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iaintyourbro · 4 years

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I’ve just read your piece on Zack & Cloud (you nailed it). What Zack & Aerith has together as a couple is much much more than what she will ever have with Cloud. Zack & Aerith has a long and meaningful romantic relationship, this same ‘romantic relationship’ never existed with soldier/true-Cloud, ever. Zack importance to Aerith and Cloud should’ve never ever been questioned, period.

Hey anon!

I agree 100%... Aerith’s interest in Cloud did begin because of Zack. She wanted info on Zack. This was more clear in the Remake since she flat out comes out and says it was the first guy she loved AND tries to tell Cloud his name. In Crisis Core, she wrote 89 letters to the guy. One every two weeks for four years. She waited four years. Four. Years.

I would say that’s not something small. Zack obviously meant the world to her. She also meant a lot to Zack. When he realized she’d written her last letter and it’d be four years, he was devastated. He tells Cloud while still in the Inn in Nibelheim that they needed to get to Midgar because he saw the list of 23 tiny wishes.

Zack and Aerith’s relationship was a focus in Crisis Core. There were a lot of cute moments between the two of them. Something we don’t see with even Tifa and Cloud, but this is also due to a personality differences between the four of them.

Aerith was shy at first - she was young - Zack was the charming, handsome guy that was friendly to her.

He called her an Angel when he woke up in her church. Zack immediately seemed taken with Aerith here. Yes, he was described as a flirt, and in OG they pretty much called him a womanizer (this is where some of this hate is coming from... I don’t think it was supposed to be taken so seriously). In Crisis Core, Zack gets teased about talking to Aerith because everybody knows she’s special. In OG, Zack’s parents say that he did write home about a girlfriend.

What did Cloud do? Gave her a dirty look and didn’t even remember who she was. Even though he’d met her before. Cloud doesn’t like people, though, especially not people he doesn’t know. However, he will help anybody - even people he doesn’t know - and Aerith appears to need help before he leaves the church.

The first two pictures on the top are when he first sits up. The second one in particular is him backing up from her like “Who tf are you?” This is just Cloud. This isn’t specifically against Aerith. He would have done this with anybody he didn’t know.

The third picture is him looking up at the hole in the church roof and probably wondering how he’s even still alive. The last one is right after she says “Nice to meet you again!” This look cracks me up. It is that like of “Ooookayyy.” Go watch it. It’s hilarious to see him change his face when he turns his head.

The pictures of Cloud kind of crack me up. I would really like to see the same scene that Crisis Core had with Zack falling through to see the level of animation on his face. The graphics were good for the time, but the new technology really helps to show a lot of what’s going through their minds.

In Remake, they made sure to have two holes in the ceiling after Cloud falls through to show where Zack fell through and where Cloud fell through. Of course Aerith is excited - she just had a guy fall through the church just like Zack did... and he has Zack’s sword and clothes on.

This just shows the difference between Cloud and Zack and how they are. Zack was flirty and charming. Cloud is... well, Cloud is Cloud. He’s not smooth (he tries and does succeed a few times I suppose), but he’s an awkward ham. This was a stranger to him and he just wanted to go home at this point.

Aerith’s personality in CC vs OG and Remake shows her character growth. Mostly due to her experiences with Zack... she picks up on some of his confidence and mannerisms. Zack helped Aerith feel confident, just like he helped Cloud feel more confident.

I think some of the scrutiny and looks Cloud gets around Sector 5 may be related to this above comment from the Attendant. They seem to like Zack very quickly. I think they start off when Aerith first brings Cloud to Sector 5 with thinking maybe he’s like Zack, but seem turned off by him pretty quickly, because he’s nothing like Zack in how he acts.

I also found it comical that Aerith’s reaction to the guy’s second comment is that they just meant, but her next line is contemplating that perhaps something IS there between them...

This is how she acts when her and Cloud are called a couple in Wall Market:

Sad. She just looks sad. She doesn’t want this. She was okay with it being about Zack 5 years prior to this, but I think it also reminds her of that moment. It’s painful for her. Cloud also doesn’t react positively. Sadly we don’t have a good view of Zack’s reaction because, well, it wasn’t a cut scene and they really didn’t animate idle characters back in the day.

Zack teases Aerith. A lot. He makes fun of her for being picky about the flower cart, but does agree to upgrade it like she wants. He tells her to write down all of her tiny wishes after teasing her about it. Aerith teases Zack back too. Aerith tries to tease Cloud and doesn’t really get a great response... because he probably doesn’t even know what she’s doing. He’s dense. Like really dense. He does it with Tifa because he’s initiating it. With Aerith he’s just dense. Teasing generally is seen as flirting, especially the type that goes on between Zack and Aerith.

Zack didn’t need to be cool, but he does ask Aerith if he’s cool for killing some monsters. I think he’s trying to flirt with her more there.... Zack was Zack. He wore his heart on his sleeve and didn’t see selling flowers as uncool. This also shows just a basic maturity difference between Cloud and Zack, but that’s not really Cloud’s fault. Personality wise, though, I think Cloud would sell flowers if a girl he liked asked him to as his real persona... He pretty much does whatever Tifa asks him to in Chapter 3 without really complaining.

I think in Remake, too, they made it clear that the Turks were aware of her relationship with Zack. Rude says to Aerith when he sees Cloud with her “This your new boy toy.” She seems a bit offended by this and tells Rude it’s her bodyguard.

It was pretty clear that Zack was more interested in getting to know Aerith right off the bat. He bought her a cute pink ribbon for her hair, which of course is always a source of argument on whether or not Remake “retconned” the ribbon, since she has the ribbon as a child too, but I don’t think they took that away.

Then we’ve got the park. Zack is excited... Cloud needs a nap. I really don’t think Aerith was romantically interested in Cloud in Remake. I think in OG at the park part it was more that Aerith was interested in Cloud, but also interested to see if he knew anybody from SOLDIER. It’s much more apparent in Remake that she’s more interested in who he knows from SOLDIER. She takes him to the same place that she took Zack.

Cloud is mostly cold towards Aerith until after she tells him about Zack. He seems to soften up a bit after that. I’m not sure if he’s more comfortable or if he gets a zap during his episode to tell him to stop being a dick to her.

Overall, though, Zack and Aerith have a ton of cute moments in Crisis Core. She cared about the guy a lot. She’s not over him in Remake, she’s trying to convince herself that she is... but she’s not. There’s no closure for her, for one. She kept writing for four years... if she really didn’t care, didn’t want to wait, why write to him for so long and so frequently?

With Cloud, this was a potential new prospect, but also a way to try to get closure on what happened. If you notice, they don’t have Aerith say he probably ran off with some other girl, like she does in OG. I think with the Crisis Core story showing a much better picture of how those two were, it wouldn’t have fit.

Aerith and Zack have one of the more outwardly romantic stories in FFVII’s Compilation. By. Far. Tifa and Cloud’s is a deeper one that isn’t shown through words and flirting. Most of what Tifa and Cloud do isn’t shown to the player outwardly. A lot of it is through physical contact, like in Part 1. Tifa tells Cloud under the Highwind that words aren’t the only way, so they’re really playing that up.

Anybody who denies that Zack and Aerith had a pretty solid, heavily implied, romantic relationship either didn’t play Crisis Core or refuses to acknowledge it. It’s slammed in your face in Crisis Core. I honestly forgot how cute the two were until I was watching clips of them and was pretty surprised at how blatant they were with these two. It’s more blatant than most FF couples that early on, honestly.

They do have a tragic romance - we know his fate in the normal timeline and we know her fate, but it’s definitely super cute and I would say she absolutely loved him. I think it turned from puppy love to true love the longer she waited for him. Zack brought out a lot of Aerith’s charm that we see in OG and Remake that people always say is what brings Cloud out of his shell. The guy who helped Cloud be more confident and come out a bit, helped the girl who further helps Cloud come out a bit. Cloud and Aerith never did have anything close to what Zack and Aerith did, whether or not they would have is up for interpretation. My guess is no.. Cloud’s true self was and is in love with Tifa. It wouldn’t be fair to Aerith, honestly. I think Aerith was interested in meeting real Cloud. I don’t think she only liked his SOLDIER persona, but it was all she knew about him.

Discounting her relationship with Zack is shitting on her character. By comparison, Cloud is not exactly nice to Aerith at first. Yes, he does become nicer to her. In OG, player choice dictates this more, so you can be nice or you can be mean to her. In Remake, you don’t get a choice. He’s cold at first towards her and slowly warms up to her, just like he did with Avalanche and crew. The only one he doesn’t need encouragement to be nice to is Tifa, but we know why.

Thanks for the ask!

#zerith #zack x aerith #zack fair #aerith gainsborough #zack fair plz come back #ff7 crisis core #ff7r #cloud strife #cloti #final fantasy 7 #final fantasy 7 spoilers #ff7r spoilers

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inmyarmswrappedin · 3 years

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I wasn't being facetious w my ask and i certainly wasn't intending for it to appear like i was criticizing Tarjei. I was just making an observation on the patterns that seem to reoccur and influence how and why some shows and actors become popular and sustain it. Imo most of the remakes ~ that NRK signed off on~ are below par so i side eye every1 who approves more content from them. Lastly the fandom(s) is small enuf that any conflict sends ripples thruout making ppl feel uncomfy so they leave

Second ask: I'd also like to add that, aside from whatever promo the actor signed off on in their contract, no actor is obligated to attend additional events just to give you more content. Would it be awesome? Of course!! But we as fans need to recognize that the actors have a life outside skam. tarjei attending conventions two years after skam ended would have been awesome, don't get me wrong, bit skam had been over for two years and it wasn't the career choice tarjei wanted to make and that's extremely valid

Hi anon! 🎈 I guess I find the amount of responsibility/blame that you lay upon NRK to be unreasonable. Like, they already dictate that teams must do research, that some characters are off limits as mains, and that some other characters must be mains. That one French guy said that someone at NRK reads the scripts for the original seasons and has veto power. There's already a perception that NRK micromanages the remakes far too much and is too demanding. Compare with other adaptation contracts like, idk, The Office, Queer As Folk, or Ugly Betty, where remake teams were allowed massive amounts of freedom in terms of casting, characters, storylines, etc.

Like, what else would you have NRK do? Demand a specific episode runtime? A specific percentage of the script that must be entirely rewritten? A specific feel for the soundtracks that avoids unlicensed music or too much generic pop? To cast Tarjei as the Isak in every remake? I'm sorry that you find the remakes below par, cheap and unwatchable, but lol I find the insistence that NRK should've done more to protect Skam's legacy to be bizarre. It would've been completely batshit insane for them to send a NRK rep to every remake shoot to be all, "Okay we're not doing this scene because Julie wouldn't have done it this way, and we're not adding that song because it's lame, and please stop filming that actor because we need to be shooting B roll for clip transitions now." Gvhvhvv. There's only so much NRK can do without outright taking over productions in other countries. And if your argument is that NRK shouldn't have licensed Skam if they couldn't guarantee it'd be done exactly like Julie would have done it then... I'm sorry they didn't envision the same thing for their intellectual property. Not much more I can say about that.

What NRK can do is keep producing shows that they are happy with, which is what they've done. Since Skam, they've produced lovleg, blank, 17, lik meg and others, taking into account the feedback they received for Skam. I've enjoyed pretty much all these shows (haven't watched lik meg), so side eye me for approving of more content from NRK all you want I suppose.

Re: Tarjei. Right, but the thing is, I don't need to recognize that actors have a life outside of Skam because I already know that lmao. Like, I know you meant it in a generic sense, but I truly madly deeply give no fucks if Tarjei does a convention or not (and so do plenty of other fans who aren't in it for Tarjei's existence). In fact, given how MASSIVELY CREEPY con organizers have been in trying to secure his presence, I hope he's never in a situation where he has to attend a con for financial purposes.

#ask #Anonymous #I cannot emphasize enough how bizarre I find this point of view #and this is coming from someone who finds half of the remakes not my thing

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nosybookworm · 3 years

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Ninja Academy vs Hero School Rant

Naruto was my jam back in the day. I stayed up late to watch the new episodes, bought the dvd box sets and manga volumes, collected toys and cards just to stare at adoringly, even pretended to be sick so that I could stay home and watch a Naruto marathon. Point is, I LOVED Naruto.

I was invested in the characters. My heart ached for every single character that gave me a backstory. I ugly cried on more than ten occasions.

The action and moral dilemmas sucked me in and spit me out, made me the person I am today thinking critically about the stuff I love because wow that universe is in no way safe or sane for the people living in it lol.

The villains absolutely TERRIFIED me DESPITE STILL WANTING TO SEE MORE OF THEM, Orochimaru alone had me sleeping with the lights on and ripping the arms off his action figure just to be safe.

When I started watching My Hero Academia those old happy feelings started slapping me in the face drawing me in. MHA hits a lot of the same points that Naruto had and I didn’t really notice until the end of season 3 because those points weren’t as in-your-face or emotionally impactful as it was in Naruto I guess. Not to say it didn’t have an impact! Just that it rolled off me a lot easier which might just be a me problem.

I Mean:

The main character getting bullied/excluded because of something he can’t control.

Underdog character then meeting or making an emotional connection with a mentor figure truly feeling “acceptance” for maybe the first time and taking that all important first step toward their life long dream.

A teacher willing to sacrifice himself to protect the students.

A school training teens to protect/serve.

Rivalry that may or may not be actual friendship.

Students fighting against each other to “rank up” by showing how capable they are to their superiors.

Enemies invading to terrorize the kids and escaping to terrorize another day.

Traumatic family backstories that child will now attempt to seek justice through own power.

Previous underdog character actually having a secret power that no one knows about but a select few and that he has to train to learn how to use, but it makes him a powerhouse that is always surprising the enemy and inspiring his fellows.

Sure all that can be tied to any story when generalized like this, but the way MHA presents them is pretty similar to Naruto.

(Okay, ALL OF THIS is going to be my personal opinion. Things I want to say to get out of my system so that I can move on. It’s long too. So, now that you’ve been warned continue on.)

The more I got into it the stranger it felt because despite hitting those same points I loved they hit in a different way that....well... made me a little uncomfortable to sit through.

Like Aizawa

Very clearly the Kakashi in MHA. He’s sly hardly ever telling his students the truth but has incredibly high expectations of them, has been known to expel students left and right until his most recent batch of kids, is ready and willing to throw himself in harms way for them, and surprisingly competent despite his exhausted persona/personality. However the way these two teachers act get two very different results from me. Naruto got a chance to introduce Kakashi in a way that endeared him to me, the bell test was more than just showcasing the kids current abilities it was introducing Kakashi (the Jounin that is a kind of jack of all trades, the known perv that will publicly read porn, the guy that will happily mess with a bunch of kids to “teach them a lesson” and because its funny, the guy that requires the students under his care to care about each other because caring for his team matters to him more than any mission, that guy). MHA gave the quirk test. Aizawa mostly in the background taking notes and jotting down scores after his speech about expelling whoever comes last. We didn’t get to hear Aizawa’s thoughts until the very end when Izuku surprised him.

I didn’t really feel any connection toward Aizawa until I stumbled across fanfics that wrote him more involved with the students and I think that’s the problem. Aizawa is dedicated to his student’s education, he believes they will all be amazing heroes one day, but he hardly ever interacts with them. He can be seen watching their training from afar, sleeping in a corner as another teacher takes over for a bit, protecting them from danger or fighting along side them, and proudly declaring that Bakugo would never turn villain but all of that means very little emotionally when I can’t see him making connections with these students to make this standoffish confidence understandable. He comes off as one of those super smart teachers that have undecipherable lessons because he has no idea how to connect with his students enough to explain in way they understand. Similarly, he like jots down that he’s taking note of Bakugo and might need to step in before he goes down the wrong path but then does nothing and confidently tells the press Bakugo would never be a villain.

Kakashi was pretty standoffish too, no denying that, and the little episodes when the kids conspire to try to see him without his mask are the kind of outside interactions that would be weird for a modern teacher-student relationship like in MHA, so I get why Aizawa doesn’t really have that with any of the kids. However, Kakashi saw the path Sasuke was going down and spent time with him and confronted him about it (it did nothing to stop him but he tried). He took time to find a teacher for Naruto. He was present and awake for just about every milestone in there education with him. He told them when he was proud of them not other people. He involved himself in some of their high jinks to measure their growth and as such was able to have confidence in them when they went off on their own.

The Villains

And My Hero Academia villains, namely All For One.

I felt nothing when he showed up. I was all caught up in All Might and his passing of the torch. The guy without eyes didn’t feel threatening, didn’t feel like the big bad he was suppose to be. The League of Villains really didn’t feel like “serious enemies” either cause I actually really enjoyed them when they were on screen for their dynamics with each other. Similar to how I liked the Akatsuki in their more light-hearted scenes when they where super strong idiots banded together by sheer force of will and explosive personalities that refuse to leave a job half finished. With the League I would be just as entertained (probably more so) if they were in a slice of life anime just being terrible people together.

I get the feeling All For One was supposed to be MHA’s Orochimaru. (And I say this despite knowing Orochimaru’s introduction is probably a lot closer to Stain what with the confrontation and all, but his whole “the world is corrupt, I will cut out the wrong and remake it into the pure world it should have always been” aligned more with Pain especially with his quick turnabout saving Izuku.)

Orochimaru always felt in control even when he was in hiding or on the run, he felt like he had more up his sleeve which is the only thing I got from All For One when he was imprisoned. Both Orochimaru and All For One showed up out of nowhere, very obviously in a class of their own that the teenage main characters had no hope of beating, and a mysterious backstory that clearly put all the adults in the know on edge. But I just don’t see All For One as a villain. Nothing about him screamed “Run for your lives this man will smile as he tears you apart!” like Orochimaru. Nothing about All For One’s secret Mad Scientist lab gave me creepy vibes that left me on the edge of my seat clutching at the nearest pillow the way the Sound Village that practically worshiped Orochimaru and the many base of operations he had did.

Terrible Parents

The Todoroki family.

...

Look. The world of Naruto has terrible parenting, but they also live in a dictator/military run nation where kids can be a front-line defense or key players in a war zone so it’s hard to measure how to view these people. Cause a father that beats his kid and yells at him to get stronger has genuine reasons to rightfully freak out when children as young as 8 get sent to ninja academy. Families that have a rare genetic trait like the Hyuga or Uchiha have every right to be tough and stern if they feel that will protect their kids when they know putting them out into the world makes them an easier target for enemies that would rip out their eyes.

I can judge their actions based on their consequences. Like the Uchiha clan planning a revolt forcing their eldest to massacre them to keep the peace and their youngest to live with a crazy amount of trauma. Like the Hyuga clan branding their branch members to protect family eyes, but forcing them into being lesser than the main branch and all the trauma that forced on Neji’s poor head. The stupid level of expectation set on Hinata’s young shoulders that she couldn’t meet in the way her clan wanted that made her self-confidence practically non existent. The Hokage leaving Naruto mostly alone for his entire childhood in a village that openly hated him. The Kazekage trying to have his lonely three-year-old assassinated multiple times once by his beloved uncle - the only person that was kind and loved him - that scarred him so entirely that he carved “love” into his forehead and rampaged around the village and did casual murder intentionally for years before meeting Naruto.

All that... I can get behind as abuse. I want those sad kids to be happy. They deserved better and I will happily lose myself in a fix-it fic where they get that.

MHA gives me similar scenarios but without the clear-cut consequences that shows when parenting for that world is abuse.

Endeavor is not a good husband. He is emotionally abusive to his wife to the point she has a mental break and attacks a child.

However, in a world of heroes, in a world where high school students are trained to protect and serve and that self sacrifice is a noble heroic trait. How do I compare such a society to my own? They put children in harms way with hero internships yet don’t allow them to defend themselves if they don’t have a hero license, that would be like getting a learners permit but not being allowed to practice driving.

All this to say I have a hard time telling when bad parenting falls into abuse when it comes to MHA. Endeavor is not a good parent, he is an abusive husband, but is he an abusive parent? As a hero training up the next generation of heroes can it be argued that he is pretty okay even if his methods are a little harsh? None of his children fear him from what I’ve seen. Shouto happily tells him his plans to never use his fire and all the reasons why without fearing he might be punished for it. The other kids seem to be pretty okay going on with their lives. Toya being the exception but again I don’t know what happened to him and he’s a follower of Stain so did he have a falling out with heroes or did his father push too hard?

Nighteye & Tsunade

Okay so this is where I get super rant-y. I have feelings on Nighteye and none of them good.

Nighteye being the estranged comrade of All Might the underdog’s teacher, Tsunade being the estranged comrade of Jiraiya Naruto’s teacher.

Tsunade has been hurt deeply. She ran because she felt that was the only way to save herself from more pain. Here comes Jiraiya with his new little tag along demanding she come back home, she gets appropriately angry and tries everything she can to get them to leave her alone. Naruto being the special little underdog that he is immediately gets under her skin reminding her of all the loved ones she lost bringing back all of that old pain back, so she gets even. She beats him down and challenges him to an impossible challenge to show him how small he really is and get out of her own responsibilities. But he wins. He wins, and shows Tsunade how closed off she’s become forcing her to face reality head on and face her fears at last. He changes her whole world view through action.

Nighteye has been hurt deeply. He sees the future for every person he touches and as such sees futures in which people he loves get hurt and sometimes die. He believes there is nothing he or anyone can do to change these visions. All Might is his hero, His friend and mentor, his comrade. His friend gets hurt in a way he can never fully recover from and he sees a vision where his friend dies on the battle field. He then tells All Might who refuses to retire and leaves without a backward glance. They don’t speak until years later when Nighteye picks out a successor for One For All, but Toshi chooses Izuku and never meets Nighteye’s pick.

Izuku, needing an internship not Gran Torino, goes to Sir Nighteye All Might’s old side kick. He gets tested, told he’s not worthy of One For All, and has to work under this man as he tries to get Izuku to see how Mirio is more worthy of All Might’s quirk. Facing off against Overhaul when they are at their most desperate Nighteye uses his quirk to see what will happen and sees the worst possible scenario. They lose. Then Izuku flies in sweeps Eri into his arms and fights Overhaul saving the day. Izuku proved, unknowingly, that the future Nighteye sees is not set in stone with his actions and on his death bed Nighteye acknowledges that without acknowledging it.

Nighteye’s treatment toward Izuku makes me uncomfortable. This is a man in a position of power over this student telling him that he is not enough, will never be enough, and that he is a disappointment.

His glorifying of All Might makes me uncomfortable. He was All Might’s partner and yet he practically had a shrine of the man in his office. He made him more than just a man, built him up as The Symbol of Peace and kept him there (as many of Toshi’s friends seem to do except for Nedzu and Naomasa) despite getting close enough trusted enough to learn about One For All. And despite all that “love” and “devotion” he left Toshinori alone to deal with his new normal of a permanently damaged system alone for years then takes out all that frustration and grief out on his friends chosen successor.

Then when all is said and done and he’s dying and he’s confronted by Toshinori and Izuku what happens? Does he apologize? Explain his actions? Get closure in his final moments?

No. Well, Toshinori got some measure of closure. Izuku got a few words that essentially boiled down to “Good job, your better than I thought.” without talking about the newfound hope Izuku’s action gave him that his visions are only possibilities not absolute. All of his attention then goes to his choice for One For All, Mirio.

Understandably.

He’s dying and Mirio was always his main priority as a mentor, and you know who Mirio looks like? All Might. He’s blonde, buff, blue-eyed, cheerfully friendly, and with a happy-go-lucky persona about him. Sir Nighteye taught him to smile. Chose him to be the new wielder of One For All and without telling him anything planned to introduce him to Toshinori to make his choice reality. Doesn’t that sound... I don’t know... uncomfortably close to manipulation? Grooming? To taking this child under his wing and molding him to be pretty close to a new version of All Might?

I don’t know. Maybe if Sir Nighteye had lived this uncomfortable impression I have of him would be lessened as he began to internalize the full extent of possibilities for the future that he never thought possible before and acted more hopeful, more willing to take gambles because his visions were no longer a guarantee of what will happen.

#sorry for the rant #Naruto #mha #spoilers?

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cateringisalie · 3 years

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Cloud x Aerith and Zack x Aerith for the ask game? Either one

Both is probably bad. But...

Cloud x Aerith

Ship It

1) What made you ship it?

Final Fantasy VII itself. And demonstrating things I like; first meetings, the development of a relationship between the couple, aspirations and little character moments.

2) What are your favorite things about the ship?

Aeris wanting to spend time with Cloud, and Cloud however he might grumble never objecting to her being there. Aeris has an energy and Cloud is able to match it for the most part, that energy separated out from the story would see them in high-octane rom-com scenarios (lets say, something like What's Up Doc might fit). I was quite startled to see this in place in Remake too (the progression of high-fiving each other, their increasingly ability to fight alongside each other).

3) Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

Good god, let Cloud move on with his life! Let's not have Aeris waiting eternally in the lifestream either. Cloud will recover from Aeris's death after a mourning period (two years is a pretty good one). No love at first sight. None of this chaste stuff either; Aeris is touchy-feely. No fate or precongition of death either. Cloud has other romantic partners/is capable of being with other romantic partners (including the obvious ones). Aeris has had other partners in the past.

(also really people some of the shipping evidence arguments turn Cloud into a colossal jerk which is really not good?)

Zack x Aerith

Don't Ship It

1) Why don't you ship it?

I should clarify a bit more. If this is relating to the relationship as it existed between 1997 and 2006 then I would be perfectly happy with it. Horribly burned out on it though as it stands now. And hey! It's all Crisis Core's fault (and to an extent, fandom because of CC). Specifically the issues are that the ship as it exists now is contingent on what CC did to Aerith. And what it did was strip her of so many character attributes via making Zack responsible for: her dress, her ribbon, her choker (admittedly post CC, but seriously), her ambition to sell flowers and also reusing Aeris's second meeting with Cloud for her first meeting with Zack - that kind of thing.

To say nothing of introducing a fear of the sky and failing to actually handle that disparity in characterisation. Many have argued that making Zack responsible for these elements in fact deepens her character. I must say I remain skeptical given that I feel being able to say "She wears pink because Zack told her to next time they met" tells me very little about Aerith and much more about her relationship with Zack and his dictation of her wardrobe. For one example.

Also that it ends to be used to resist Aerith moving on with her life and no spending near a quarter of her life waiting for Zack to come back. Stop it.

2) What would have made you like it?

The absence of CC primarily, or else, just CC without the prequel trickery it made use of. Its a familiar trick to take something consistent in the present and then give attribute it to someone in the backstory later. Tends to be iffy depending on how you do this; CC did this to try and cement Zack into a world in which all but three people forgot he existed so, not sure that was necessary.

But simply put: if Aeris was recognisably in character in this ship (no, you don't get to claim she was off character because of teenager given no other character has a swing as wild as this/Aerith aged 7 is recognisably Aeris aged 22), and if the pairing met via some other mechanism than a retread of an OG scene. Then maybe.

3) Despite not shipping it, do you have anything positive to say about it?

Its clearly very popular and I understand the aesthetic and appeal. Elimates the LTD completely and gracefully, which I can't help but feel might be part of why it is favoured in some quarters. Much less messy relationship-wise.

#theoreticalconstruct #asks #thanks!

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mostlysignssomeportents · 4 years

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Why I won't buy an Ipad: ten years later

Ten years ago, Apple released the Ipad. I was in a hotel room in Seattle, jetlagged and awake at 4AM while my wife and daughter slept.

I had been thinking about Apple's impending Ipad release and what a reversal it meant for everything I loved about tech: taking away your right to decide whose code you'd run -- even your right to change the battery! I wrote about my feelings and many people read it. It even rated a mention in Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs.

A decade later, the Ipad is ten years old and Apple has killed 20 state Right to Repair bills, in part to lock out third parties who might change you batteries for you.

I just reread that piece, and I still stand by it.

Why I won't buy an iPad (and think you shouldn't, either)

I've spent ten years now on Boing Boing, finding cool things that people have done and made and writing about them. Most of the really exciting stuff hasn't come from big corporations with enormous budgets, it's come from experimentalist amateurs. These people were able to make stuff and put it in the public's eye and even sell it without having to submit to the whims of a single company that had declared itself gatekeeper for your phone and other personal technology.

Danny O'Brien does a very good job of explaining why I'm completely uninterested in buying an iPad -- it really feels like the second coming of the CD-ROM "revolution" in which "content" people proclaimed that they were going to remake media by producing expensive (to make and to buy) products. I was a CD-ROM programmer at the start of my tech career, and I felt that excitement, too, and lived through it to see how wrong I was, how open platforms and experimental amateurs would eventually beat out the spendy, slick pros.

I remember the early days of the web -- and the last days of CD ROM -- when there was this mainstream consensus that the web and PCs were too durned geeky and difficult and unpredictable for "my mom" (it's amazing how many tech people have an incredibly low opinion of their mothers). If I had a share of AOL for every time someone told me that the web would die because AOL was so easy and the web was full of garbage, I'd have a lot of AOL shares.

And they wouldn't be worth much.

Incumbents made bad revolutionaries Relying on incumbents to produce your revolutions is not a good strategy. They're apt to take all the stuff that makes their products great and try to use technology to charge you extra for it, or prohibit it altogether.

I mean, look at that Marvel app (just look at it). I was a comic-book kid, and I'm a comic-book grownup, and the thing that made comics for me was sharing them. If there was ever a medium that relied on kids swapping their purchases around to build an audience, it was comics. And the used market for comics! It was -- and is -- huge, and vital. I can't even count how many times I've gone spelunking in the used comic-bins at a great and musty store to find back issues that I'd missed, or sample new titles on the cheap. (It's part of a multigenerational tradition in my family -- my mom's father used to take her and her sibs down to Dragon Lady Comics on Queen Street in Toronto every weekend to swap their old comics for credit and get new ones).

So what does Marvel do to "enhance" its comics? They take away the right to give, sell or loan your comics. What an improvement. Way to take the joyous, marvellous sharing and bonding experience of comic reading and turn it into a passive, lonely undertaking that isolates, rather than unites. Nice one, Misney.

Infantalizing hardware Then there's the device itself: clearly there's a lot of thoughtfulness and smarts that went into the design. But there's also a palpable contempt for the owner. I believe -- really believe -- in the stirring words of the Maker Manifesto: if you can't open it, you don't own it. Screws not glue. The original Apple ][+ came with schematics for the circuit boards, and birthed a generation of hardware and software hackers who upended the world for the better. If you wanted your kid to grow up to be a confident, entrepreneurial, and firmly in the camp that believes that you should forever be rearranging the world to make it better, you bought her an Apple ][+.

But with the iPad, it seems like Apple's model customer is that same stupid stereotype of a technophobic, timid, scatterbrained mother as appears in a billion renditions of "that's too complicated for my mom" (listen to the pundits extol the virtues of the iPad and time how long it takes for them to explain that here, finally, is something that isn't too complicated for their poor old mothers).

The model of interaction with the iPad is to be a "consumer," what William Gibson memorably described as "something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth... no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote."

The way you improve your iPad isn't to figure out how it works and making it better. The way you improve the iPad is to buy iApps. Buying an iPad for your kids isn't a means of jump-starting the realization that the world is yours to take apart and reassemble; it's a way of telling your offspring that even changing the batteries is something you have to leave to the professionals.

Dale Dougherty's piece on Hypercard and its influence on a generation of young hackers is a must-read on this. I got my start as a Hypercard programmer, and it was Hypercard's gentle and intuitive introduction to the idea of remaking the world that made me consider a career in computers.

Wal-Martization of the software channel And let's look at the iStore. For a company whose CEO professes a hatred of DRM, Apple sure has made DRM its alpha and omega. Having gotten into business with the two industries that most believe that you shouldn't be able to modify your hardware, load your own software on it, write software for it, override instructions given to it by the mothership (the entertainment industry and the phone companies), Apple has defined its business around these principles. It uses DRM to control what can run on your devices, which means that Apple's customers can't take their "iContent" with them to competing devices, and Apple developers can't sell on their own terms.

The iStore lock-in doesn't make life better for Apple's customers or Apple's developers. As an adult, I want to be able to choose whose stuff I buy and whom I trust to evaluate that stuff. I don't want my universe of apps constrained to the stuff that the Cupertino Politburo decides to allow for its platform. And as a copyright holder and creator, I don't want a single, Wal-Mart-like channel that controls access to my audience and dictates what is and is not acceptable material for me to create. The last time I posted about this, we got a string of apologies for Apple's abusive contractual terms for developers, but the best one was, "Did you think that access to a platform where you can make a fortune would come without strings attached?" I read it in Don Corleone's voice and it sounded just right. Of course I believe in a market where competition can take place without bending my knee to a company that has erected a drawbridge between me and my customers!

Journalism is looking for a daddy figure I think that the press has been all over the iPad because Apple puts on a good show, and because everyone in journalism-land is looking for a daddy figure who'll promise them that their audience will go back to paying for their stuff. The reason people have stopped paying for a lot of "content" isn't just that they can get it for free, though: it's that they can get lots of competing stuff for free, too. The open platform has allowed for an explosion of new material, some of it rough-hewn, some of it slick as the pros, most of it targetted more narrowly than the old media ever managed. Rupert Murdoch can rattle his saber all he likes about taking his content out of Google, but I say do it, Rupert. We'll miss your fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the Web so little that we'll hardly notice it, and we'll have no trouble finding material to fill the void.

Just like the gadget press is full of devices that gadget bloggers need (and that no one else cares about), the mainstream press is full of stories that affirm the internal media consensus. Yesterday's empires do something sacred and vital and most of all grown up, and that other adults will eventually come along to move us all away from the kids' playground that is the wild web, with its amateur content and lack of proprietary channels where exclusive deals can be made. We'll move back into the walled gardens that best return shareholder value to the investors who haven't updated their portfolios since before eTrade came online.

But the real economics of iPad publishing tell a different story: even a stellar iPad sales performance isn't going to do much to stanch the bleeding from traditional publishing. Wishful thinking and a nostalgia for the good old days of lockdown won't bring customers back through the door.

Gadgets come and gadgets go Gadgets come and gadgets go. The iPad you buy today will be e-waste in a year or two (less, if you decide not to pay to have the battery changed for you). The real issue isn't the capabilities of the piece of plastic you unwrap today, but the technical and social infrastructure that accompanies it.

If you want to live in the creative universe where anyone with a cool idea can make it and give it to you to run on your hardware, the iPad isn't for you.

If you want to live in the fair world where you get to keep (or give away) the stuff you buy, the iPad isn't for you.

If you want to write code for a platform where the only thing that determines whether you're going to succeed with it is whether your audience loves it, the iPad isn't for you.

https://boingboing.net/2020/01/27/nascent-boulangism.html

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xsparklingravenx · 4 years

Text

dying light

Title: dying light

Fandom: Xenoblade Chronicles 1 / 2

Characters: Zanza, Meyneth, Klaus, Galea

Rating: T

Word Count: 5,244

Summary: On the shoreline of a dying world, they meet again for one final time.

Klaus and Galea. Major spoilers for the entirety of Xenoblade 1 and Xenoblade 2

AO3

In the dying light of a cross-shaped sun, a woman awoke.

From horizon to horizon stretched a boundless sea, the sky above scorched in red, green, and lilac tones. She drifted amidst the trembling waves, carried along by its easy caress as it handled her as careful as a mother with her child. With no direction, no obvious right way to go, she was at its mercy as it carried her across its surface, no clear destination in sight wherever she looked.

So instead, she turned her thoughts, and her gaze, back to the sky. Such an unusual sunset, she thought as the sun dipping halfway beyond the horizon. The colours were more akin to a borealis, an amalgamation of odd, contrasting tones that she was certain held more in common than their appearances would have her believe. After all, it was nothing like she’d ever seen in any natural world. Nothing like what she’d ever seen from her perch upon the Mechonis, or in any other world before that.

She continued to drift, letting the ocean take her on whatever path it deigned. She was content to simply be the passenger; there was no need to be fight it, or to try and dictate the way the waves rolled her. This was her afterlife, or, so it seemed. Surprised as she was that there was one, she didn’t question it. There were so many things she didn’t understand, and so many things she had to accept. In a very long line of oddities, this was hardly the strangest she’d ever experienced.

And yet still, the shape of that cross-like sun as it continued to dim—she’d seen it before, years and years and years ago, countless millennia gone by. It had been burned into her mind, the final thing she’d seen before her life changed irreversibly, illuminating the figure of the man she loved as he dammed them both. There were many things she’d forgotten from her life before, but that would never be one of them.

Closing her eyes, she let the darkness be a comfort as she fell between the ocean’s waves, moving, moving, her body still, the air silent. In the moments of calm, she dreamt, of the Homs girl who had leant her a body, of her final moments clashing against a megalomaniacal god. War had been forever seared into her bones, into her genetic makeup. She had been born into the world fighting, and so she had left it too. Battle was all she knew, had been all she’d known for too long. Now that there was a moment for peace, she was all too glad to take it.

“This breeze. It’s nice, isn’t it?”

“I wasn’t really considering it, but now you’ve said, I can see the appeal—”

Echoing words, voices she could hardly untangle, her own, or the Homs girl, his, or the Heir to the Monado. Memories she’d shared had become integral to her being, feelings she’d absorbed from the girl who had melded with her heart. The woman was a goddess, but she hardly felt powerful now. Lost in the ocean, she pulled herself apart and pieced herself back together, over, over, a machine replacing its own circuits, a woman searching for her own soul. Thousands of years’ worth of experiences were layered over her past like sediment, burying the truth and all that she had known with it.

So caught up in herself was she, that she barely noticed the waves depositing her carefully on a shoreline that had not been there before. It was only when she felt sand beneath her fingers that she realised she was no longer at one with the sea, but instead, on the surface of a wet, grainy beach. Surprised at the sensation, the woman sat up, looking at her hands in mystified silence.

She stared, turning her hand to look at her palms, then back to look at her knuckles, grains of sand falling with the movement. Then she flexed her fingers, clawing them, spreading them, making a fist with her hand. Tendons moved, and she noticed veins too, as faded as they were. It was not the movement that surprised her, but the fluidity, the colour, simply how normal it looked. She had grown so accustomed to her metal skin, to her silver tones, that the uneven, peach tone of her flesh stunned her into silence.

“It is horrifying, is it not? To be returned to our own flesh and see ourselves for what we truly were?”

Her breath hitched. The voice that came from behind her was one she knew intimately; though he and the Heir to the Monado shared it, she knew it was not the boy who she would find if she turned. Taking a moment to steady herself, she stood, wet fabric clinging to her body, sleeves of a white lab coat tight around her arms, drenched strands of silver hair falling past her face. The garb of a human. The garb of someone she might have once been.

She didn’t turn. Not immediately. Fists clenched at her sides, staring out to sea, she said, “I see this is not the afterlife after all.”

“What would make you say that?”

How sad he sounded. She knew it for the lie that it was. “You are cruel beyond words, Zanza. Those children, tell me, did they fail? Is this how you would remake our world? You would drag me back after you won to do war once more?”

Silence. Only the dreamy sound of the rolling waves punctuated it, her anger not matched by that of the atmosphere. Those Homs that she’d entrusted the world to, they’d had so much hope for their future. She’d given her life to make it happen, to save the boy who would save them all, yet once again, she and Zanza had been brought back to their beginning.

Zanza said, “I understand if you would hate me, but you misjudge the situation. This isn’t that world reborn.”

There was no other explanation. It was as empty as it always was at the start. As the Mechonis, she had borne witness to a world made of nothing but endless ocean, her own body and his the only habitable spaces. They would eventually give birth to life once more, and then they would divulge into needless violence. It was their cycle. It was their way. Zanza forced her into battle and she had no choice but to fight back, only ever for her people, never for herself.

“I no longer wield a Monado,” the woman said. She loosened her fists, the tension leaking out of her as she realised the futility of it all. “You saw to that. I know not how I stand here before you, but our battle is over before it begins this time. You will sacrifice everything all over again, and there is nothing I can do to stop you. This world will be yours for the taking. Is that not what you dreamt of all along?”

“Perhaps a part of me did,” Zanza said. “But in truth, there’s something else. One other thing I’ve been dreaming of all this time.”

She closed her eyes, angered tears welling in the corners. Her remorse, for everything she’d failed to do. Her guilt. Her grief. The Heir to the Monado deserved no such fate as to be obliterated. His friends deserved to defy their passage of fate, not submit to it. “And what is that?”

“To finally face you again, Galea.”

The name struck her like an arrow through her back. Finally, she turned, the breeze catching her hair as she did, her voice stuck in her throat. Her eyes took a moment to adjust, to focus on the hazy sight before her. Hands in the pockets of a lab coat matching her own, a faint smile on a familiar pair of lips, eyes as blue as the ocean she’d borne witness to for millennia.

Those eyes widened as he laid them on her, his lips parting a fraction. For a moment, she wasn’t there, on the shoreline, but instead a hundred thousand years ago, stood in the faded memory of the gardens of a research facility, seeing him for the first time below the low branches of a weeping willow tree.

The new professor was quite unlike any who had come before him. Galea had overseen several who wanted to crack open the secrets of their newfound Conduit, but none had managed to even scratch its surface—until this young man, or, so Galea had heard from her colleagues, anyway. Brilliant, alert, and yet incredibly elitist, he had apparently driven away every other assistant who had been assigned to his side.

“He has to do everything his own way,” said her friend, who waved her hands in overdramatic gestures when Galea chose to ask after him. “You’re gonna have your hands full with this one, if you even last five minutes with him.”

Galea was next in line for the role, having been begged by the higher-ups to take over the role of assistant as their last one threw in the towel. It was a mistake to say yes, and she knew it—her mother had always told her to never take a job position if she’d been passed over as the primary candidate in the first place. But she was young. She didn’t have all the time in the world to make a mark. If there was an opportunity in place, she had no choice but to grab it with both hands.

It was in the base’s gardens she found him, stood beneath a tree with one hand resting on the trunk, gazing out across the tranquil lake that bisected the grassy land in two. The ends of his white, standard-issued coat fluttered in the wind, blond strands of hair picked up and thrown about his head. Putting on her best smile, she linked her hands behind her back and went to stand next to him.

But, in her haste, she hadn’t prepared an opening statement. Unknowing what to say, she floundered for words, desperately searching for something to introduce herself with. In the end, all that came out was, “This breeze. It’s nice, isn’t it?”

He turned his head in surprise, eyes a fraction too wide, his mouth downturned a tick. “I wasn’t really considering it, but now you’ve said, I can see the appeal—” his gaze travelled downwards, and she considered retracting her comment until his line of sight snagged on her nametag attached to her breast pocket. “—Galea.”

Above them, quietly, a war raged on. Humanity had taken their conflict higher, beyond the stars themselves, but down on the earth, it was peaceful, quiet. “Yes. And you are Professor Klaus, are you not?”

He nodded, facing back towards the lake. “Am I right in thinking that you’re to be my new assistant? I recognize your name, but this would be our first meeting.”

“Our first meeting, yes, but I’ve already heard a lot about you.”

“Have you now? None of it good, I imagine.”

“I don’t tend to believe in idle gossip,” Galea said, still smiling. “I judge men on their own merits, not on the hearsay of others. As they say, seeing is very much believing.”

The breeze caressed her skin, calm and gentle. Klaus didn’t reply immediately, and when she turned to look at him, she found him still staring out at the lake. “Might I ask what you’re looking at?”

“Nothing in particular,” came his quick response, one of his hands dipping into his coat’s pocket. “I do my best thinking in the quiet, though that pursuit is ruined now, given that you’re here now. Judging men on their own merits, you said, and refusing to take part in gossip? Well. You must be fun at parties.”

“As must you, given how quick you are to turn.” Galea crossed her arms against her chest as he turned to face her once more. He was, in her view, terribly beautiful, his hair golden, his eyes soulfully blue, like if she looked too hard, she might see galaxies shining within. “Let me guess; the reason for your rudeness is because you want nothing more than to examine the Conduit by yourself. My presence is only a hindrance because of that reason—but tell me. Why? What is it about the Conduit that draws you in?”

Klaus laughed then, a bitter sound in his throat. “I want to save this world, Galea. What else? That thing, it emits so much power, if only we could access its full potential. Nobody has the acumen, the knowledge, to figure it out. But I do. I will unlock its secrets on my own, with no-one to stand in my way. And when I do, the Saviourites will fall by my hand.”

“I see,” Galea said. “So it is trite heroism that drives you.”

“Trite—!”

“But here is the issue, Klaus,” Galea cut him off, raising a finger to quieten him. “I can hardly believe in a man who I know nothing about. Your words right now are just that—words, and I haven’t seen what you can do. For all I know, I will find the path to humanity’s survival in my own research.”

“You have a lot of confidence, don’t you?” Klaus scoffed, shaking his head. “I don’t need you. Or any of the others who they’ve tried to partner up with me. You’re all the same, eager to please, desperate to make some kind of mark. I don’t need that kind of overenthusiastic uselessness holding me back.”

“Uselessness? Such a strong word, considering you don’t know a thing about me!” Galea couldn’t help but be offended, planting her hands on her hips. “Well, you won’t find that ‘eagerness’ to please in me, Klaus. I’m not playing the role of your assistant to make-nice with the higher-ups, I’m doing it because the Conduit interests me, because it has so many secrets hidden within that I must know. Desperate to make some kind of mark, you say? Well. Aren’t you also? Isn’t that what you just said?”

“That’s what you took away from this conversation? That I’m ‘desperate’?”

“Indeed. But maybe you could show to me that you’re wrong, if you work hard.” He tried to speak over her, but Galea raised her finger again, cutting him off soundly. “No, you’re listening to me right now. This is my proposition to you; I will be your assistant, and you will prove to me that you are as good as you say. Then, and only then, will I have faith that perhaps you could save us all. That you could be the hero that you seem to be dreaming of being.”

Klaus’s eyebrows drew together, but he didn’t seem displeased. After a moment of what seemed like pure shock, he began to laugh, genuinely. Frowning, Galea said, “I don’t see the joke.”

“I’m not the only one they gossip about in this base, you realise,” Klaus said, shaking his head. “But perhaps they were wrong, or simply shallow. I heard you were cold, stony, even. Some even called you robotic in your methods, but from what I see now, that it is untrue. You wish to share the Conduit with me? Then you need to prove something to me also. Prove to me that you’re just as worthy, and perhaps I might consider the idea that we could be able to carve out a path to a new future together.”

Galea looked back across the lake, so still, so quiet. The sun sat in its lofty throne, perfectly circular, a beacon for their earth. A sign, she thought, of better days to come. “So it is to be a challenge then, one to another? Your arrogance is as they say.”

“Arrogance?” She could hear the smirk in his voice. “How amusing. I heard many use the same word to describe you. Perhaps we’re not so different as I first thought.”

“Give it time,” Galea said. “You will see the difference.”

“Will I? I can’t say I’m disinterested. But, for now, I think it’s time for me to go.” Klaus turned, drawing her attention back to him. He retreated away from the weeping willow, his back to her, giving a careless wave goodbye as he left. “I will meet you again, when it is time for us to do our work. You’ve spoken a big game now, so, don’t let me down, Galea.”

“The same to you, Klaus,” she replied. The lake rippled in the breeze as she looked back to it, tucking a lock of silver hair back behind her ear. Their war was one they had to win, competition or no.

Alone, or together, it mattered not.

He looked at her like he had that day, as if he was laying his eyes on her for the first time all over again. Blue-on-blue, human-to-human, flesh-to-flesh. He was gold, and she was silver, contrasting colours on the wheel of their world, opposite sides of the shoreline, opposite sides of their war. Her tears threatened to fall, but she did not let them.

Not yet.

“You would call me that, after everything?” she said. “I cast that woman out to sea as you so carelessly abandoned your past to rot. Do not invoke that name now, after I tried so hard to reach out to you. Do not speak to me so plainly, when you tore it all from me. I offered you peace, and you ripped it apart with your own hands.”

“Then you would prefer ‘Meyneth’?” Zanza asked. He looked so out of place, standing there like that in his human guise. The last time she’d seen him, his expression had been twisted with mania, his voice warped with delusional hatred. “You do not look very much like her to me, though.”

Something was wrong here. She searched him for any hint of a Monado, but there was no such weapon in sight. “This is treacherous, even for you. Appearing as you are, speaking to me this way—you revel in the fact that you’re breaking my heart.”

“That’s not true.” Zanza cast his gaze downwards, taking a single step across the sand. She took one backwards in response, and then another, her heels burying themselves beneath the grains as she wrapped her arms around herself. “Listen to me, Meyneth, Galea, whoever you wish to be in this moment. This is not your world, or mine, because those children you believed in succeeded. Your wish has been realised. They remade the world with their own desires, they cast out my twisted form and denied all gods.”

“How can I believe you?” Meyneth asked him. “When all has come to pass before, when you forced me into battle against you again and again, why would I believe a single word from your mouth?”

He stopped in his approach, closing his eyes. “I understand if you would hate me, for everything I’ve done.”

Hate? It wasn’t the right word for the way she felt. There was no word that could quite encapsulate the spectrum of emotions that she felt whenever Zanza entered her field of vison. They had clashed for lifetimes, sword against sword, collision in a thousand forms, a thousand conflicts.

“If what you speak is truth, then prove it.” Meyneth said.

“As someone once told me, seeing is very much believing,” Zanza said. He made a grand gesture towards the dying sun in the sky, a sweep of his arm. “The Conduit is gone. That boy, Shulk—his actions saw it so. What we are now, I couldn’t tell you, but we’re no longer the gods we once posed as. I believe—I believe that we’ve been reborn anew, one last time, in response to our own wishes, but that is mere hypothesis. I only know what my wish was, after all.”

She looked up at the sun. It did look like the Conduit, and it burned as brightly as it once had in the laboratories. “So if I am to believe what you say, then you are not Zanza. Is that it?”

“It would be easier to say yes,” Zanza said. “But it would also be a lie, and I can hardly hide from the blame that I deserve. I am recomplete. That day, when I made my decision, when I pressed that button, the Conduit tore my soul in two. Some of me ended up with you, in that world. I only regret that it was the worst of me.”

“Stop this,” Meyneth said. “You speak of another world? That you could possibly have—”

“It is a gateway. A gateway that will take us to an entirely new world!”

“You were right,” Zanza was looking up towards the Conduit-shaped sun for himself when she turned back, bathed in its light. “A meta-universe manifold. That was what you called it. And it was. It opened up so many possibilities, but I never should have done it. I awoke in pieces on the floor of the Rhadamanthus, half of me lost to your world, half of me still on that station. My decision was wrong. I know that now.”

She remembered the day she awoke too, the day she turned to the man she loved and saw only that crazed look in his eyes. “You never wanted peace,” she said. “First, you wanted heroism and glory. Then, you wanted immortality and devotion. You chose that over everything, even when I tried to stop you! You chose that over me.”

“I never forgot,” Zanza said. He approached anew, and she didn’t step back this time. “I never forgot your voice, how you shouted that day, how you told me to stop. I never forgot how frightened you sounded, or how tightly you held onto me. And part of me, the worst part, Zanza, he used that to fuel his hatred towards you. But me…”

“But you?” Meyneth stepped forwards now, the distance between them getting smaller. “Speak, Zanza. Respond to me.”

“My name is Klaus,” he said. “An arrogant man who thought he could change the future. A lonely fool who awoke to the knowledge that he’d sentenced everyone on the Rhadamanthus to death, a pathetic god who screamed your name over and over, hoping you would come and find me. I could see you through the link I shared with my body in your world. I knew everything he was doing, and I couldn’t stop him. He was me. I was him. And yet I could do nothing but wait and hope that someone would put us down. I carried the guilt of what I did for a millennia, waiting, waiting, constantly dreaming that I could one day see you again for myself.”

He closed his eyes, head ducked down low, hands in fists at his side. The Conduit’s sun grew dimmer still, the colours of the sky fading. What happened when it went out? Would their brief meeting come to an end?

Their lives were linked in the light of the Conduit. It was through it they had been reborn, been changed, been shaped. Klaus and Galea. Zanza and Meyneth. The same souls, different aliases. Humans and Gods, what became of them when there was nothing left?

Her voice would not come to her. Her mind would not work. It grew dimmer, and dimmer, and yet she didn’t know what to do.

In the light of the Conduit, brilliant and blinding, they kissed for the first time.

There was nobody around to see them, nobody around to interrupt. Most of the Rhadamanthus’ staff were tucked away in their dorms, and it was only Klaus and Galea left in the lab. One thing had led to another, and now she had her back against the window of stars while their lips chased one another in hungry desperation.

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, pushing further into him. He pushed back, his arms around her waist, their bodies pressed so tightly together that they were almost one. The solar system was their single witness as they abandoned their work for only each other, desperate and passionate. Planets watched, their legacy to come remembered by them and them alone.

Her hands found his hair. His held onto her hips. She’d never intended for things to go this way. What had started as simple rivalry had progressed into friendship, into late-night drinks and research. Travelling to the station beyond the stars had intensified things, their quarters now closer than ever before, their time spent mostly with each other.

For what felt like hours they simply existed to express their love, surfacing for air only to return once more. She was starving for him as he was her, and it was only later, when they finally tired, that she said, “I want to be with you, Klaus.”

“When the war is over,” he said, holding her close. “When we’ve unlocked the secrets of the Conduit and saved humanity, then we can do this right.”

“Are we not already?” she asked, touching her fingertips to her swollen lips. “I don’t think I’ve ever been happier than this moment. I don’t think I’ve ever been happier than when I’m with you.”

“No, that’s not what I mean.” Klaus rested his forehead against hers. “I want to take you to dinner, or to make you dinner. I want to take you home and sleep in the same bed as you. I want to be yours, to make a thousand memories with you.”

“We can start now,” Galea said, looking directly into his eyes, drowning in the depths. “Right this moment. I don’t want to be apart from you, not now, not ever. I want to hold onto you forever, not just in my memories. I want to do something fun. Can we dance?”

“Dance?” Klaus blinked, his surprise endearing. “But we have no music.”

“We need no music.” She pulled back from him and took his hand. “Sweep me off my feet. Prove to me that your head isn’t only for science.”

Ever one to rise to the challenge, Klaus took the lead. Clumsy as he was, he was enthusiastic, the two of them clasping hands in a not-entirely dreadful imitation of a ballroom dance. Around and around they went, momentum shared, joined in a union of movement that had her grinning, that had his eyes focused on her like she was all that existed in that moment. Perhaps they were all that existed. In her wildest dreams, she imagined a place for them, and them alone, untouched by war and fear, untouched by death and destruction.

“So do you believe in me now?” Klaus asked as they continued their duet, lab coats drifting with their movement. “That my head isn’t only for science?”

He dipped her low. She looked up at him, smiling. “I see it for myself, don’t I?”

So they went. So they carried on. And if she’d dared look away, dared catch sight of herself in the window’s reflection, she might have seen a future echoed in the mirror, illuminated by the Conduit itself.

A god dressed in golden tones dancing with a goddess made of steel, hand in hand, face to face. Their lips touched anew, and in the window, conflict sparked; but for Galea, all she knew in that moment was love.

“This burden is mine to bear,” Zanza said. “Everything that happened to our world. Everything that happened to you. Everything I put the innocent through.”

Meyneth turned her head, looking behind her to where the sea continued to roll on in. How unassuming it was, to not know of the conflict within her heart, to not understand and respond to her thoughts, her feelings. The sky had morphed into dusky tones, violets and emeralds and scarlets. She had the feeling they were running out of time, but she couldn’t explain why.

“You said you have a hypothesis,” she said, still looking out over that deep blue. “You believe the Conduit granted us one last wish each?”

“It is what I did for the world I came from,” Zanza replied. “After I had given up hope, a boy came to me with his friends and showed me there was still more to life than death. Perhaps the Conduit took pity on us. I for one know I’m pitiable.”

Such fascinating words coming from the mouth of the god who had decried anything that came beneath him. “Then what was your wish?”

“Have I not already told you?” His tone spoke volumes of his surprise. “It was to see you one last time, Galea. To beg your forgiveness.”

“Prove it to me,” she whispered. “Prove that you’re not him. Prove to me that you’re Klaus, not Zanza.”

“Done,” he said, and she heard his voice shatter on that single word. “I love you, Galea, more than the earth, more than the stars, more than anything. And I was wrong to choose the Conduit over you, I was wrong to submit us to destruction, and though I know forgiveness is out of reach for me, I needed to tell you that I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

Finally, her tears ran free. She blinked hard as they ran down her cheeks, and, cruel illusion or no, she could hold it back no longer. He was right there, the man she’d searched for in the eyes of a crazed god, looking at her like she was the world, and it broke her in two. She ran to him, arms outstretched, and he caught her as she collided with him. Together, they went down in the sand with a whumph, a flutter of coats and a mess of sobs. He pressed his lips to hers, and she let him in, responding lightly, her hands shaking as she clung to his back, his fingers gripping the back of her coat just as tightly.

“I searched for you within him for so long,” she said as they broke apart, as she buried her head into the crook of his neck. She shook off Meyneth like a snake shedding skin, searching deep within herself for the woman she might once have been. “Take me back to the start, Klaus. Let us begin again.”

“I would give anything to do that,” he said. The sky darkened further overhead. “But I fear this is all the time we have left.”

“No,” Galea lifted her head to look him in the eye. “If we are to be reborn again in the light of the Conduit or not, know that I will find you, no matter what it takes, because I never stopped searching, not even in our darkest hours.”

“And I will find you, Galea,” he said, one hand brushing against her hair. He closed his eyes and smiled. “This breeze. It’s nice, isn’t it?”

Breathless, tearful, Galea found it in her to smile; genuine and true. Her words echoed his of countless years ago. “I hadn’t noticed—but now you’ve said, I can see the appeal.”

The sun continued to die. The sky grew darker still, the colours fading from sight one-by-one, yet it mattered not to the lovers who had reunited in their final moments. They remained amidst the grains of sand, hand-in-hand, awaiting the end.

#Xenoblade Spoilers #Xenoblade Chronicles #Zanza #Meyneth #Xenoblade #My Writing

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smilerforyou · 4 years

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You Will Be King (Gale/Thom)

A/N: Well, here's the first non-Gadge piece. I don't know why but Thom and Gale's relationship has always interested me, and I've been imagining what they'd be like together for a while now. We get very little of Thom in the books (bummer!), but I always imagined the two of them as inseparable. Not a whole lot of Thom/Gale romance going on here, today, but if you're interested, I'd love to continue the piece!

This piece is inspired by Netflix's The King. I'm kind of OBSESSED with Timothée Chalamet and have been watching all his movies again recently. I just finished The King for a second time and it inspired me to write another royalty piece.

Gale paused outside of the throne room, his spine stiffening. The last time he entered this room he told his father he was gay and was engaged to a man. Their wedding would be at the end of the summer – to mark their second anniversary – and he would be moving out and abdicating his direct line to the throne immediately.

Now, after six months, his hands still sweat the way they did that day. He curls and uncurls his fists, trying to wick away the sweat bedding on the palms.

He doesn’t know why his father has summons him to the palace after all this time. It certainly couldn’t be for forgiveness. Gale’s own siblings haven’t even been allowed to communicate with him since the day he had left, and – despite being invited to his wedding – hadn’t been allowed to come. It had hurt Gale more than he wanted it too, finally sharing a union with someone he loved without the witness of his family. Their absence had felt wrong then, and still do now. So, standing in front of the be wooden doors with the family seal engraved into its center put an awkward weight on Gale’s chest. The pressure came from within, bubbling his fears and worries with it.

The guards patiently waited for approval to open to the door – something they didn’t have to do now that they held no loyalty to him anymore. But now that Gale is standing in front of the doors…he doesn’t know if he’ll ever be ready to face his father again, to see the disappointment his father’s eyes placed upon him every time they were in the same room. He has gravely disappointed his father, ripping away the long-sipped cocktail of monarchal succession. The old-fashioned recipe sweet to thy country’s tongue and thy country’s citizens, a taste so strong and recognizable that one unbalanced flavor would spark an outburst. Gale is the glass hitting the bar top, his father’s voice the disgruntled complaint for a remake, but Gale wasn’t remake-able.

Gale has known for years that he desired male attention and only male. He fumbled with it, became connected with it, in darkened alleys and sticky bathroom floors. Gale’s body always ended up the same: pushed against the alcohol covered wall with someone’s impossibly hot hands pressured firmly against his stomach and their lips confidently pressed to his throat. It only came out in places where the other residents wouldn’t remember seeing him there when they opened their eyes the next morning, too drunken to spill the tea to the media about a prince with unroyal desires.

Very few people knew about his internal desires. He displayed them only when appropriate, as desires should be. At palace galas and garden parties, he tucked his desires away and forced himself to only admire the well-fitting suits with his eyes instead of his lips. His desires is his own problem to control, not exert onto anyone, but outside, in the well past midnight moonlight, he unleashed his desires with any willing body.

When he came stumbling back home in the early mornings, his oldest sibling, Lucinda, would just shake her head and lock the underground tunnel door behind him. As they stumbled through the old musty tunnels, they whispered about the men they shared their beds with – or rather the men whose beds they lay in. Once they pushed open the hidden library door, no words of desired hands or sharp teeth or warm thighs would ever be spoken. They kept each other’s dick appointments between themselves, immunity granted through shared collateral.

For years, so many men let him into their warm beds, whispering how beautiful and delicate his petite body was, how his unmarred skin glistened in the glow of the moon. More often than not, the men would rave to him about being in bed with the prince, but Gale pretended it was role play, convincing himself that in those moments he was nothing but an ordinary man.

He was anything but ordinary then. He was indeed a Prince of Panem.

It wasn’t until he met Thomas Michael Grayland that he finally felt the freedom only ordinary men felt. Thom rarely mentioned anything about royalty, and definitely not while in bed. In the rare moments where royalty passed his lips, it was of criticism, mostly toward Gale’s father. Thom resented the King for his oppressive tactics he used on his children. He hated the way Gale was stifled and silenced all because he was the eldest male and would be destined to ascend the throne. Thom was the first person Gale had ever breathed the words abdication to, and he was the only man who pushed Gale to follow what Gale’s heart said was true. He never pressured Gale to make a choice or to choose him over the crown, but a part of that might have been that Gale wore his weathered heart on his sleeve. There was never a moment’s hesitation about abdicating. Gale had wanted it for years, since he could remember understanding what the line of succession meant for him. And despite his sweaty palms, Gale had rolled into the throne room that day confidently covered in the smell of Thom’s day-old cologne and mint Chapstick.

And he’d do it again, just this time with a little more sweat on his palms.

He nodded and the doors slowly began to open.

“Your Majesty, your son has arrived.”

…

“Gale,” King Marcus said coolly, his eyes desert dry of warmth upon landing on his son.

“Father,” Gale bites out. He doesn’t deserve that title after everything, but Gale bites his tongue.

“I’m sure you’re wondering why I have called you here today.” He waits for his son to nod before continuing. He confidently shifts in this throne, the unnecessary crown placed lightly on his head. It seemed to float there, like it was meant to be there, although Gale’s own shoulder felt its weight from across the room. Gale had always noticed the ease in which his father took to ruling, to the fancy and expensive suits, the heavy crowns and robes always appearing to float weightlessly on his shoulders.

Gale could admit that his father is an excellent king, there was no doubt about that. The kingdom took great pride in plastering his face everywhere and worshipping the ground he walked on. On the other side of that very same coin, though, Gale could also say that his father is a shitty dad. In the younger years, when royalty and lines of succession and duties were far, far away, he can remember the good dad he had. The one who taught him guitar and piano and how to write a song, the dad who would run through the big rain puddle that turned their backyard into a lake, the dad who would bake cookies with them in the kitchen and eat half the cookie dough before it even reached the oven. But as Gale grew older, their relationship changed, and Marcus became more of a dictator than a father. He disguised his harsh punishments and disappointed stares as a father’s love, but Gale knew that Marcus hated the person Gale had become.

Marcus had always viewed Gale as weak. He constantly told him that he was “too romantic,” and “needed to stop wearing his heart on his sleeve,” but Gale didn’t know how too, nor did he think it would be very beneficial. Gale – who dealt through most things with tears – would be told to harden his exterior and only cry on the inside.

“A King is meant to be a powerful leader, not a crybaby,” his father would rant at him constantly.

But Gale didn’t feel like a king, he felt like a child whose feelings got hurt.

As Gale grew older, and his tears were shed in the quiet of his mother’s arms in his darkened bedroom, Gale watched his dad turn into his father, who would eventually turn into his king. Gale’s emotional state and desire to be loved would sever all familial ties between them. They became harsh master and unwilling student.

After a long pause, Marcus spoke again, and much like the last time they had spoken, the words are condemning.

“You will be king.”

The words echoed through the empty room, bouncing off the marble floors and the gallery seats and passing through the crystal beads of the high chandelier.

“No.” It came out harder than Gale expected his voice to allow, but he reveled in the reverence of answer, the clarity that rang through the single syllable.

The King’s chin rises only a fraction. “You will be king,” he repeats.

“I will not.”

“It is your destiny.”

“I have not soughtit,” Gale spits out, “I abdicated the throne. Don’t you remember?”

“I remember.” His father’s eyes grow harden, the gray turning to stone and his fist curling around the armrest with great tension. “I know you did, but you mustbeking.”

“I do not wantit.”

“I cannot have your sister on the throne. She are far too devoured by her own interests. And your brothers and younger sister are too young. Rory isn’t even 13 yet, let alone 16. It must be you, Gale.”

“I don’t wantit,” he repeats.

“It isn’t about want, Gale.”

“Everything is about want, father. You can’t force me to place a hideous crown on my head. I abdicated; I’ve made my choice. Parliament won’t change the decision now.”

Marcus sits back in his throne. A spark a fear spreads through Gale’s chest as his father’s face twists with satisfaction.

“Your mother and I have spoken to Parliament.” His full lips spread into a wicked grin. He knows how much Gale values his mother and her trust. For her to agree with his father on this means the years of preaching to him to be himself and only himself has to be lies. “It will not be a problem. They have already agreed to reverse your decision.”

“This is bullshit!” the words echo harshly in the room. “You didn’t agree with my decision to leave this fucked up family, despite the years of abuse at yours and Parliament’s hand. You wouldn’t even throw me a bone and allow me to be who I am. I abdicated for a reason, father–”

“So you could suck a cock.” It wasn’t even a question, just a statement.

“And many indeed I did, but I did that with a crown on my head. My loyalty lies with only one cock outside these walls.”

“You’ll grow out of it. Once that crown is on your head, you’ll find the pleasures of a woman. Of an heir.”

“Are you speaking from personal experience?”

He knows the weight of that insinuation, of the repulsion that will rise in his father’s chest being associated with such a comment. He knows this, so he uses it.

“You disgustme!”

“My happiness — your own son’shappiness — disgusts you? This is the reason I left the family, Father. I gave up my title to be who I am. To be with him, to celebrate the beauty of who we are, of love. I never asked for this life, Father. I never wanted royalty or a crown or a title. I wanted simplicity and someone to love me.”

“England loves you.”

Gale spits on the floor for real this time, stamping his foot into it and smearing it into the floor.

“England has showed me time and time again it does not love me, and she will not love me,” he growls.

Marcus’ voice lightens for a mere second, “Gale, I wish this could be diff—“

“It canbe different, Father. You choosefor it to proceed this way.”

“We have to sacrifice our lives for our country. We are born to be dutiful, to love England.”

“But do youlove me?”

He father stills in his chair, his head shifting to one side, his eyes widen a fraction. “Of course I do.”

“Just the old me?” Gale volleys back.

“Yes, the old you. The only who isn’t drunk off satanic desires, yes.”

“It. Is. Not. Satanic.”

“Isn’t it? Nowhere in our church does it say to engage in such relations.”

“FUCK THE CHURCH! Fuck you, Dad.” He chest heaves with such weight. Gale likes to think of himself as a calm individual, a steadfast partner. The only man who can make Gale lose his shit is Marcus. “If you love me, leave me alone. Don’t call me back to palace to rip the life I’ve built from myself.”

His father’s face boils red. “You likeliving in poverty? You likethe disgusted looks? You likebe disgraced among your own people?”

Gale rolls his eyes. “Father, please, they were worse when I had a sparkling crown on my head.”

Marcus shifts in his seat again, crossing his ankle over his knee. It was the first time that Gale had noticed that his father is incomplete. His bare foot pokes out from under the heavy robe, his poke tattoo of a crown on the bottom of his foot is almost completely worn off now. Much like his reign over his kingdom.

But what bothered Gale the most was the fact that his father couldn’t even be bothered to dress for him, but had time to put on a crown. Gale was such a disgrace and afterthought that shoes weren’t even important enough to be worn in front of him.

“Of course you’ll have to marry again,” his father began. “We can move Thom somewhere no one will know him, make a deal with a neighboring nation. We can say he died, or you made a mistake – although that might cause a national scandal. Mmm…we’ll figure it out later. Margaret Undersee is still available to marry and we–“

“Father, stop.”

“Gale, there’s a lot—“

“To do? There is nothingto do, Father. I will not be king no matter how hard you try to ignore my answer. You’ll just have to remain king until Rory is of age or bend the rules to make him king at 14, like you’re clearly willing to bend the rules to break my abdication.”

“Gale, it is your—“

“No, no. I reject your offer.”

“You cannot do such a thing. I am the King.”

“I’m going to ask you again…Do you love me?”

“Of course I do, you’re my son.”

“Do you love me more than England?”

“Gale, please. This isn’t a discussion worth having.”

“Answer me, Dad.”

Marcus’ face softens are the mention of ‘dad.’ He sighs, looking across the room at his son. His pale, thin son stares back him. The clothing that once fit him now hangs off his shoulders and pools against his withering body. The shadows under his eyes were darker than night and his once smooth hands are now puckered with scars from broken guitar strings. Marcus could almost hear the sad melody playing off his son’s aura, the single violin playing a soft note of a sinking chord.

“Of course I love you,” he finally says.

A silence settles over them as Marcus waits for his son’s reply. He could see the tears well up in his son’s eyes. And despite the words of criticism being on the edge of his tongue, he lets his heart speak first. He lets his son drown in his emotions just this once. He watches a single tear run down his son’s cheek, the tips of fingers tingling to wipe it away.

“I wish you loved me as much as you love England.”

He had seen through. Gale had seen through the lie.

Gale turned on his heel and made way for the door. The guards raced to pull open the door in time for Gale to run through them, but Marcus stops their descent. Gale would have to push through his own door. He didn’t mind, his father always made things difficult.

His hands wrapped around the steel handle, the thick metal cold in his hands. He stopped, leaning his forehead against the door, wishing he could leave without the last comment, knowing he couldn’t.

“I hate you!” he cries out, his breath heaving in his chest.“I hate you.”

“Gale.” His voice was light, soften by the moment of emotion.

Gale turns around, peaking through heavy eyelids and tear stained lashes. His breath catching in his throat, choking him. He wails unapologetically into the open air, his hands the only thing keeping him from sinking to the floor.

“You must be king.”

He collapses.

_____________________

A/N: Should I continue?

_____________________

Fanfiction.net Profile

Gadge: The Mini Stories

Gadge: The Mini Stories: Chapter 37 (if you wanna leave a comment here, that’d be much appreciated!)

#gadge #tagging gadge so all my normal readers will see it #gale hawthorne #gale x thom #thom #the hunger games #thg #fanfiction #fanfiction.net #smilerforyou #iheartliamhemsworth #lgbtq

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laryna6 · 4 years

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Dream/Wishlist

Grandia 4 - A friend in the games industry told me that the company he works for was asked about doing a remake of Grandia 1, and Grandia 2 got released on Steam. It would be nice if that was to create awareness of the series leading up to a Grandia 4.

At least there was Child of Light’s... homage to the Grandia battle system in the interim?

Devil Survivor 3 - I want this much more than the teased SMTV. In both Devil Survivor games, it’s entirely possible to do entirely without random battles (to the point that in Devil Survivor 2 I was ‘I’ve done multiple routes now: where TF is Prayer (best healing spell)?’ and it turned out you got it by actually doing a random battle for once in your life. And it helps keep doing multiple endings from feeling repetitive when every encounter you’re in was individually planned by a designer instead of randomly generated.

SMTSJ was all about actively punishing you for not grinding the same mobs over and over and doing sidequests for demons while the plot was reminding you every five seconds that the planet was on a timer and you needed to speedrun. SMTIV was... I ended up not caring enough to level demons fifty levels to use them for bonus bosses even with easy leveling preorder DLC. It was a good game and all, it just came after Nocturne, which was peak aesthetic and the Reasons were interesting, unlike Law and Chaos.

Like, I get that Law and Chaos are meant to both be exactly the same thing, the idea that ‘the strongest person gets to make all the rules and everyone else does as they’re told or gets murdered because people’s lives have no value,’ the only difference being that Chaos is honest about it, and it ties into the plot point in SMTII that Lucifer might be a ‘rebel’ but he’s still an angel programmed to obey so if YHVH says jump he has to ask how high, it sucks to not have free will - Lucifer is TRYING to rebel but he can’t actually think independently of the System he was created in, he can only be critical of it. Nocturne had a nod to this in that all the angelic demons followed the ‘might makes right’ philosophy, because yeah, that’s what they do in other SMT games.

SMTV’s trailer made it look like it was aiming for that SMT I-II feeling, and I’m like, ‘You just did that with SMT IV, please try having an artistic vision again instead of just another retread, you knocked that out of the park with Nocturne.’ I stuck SMT IV A in the 3DS and played like a bit, but even though the press turn icon system is at minimum tied for best battle system ever, I didn’t actually do any fights and ended up taking it out again.

Devil Survivor hits the same sweet spot as Nocturne, where it captures what draws people to SMT but also has a feeling of creativity and originality and creates the feeling that the player’s choices have meaning, which SMTIV failed to do despite the open world, partially because a lot of the decisions in there are followed by a narrative ‘you did X because Y’ while I’m ‘no, I did X for my own reasons stop trying to dictate to me what I think.’ Which come to think of it is a good choice narratively: you have two sides trying to shove you into either a Law or Chaos box/that can’t understand the validity of viewpoints other than their own, it just got quite annoying because of the growing up undiagnosed with neurotypicals insisting they were right and I was wrong about what was going on in my head. It probably doesn’t help that my personal moral schema is centered around respecting people’s agency, while Law and Chaos both respect nothing other than ability to kill people who do shit you don’t like. ‘People’s lives and rights matter’ feels like Blue And Orange Morality, which it is to angels and demons, which is why you need to kick both side’s asses for the Neutral ending where those things can matter again.

The only thing that really stands out at me as bad about the Devil Survivor games is 2′s storyline with Otome and her daughter which just. While children need time with adults just spending, what, .005% (given the circumstances) more time with a child - okay, let’s ignore what’s going on in the actual story and say that Otome manages to spend 50% more time with the girl (haha not happening). Unless the underlying issues are addressed, that just means the girl is going to end up 50% more fucked up. ‘Quality time’ is not a substitute for actually listening to and respecting children. I’m just. God. Someone get that kid away from her, she is in no way qualified to adopt. ‘Quality time’ dear gods, a therapist, start there plz.

#I acknowledge your good intentions #but you are made of fail #you ARE a professional please get one #you are not equipped to handle this #devil survivor 45mm autocannons

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rhan-but-faster · 4 years

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A Bittersweet Secondary Honor

In honor of Lilia Cuntapay, The Queen of Philippine Horror Films

"Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm." A quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson an American Philosopher. This is about a film of a 75 year old actress with a 30 year career record in the film industry and her journey for recognition. I am often very forgetful when it comes to name and Lilia Cuntapay was no different. Yet the opposite is true to her face, it felt almost omniscient like she was everywhere in my life and yet I could not remember who she was. She was very familiar and yet that familiarity is accompanied by mystery. That feeling of enigma began once the film started. This has also served as a recurring theme of the movie.

As a reference to reality, since the birth of the Film industry in the Philippines, it is incredibly difficult to climb up the ranks of one's role in a film or series but it is especially harder for secondary roles whom are often overshadowed by the main cast. In order to be recognized, you usually have to have a prominent role in media. This standard is exemplified by Flicks. Despite a character being a huge part of the story of a film, they can either be remembered consciously or forgotten yet retained subconsciously. Lilia Cuntapay is one of those whose name and identity unrecognized yet her façade and contributions immediately known. In spite of being considered as the Queen of Philippine Horror films, she was left little to no amount of recognition even though she is the face of several movies in the golden age of film like the witch maid in Shake Rattle and Roll Part 3 and and a recurring antagonist to the Ibong Adarna film and remake. Very few know about her name yet multitudes know about her face. This phenomenon is a reality secondary actors and actresses face.

The film is a documentary about Lilia Cuntapay and the awful reality In the recent years of the 21st century, where certain actors and actresses loose projects they could work for, where there is a slow decline of the number of genre Films in the Philippines, Especially that of horror films where the lead actress Lilia Cuntapay is known for. She struggles to have projects she can join in despite her passionate effort to continue her career in the film industry. But the time comes when she received the news about her nomination on the Association of Film and Television Awards with a recognition as as best supporting actress. She was then joined by Director Antoinette in her effort to prepare her speech. However much like her roles in films she was treated the same way in reality, how she is treated and dismissed by those around her; through passerby’s who would not recognize her name; neighbors who ridicule her if she would really win; her co-workers and directors who doubt her abilities as an actress; to broadcasters removing her from the news casting; and to even her own adopted children who are dismissive whenever she calls. Lilia struggled to work on the preparation of her speech for the day of the AFTA awards often asking aid from those who she has helped in her golden years, from her barangay community to her children. On that day, she was unfortunately not chosen as the winner but was given a honorary mention by them and a chance to give her own speech.

In my personal view, The film is about a professional actress whose 30 year career was dwindling being nominated in an award as best supporting actress in the Association of Film and Television awards found herself in odds ends with herself and the reality of her work field. Throughout her journey until the awarding day, she has been bombarded with doubt and dissatisfaction while preparing her speech either through interruption from other people or from herself. Lilia is often unsure about what to say yet still hoping for an award as such she constantly daydreams or envisions herself in stage, rehearsing non-stop of her possible award. However, as an actress specializing in supporting the lead and due to her lack of awards for her time in the industry, she continuously worries about her belongingness up in the stage, she felt deep desire to be a person in the spotlight, even praying and thanking God in advance, yet she remains unsure about what she truly wanted to relay. Eventually her doubts turned out to be true in the end, she was not chosen as the awardee yet she was then recognize by the winner herself. At that moment, she realized that as a secondary actress, the Modern era of movies would not have been the same without her, without her support, whether in the film industry or reality, she has given what she has to offer. By the time she was given the opportunity to talk in stage, she was able to truly say what she wanted to, to thank her children, to thank God, to thank the persons involved, and most especially to state what people forgot about her, her name as the queen of horror films, Lilia Cuntapay.

In my time with this movie I have learned one thing that I am sure I would not forget. Many seek for fame and fortune. This was exacerbated especially with the rise of social media. Because of this being in the spotlight has since become the set goal in mind of modern people. Often times, to receive recognition and approval it would lead to a cutthroat competition to be the best, focusing on individual identity and greatness to people they don’t know. But to realize that awards and recognition do not dictate one's value, it is only then that through their actions and roles for other people, will they receive true genuine recognition, and it is to recognize your worth on your own.

This film by Antoinette Jadaone was a mesmerizing, different and unique, albeit convincing mockumentary of the reality of the film industry, most notably the treatment of secondary characters like Lilia Cuntapay. It showed the harsh and rigorous process and conditions film makers and their staff must have in order to create media. For them, the main drive in the industry is through passionate and enthusiastic work. They were able to show the importance of recognition and its value in life. To be reminded of once existence is essential that is true, however to be truly living is to recognize their contributions despite the payout. The story of the film was able to portray this, it coherent yet it was deep and thought provoking it felt very real and alive, it showed a clear window about poor conditions in our country and that having a renowned occupation does not dictate one’s livelihood. It made me feel the sorrows and the simple joys the scenes are trying to depict. It lead me with a lot of questions in mind and thoughts that would reoccur about the situations in the film. It was a unique concept brought by combining documentary and autobiography together. I had some troubles with several scenes that felt off and were either too long to begin with but overall I enjoyed and would highly recommend the movie to others.

She may not be the leading actress, but she has been the leading woman in the Film Industry especially in the Horror Genre, For a lot of people know her by face and recognizing her as some sort of Hag, old woman, ghost or which, and only now have I learned about her name and her contributions to her passion and to her love ones. In this film, she was awarded with her very first award as Best Actress. Lilia may not be here alive today, but she was indeed six degrees away from Kevin Bacon and everyone else in the Film Industry.

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phoenix-downer · 5 years

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Sora and Xehanort: The True King vs. The Pretender to the Throne

Sora fighting Xehanort in Scala ad Caelum was kind of like watching a king reclaim his throne from a pretender who caused nothing but havoc in ruin in the king’s absence. Credit to @rapis-razuri for first making the connection and then telling me about it.

Let’s back up a bit first, though. Verum Rex, the video game featured in Toy Box, means True King in Latin.

And while yes, this is no doubt a reference to Versus XIII, I also want to consider the idea of true kings in the context of KH3.

Sora has his first confrontation with Xehanort in Toy Box (albeit Young Xehanort). The true king (Sora) goes up against the pretender (Xehanort), and Sora doesn’t even hesitate to attack him in a sequence that shows that no, Sora is not over what Xehanort tried to do to him in DDD...

...but unfortunately Xehanort manages to grab him...

...and casts him out/banishes him, i.e. throws him into the video game where the gigas are.

Fourth wall? What fourth wall?

But Sora fights his way out and makes his way back to his friends... much like how later in the game, he is cast out of the realm of the living...

...and then fights his way back to his friends and rescues them.

In San Fransokyo, Sora meets Xehanort again after he finds all his friends’ hearts... except Kairi’s.

Look how hostile he is right off the bat towards him:

He just glares at him even while Xehanort... tells the truth for once and warns him what’s going to happen to him?

Sora’s not having it though and is sure to sass him:

And Xehanort’s parting words are chilling:

And then Sora goes back to the Keyblade Graveyard and... well, we all know how things went from there.

Xehanort wants power, no matter what the cost... and he’ll sacrifice whatever it takes to get it. Including Kairi.

And by the time we get to Scala ad Caelum... there’s a marked change in Sora’s interactions with him. No more sass. No more discussion. Sora doesn’t take Xehanort’s BS at all.

Seriously, almost every time he looks at Xehanort, he’s glaring at him or regarding him with the contempt and disgust he deserves. This is the man who killed the girl he loves enough to become a Heartless for - and later on in this very game actually died for! - and it hits Sora where it hurts. Like a king losing his queen when the pretender tries to take over his throne, Kairi’s loss wounds Sora deeply.

And, of course... the game of chess isn’t over if the queen’s gone - the king must be captured for that to happen - but all the same, the king’s left a lot more vulnerable without her.

But, queen at his side or not, he still has to win and beat the guy who made his friends’ lives hell and has made his life hell, too.

His eyebrows are furrowed and he has his hand on his Keyblade, ready to fight:

Xehanort is dressed in goat/ram armor for one of the battles, and goats... well, they’re associated with the devil, among other things, so the parallel is very fitting here. Sora probably felt like he was fighting Satan at this point.

Shoutout to Donald for being equally disgusted/angry with him:

The sky starting to go dark reflects Sora’s mood pretty well here:

Sora just looks at him with utter loathing and disgust, which is such a huge change from his usual friendly/cheerful demeanor:

Even when he’s looking up at him it’s with his head pulled back to make himself look as big/tall as possible. In other words, he isn’t giving Xehanort any sort of deference because he never in a million years deserves it.

Donald and Goofy are equally pissed and it really shows:

Even when Sora’s surprised/unsure about what’s going on he’s still glaring and gritting his teeth:

And when Xehanort took Sora’s light, I’m pretty sure I gasped. Not just because I really liked Rage Form in this game and love any sort of exploration of Sora’s darkness, but because...

Well, Xehanort already took Sora’s light from him. Kairi. Kairi’s his light. This moment really drives that point home. Sora’s still feeling rage and fury and grief over her death, over losing her, and that comes out all at once and boy was it satisfying to wail on Xehanort like this:

Fight darkness with darkness!

Even when he’s desperate and about to die, he’s still just furious at Xehanort and that’s reflected in his demeanor:

And finally, FINALLY, he wins. Xehanort is no longer towering over him. They’re on equal footing now. Sora has dragged him off his high horse and defeated him. Not only that, he’s actually managed to get him to collapse to the ground when before Sora had collapsed to the ground over his grief at losing his friends and then his grief at Kairi’s death. But not here. He’s the one standing over Xehanort for once.

And he’s so tired and so done with him at this point and it was so satisfying to see someone call Xehanort out on his BS and for Xehanort to finally have to listen:

Sora demands to know what’s going to happen because he doesn’t want to hear any more lies, half-truths, or beating around the bush:

Side note: foreshadowing?

Sora, in a way, is the World’s hope, and he is likewise lost at the end of the game, and the camera very deliberately chooses to focus on him here...

But anyway, as the scene continues, you can still really just see his contempt and disgust with Xehanort. This is the part where he basically tells Xehanort he’s not cut out to be a true leader because he thinks he can control destiny, and his contempt for Xehanort just oozes off the screen. Bonus points for them having a discussion about destiny vs. free will, where Xehanort blathers on about dictating people’s fates for them while Sora comes down hard on the side of giving people free will even if no one can really control their own destiny:

I love Sora’s line here: “A real leader knows that destiny is beyond his control... and accepts that.”

He tells it like it is, not at all afraid to mince words. Because yeah, Xehanort doesn’t deserve to rule one single bit. And in doing so Sora proves he is the one who truly deserves to rule. What do you bet he will become the eventual ruler of... something, eventually. Kingdom Hearts, maybe?

This moment is like when the true king tells the pretender to get off his throne, an idea @rapis-razuri first proposed:

Yep, I’m definitely getting a “Get out of my kingdom and leave my people alone” vibe from this scene, even if Sora doesn’t know his true destiny yet. Foreshadowing? Especially when his shotlock in Second Form was called King of Hearts?

Probably. After Xehanort banished him and caused endless destruction and ruin, he’s casting Xehanort out and he’s going to make things right.

Goofy gets a moment to look disgusted, too:

And Xehanort tries to make a big show about how he’s handing over the χ-Blade because Sora did so well, blah blah blah, which... at least he acknowledges that Sora is the one who truly deserves this power?

Sora takes the χ-Blade from him:

And to Sora’s infinite credit, even though he has such a powerful weapon at his disposal, even though he could use it to summon the door and open Kingdom Hearts for himself and take full power of whatever lies beyond and be reborn as something greater than human and remake the World how he desires, if Xehanort’s reports in BBS are to be believed...

He doesn’t do that. He doesn’t want that power, and by doing so, shows he is truly worthy of it in a way that Xehanort never was or will be.

But Sora doesn’t take it for himself. He doesn’t because he despises the χ-Blade and what it represents, despises the fact that Xehanort murdered Kairi to create it, despises the fact that it was completed with her death and created by so much pain and suffering.

He could remake the World however he wishes and he chooses not to. He wants the old world back, flawed as it might be, because he wants to give people a chance. Wants to give them a choice.

And instead of trying to go it alone like Xehanort did, he calls on his friends to help him close whatever realm Xehanort opened up:

Then lifts the χ-Blade in the air...

And we get this shot. My friends are my power, indeed:

“Good riddance, I’m destroying this awful thing that represents everything I hate about what happened to Kairi plus all the crap Xehanort put my friends through, and I’m gonna do it with my bare hands.”

Must’ve been so satisfying for Sora to finally see that thing gone. In the next scene the worlds are safe, the χ-Blade is gone, and Kingdom Hearts has been sealed once more.

But even though he fought all night and it is now morning, the king isn’t through with his mission. There’s one last person he still has to save. His queen. And in sharp contrast to how he felt like he was worthless without his friends before, here he feels worthy enough to go after her alone. And he pulls it off and saves her, too.

And for my game, at least, I got this image of Sora sitting on a throne at the end.

Sora won. He might not be king yet, but he stopped Xehanort from becoming king and restored the worlds and rescued his friends and saved Kairi, and that’s what’s important for now. The rest can happen later. Nomura does like to play the long game, after all, and he’s been drawing Sora slouching around on thrones since... KH1 days?

And... until the next KH game... we’ll just have to wait and see how this theme will be further developed...

#kh3 spoilers #kh3 #kingdom hearts 3 #kingdom hearts 3 spoilers #kingdom hearts #sora #xehanort #kairi #sokai #donald #goofy #kh analysis #kh meta #phoenix plays kh3 #long post #donald duck

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isitgintimeyet · 5 years

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Letting Go

AO3

Another Sunday, another chapter. Hope you enjoy the morning after.

Thanks to @mo-nighean-rouge for the beta and @happytoobservenolongerdistant for the encouragement.

Chapter 11: All Out of Love

I’m lying alone with my head on the phone Thinking of you till it hurts I know you hurt too but what else can we do Tormented and torn apart

Clive J. Davis / Graham Russell

Claire awoke with an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. The events of the previous day came rushing back to her. She moved her hand behind her and made contact with a body… a warm body… a very warm body sporting ‘morning wood’. She snatched her hand back and quickly scrambled out of bed, muttering “shower” under her breath.

As the warm water soothed her body, she let her mind process the last twenty four hours, in particular the previous night. Although she had been gripped by a sense of unreality since Anna’s accident, that really had been no excuse for her actions. And to confuse matters even more, Jamie’s behaviour towards her had undergone a complete sea change, from his curt and abrupt manner to, well, an active and somewhat vocal participant in last night’s exertions. Claire could only assume that, due to a growing affection for Anna, and with some sort of convoluted male justification, Jamie had used sex as a distraction from his thoughts of Anna, seeking the comfort of a long familiar body.

Indeed, she told herself, he was probably lying in her bed working out how to ‘let her down gently’. Otherwise, she was sure, he would be climbing into this shower with her right now.

****************

Nine Years Ago

“Jamie, what are you doing?”

“What does it look like? I'm getting in the shower too.”

“But this shower is tiny, there’s hardly room for me.”

“Well then, Sassenach, I guess we’ll just have tae squeeze closer together… Aye, that’s it. This is my fantasy, ye ken. I jes’ love ye in the shower when every bit of ye is soakin’ wet… every... single... bit.”

“Jamie… ooh… and what happens next in your fantasy?”

“Weel, I press ye against this wall… and I bring yer legs around me… aye… and then…”

…

“Wow, oh wow. So, Jamie, will this happen every time I have a shower?”

“Aye, every time. Ye can count on it.”

*******

Jamie stretched and listened to the sound of the shower coming from the bathroom. Last night had not been planned, a mutually spontaneous decision, but none the worse for that. He pictured Claire now in the shower, all slippery and wet, and felt himself grow hard. There was an obvious remedy for that next door. Jamie started to climb out of bed, halted only by the ping of Claire’s phone on the bedside table. He hesitated before glancing at the message notification.

Frank: can’t wait to see you tonight, darling. Pick you up at 7:30. I have a special surprise for you xx

And that was it, they were back to reality. Frank was Claire's reality. Last night was nothing more than Claire’s response to a surreal day. In fact, hadn’t she said that to him, how none of it felt real? And so he would have to accept the reality, forget that last night ever happened and let Claire move forward with her life… with Frank.

Jamie quickly gathered up his clothes and got dressed. There was no point in prolonging the inevitable.

*******

Claire put the lid down, sat on the toilet seat and tried to think practically about the situation. Last night had obviously just been the pair of them seeking some comfort with a familiar body. Nothing more than that. Forget about the metaphorical fireworks exploding, forget about the most satisfying orgasm she had experienced in, well, eight years, forget about their bodies instinctively coming together, forget about…

“Shit! Shit, shit, shit.” Claire jumped up and grabbed her bathrobe. There was one thing she had forgotten about. She definitely had an unscheduled stop before work.

Claire left the bathroom at the same time as Jamie, now fully dressed, emerged from the bedroom. They stood together in the hall, slightly awkwardly.

“Do you want…”

“Well, I’d better…”

They both spoke at the same time. Claire tied the belt on her bath robe a bit tighter and tried to keep her eyes averted from her shirt and bra still lying, discarded, on the carpet.

“You’ve got a bit of a drive ahead of you.”

“Aye, best be headin’. Er… weel, thanks… er, bye then. I’ll keep ye posted if I hear any news.” Jamie brushed his lips against Claire’s cheek.

“Bye, Jamie.”

Claire unlocked the front door and let Jamie out. Through the spy hole she watched him disappear from view, before closing her eyes and sinking to the floor as she thought about the day ahead.

First stop, she decided, had to be the chemist. Claire couldn’t believe how irresponsible she… they... had been last night -- no contraception. Jamie had probably assumed, Claire reasoned, that she was still on the pill. The truth was that her relationships over the past eight years, whilst some had been of a sexual nature, had not been long enough, or serious enough to convince her to return to that method of contraception.

And her last sexual relationship had been a while ago. There were no handy condoms lurking in her bedside cabinet. Claire had never been prepared for one night stands. She didn’t go in for one night stands… usually.

So, the ‘morning after’ pill it was then. Claire grimaced. She was a mature, medical professional and had acted like some horny teenager with no thought for consequences.

As she made to get up from the floor, another thought struck her… Frank. This was quickly followed by the realisation that it had taken her hours to actually think about him. That wasn’t good. Maybe a perfect match was out there waiting for Claire, but she had just proved to herself that it definitely wasn’t Frank.

******

The roads were remarkably quiet as Jamie made his way up to Lallybroch. He knew his father would make no comment about his somewhat late arrival. He would automatically assume that Jamie had stayed with either Murtagh or John.

The worst thing he could do, Jamie told himself, was to keep thinking about Claire and last night… or about Claire and her future. But it wasn't just his imagination, last night had been special. The way their bodies had come together, instinctively, no thought required. No thought for anything. Jamie automatically slammed on the brakes. Certainly no thought for contraception. Shit! He hoped Claire was on the pill. How could he not have asked? And what must she be thinking of him now?

******

Claire sat at her desk, trying to dictate patient letters, without much success. Instead, her mind kept focusing on her date with Frank that evening. He had said, in his text, that he had a surprise for her. Well, probably not as big a surprise as she had in store for him.

Claire shook her head. That thought really wasn't fair to Frank. He was a nice man, just not the right man. And she knew what she had to do… tonight, when he came to pick her up. She would have to tell him then.

**************

As soon as Claire arrived home from work, she hurried to her bedroom and stripped her bed. Fresh sheets, she decided, smelling of soap powder and oriental blossom fabric conditioner would undoubtedly help to diminish the memory of the previous night. Without thinking, she reached for a pillowcase and inhaled the lingering aroma of Jamie’s cologne, unchanged for eight years.

*********

Nine years ago

“Are ye sniffing me, Sassenach? Do I reek, have I forgotten tae put deodorant on?”

“No, just the opposite. Are you using a new aftershave?”

“Aye, Jenny brought me back a bottle duty free from her holidays. Tom Ford, apparently. Do ye like it?”

“Oh, yes. It’s lovely. Let me have another sniff… ooh... Makes me feel all sorts of things… it’s quite a turn-on.”

“Ah, yer breath is tickling my neck. Ye’re giving me goosebumps… what are ye doin’ now, Sassenach?... I’ve no’ put any aftershave down there… A Dhia… Sassenach… I’ll always use this now.”

*******

Quickly, Claire threw the pillowcase into the laundry basket and carried on remaking the bed. Her phone pinged and she paused to check her messages. There was one from John and she eagerly read it:

Doctor pleased with progress. Swelling reduced. Hopefully will start to bring out of coma over the next few days. Relieved or what? Mary and her parents doing ok. She says thanks for the messages. See you soon. John

Once the bed was made to Claire’s satisfaction, she prepared a cup of coffee and sat, waiting for Frank. There was no need to change out of her work clothes, she intended to tell Frank as soon as he arrived. There was no use in prolonging the inevitable.

Exactly at 7:30 p.m., the intercom buzzed, announcing the arrival of Frank. Claire let him in and waited at her front door.

“Good evening, darling.” Frank leaned in to kiss her as Claire moved her head. His lips made light contact with her cheek.

He looked puzzled as he pulled away, taking in her somewhat creased attire and wayward curls. “Long day? Have you just got back from the hospital? You'd better get a move on.”

He carried on talking as they walked into the living room. “I made a reservation for 8 o’clock. And, you’ll never guess, I found a restaurant, here in Glasgow, that is authentic Turkish Black Sea cuisine. Just like your trips with Lamb. I remember you telling me about eating Muhlama and laz böreği for the first time. So I thought I’d surprise you, a trip down memory lane, Claire. We could spend the evening with your reminiscences. But hurry, I’ll wait here.”

Claire watched Frank as he spoke, wincing inwardly at the over-pronunciation of the Turkish words. She made no move to go and change, but sat on the sofa and indicated that he should sit too.

Claire hesitated for a moment. Was this really what she wanted to do? Frank was rational, discreet, polished -- a true adult, seemingly not prone to any stubbornness or petulance. But, she realised, there were never any unguarded moments of excitement, no real emotions, no careless words spoken. He seemed too generally agreeable.

Another man appeared, unbidden, in her mind -- certainly more stubborn and petulant, irrational at times but filled with warmth and sincerity. Claire forced that image away and spoke.

“Frank, Thank you for thinking about me… with the restaurant choice, but I need to talk to you. I’m sorry, there’s no easy way to say this, but I think we should… er… stop seeing each other.”

Frank made a move to interrupt.

“Please, Frank, let me finish. I know it sounds like a cliché, but truly, it’s not you. I thought I was ready for a relationship, but I’m not. I know I’m not and it’s best to stop now before it goes further. I don’t want to hurt you any more.”

Claire watched Frank as he thought about this. His arm rested on the sofa. Claire noticed his hand tightly digging into the fabric momentarily before relaxing. He refused to look at Claire, his gaze was over her shoulder, focussed on the eclectic mix of photographs on the wall.

“Is there someone else?”

Claire barely hesitated before lying. “Frank, this isn’t about anyone else. There is no one else. It’s just about me.”

“Well… I’m… what can I say? I thought this was going somewhere. I really did. Can’t we try? Take it slowly, maybe… let a relationship grow.”

“I’m sorry, really I am, Frank, but I can’t do that. I can’t pretend this is going somewhere. And it’s not you. I’m not in the right place for a relationship. I can’t tell you how bad I feel but… well…” Claire repeated the familiar clichés.

Frank stood up. “If that’s how you feel, Claire, there’s nothing more I can say. Please sleep on it. If you change your mind, you have my number, ring me. I was in this for the long haul, I thought you were too.”

Together they walked to the front door. As Claire’s hand reached for the handle, Frank turned to her. “I don’t know what happened to you in the past, Claire, but it’s closed you off, you always seem so self contained. You need to open up to possibilities. I felt this every time we were together, you were always holding back, always reticent. You have to move forward… whatever it is, you need to let go.”

NOTE: the description of Frank ‘rational, discreet....generally agreeable’ is paraphrased from the original novel

#outlander fanfic #outlander fan fiction #Letting Go #Jamie Fraser #Claire Beauchamp #Chapter 11

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thinking-through-some-things · 5 years

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sure is interesting how many people will talk about propaganda and being a careful consumer and then just. turn around and act like disney is somehow above political and economical problems.

it's astounding how many people say "disney should just own everything! then we wouldn't have to worry about who owns the characters! think of the crossovers!" and honestly don't see a problem with that. even people who understand, to some degree, 1) corporations aren't your friend, and/or 2) monopolies are bad.

so many of us just look at Disney through the rose-colored glasses of childhood nostalgia, and because of that, we can't conceive of disney as being yet another corporation that values profit over art and people. except it is.

we're so blinded by the endless franchises disney pumps out, and the innocence we associate the company with because of the content that it produces/has produced, that time and time again we'll ignore shady business practices, poorly done films/shows, complaints and strikes of disney employees, etc., all because we cannot picture disney as yet another company that prioritizes profit above all else.

but it is.

i don't blame you if you like disney movies — so do i! but disney is not perfect, and it is not infallible.

disney's animation is not inherently better than other companies. on a technical level they may be able to achieve more, but 1) they have significantly more money than any other animation company so this should be expected, and 2) all this has resulted in a homogenous style that doesn't take artistic risks — because it's safer, profit-wise, to stick with a reliable art style that has proven to sell well.

disney movies are not intently better written than other films. sometimes it's just that disney has a solid corner of the market in popular but niche genres. sometimes it's that they can afford to hire better (or just. more) writers, or out-bid other studios for strong scripts.

disney movies are not better movies simply because they are disney. sometimes it's just that you've forgotten their bad films and only remember the ones you like. and sometimes you like bad films because they're disney and you expect them to be good.

it's time we started looking much more critically at disney. it's time we started expecting more from them.

"they can't include gay characters because they have to worry about conservatives/international markets." bullshit. disney can afford to include gay characters. they can afford to have a film that underperforms. they just care more about money than representation.

"the animation is so advanced! it just looks the same because that's what's in style." disney could be producing some really unique and unusual stuff. they can afford experimental styles and plot choices. they just won't try that because they won't risk losing money.

i can't tell you how many times i've seen people say "i don't like that disney does xyz, but i'm still going to see this film because it's disney." i get it. i've been there. but when are we going to stop letting disney dictate our entire media experience?

honestly, disney is killing so many creative industries and genres.

remember how disney decided to scrap their 2d department because it wasn't making as much as 3d animation? and nearly the entire animation industry followed their lead? and now we have an endless supply of subpar 3d animation, because few studios have the resources disney has? most us animation studios just poorly imitate disney's style, which is why the most interesting and innovative animated films today come from outside the us.

why does competition matter? look at animated tv shows vs films. since disney dominates the animated film industry, other studios have struggled to break free of their control. but in television, cartoon network and nickelodeon have maintained just enough of a share of the market to encourage a variety of animated styles — and netflix's growing list of animated shows, including many international options, have resulted in a boom of really good animated shows in the past few years.

i'm not saying these other companies are better than disney, only pointing out that, by forcing disney to share the stage with a serious competitor, these companies are forcing disney to take more chances and be more creative.

and. touching on marvel and star wars. part of the reason disney has been successful with these films is yes, they knew how to cater to the right audience at the start. but now they're just relying on brand/franchise/star power, flashy effects they can afford, predictably successful plot points, and pure nostalgia to get people's attention (and money).

marvel movies don't even have to be good anymore. regardless of what you think of the movies, you're going to go see the next one. because as long as you liked one character, as long as you're invested in one story, you have to see every. other. marvel. film. to have any idea what's happening in the next film with that one character. it's gotten to the point that there's really no point in watching new films if you haven't already watched previous ones because they don't explain basic information if it was mentioned in another marvel movie.

also. because disney's marvel films are the most popular and recognizable superhero films, most viewers expect all superhero films to look and feel like marvel films — especially since there are so many that it feels like that's just. how superhero movies look. so instead of seeing a wide variety of superhero films trying different storytelling tactics, visual effects, narrative justifications, etc., we see, again, poor imitations that lack disney's budget and really different films that get rejected because they don't match our expectations.

the live action remakes really are the epitome of this problem (and before anyone says anything, no, the live action films are not about copyright law. that's not how copyright works).

first of all, disney could be taking daring risks and really challenging these films. they could have, for example, given middle eastern or indian directors, costume/set designers, writers, etc. crew members the chance to take a film that, while loved by many, has been criticized by others for being orientalist, and turn the film into something that reflected and appreciated their culture(s) from a personal perspective; and disney, in turn, could have helped those people move up in a competitive and hard-to-break-into field.

but they didn't do that.

or beauty and the beast. disney could have gone in a completely different direction, telling a brand new story and challenging ideas of social convention and love. or really pushed the aesthetics of the film.

but they didn't.

except for a few minor changes and an overblown "first gay disney character!!!" campaign (that amounted to almost worse than nothing), the live action was practically a carbon copy of the animated one. they played it safe and used the same predictably popular elements, and the few "feminist" jabs they added in were so uncontroversial that no one in 2017 would complain about them except laughably misogynistic people who hated how preachy those moments felt. in other words, even the "politics" they added in were safe.

ironically enough, my favorite disney live action film has been cinderella. i though it was visually interesting and different, and the changes to the script/plot focused on personal freedom and survival and retaining your sense of empathy despite abuse. but it didn't do as well monetarily for disney, it is, categorically, a failure. so we're likely to see disney rely more on close retellings than changed stories.

i don't think all disney films are bad, nor do i think you're a bad person for liking disney/pixar/marvel/star wars films. but if you think disney is the only company that does x well, or that they really should just own y company, or who cares if they do z, then you need to take a step back and re-evaluate.

we need to stop excusing disney. we need to stop thinking the company is cute. as a corporation, their goal is not to coddle you or make the world safer and nicer. their goal is to make money. full stop.

if you want to see a disney movie, fine. go see it. but don't watch it just because it's disney. make them earn your business by. actually. making good movies.

(sorry this is really disorganized and definitely missing points. it should probably be like. five separate essays. oops.)

#disney #capitalism #media #propaganda #spider man

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shyguycity · 4 years

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Goty 2019

Hey. It’s game of the year 2019 baby. By now you know the kinda justice we seek on these streets, so no long-winded introductions, except to remind you that these aren’t reviews, and honorable mentions have been moved down to the bottom this year because we're evolving.

12. Super Kirby Clash (Switch) - A free to play online Kirby spinoff centered around combat that features microtransactions sounds like an awful idea on paper, and yet it’s somehow my most played multiplayer game of 2019. I won’t try and present the game as anything more than what it is, which is basically a very (very very very!) simplified, arcade-y Monster Hunter game with a very (very very very very!) cute aesthetic. But as a recent convert to Monster Hunter and a longtime Kirby lobbyist, it turns out that that’s all I need to play a game for nearly 100 hours. The four classes all have varied abilities, gameplay and roles to play, and there’s nothing more satisfying than freezing time as the mage in the middle of an enemy’s jumping animation. I found the microtransactions to be completely fair, as I spent around 10 dollars total on the game and never found myself hurting for apples (the game’s main currency and the only one you can buy with real money) to upgrade my equipment. This isn’t a game I would be able to recommend to everyone, but if it’s your type of thing then it’s going to be very much your type of thing.

*Image credit: 505 games

11. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (Switch/PS4/Xbox One/PC) - Despite horrible first impressions from my backer copy of the Switch version, Bloodstained really ended up delivering the true Castlevania: Symphony of the Night successor it promised to be, and I had a fantastic time with it (after trading in my Switch version and begrudgingly purchasing a PS4 copy). While I love almost all of the Castlevania games in their own ways, even the best entries post-SotN didn’t end up feeling much like SotN. Bloodstained, meanwhile, wears its inspiration on its sleeve. Or rather on its wolf hood and gas mask combo.

Obscure, bizarre, and goofy secrets are around every single corner of the castle. I mean, like, really esoteric ones that I can’t imagine having found without a guide. From the myriad of hidden (and very challenging!) boss fights, to trophies popping for playing a piano while having a fair familiar out to entire sprite based areas, the surprises never stop being thrown at the player. It adds so much goofball flavor to the game that’s missing from just about any other entry in the genre, and it does the brunt work in giving this game its identity.

Not only are the secrets plentiful and good, but the combat is also excellent; much like a couple entries in the latter Castlevania games, just about every single enemy in Bloodstained has a chance of dropping you a shard upon defeat, and each one gives your character Miriam a new ability. Some of these are simple passive buffs, while others completely change your combat options. From ghostly portrait guardians to giant dentist drills coming out of your hand to summoning disembodied dragon’s heads, the shard system is never not entertaining, and leaves the player so much room for experimentation and realizing their ideal build it’s actually a wonder they were able to bug test this thing at all. And truly, the main issues holding Bloodstained back from true greatness are its technical issues. Which is a shame, and seemingly an issue on all platforms. But if you can handle a hard crash here or there, you’re in for a treat.

10. Fire Emblem: Three Houses (Switch) - I never thought I would care at all for any Fire Emblem game. Certainly, I saw the appeal of them prior to Three Houses, but they just never seemed like something I would want to devote a lot of time to. But putting the game in a school setting and recontextualizing your soldiers as students really made a huge difference for me, and I bonded with the characters in the game in a way I normally reserve for my Pokemon teams. And unlike Pokemon, I can marry my students, which is beautiful and horrifying.

There are definitely issues with Three Houses. A silent protagonist has no right starring in a game like this, especially with all the emotional story beats the game is trying to pull off. The writing in general was also all over the place, ranging from odd decisions with both the characters as well as the overarching story (some of this is remedied by replaying the game multiple times and going down different routes, but I put 60 hours into the game and couldn’t even finish two paths, so that’s a bit unrealistic). Lastly, the monastery that serves as your school needs just a tad more variety in activities to do in between the battles, as what started out as my favorite part of the game became a chore for the last dozen or so hours.

All of that said, I am anxiously waiting for the sequel, as the foundation that’s been put down here could lead to something truly special. As it stands, this is the best secret Harry Potter game ever made, and that alone is going to have a lot of appeal to a lot of people.

*Image credit: Gamespot

9. Resident Evil 2 (PS4/Xbox One/PC) - Truly, I have never been more stressed out when playing a game than the first time I had to start dealing with Mr. X. Yes, on each subsequent playthrough (of which I did many!) and even encounter he became less of a threat and more of an annoyance, but much like a good horror movie, that first time will remain embedded in my brain as one of my most memorable gaming moments.

And that kinda sums up Resident Evil 2 as a whole for me. An amazing, unforgettable start in the police station, followed by a somewhat middling second act in the sewers, and ending on kind of a weirdly short whimper in a very tonally different setting than the rest of the game. And that’s without getting into how disappointingly similar the “B” playthroughs of either character were to their “A” counterparts. It was all still great, mind you, and the gameplay and scares remained excellent throughout. But man was that first act in the police station something truly special, and I’m hopeful that the eventual remake of 3 keeps more of that tone throughout.

8. Pokemon Sword/Pokemon Shield (Switch) - Cutting hundreds of Pokemon was pretty close to the bottom of my list of concerns going into the latest Pokemon. The series hasn’t really grabbed me in a major way since Black and White on the DS almost 9(!) years ago, and I had largely accepted the idea that I was finally growing out of the franchise. While this 8th generation of Pokemon titles is far, far from perfect, and in fact doubles down on a lot of the aspects I don’t like about modern Pokemon games, Sword has become my favorite entry in the series in a very long time.

This is down to two things: my favorite batch of new Pokes the series has ever had (Galarian Farfetch’d, my prince............) and the introduction of multiplayer coop content with raids. The former is subjective I suppose (but seriously, Galarian Farfetch’d), and the appeal of the raids is going to be dictated by how into repetitive content you are and if you have people to raid with. I’m fortunate enough to love repetitive tasks in video games, especially repetitive tasks that amount to fighting and capturing giant monsters for rewards, and to have a partner to enjoy those repetitive tasks with. We lost entire weekends to hunting down new raid opportunities in Sword, and this feels like the first major step the series has taken in nearly a decade to try and reengage me in a meaningful way.

And don’t get me wrong: Pokemon has a long way to go to bring me entirely back into the fold. The dungeons are nonexistent, the routes are largely completely straightforward affairs, the post game content is so light that “barebones” feels like a generous descriptor, and the performance issues in the wild area (the game’s more open, free roaming space) are inexcusably awful when played online. I hope by the time the 9th generation games roll around that we’ll get a bigger advancement than what’s been seen here, but to me, this feels like an all around better made product than any of the 3DS entries, with or without Galarian Farfetch’d.

7. Risk of Rain 2 (Switch/PS4/Xbox One/PC) - The original Risk of Rain is a personal all-time favorite, so seeing the developers successfully make the jump from 2D to 3D while still maintaining everything I love about the first game is a truly remarkable feat. Both games sport essentially MMO-lite combat with abilities dictated by cooldowns and items that you get from chests and bosses, with rogue-like progression and permadeath. That’s a lot of jargon even for me talking about video games, so essentially: keep shooting things and powering up by grabbing items and defeating bosses, and when you’re dead you’re dead (bar a specific item), rinse and repeat.

It’s deceptively simple while being endlessly replayable. The true fun comes in when playing with other people, as every character plays completely differently, and figuring out builds for each person on the fly is extremely fun and rewarding. This also means that if you start getting bored of one character, simply play a different one on your next run. Add in an extremely moody sci-fi aesthetic (including one of my favorite soundtracks of the year) and that’s Risk of Rain.

The main issue with Risk of Rain 2 at this point is that it’s simply unfinished, and won’t even have an actual ending state until spring of 2020. This doesn’t hamper my enjoyment of the game much, hence it being on this list, but I imagine a lot of people would be bothered by it. The developers have done a great job of updating the game at a decent pace so far though, and every major patch has come with a new character, among a ton of other things. And if I’ve already gotten this much enjoyment out of an early access title, it’s exciting to think about a feature complete version down the line. And hopefully that feature complete version of Risk of Rain 2 includes the Chef character from the first game *ahem*.

6. Astral Chain (Switch) - In a year full of some real dang weird yet shockingly great games, Astral Chain stands tall as probably the weirdest surprise of them all. You’re a future cop fighting invisible ghost demons from an alternate dimension with your own invisible ghost demon chained to you through some high tech handcuffs. That’s just the first half hour of the game, and it ratchets up the anime nonsense many magnitudes over in the course of its 20ish hour runtime. And it’s great and stupid.

It’s not just the plot that’s over the top, though. Coming from developer Platinum Games, renowned for their nonstop super sweaty action portfolio, Astral Chain spends just as much time tasking the player with exploring its world, characters, and lore as it does asking you to punch enemies the size of skyscrapers (or bigger). It’s a formula that works shockingly well, as I found myself enjoying the downtime segments just as much, if not more, than the action portions of the game. And the action that is there doesn’t really play like your typical Devil May Cry or Bayonetta, either; the player character, while critical to pulling off combos and the like, is not your primary damage dealer, with that role being fulfilled by your five “legions” (the aforementioned ghost demon buddies), all of which have different strengths, weaknesses and abilities. The gameplay ends up feeling kind of like a realtime Pokemon game by way of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, and no sentence I’ve ever written has been as cool as that one.

I do think Astral Chain falls a bit short in the combat department, at least compared to other games in the genre. It’s a bit too simplified, despite how crazy looking and overwhelming the actions you and your legions end up doing can be, and I think that the obligatory Platinum-style grading system in this is very poor - it doesn’t seem to grade overall performance so much as it just wants you to constantly be switching your legions in the midst of battle. Which is a great lesson to teach your players, but I would also like if anything else about my combat performance seemed to have significant weight on my grade. Having said all that, it’s a flaw that I found much easier to overlook in the midst of battle when I sent my wolf legion ahead of me, biting and tearing its way through a cluster of enemies, while I hung back inside of my punching legion, finally able to fulfill my years-long Star Platinum “ora ora ora” fantasies.

5. Anodyne 2: Return to Dust (PC) - There’s a lot going on in Anodyne 2, and I fear trying to describe it in words, not only because of all the jargon I’d inevitably have to use, but also because I’m not sure I can do the game justice. To that end, here’s a brief trailer of the game to get you started:

youtube

If you find that trailer at all intriguing, Anodyne 2 is definitely for you. And if you’re still skeptical, know that the game has far more to offer than just its (beautiful) low-poly aesthetic. While visually it’s obviously most evoking Playstation 1 era games such as Mega Man Legends, in terms of the tone of its writing it strikes a pretty peculiar balance between Earthbound and Nier: Automata (names I do not invoke lightly!). The visuals aren’t just an aesthetic choice, either - throughout the game you find yourself in 2D overhead areas, solving puzzles inside of the minds of other characters, and these varying layers of abstraction serve to further the game’s message and atmosphere. And it’s all of these things combined that pushed Anodyne 2 over the edge of “memorable” and into the realm of “haunting” for me.

It’s a game that wants to be played and experienced by everyone; you can tell how much love was put into every single corner of the world, every line of dialogue, and each and every single goofy joke. Steven Universe (another seeming inspiration of the developers) is the only other piece of media that has reminded me of just how lost and alone I’ve felt at various stages of life, while choosing not to dwell on that and instead using it as a launching pad to remind me of just how far I’ve come. As the game itself says, Anodyne 2 is a game about life, and I’ve rarely come across one that felt so full of it.

4. Judgment (PS4) - With the release of Yakuza 0 a couple of years ago, the Yakuza games went from a series I was vaguely aware of in my periphery to maybe my all-time favorite video game comfort food. They’re silly, melodramatic, sad, and beautiful, tonally swinging back and forth like a large imposing guard wildly trying to hit Kiryu with a couch section. Most importantly, they manage to feel heartfelt and personal in an age where high budget games seldom feel anything of the sort. I was initially hesitant, then, to play a spinoff that threw aside its entire cast of established characters for a crew that dabbles in detective and lawyer work; I didn’t think there was much of a chance that this new band of very handsome crimeboys with hearts of gold would be able to compare to Kiryu, Majima and the like. How glad I was to be wrong, as Judgment is now maybe my favorite of the Yakuza games I’ve played.

By pulling further out (but not completely away) from the culture of organized crime as the central driving factor of the story, you no longer need to memorize a dozen different yakuza organizations and all of their subsidiaries and patriarchs within, nor do you have to try and remember which side is feuding with who. And that isn’t to say that the story doesn’t have just as many twists and turns; it does, and despite the larger scale of the stakes, ends up feeling more focused and personal. I also found it easy to bond with the two main characters, Yagami and Kaito, as not only do their personalities play off of each other very well, but they simply share more screentime together than I’ve ever seen Kiryu get a chance to do with anyone. Truly, the story ended up being one of my favorites in the entire medium, and I fell in love with the characters to the point where I got misty eyed during the credits.

With regards to gameplay, it’s a Yakuza game. Which means a lot of running around Kamurocho, talking and shopping and playing minigames and brawling. Since the player character in this entry is a detective, there are various mechanics and events related to the profession, such as investigating crime scenes and tailing suspects, but they’re by far the weakest part of the game, and you shouldn’t come to this game looking for incredible detective gameplay. Instead, come to the game for literally everything else it offers, because it’s a fantastic experience all around, and a great jumping on point for anyone unfamiliar with Yakuza.

*Image credit: Steam user Symbol

3. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (PS4/Xbox One/PC) - Frankly, I did not much care for Sekiro for the majority of my first play through. Specifically, I dreaded its boss fights. To go from the sheer joy of being able to dispatch a courtyard full of enemies in any way I pleased in the game’s relatively free form stealth sections, to being killed in a matter of two or three hits to every single boss and miniboss was frustrating; how could I not groan when I started that duel with Genichiro at the top of the castle, knowing full well that I was going to be stuck there for a few (or more) frustrating hours? It wasn’t until the fight against the protagonist’s father figure, Owl, hours later at the same location as the aforementioned Genichiro fight, that something clicked. It only took around 30 hours, but suddenly, instead of approaching the situation like a Dark Souls or Bloodborne boss, I was not only being defensive, but I was being aggressively defensive, parrying nearly every single blow. Suddenly it was me standing in place, baiting out my opponent’s attacks only to throw the force of his own momentum back at him. Suddenly combat made sense in this damn game. And suddenly I was dead again in a quick three hits after inhaling some magic gas that prevented me from being able to heal. But that was ok! Because suddenly this game was amazing, and suddenly I had completed it four times and adored every second of it (except for that fucken four form final boss with no checkpoints).

I still stand by my (and a lot of other’s) original complaint that the disparity between the freedom offered in the rest of the game compared to the unflinchingly rigid roadmap you have to follow in fighting the bosses is jarring game design, and it’s very fun to imagine a version of Sekiro that lets you approach bosses any which way you like. On the other hand, no other game that I’ve ever played, not even Sekiro’s predecessor and my favorite game of this console generation, Bloodborne, has come anywhere close to making me feel this cool when fighting bosses. And that’s a mighty impressive accomplishment on any game’s part, speaking from the perspective of an overweight, sweaty, hairy, very uncool man.

But really, fuck that final boss though.

2. Dragon Quest Builders 2 (Switch/PS4/PC) - When we were around 10-years-old, one of my best friends, Patrick, used to host fairly regular Lego-building sleepovers, where everyone built whatever they wanted, and our creations were then showcased to the rest of the group. Being that the group consisted entirely of pre-pubescent boys, this meant building various robots or cars, all of variable quality/ability to stand upright. During one of these nights, in lieu of the usual deathbot piloted by the ghost minifig, I instead constructed a little bunker for the ghost - a place where, after a long day of being forced (by me) to pilot his mech suit and commit unspeakable acts, he could hang up his ghost hat and be forced (by me) to ponder the morality of his actions. It was just a tiny little room with the necessities: bed, table, bookshelves and pizza, but when presenting it to my friends I proudly declared that the bunker was also located at the bottom of the ocean, a factor that couldn’t be visually represented due to the harsh limits of time, Lego pieces and my ability. I was pretty proud of my cool-down chamber, but if memory serves correctly, it was Patrick’s no doubt boorish creation that was the apple of everyone’s eye. And who am I to try and convince a room full of my peers that actually, a secluded room where you could read in peace for all eternity was much cooler than a punching gorilla bot?

This is all to say that I have never been a creative type, especially when it comes to building. I had previously played Minecraft and the first Dragon Quest Builders, and while I enjoyed them, there wasn’t quite enough there to make me want to engage with them on a level beyond just playing them like any other game - I don’t think I ever built anything in DQB1 that wasn’t required for the sake of progression in the main story, and the less said about my Minecraft efforts the better. Builders 2 expertly sidesteps this issue by wrapping its building mechanics around an engaging and hearfelt story (I got teary-eyed multiple times!), great characters (especially the main character’s mysterious best friend/partner in crime, Malroth) and a lovely localization. It also encourages more freeform building than the previous game by tying the progression of the story to the progression of your main, customizable island. You don’t ever really have to go off into the weeds on your own in regards to building, but the game gives you so many opportunities to fill in the blanks on premade templates that you eventually just become comfortable in doing so. It’s hard to stop myself from gushing about the game, to the point where as I type this I’m questioning why it’s “only” number 2 on this list.

And thanks to DQB2, for the first time in 20 years I revisited my first creative endeavor: the underwater solitude bunker, this time no longer held back by the technology of the day, instead fully realized in digital form. Built as far down as the game would allow my character to dig, hidden beneath the still waters of a reservoir inside of a pyramid, it is truly a testament to mankind’s ingenuity. And it is wicked. Naturally I had my artist (and DQB2 fanatic) girlfriend visit my game’s world so she bask in my true brilliance. I gleefully guided her down to the catacombs and down the intimidatingly long chain that dangled into the deceptively still depths. After a brief swim into the murky unknown, we arrived at our hidden destination at the bottom of the earth, where she was greeted by the sight of my submerged masterpiece. A wry smile snaked itself around my lips, as I knew, was absolutely certain, that within seconds, once she had made it through the de-pressurization chamber at the entrance to my paradise, I would be hearing the words of someone simultaneously shocked, awed, and hopefully only a bit jealous. Instead, I was met with a few seconds of silence followed by a patronizing “Well, I’d have never thought to build something like this.”

So, I guess that’s why Builders 2 couldn’t quite reach the number one spot: true art is never appreciated in its time.

1. Hypnospace Outlaw (PC) - No piece of commercial art has ever felt like it was made for me in the way that Hypnospace Outlaw does. I grew up on the internet during the time period this game’s alternate reality take on the 90s internet is drawing its inspiration from; I have talked at length, to anyone who will listen, about how this early incarnation of the internet felt more like a physical space than it does now, and how much I miss the days of stumbling on to weird Geocities sites, meeting people in AOL chatrooms, and the early days of pirating. I met my first girlfriend through the internet, as well as my current one. The vast majority of the friends I’ve made in my life would not have happened without the internet, and not just because of distance; the internet allowed the younger me to be the person I was too insecure to be in person, and to develop my own voice. I owe who I am to the people I met in freeware fanmade Dragonball Z games and IRC chat rooms, and I think that’s kind of fucked up and magical, and it’s all kind of a miracle that I’m not even more of a mess of a person than I am today. And the developers of this game have clearly had those experiences, too.

I’m not going to sit here and tell you that Hypnospace Outlaw is for everyone, because it’s absolutely not. It’s essentially a detective game, but you’re solving cases by investigating user made internet pages circa 1997, and the “cases” you’re working on are largely things like bullying and copyright infringement. In other words, you’re mostly just reading gaudy websites and figuring out more about the back end and exploits of the Hypnospace experience. It is incredibly specific and niche and, as someone that sorely misses staying up until 3 AM downloading Winamp skins, I can’t stop thinking about this game, even months later.

I wrote a longer piece on the game on this very blog, and instead of rehashing anymore of it here, I’ll just direct you that way. Though if I may, I’d like to give one last endorsement for the game for any hypothetical person reading this that’s on the fence about trying it - if you’re the kind of person that somehow finds yourself reading this game of the year list, and have made it this far down the page without getting bored, I promise you that you’ll find something to love about Hypnospace Outlaw.

Honorable mentions (for games that were either not originally released in 2019 or I still wanted to briefly touch on):

Dragon Quest 11 S: Echoes of an Elusive Age - Definitive Edition (Switch) - Somewhere in between listing the original release of Dragon Quest 11 as my 7th favorite game of 2018 and now, it went from being “a really great JRPG” to “one of the best games I’ve ever played”, and in all honesty should have probably been at the top of last year’s list. A beautiful, unmatched experience all around.

Overcooked! 2 (Switch/PS4/Xbox One/PC) - The Overcooked games are possibly the best coop games I’ve ever played by merit of them actually requiring communication between players. Framing the game’s mechanics around cooking food, a universally understood act, is brilliant.

Baba is You (Switch/PC) - This is the most clever puzzle game I’ve ever played. Hell, it’s probably the most clever game I’ve ever played period. What prevented me from truly falling in love with it was that every single puzzle after the first couple of worlds became the hardest thing I’ve ever tried to do in my life. And while that did make solving those puzzles equally satisfying, the thought of dedicating multiple hours each to stumbling through dozens and dozens more of single screen puzzles was a bit more than I was able to handle. Still, for any puzzle fans, there are some genuinely jaw-dropping moments in this that shouldn’t be missed.

Kirby’s Dreamland 3 (Switch/SNES) - The things I didn’t like about DL3 as a single player game are exactly what makes it a great coop Kirby game, which was a way to play this game that I never had the pleasure of experiencing until this year when it was re-released on the SNES Switch app. It’s skyrocketed up my list of favorite Kirby games, as well as become my favorite SNES coop game. Also, Gooey.

Kind Words (lo fi chill beats to write to) (PC) - I don’t quite qualify this as a game, as it’s more of a message in a bottle app with a very warm and charming aesthetic. But if you’ve ever wanted to anonymously reach out to strangers and tell them things are going to be all right while listening to some calming music, this is the thing for you.

Luigi’s Mansion 3 (Switch) - I have a deep, deep fondness for all three of the Luigi’s Mansion games (the GameCube and the original game were my first launch day purchases!), and 3 is by far the best game in the series. Every single moment of it was some high degree of charming and/or cute, and it’s a game I would feel confident in recommending to just about everybody. However, while I truly loved my time with the game and will no doubt replay it years down the road, there was nothing inside of it that really left any kind of deep impression on me. It’s a summer blockbuster in a kid-friendly spooky form, and that’s great for what it is.

Super Mario Maker 2 (Switch) - Mario Maker 2, sequel to what I would consider to possibly be the best game Nintendo’s ever made, is by far and away my most disappointing game of the year. It’s still an amazing toolkit, and I’ve been very satisfied with the levels I ended up making. That said, the gaming landscape has changed a lot in the 5 years between the original and the sequel, and with Nintendo’s nigh complete silence regarding updates coming to the game, I can’t consider it to be anything but a massive disappointment. And maybe that will change! But as of this posting, there’s been almost nothing to keep me coming back to the game a mere few months into its life, and that’s a huge problem. All of that said, it’s still a fantastic game and value, especially if (like most) you didn’t get a chance to play the original due to the console it was stuck on.

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