her own person and not just Felix’s partner *cough* Dimileth *cough* Edeleth *cough*)

D - A pairing you wish you liked but just can’t

Hmmmm well sometimes I wished (in general) that I could actively ship mlm couples, just because there’s so much content for them :)) (don’t get me started on how fandom gravitates towards male characters and mlm ships...lmao someone way back then gave me the excuse that it’s because the actual creators put more effort into their male characters and that they end up becoming more complex and interesting and like *looks at my fandoms where there are just as many girls as guys, just as interesting (if not more so) backstories and dynamics and interactions for the female characters, looks at the sheer number of mlm shippers in those fandoms who squeeze the most out of every insignificant moment for their male characters while ignoring the depth and complexity of the female characters* sure)

N - Name three things you wish you saw more of in your main fandom (or a fandom of choice)

Glee

1. Fanfic with more “out-there” ideas :)) (Don’t get me wrong, there are fanfics that fall far from Glee’s high school/young adult/modern-coming-of-age setting, and even for fics that do fall under those spheres there are some that deal with complex, intricate themes in such an incredible manner or even if not that are just plain enjoyable but like,,, there aren’t enough for my ever-expanding hunger HAHA)(my last couple of fandoms were dark fantasy/sci-fi/whatever The Good Place is so I guess I just got spoiled lmao)

2. More analytical thinking LMAO I guess it just frustrates me that there are so many people in the fandom who take things at face value??? Given how biased the writers are and how shit they are at continuity it really doesn’t make sense to me that so many people take things so literally haha

3. More fanart unu I totally understand though that the fandom isn’t as big as it once was but a girl can dream, you know?

P - Invent a random AU for any fandom (we always need more ideas)

Something that I had wanted to write for Brittana (since 2012!) but never had the brain cells to: a sailor!AU where the characters live on a flat world and they’re trying to sail towards its edge (encountering so many mythical beasts and legends on the way) (may or may not be inspired by C.S. Lewis’ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader haha)

Special mention to this AU since I've used for at least three fandoms by now haha: Pygmalion&Galatea!AU wherein one character creates a statue and her love for it brings it to life :)))

R - A pairing you ship that you don’t think anyone else ships

LMAO I went through Bae Doona’s body of work (what was available of it at least) in 2015 and ended up shipping her character Park Hyun-nam with her best friend (Yoon Jang-mi) in 플란다스의 개 (Barking Dogs Never Bite)...I wrote a very small ficlet of them (I literally had to create the section for them in ao3...and lmao I just checked and I am still the only fic in there HAHA)(please don’t look for my account btw all my fics are so self-indulgent and atrocious huhu) and I also made this gifset of them :))) As far as I know I am literally the only one in the entire world who ships them HAHA

Similar story for her character Ri Bun-hui in 코리아 (As One)...although honestly if it turns out that a decent number of people have seen this movie I’d be surprised that no one else shipped Bun-hui with Hyun Jung-hwa??? Because they??? Tennis table rivals from North Korea and South Korea who have to team up to win at the Olympics??? Jung-hwa trying to get Bun-hui and her team to loosen up??? Them becoming closer??? When the Olympics are over and the North Korea team have to go home, and Jung-hwa chases after the bus and tries to reach for Bun-hui’s hand, realizing that they might never see each other again??? I??? (Just...I had to make this gifset of their hands: when they first meet each other, when one takes the other’s for comfort, the last time their fingers will ever touch...)(Also let’s ignore that it’s a re-telling of real life event akjsndaskj haha)

T - Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending, about anything at all

(Thank you roseate ;u; I’m glad that you agree and are interested with my headcanons ;o;)

Santana’s a trivia nerd and is the type to deep-dive down Wikipedia pages which is why she makes all those obscure references :))) (Also a more specific version of this headcanon, not something that I’d die defending but like,,, something that I won’t let anyone take away from me lmao is that she’s a TV/movie buff, dabbles in comics (specifically, DC and follows character like Wonder Woman, the Birds of Prey, Poison Ivy/Harleyquinn, Batwoman, and Renee Montoya), and started getting a little into theater/musicals after spending time with Kurt and Rachel :))) She also has a record player back in Lima and has a bunch of vinyl records back home (back in high school she’d play a couple of slow songs and just slow dance with Britt in the privacy of their bedrooms uwu)(imagine this scene and this song playing in the background ;u;)

Y - What are your secondhand fandoms (fandoms you aren’t in personally but are tangentially familiar with because your friends/people on your dash are in them)

BTS, because so many of my friends are KPOP fans

Genshin, also because so many of my friends are into it

魔道祖师 (The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation) because my close friend fangirls over them so much and we just exchange anecdotes with me and Glee/Fire Emblem and her and TGDC

Critical Role and My Brother, My Brother and Me podcast because my gf is a huge fan of them :))

Not quite there yet, but I am looking forward to having Dostoevsky’s extended universe as a secondhand fandom HAHA

#ask meme #thank you for the questions!!!#(mayhaps you'd like to do the ask meme yourself so I could ask my own questions 👀)#(also I am so so sorry for taking so long with replying to your messages ;o;)#(you ask the most interesting things friend and I gotta make sure that what I'm saying isn't complete gibberish aksjdnasjkdna)#(also!!! feel free to chat me up on tumblr even if I haven't replied yet (if you want to!))#(I may take forever to answer messages but I'm a lot more prompt with short-form chatting ;u;)#(also ngl I miss hearing your Thoughts hehe))#roseateinferno

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thementalattic · 7 years

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The Holy Grail War on the Moon Cell is over and you’ve won, but victory is short-lived as a new threat looms on the horizon. This is Fate/Extella: The Umbral Star.

Genre(s): Tactical | RPG

Developer: Marvelous

Publisher: Marvelous

Release Date: Jan 2017

Played: Full game.

Platforms: PlayStation 4

Purchase At: PSN Store, Marvelous

Source: Review Copy provided by Publisher

Good:

Fast paced.

Characters have unique playstyles.

References to other Fate media.

Bad:

Convoluted plot and setting.

Repetitive narrative.

Review

I’ll be honest, I had no idea what kind of game Fate/Extella was going to be, but the one thing I did not expect was a Dynasty Warriors-style tactical title, where you focus on liberating zones from your opponents while wreaking havoc among their troops. But you know what, it works. It really does.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Fate/Extella is different from other games and media in the Fate series, taking place not on Earth but in cyberspace, in a constructed reality on the moon controlled by an ancient machine called the Moon Cell. Humans discovered it but it predates them, its role to chronicle Earth’s history, particularly that of humanity.

She looks familiar, are you sure you’re not Arturia? No? Ok, you’re Nero then!

Your protagonist is the winner of the Holy Grail War in the Moon Cell’s cyberspace. The machine summoned Wizards to its artificial world, granted them Servants and pitted them against each other, the winner earning the Regalia, the symbol of authority over the Moon Cell, which basically means they’re system admins.

Oh also, they’re Wizards but in truth they’re closer to characters in The Matrix, people who can manipulate the forces of this Cyberspace, than they are to the traditional spellcasters of the Fate series.

Combat basics are simple but with lots of depth

As with other titles in the Fate series, Fate/Extella doesn’t have one story arc but several of them, like each other but with pointed differences, such as the protagonist and some events, with the arcs building the overall plot through these divergent points of view.

The first arc stars Saber, who looks exactly like the one from Fate/Stay Night but is not Arturia Pendragon but Nero Claudius, a not-so-nice Roman Emperor played here with something of a romantic look.

All hail the winner of the Holy Grail War: Lawful Geek!

At its opening our main character wakes up near his Servant without any memory, apparently in reaching the Moon Cell core to receive his prize for winning the war, he came under an attack that left him with amnesia and severely weakened. And to complicate matters further, it soon becomes clear that the character’s been split into three parts: Mind, Soul and Body, because apparently that’s how their cyberspace bodies work, their life uploaded to the Moon Cell and composed of these three elements, the first representing passion, the second instinct and the third merely a vessel for the other two.

As you battle your enemies, a new threat emerges, that of the Umbral Star and its herald, whose mission is to destroy the Moon Cell so the Umbral Star in the real world can find Earth and destroy it.

If any of this is sounding a bit too convoluted even by Type/Moon standards, then don’t worry, because it is.

Fate/Extella does a very poor job of conveying the base elements of its setting, particularly the timeline, which, as you play the game, you realise is crucial. This forces players to look up the included Encyclopaedia AKA Glossary for all the terms, backstory and details to start making sense of things.

The story of Fate/Extella isn’t bad. Once you go through all arcs and understand how it all fits together, it’s a pretty good story, predictable as all hell and sometimes even cheesier of course, particularly anything involving Saber and the Mind, but considering that all Fate stories are essentially romantic ones, it’s something you have to accept. It’s the admission price, dealing with some overwhelming soppiness.

Even Elizabeth Bathory shows up!

But where it fails is in the narrative. It spends little time setting up the basics to understand the setting as I mentioned, but then it repeats itself across the story arcs, forcing you to listen to the same exposition each time, which grows a bit annoying to be honest. What makes it worse is that sometimes they repeat the dialogues and monologues verbatim.

Characterisation is solid though, as Type/Moon has always been very good with writing compelling characters that mix history with fantasy. Despite the cheesiness, I loved Nero (Saber) the most, because while they do romanticise the life of the emperor somewhat, to make her seem like a more grandiose figure, they do acknowledge the things the character did, with Saber describing herself as a tyrant at one point. But even the murky past feeds into the character’s ideology of seeking greater pleasures and following her passions.

Every servant gets their own Side Stories. I’ve yet to unlock the last one, the wielder of Excalibur!

I do want to say that the character of Altera, the character who pretty much drives the central plot, is the weakest of the bunch, her personality almost cookie cutter anime protagonist, with very little depth to her. Typical case of cold character with cute mushy core.

Speaking of characters, one thing fans of the Fate series will love about Fate/Extella is seeing so many characters from the series show up, from both Fate/Stay Night and its prequel Fate/Zero, in all their glory and with their original voice actors. Trust me, if you’ve heard Iskandar or Gilgamesh speaking once, you never forget their voices. Best of all, they often drop lines and hints that reference their source material, such as Rider mentioning the city stage giving her an advantage because of how familiar she is in stalking it.

When you clear the side stories, the Servants get costumes. This one fits wonderfully!

And as a follow-up I think one of the strengths of Fate/Extella is that you can use those heroes as well, instead of the game locking you to using solely the protagonists. There are “spells” in combat that you can use to switch the main character with a secondary one and each of the other Servants has their own side-story-arc which you can access from the menu, giving you a chance of seeing other stories, some of them alternatives to the main plot, and controlling these wonderful characters. My favourites while playing were “No Name,” the Archer from Fate/Stay Night, his combination of swords and bows plus his Noble Phantasm “Unlimited Blade Works” just filled me with fandom giddiness, and Lu Bu because he’s kicked my butt hundreds of times in Dynasty Warrior and as Berserker he’s unstoppable.

Every character in Fate/Extella plays completely different to each other as they all have different combos, timings to their attacks, strengths and weaknesses, so there’s a bit of a learning curve when you switch between them, but as you level up in combat, the unlockable moves help the weaker characters stand a chance. For example, Caster is pretty slow and her moves tend to push the enemies away, which is terrible for building combos, but her other skills make up for it, giving her powerful AOE.

Yes, you fight other Servants, because if you didn’t we’d all be disappointed!

The only downside I see here is that some characters start out with a wider range of combos than others. For example, Lu Bu starts out with more options than Caster or Archer, who resort to spamming their regular attacks without any moves that combine those with heavier attacks.

But one thing I will give the game is that levelling up is not essential, you can still defeat enemies and clear the game at low levels. I cleared Lu Bu’s story barely levelling a couple of times, because he’s a beast…well, a Berserker.

Extella Maneuvers help clear out large and heavy Aggressors!

Speaking of combat, the basic gameplay in Fate/Extella consists of fighting in small zones, held by your enemy’s forces or your own, trying to conquer theirs and defend yours. The point of this is to build up the Regime Matrix. Once filled it summons the area’s boss, another servant to defeat. Each zone has a given value, with higher ranked zones having more Agressors, which are heavier attack units you must defeat to claim the zone. Servants, of course, also count as aggressors—and some of them are hardcore—and often defeating them is the objective in the mission.

Your Servant fights with combinations of light and heavy attacks and combos build up two gauges, the first one allowing you to unleash Extella Maneuvers, fast rushes that deal damage in an area and massive damage to the first enemy you hit with it—and probably the origin of the game’s name. And the second unlocking a “boost” mode that pierces enemy defences and increases your damage by a ton.

Installing skills earned in battle boosts character stats. I always boosted normal attack damage and Extella Maneuver gauge build!

While you can equip skills to boost the recovery of these gauges, they are resources you must handle carefully, especially when fighting other Servants, who will trigger their own boost when at low health. You can counter it with your own or wait until theirs runs out, at which point you can use your Extella maneuver for big damage. If you use it during their boost, it’ll deal minimal damage.

You of course have the Noble Phantasm as well, the most powerful attack for the Servants, tied to their own legends. Nero’s is an attack carrying the name of the Golden Villa, Domus Aurea. Iskandar’s Ionioi Hetairoi summons his entire army, every member of which is another Servant, a Heroic Spirit. Gilgamesh takes out Ea, his prized weapon and Archer goes for “Unlimited Blade Works.”

I would have preferred the Noble Phantasm unlock the more you fight, yet another gauge to fill, because I am not a fan of the way you use them in Fate/Extella, where you need to collect three “Phantasm Chips” found in red items boxes spread around the zones. Once you do, you can use the phantasm once and that’s it. I get the decision to go this way, considering how powerful they are. Still, if they unlocked by just playing the game normally I believe it would’ve been much much better.

I really like the visuals, I love how bright and colourful the environments are and how, by cleverly using their skyboxes and backgrounds they make even the smallest of battlefields feel large instead of claustrophobic. Character models are fine, with very fluid animations save for the face, where they’re barely capable of smiling, which isn’t a problem for Fate/Extella as it uses visual novel styled hand-drawn portraits with dialogue to show character emotions. Still, it’s somewhat disconcerting when the stellar voice acting and expressive art contrast with the dead faces.

I enjoyed the soundtrack very much, particularly the themes that play when you fight Servants and those of the last stages, which ramp up the epic feel to eleven. The opening song I’m not a big fan of, but overall the music is solid as is the voice acting of course.

The writing goes the full range between solid and wonky, with lots of corny moments in between!

When you conquer a zone, all enemy units die

Missed a bit of dialogue? No worries!

Fate Extella gives you the characters’ True Names in most cases.

You can use points earned in combat to craft new suits for the Wizard, granting you different support spells.

This little ring is the Regalia, a central plot McGuffin

Still not good enough!

In the Gallery you’ll probably go to the Encyclopedia!

Gawain is amazing!

If you have the spell equipped, you can switch out your main character for a secondary Servant

Build up the boost gauge for a giant boost in combat. Saber and Caster even get a different move set

That good, yes!

Killing aggressors grants you more Install Skills to use and combine!

Yes, I’m that good!

Lu Bu is AMAZING!

Aggressors are the key to clearing out enemy areas.

The sword of Mars looks like a rave glowstick, but it’s awesome

Super warrior in skimpy clothing, check! Also, that probably offers just as much defence as the full armour!

He’s such an ass, but we all love him!

Love the character designs

In case you missed it, yes, Nero is the new Heroine Saber

Conclusion

I’ll be honest, I didn’t think Fate/Extella’s fusion of Dynasty Warriors-like gameplay and visual novels would work, but I must admit it really does, even when it goes full corny in the conversations to raise companion affinity—which I’ll admit is pretty cool as it has a definite mechanical benefit! Gameplay is really fun and with multiple characters to explore their side-stories and use them in combat, there’s plenty to come back to.

TMA SCORE:

4.5/5 – Amazing!

I gotta say, #Fate #Extella is pretty damn fun! Our review! @marvelous_games

The Holy Grail War on the Moon Cell is over and you’ve won, but victory is short-lived as a new threat looms on the horizon.

I gotta say, #Fate #Extella is pretty damn fun! Our review! @marvelous_games The Holy Grail War on the Moon Cell is over and you’ve won, but victory is short-lived as a new threat looms on the horizon.

#Amazing #Fate/Extella #Fate/Stay Night #Fate/Zero #Gaming #Marvelous #Nero Claudius #Review #Saber #Servants #Tactical #The Umbral Star #Type/Moon #Video game #Visual Novel

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kkutlesa · 7 years