#Iron Dominion was dumb

[toaarcan]

Dumb fan theory: The Iron Queen was red-green colourblind and that's why she never noticed that Nicole's eyes stopped glowing red when she was unbrainwashed.

#Sonic #Archie Sonic #Sonic the Hedgehog #Iron Dominion #Iron Dominion was dumb #Iron Queen #The Iron Queen #Regina Ferrum #Nicole the Lynx #Iron Nicole #Nicole the Holo-Lynx #This is your reminder that #despite all the fanart #(most of it horny) #Iron Nicole only existed for two issues

[mywifeleftme]

355: Motörhead // No Remorse

No Remorse Motörhead 1984, Bronze

I heard British comics writer Warren Ellis tell a story about hearing a horrible banging in the hallway outside his flat late one night in the mid-1980s. When he poked his head outside to give the noisenik hell he discovered Lemmy wandering around smacking the walls with a wooden cooking spoon. After he managed to get the metal legend’s attention, Lemmy waved the implement at him and snarled, “You ever hear of a coke spoon? This is my coke spoon!”

*

This past Friday, I talked to a 50-something punk named Joey P who has 26 Motörhead records on vinyl (including the coveted leatherbound version of No Remorse). If you ever want to have a long conversation with Joey P, I recommend starting with a riff on if Ronnie James Dio was a mob-connected / Rat Pack wiseguy, and then letting him go into antiquarian detail on which Motörhead records are kind of underrated (Another Perfect Day), underrated (Bastards), and really underrated (1916). Love that guy, and I think he’s mostly right. 26 is probably too many Motörhead records even for me, but they are one of those long-running, very sonically consistent bands who turn their deepest fans into sommeliers. I can hold forth about the subtle differences in tasting notes between an Ace of Spades and an Iron Fist (let alone a departure like Orgasmatron!) while an outsider looks doubtfully into their two indistinguishable cups of Jack and Coke. A band like this gives men of a certain age a way to sniff each other over when they meet in a clearing, a low-impact ritual of butting heads.

*

For years I remembered a story I thought one of my friends had told me about running into Lemmy at the Dominion Tavern in Ottawa towards the end of his life. He was miserably drinking white wine on his doctor’s orders, not looking for conversation. The image always struck me as both funny (I cannot imagine the house wine at the Dom having a nice finish), and sad (the day Lemmy Goddamn Kilmister lets anyone tell him he can’t have whiskey!). I think I’ve repeated it once or twice over the years as an example of how age mellows us all, but when I asked the pal I thought had told me, she denied it (though she did add that her ex told her Lemmy’d gone to see “the rippers in Aylmer once”). So, I dunno, maybe he escaped the fate of the Dom Chardonnay.

*

Speaking of fate, Lemmy was a damned sharp fellow beneath all the drugging and boozing (who else could’ve written the lyric “Fourth day, five-day marathon / We’re moving like a parallelogram”), and he rightly figured his label had pitched doing a hits compilation in 1984 because they thought the band was washed up. (The limp sales and savage critical reaction to Another Perfect Day having had something to do with that.) Kilmister insisted on inserting a side’s worth of new songs onto the double LP comp to emphasize that Motörhead remained very much a going concern. Of the four, only the brilliantly dumb “Killed By Death” became a classic in its own right, but the new tracks showed the band were still capable of churning out the sound that had defined them with undiminished ferocity. They never lost it.

*

I do know a woman who hooked up with Lemmy towards the end of his life (if anything in rock and roll can be believed, she had about 1,000 peers. It was like a more pleasant [?] Germs burn). They went home from the bar in Montreal and drank whiskey, and then she split in the morning without leaving her number. She thought the story was funny and I thought not leaving a number was a pretty good flex, but at the end she still gave a bit of a wistful, “I know he probably wouldn’t have called me anyway…”

*

Lemmy picked the songs for No Remorse himself, and even provides short annotations in the liners, so if you’re going to quibble with the selections, you’ll have to take it up with the mole man. (As he says of “Like a Nightmare,” a left-field inclusion, “This was one of my favourite B-sides. Everyone didn’t like it, but seeing as I’m the only one of the old band left, here it is!!”) There are a load of Motörhead compilations out there (I’m partial to 2000’s lavish, oddly-sequenced double-CD The Best of, since it’s the one I had as a kid), and as Joey P will tell you, they did lots of good stuff after 1984. But if 1) you only need one Motörhead record on wax, 2) you’re mostly into the original lineup, and 3) you want something reasonably comprehensive, No Remorse is a no-brainer. It has a few relative duds (“Louie, Louie”) and lacks some absolute classics (“Dead Men Tell No Tales”; “Tear Ya Down”; “City Kids”; “Love Me Like a Reptile”; “White Line Fever” etc. etc.) but why complain given the teeth-rattling abundance there is? As Lemmy says, “Here is Motörhead as you’ve come to expect them. Write your opinion on a Beatle wig and send it to someone who gives a damn. Even if you get us banned, we ain’t gonna stop!”

*

Motörhead were obviously a legendary live act, and they were my first metal show (on a bill at Detroit’s Pine Knob with Dio and Iron Maiden). They played a lot of arenas, but they made the most sense in small theatres. Bigger venues tend to dwarf them, like a small motorcycle gang trying to take over a castle. In a theatre, or better yet a bar, they own the place like The Wild Ones. I don’t remember much specific from their Pine Knob set, except that before closing with “Ace of Spades,” a song Lem was famously bored of playing every night, he told us all, “You’ll know this one, sing along if you want, I won’t be able to hear you anyway,” and then abruptly launched into that hellbent bass riff. Then he disappeared (probably there was some walking beforehand, couldn’t tell you for sure).

*

Lemmy’s funeral was livestreamed back in 2015, and it’s genuinely one of the sweetest, silliest things I have ever watched. The altar features flower arrangements in the shape of the ace of spades; an iron cross in place of a crucifix; two Marshall stacks; a pair of Triple H’s wrestling boots; a 3D-printed urn in the shape of his cavalry hat; and a mirror with a big line of speed on it. Everybody cries, many of them the sort of people the PMRC would’ve expected to burst into flames if they were to enter a church. Everybody talks about how genuinely nice he was. His girlfriend Cheryl, a job that earns you instant and eternal That Poor Woman status from all who observe, gives a super brief statement: “Lemmy loved me, but his greatest love was his fans and his music. I remember saying, ‘Baby, stay home, don’t go, skip this tour. And he said, ‘Baby, I can’t. I love my fans.’” (Imagine that being an interaction between two genuine living people—yet I believe it.) Apparently, he was an absolute pinball fiend. His bootmaker gives a speech. Somebody reads some limericks Lem wrote. What a life. What a story.

*

“Can’t get enough / And you know it’s some righteous stuff / Goes up like prices at Christmas! / Motörhead / Remember me now / Motörhead, alright"

355/365

#motörhead #lemmy kilmister #lemmy #metal #punk #rock n roll #ace of spades #overkill #'70s music #'80s music #no remorse #music review #vinyl record #anecdote #tour stories

[xaracosmia]

ꕥ — WELCOME TO CATA COSMIA, BASS. 🌕

ꕥ  — OOC INFORMATION;

name / alias: Swerve age: 24 pronouns: he/she/they ooc contact: swearthling on tumblr and twt other characters in xc: brainiac 5, warren worthington iii, siatin

ꕥ  — IC INFORMATION;

name: Bass age: robot! (minor. For all intents and purposes, 12-14ish. But also, he’s 3.) pronouns: he/him series: Mega Man (classic games) canon point: For what it matters (which is very little), up to date, post MM11

app triggers:

personality:

Bass is a pretty straightforward kinda robot. He wants to beat up other robots, especially any do-gooding little blue loser ones named Rock, and thus prove once and for all to the whole world - and beyond - that he is the strongest there is. Got it? Good. That’s it.

And really, that’s good enough for Bass. Yeah, some robots have their existential crises about what it means to be sentient, or to be built with a manmade purpose, or to really be alive, but that sort of thing has never seemed to bother Bass in the slightest.

He’s a far cry from the obedient and useful weapon that he was created to be, that much is certain. It’s just as likely for him to ditch his creator and would-be-master as it is for him to actually stick around and listen to whatever new plot for world dominion the good doctor has planned for the week. He’s been a bad guy, a hero on a technicality, an anti-hero, and, perhaps most tellingly, a general nuisance and major pain in the ass to basically everyone who gets in his way.

To put it positively, you might say that Bass knows exactly who he is and what he wants out of his life. To put it a little more honestly, you might say that Bass is a loose cannon (literally) who thinks too much of himself and far too little of anything else.

He’s not all bad. It might be a low bar, but he doesn’t seek mindless destruction, cruelty, or any real harm on human beings despite all the strength he has to back up such threats; there are certainly nastier robots out there. Bass has even helped take a few of them down, showing that (despite how much he might resent any such claims) there’s good in him. (And whatever else may be true of him, he loves his dog, and that has to count for something.)

something your muse struggles with: It’s been stated that this robot has a really trivial reason for existing. Bass certainly doesn’t seem to think so, but the fact is, as rebellious as he can be, he still wants exactly the thing he was programmed to want. He is not his own person, and he doesn’t even know it.

your muse’s greatest strength: His capital t Tenacity. Bass is ferocious, determined, and surprisingly unstoppable. His primary goal in life might be to beat up a sweet little robot boy, but god damn if he isn’t absolutely dedicated to it. Ironically, this little robot is barely a person, but he’s overflowing with life.

history / background:

Once there was a robot called Mega Man, and there was a crusty old dude named Dr. Wily who wanted to kick his ass. He sucked at this, and he only did one thing right ever in his life (or at least in his quest to kick Mega Man’s ass), and that one thing was building the infinitely superior and WAY cooler-looking robot, Bass. A bunch of stuff happened before Bass was created but who even cares about that boring and irrelevant crap, I mean, how important could it have POSSIBLY been if BASS wasn’t even there for it?

Bass was sent out to do the thing he’s supposed to do as soon as he was functional enough to; that is of course to say, the first thing he did was to go fight Mega Man. Well, first he was supposed to do some dumb indirect playing innocent routine to gain the good guys’s trust or whatever. That was really boring, and Bass did a half-assed job of it, which was fine because it meant more punching, and sooner. Bass eventually lost, not that he would ever put it that way, and the two robots later fought again. And again. And again, and again.

Bass fought Mega Man, his whole loser family, Dr. Wily, HIS whole dumb menagerie of second-rate junk robots, then Mega Man again, and so on. It's a bit of a paradoxical case of artificial sentience; Bass is a fully realized and fully alive being, he just decides to use his free will to do...exactly the thing he was programmed to do. He fights to prove that he's the best, and that those he defeats are inarguably inferior, and he doesn't do much else. Although it is extremely hazardous to actually point this out to him, he only wins when he’s on the good guy team. And that’s basically the plan, as far as Bass is concerned. See robot, punch robot, ad infinitum.

powers / abilities:

Treble Boost - Treble and Bass have the ability to fuse together , upgrading both of them. With the extra power, Bass can fly and use an upgraded version of his cannon for a limited amount of time.

Teleporter: What it says on the tin. Allows Bass (and Treble, who has his own) to instantly teleport anywhere.

inherent abilities:

Maxed out dog petting stat.

items / weapons:

Bass Buster - It’s a laser cannon, it’s his arm, it's an arm laser cannon. He can keep the arm, probably, but he’ll have to wait to get back the lasers.

Rocket Boots - Abstract video game fastness (I’m calling this one based on game sprites); Bass can glide limitedly with these, and use them to go far faster than any human.

Treble - Loyal support dog. Also, the extra firepower Bass needs to use some of his powers. Also, debatably his one soft spot.

Weapon Copies: Weapon data from eight Robot Masters that allow Bass to use their abilities, one at a time. He can switch between them at a moment’s notice, but he can only have one skill equipped at a time, which extends to his buster, the Treble Boost, and his teleporter.

Triple Blade - Launchable blade hands, up to three at a time.

Water Shield - Shield made out of water, doubles as water of the shooting variety.

Commando Bomb - Maneuverable missiles.

Chill Spike - Fires instantly freezing gel.

Thunder Wool - Creates a cloud of thunder wool which shoots a bolt of lightning beneath it.

Rebound Striker - Creates a yeetable ball which charges up energy as it bounces.

Wheel Cutter - Launchable, spinning, circular arm blade. Also good for wall-scaling.

Solar Blaze - Shoots a dual-directional wave of fire.

- Evil Energy Capsule: Don’t look at him, that’s what it’s called! A limited supply of an alien power source. It can only be used once for a temporary power boost to Bass and/or Treble’s systems, and probably shouldn’t be used at all, due to evilness.

starting ability: bass buster starting item: Treble

extra:

It’s Bass like bass clef, not Bass like sea bass.

As you do with video games, any narrative source I can take from, I’m takin’. The archie comics and the rockman and forte manga are my beloveds

Does he have hair? Maybe. Does he have pointy shark teeth? Yes.

I’m subscribing to the belief that whatever source of energy is readily available will be sufficient to “feed” these bots, electricity, literal oil, et cetera.

It’s MY barely used character and I get to give him depth

I’m not kidding dm me if you want to adopt him

discord id:  .fortississimo passcode: this is awesome

#xc application #mun: swerve #cata cosmia

[honeyed-beans]

👏🏼👏🏼 let’s give it up for the Commowhore 👏🏼👏🏼 dumb bitch died alone. Drowned in his own blood, on the stone cold stone steps of a school he had no affiliation with. Detached from his domain that he claimed dominion over, ironically being felled by the elements of the storm that he believed he could control. Killed by his own act of hubris for thinking he was better than a god, than fellow men, than a child he left behind due to his own handiwork. There was no mighty moment of glory gained from the act of his death, no outcrying approximation of heroism or a villainous monologue about how he killed Shebrie or what his true plan was all along. Only the quiet joy that his name will never be uttered again. He didn’t die like a hero or a villain. He was no one and that was the ultimate revenge 🥳🥳🥳

#Argonaut Keene I love you so much sweety ❤️❤️❤️ #taz #taz graduation #argo keene #taz grad

[outoftimewriting]

Imagine (Son of Hades! Percy; Godswapped! Big Three's kids) (8/8) or (13/13)

Blood of Olympus pt.2 - The War

Hello! If you're here, it means you probably already know - but check the masterpost for both warnings and the other twelve parts.

I want to thank everyone who followed this fanfic? Imagine? AU? for the month it took us to get here. Tell me what you thought about it, if there's anything you are anxious to see in the epilogue - yes, we'll have an epilogue!

If you like my writing, you might be happy to know that I'm starting another AU - same style, no patience for prose - this time, a daughter of Zeus! Percy. Don't worry - it bares almost no similarities to this, and part 1 will be out before the epilogue, so stay tuned. For now, good reading :))

Maybe it was the death of Malcolm, but after that night, there was something different about the crew of the Argo II. Their journey to Gaea changed them.

Will notifies them as soon as morning rises, leaving Annabeth secluded in her room and Perseus to whatever was happening upstairs - they are told not to interfere.

No one knows exactly what happened on the deck between Perseus and whoever dared to attack them - there is nothing there but sea salt and dried ichor when Frank goes to take his shift.

The screams will haunt him for the rest of his life - they pleaded for mercy, but after this journey, no one in here is a merciful person.

There's an aura - an aura Frank recognizes well, for it clogged around Hazel in her first days in Nova Roma. An aura of death. Perseus is looking at the sunrise, cleaning his gold-stained ax.

He looks happy - for the first time since Tartarus, he is humming a melody to some song that Frank is pretty sure is from Disney. Percy grins at Frank.

"Hey, man."

Frank doesn't ask. He trusts Perseus - Perseus took a whip to the back, side by side with him. Perseus fell on Tartarus for his best friend. Perseus would give his life for any of them. The son of Mars Ultor is sure he did what he had to do.

It still spooks him a little when Perseus leaves, whistling what he now recognizes as Fathoms Bellow.

They're journeying to Delos - for more half a day - and then, finally, to Athens. Frank wonders if the monsters are too afraid of them - or if Gaea just told them to stop attacking.

The fact is that, for several hours, no monster touches them again. Might be the death air encapsulating the ship's bow. Might just be their reputation.

With nothing to do, Frank watches as the sun rises and his friends starting to walk around.

Leo has no fixed hours - so he might be either awakening or going to sleep. He crosses through Frank in his post and rambles for a second - the Legionis thinks it's cute.

Leo crosses Hazel - she never wakes past eight unless she had a night shift - who is probably going to breakfast. They exchange a kiss, and Frank's heart aches.

Hazel stops to talk with Jason - the last one awake, since Perseus and Will are probably sleeping, Annabeth still hasn't left her room, and Nico and Piper went to their room after the morning announcements - probably to grief.

The blonde is uncharacteristically serious for such an early hour, but with recent news, it's expected. Frank goes back to look at the sea - and wonder if any of them will ever be free of this.

The two of them retract to the war room - to plan the attack on Gaea. They are at a serious disadvantage. It might be better for them to ride back to Long Island and try to unit the camps and plan a war - just like they did with Kronos/Mount Otris.

It's very improbable that Gaea will give the same considerations to put Manhattan to sleep. Kronos wanted power - not to destroy humanity. Gaea is a nesting mother who lost her kids - she wants chaos.

But with all giants here - wouldn't be easier to do this here? Even if they have no support whatsoever? If they tailed back to Long Island, would the giants run rampant through Europe?

They wait until after lunch - when everyone is more or less up - to congregate and vote.

"There are seventeen giants - one for each Olympian plus Trivia, Proserpina, and the Fates, except for Dyonisus who has two and the twins who share two - and nine of us."

"Fifteen" Retorts Percy from his place opposite to Jason "I killed Aristaeus - the bane of Proserpina - yesterday. And the bane of Ares... Damasen... he was a good giant. He didn't reform."

Jason doesn't argue - Perseus was the one on Tartarus - even though he wants to ask who helped him kill the giant - and if he killed them afterward.

Fifteen is still a staggering number of giants. They have no chance alone - so after Delos, they solve to make their last stand on Camp Half-Blood.

Will, Perseus, and Jason are the ones to go down to the small island. Finding Apollo is exceptionally easy: it's just a matter of following the sound of the lyre.

He laughs at their request - full-blown laugh. Jason wants to punch him - the world is ending.

"There's no need for flowers. You already have the Physician's Cure. This is a name my son gave to his union to Zagreus - life and death."

Jason wants to scream. He wants to kill Nike - who is in her island, chilling after sending them in a goose chase. But Perseus and Will are already miles ahead of him - whatever happened last night unlocked something in him, even if the gloves never left.

"You'll come to Long Island. You'll fight - for as long as needed - against Orion and Gration." It's Will - defying his own father. Jason doesn't know if he has the courage.

"Promise - on your immortality, because I don't trust the Styx."

"I could still evaporate you"

"You won't. You need us too much."

Apollo promises - maybe because he sees everything and knows more than Jason about whatever will happen, maybe because that ax still bears gold in it - and exchanges some words with Will that neither of them hear as they walk back on board to tell the news.

Will and Percy disappear into a room - it makes something stir in Jason's stomach, as he remembers that he no longer knows this Perseus, but the one he knows, he loves.

Will and Perseus talk for hours - before being invaded by Leo - only to keep talking until the next morning.

"Change course to Athens. We have the Physician's Cure. Gaea will rampage through Europe. Hercules is on her side. There's no way we can go back now."

They agree - there's no crossing Hercules little island again.

An IM from Reyna cements their decision. A group of demigods serving Gaea - including the Censor that unjustly tried Hazel and was exiled - tried ambushing she and her sister - but the Amazons and the Hunters won against them. Thalia is alive - and she drove an arrow through Gwen's eye, the traitor in Nova Roma.

The Hunters called the Pegasi - and they all set course to Athens - while Reyna followed the statue who set course by the sea. Pegasus himself is going to Athens - he fought once against the Giants, he would do again.

They reach Athens in a little more than five hours. It's the last day of their time - and they are ambushed as soon as they cross the Parthenon.

They fight well - Gaea wants Perseus and Piper, so they rally around them.

Perseus is a fighting beast himself, but he is overwhelmed by the sheer number of monsters and unable to help others. He kills the Minotaur once again - the armies of monsters are almost endless - is the battle of Manhattan all over again.

Piper strikes against the three gorgons - Medusa can't petrify anyone without petrifying her own allies - and keeps the head as a prize.

Nico is in the sky - he looks like part of the storm. The flying monsters rally around him, but Nico doesn't disappoint - his sword cuts through them like butter.

In the end, the nine annihilate the whole army - Gaea has just her giants now.

But in the fray, two griffins escape - carrying with them Jason and Hazel. Now they have no option but to follow.

Perseus almost hits his head on the wall. Why was he so dumb? Gaea was playing them. Gender had nothing to do with the sacrifice - it's just one of the sea, one of the earth. And Hazel, as much as she is a daughter of the sky, her powers exist on earth.

He could deal with the bounty hunt on him. Even on Piper - just a person to protect - but not on two. He was not expecting this. Perseus thinks Gaea must be laughing right now.

He feels guilt creep on him. That was his plan, and now two of his best friends are gone in the sky. Leo looks even worse than him - he is weeping as if the two demigods are already dead. They probably are.

Annabeth takes the reins - and they fly to the Acropolis quicker than ever. The ship slams against the ground - it probably needs repairs. But they are here.

Jason doesn't remember feeling that much pain. He wakes up, chained in a sacrificial altar, Hazel just behind him. Their powers don't answer - the chains are as dark as Perseus' ax: stygian iron. In front of them, Porphyrion and Polybotes laugh.

"We'll be glad to offer your fathers your severed heads"

He wishes to talk back - but his mouth doesn't work. It's Clytius taking his voice away, right behind them - holding a scyther that is not unfamiliar. Is the same scyther that took Uranus manhood - the same one that cut him to pieces and reduced him to the sky.

"We take an arm from the daughter of the earth, blood and flesh, so that her connection with the ground is given to our Mother, so she is able to reclaim her dominion."

There's blood everywhere. Hazel's left arm is twitching on the floor, and she lets out an ear-splitting scream, before passing out.

"We take the ability from reproduce from the son of the sea, blood and flesh, so that his fertility will be given to our Mother, so she is able to reproduce again, the ability his father took from her."

Jason feels like the world is spinning. They will... they... they want to castrate him. He sees Hazel's blood staining the marble and the floor, running through his skin, and he wants to vomit - but something is preventing him from doing so.

Hazel is paling fast - she'll be dead in thirty minutes if they don't stop the bleeding. But he can't move. He can't help. A scream strangles in his throat.

If Hazel's voice was able to cut through Clytius magic, would his powers too? If he focused enough if he stretched himself enough.

Jason forces himself to stop thinking about the chanting, and focus. He imagines Nico - with no family, losing Hazel. Or Frank and Leo. Or Perseus. He pushes and pushes.

He doesn't find a source of water - but he feels her blood. He can stop it from coming out - just for a second, just for a minute, just until they rescue them.

They are going to rescue them. They are - none of them are dying today. They have to survive this war.

Jason focuses his thoughts on good things. After this, he is going to go to college. He is going to spend time with his sister. He'll work on greek-roman relations. He'll ask the male Praetor on a date. He'll punch Octavian. Everything will be just fine.

The scyther is just over Clytius head, ready to strike when an arrow takes its place in his eye. Thalia, mounted on Pegasus, barges in. The horse is bigger than Clytius - and he takes their chains, before flying off to the arena.

Thalia cuts his chains - throwing a gladius at him. Hazel is still passed out - curled into herself in the ground. Jason stands before her, still doing his best to keep her blood inside. It won't work for long.

The giants follow them - but to no effect. The ship crashes between them, the demigods jumping off - armed to the teeth. With a scream of war, the Amazons and the other Hunters come flying in their own Pegasi.

Reyna is not with them - Jason hopes, not for the first time, that the demigod settlements are in peace. That they won't have to deal with two battlefronts.

It's not the time for petty wars. They should be here, helping, if they were not caught up in past fights of over a hundred years ago. Gaea is much more urgent than whatever they are debating.

These fighters are not enough - they are fighting a losing battle. No gods are coming, and between immortal hunters and Amazons, no one is a deity.

Jason starts thinking he is hallucinating - wishful thinking - for the sky opens, and from there descents all the Olympians and Hecate. Nike is the first to appear, guiding the chariot of Zeus, a scream of battle in her lips.

Juno is in a chariot guided by peacocks. Behind her, Aphrodite - that's not Venus, but Jason has never seen Aphrodite so ready for war. There are no doves or flowers in her - just a giant bow and arrow and a spear, riding in a horse side by side with her husband and her lover.

All twelve Olympians, plus Hades, plus the Fates, plus Trivia, Nike, Juventa, Bia, and Enyo. Proserpina is not there - nor the court of Atlantis.

Jason can't help but think is too little too late. Why they didn't show before? Before Hazel lost her leg? Before Malcolm died? Before Perseus fell? Before this journey took everything from them?

The gods pair off with their children - Hades with Perseus, Athena with Annabeth, Aphrodite with Piper, Mars with Frank, Zeus with Nico, Hephaestus with Leo, Juno with Hylla, Thalia with Poseidon.

Before pairing with Will - who looks reluctant to do it - Apollo comes to them. Jason is good enough to go - but he won't leave Hazel.

"I can't regrow her arm - not here, not now. And never, if it has been amputated by a titan weapon. The best I can do is close it."

Jason is so tired of the gods being unable to do stuff they should be capable of, but he sighs and nods. Hazel's color starts coming back, even if she doesn't wake up.

It's Trivia who comes to take the place of Jason. He stalls - he doesn't trust any deity anymore with the well-being of his friends - but they are not much, and they need him to fight. He joins Ceres as she raises a sickle to go against her bane - Asterius.

The hunters follow their mistress and Amazons divide themselves between the remaining gods - Dyonisus and Mercury - and they attack.

It's not enough. They are stretched too thin. Clytius is the only fallen one after thirty minutes of battle - Trivia burns him down in rage for her acolyte and makes a still groggy Hazel make a little cut on so he dissolves.

Perseus fights alongside his father, mounting Mrs. O'Leary as he does Cerberus. Small Bob can't die unless struck by celestial bronze, so the giant's effort to kill the creature is useless. Both of them don't hold back. It's the first time he really remembers his training with the Lord of the Dead. But mostly, he remembers Persephone too, and the gardens of the Underworld.

Percy has to go back to her. To his stepmom, and his mom, and his other stepmom. He has to go back to his life - the life he can barely remember now, but that was everything for him.

He has to go back to the gardens and the lakes, to blue cookies and bare feet. At least one of the rulers had to be in the Underworld, so Persephone is waiting for them to come back.

It gives Perseus strength. They have to win, so the earth can prosper - so that they can go back to the Underworld. So he can meet Thanatos, and play with Cerberus, and debate with Charon. So that they can be a family.

They keep fighting, but even with Perseus renewed will, there's no winning. Alcyoneus retorts them blow for blow and they tire quickly. Hades turns to him - there's a grim expression in his face when he throws his helmet to Perseus.

Perseus notices to late what his father is about to do - and is unable to prevent it.

"FATHER"

It's the first time he recognizes it. Hades has always been the lord of the dead to him - he only ever called him father in mockery. But this time, it's yelled in anguish.

"Tell Kore that I love her."

A giant blow from the Lord of the Dead makes both of them stumble. The giant falls to the floor, but not before running his sword through Hades' neck.

It's the first god to fall, and when Perseus cuts Alcyoneus' head in return, he stays dead. But it's not enough, because Hades is dead.

He'll have to tell Kore. Kore that loves Hades so much that she leaves the surface for months on end to stay with him. He'll have to tell her that he wasn't enough to save Hades.

Cerberus whine loudly and tries to wake his master - he sniffs at the ground soiled by ichor. No giant is able to approach the body or Perseus - Cerberus growls at every enemy who tries. Small Bob stays by his side, fighting alongside him.

A tear escapes his eye. After so much time, so much resentment, he didn't think he would care. His father lies on the floor like a puppet with the strings cut - and Perseus rages. He closes his father's eyes but doesn't stop - there's still a war going on, so he puts on the Helm of Darkness and goes on to join Ceres and Jason.

A scream rings through the arena - is Poseidon, noticing his oldest brother is gone. He throws his trident at Polybotes head - between him and Thalia, the giant is gone in the next ten minutes.

The god of the sea runs through the field, stepping through dead bodies and avoiding the corner where Trivia is taking care of Hazel. He clutches his brother's prone body and cries, ichor staining his clothes. Cerberus whines at his sound - it's heartbreaking.

Across the field, all four siblings cry together for their fallen brother, but none of them as badly as Poseidon. There's a cold spreading through the field - and soon enough, the sky opens again.

It's Vesta. The last Olympian - the one who stayed behind to tend to the hearth. But now, she looked as fiery as her nephew - descending from the sky with no armor or chariot. The eldest child.

Family - that's Vesta domain. Perseus never saw her fight, but she does this time - throwing herself against the closest giant - Gration.

But Hades is not the last to fall.

Between Jason and Perseus, there's no match for Asterius. Ceres cuts his head off, still sobbing for her son-in-law and brother, sobbing for her widowed child. It doesn't help when her sister falls by her side - Juno, in full battle armor, is cut in half by Eurymedon.

Perseus thinks it might be a scene worthy of being painted - her lifeless eyes stare at the sky, as her crown rolls off her and stops at the giant's feet. Hylla keeps on fighting - now joined by her mother, who changes from Enyo to Bellona.

Zeus, in rage for his wife's death, kills Porphyrion before striking against Eurymedon with his general and her daughter. Nico, even if he never cared for Juno, follows suit - there's a path of destruction behind them, where lightning bolts hit the floor and filled the ground with craters.

Dyonisus kills Elphiates with his oldest daughter by his side, but his brother doesn't die as easily. Athena is still fighting against Enceladus - Annabeth striking the giant from all angles, in perfect synchrony with her mother, with help from Nike, who shields them both with her wings.

Mars and Mercury fight against Hippolytus - but he is faster than even the god of travelers, and evade them at every turn. Frank is a dragon, and then an elephant, and a snake - but nothing hits the giant.

After a blow on the arm by Bia, Periboea spears the still masculine body of Piper. Her blood falls from in-between her legs as Aphrodite - scarier than even Ares - runs her spear through the giantess's eye, killing her.

To save her daughter, Aphrodite shifts her completely into a girl - it's jarring, and something that takes adaptation, but the only way she can keep fighting without dropping.

But it's too late, the damage is done. Gaea is awake, by the seed of a daughter of the sea. Perseus exchanges a look with Leo through the fray - Mimas is just defeated, as Hephaestus smashed his head in with his hammer, but he regenerates quickly as if nothing happened.

There's no winning anymore. The fallen giants don't rise again - the Doors are closed - but the seven remaining ones don't die either - Enceladus, Eurymedon, Orion, Mimas, Otis, Hippolytus, and Thoon - their mother healing all their injuries.

The gods that killed their banes rally together against Gaea - but it's futile. It's just like Perseus in Tartarus - there's no battling a primordial in their own turf.

Will leaves his father to battle Orion, with his sister and the hunters - as Gration lays, probably dead, across the feet of his brother, courtesy of Vesta - and joins the duo.

The three of them sprint through the muddy ground, and onto Festus. There's no winning from Gaea on the ground - but they might have one way.

"Don't let me die, okay?"

Will and Percy join hands across Leo's forehead - and try to bless him the best they can, without being gods themselves. A green sheen covers Leo - and this might be it.

Leo mounts Festus - now again a giant dragon - and rises to the sky. It is enough to attract the Earth. She leaves her battle against Vesta, Aphrodite, Bia, Poseidon, and Ceres - to go after the dragon.

"Trying to escape me, my little demigod?"

An explosion of fire rocks the sky. It's not enough to kill Gaea, but between Zeus' thunder and Leo's explosion, the primordial is unconscious.

Perseus focuses - on keeping Leo's soul in his body. Will, by his side, shines as Apollo himself - there's a sheen of sweat in his face. It might've worked

None of them have the power to kill her now - just the union of all the remaining Olympians would even be capable of rendering her asleep again.

They can't find Festus or Leo - Perseus renders this as a good sign, the sign that their powers were enough.

But for now, with her unconscious, she can't heal the giants. So the remaining gods do quick work of killing them - the last to fall is Eurymedon, with Zeus' bolt across his forehead.

The king of the gods falls on his knees and weeps. Juno is dead. Hades is dead. There are six hunters and twenty amazons remaining - from tens and hundreds.

Mrs. O'Leary died - from a stray arrow. Cerberus paws the ground where her dust is - Perseus can't even imagine his puppy back on Tartarus.

Nike - both wings pointing into different sides, spine broken by Enceladus foot - is sprawled on the ground. Her unblinking eyes stare at Athena, who is holding her hand.

"Did... did we... win?"

"Y-yes"

"Give them the... the crowns... don't forget..."

"I won't"

"There's no... no friends.... in victory. I wish I had... someone."

"I am your friend, Nike"

"My best one... don't let them forget.... champions don't die..."

"Never"

She gags in her own blood. It drips around her chin. It's the first time Perseus sees Athena cry. It hits him - they, all of them, have known each other for thousands of years.

Mars is crying by his mother's head, his spear broken on his feet. Juventa, burned blonde hair blowing around her face, hugs Hephaestus as he cries for their mother - the one that never cared for them, but that was their mother anyway.

Vesta has Hades head on her lap, while his body lays broken on the floor. Ceres is trying to calm Poseidon - but the god of the sea can't stop crying.

On the other side of the Arena, most demigods are together around Hazel - Will is explaining about Leo, but most of them look hopeless. Hazel is crying in Frank's arms.

Eight of them are here - Hazel is missing an arm, Piper went through a jarring body change and Frank has a broken leg - but eight of them are alive, and there's hope for Leo.

Perseus stands in the middle - not joining the gods or the demigods. He looks at the ichor stained floor, the upcoming battle against Gaea looming. Cerberus and Small Bob are together on each side of him.

Apollo - from where he is laying with his unconscious, but alive, sister - raises to help the demigods. None of them are happy about any godly presence - but they need treatment, so they let it happen.

Perseus is the first to break the silence after everyone is healed. Some gods are still crying - but there's no time for grief now. He doesn't look at where his father lays dead - he can't process this right now.

"We... we need to go. To Long Island. We need reinforcements - the war isn't over."

"We need to recharge" Is Hephaestus that retorts "There's no way we can fight right now. Maybe in a day or so but..."

"I don't think we have this time." Jason points "We could try and stall things, prepare... Can you send us there?"

"I can" Say Pegasus, who was fighting alongside Thalia.

Perseus wants not to care. To say that Juno or Nike deserved it. But it's not fair - not even them deserve to die, to go back to the void or Tartarus to reform or be lost for centuries.

Annabeth, however, sits in her corner with the ghost of a smile in her lips - so many demigod's lifes lost for them, for their petty struggles, and now they have to pay the price too. Everyone is paying the price now.

If they helped before, if they didn't spend months cooperating with Juno's useless plan, perhaps now no one would be dead. They could have united the demigods without waisting eight months on stupid missions to kill giants - just for them to come back.

If they stopped thinking about their "oh so bad" split personalities, maybe they could've made this journey quicker, instead of letting them spend two months going in side-quests, fighting minor gods, and retrieving useless information.

So yes, Annabeth is vindicated. This - all of this, those deaths, the ichor soiling the ground - it's their fault.

Piper feels tired. This - this body, this recognition from her mother - is all she ever wanted. But now that she has it, she can't even appreciate it. Was it worth it? She would give everything back for Perseus' leg, Hazel's arm, Malcolm, Leo.

She looks at their mismatched little family - and remembers that yesterday, they had lunch together - all of them. It was not the best moment, but they were laughing.

They could've been happy. If they weren't demigods, most of them would be in college by now. They wouldn't be broken.

Perseus solves to travel by shadows with Cerberus - he still has his father's Helm, and the immortal horse won't let him mount with it. He feels sick - that's his father's dog and his father's armor. But that's their chance of survival.

No god look at him when he melts into the darkness - it's too fresh, too painful. Part of their family is dead.

She jumps on the Pegasus, holding Hazel up - she can barely hold on to her brother in front of her. The wound is closed, but the daughter of Jupiter is off-balance - there's nothing on her right side.

Hazel closes her eyes and rests her head across Nico's back - she is so tired. Leo is gone - maybe forever - and she doesn't have an arm. There's nothing there - nothing. She goes to move and she forgets it for a second - but then she tries to hold tighter to Nico and can't.

Nico feels his sister's tears on the back of his shirt and holds tight to Frank - who is almost strangling Will in his efforts not to panic - he is flying over the sea.

Jason is behind Piper - he is the last one - and he is much more comfortable. That's his half brother after all.

They land in Long Island after ten painful hours - and Will seethes, because their journey could have been so easy, so small - but the gods were too occupied by their insignificant problems that they had to journey for months.

One after the other, they dismount just shy of the river - Jason thinks the naiads look mad when Frank vomits all over their water.

"Flying on a ship is a thing. Flying on a horse is another."

He stills looks queasy when they cross the Pavillion. There's no one there, which is weird because it's morning. There's no one anywhere.

Perseus - powered by the Helm - is the first to get there - almost two hours before them. And the first thing he listens makes him utterly mad.

"Give our soldiers back - or Nova Roma will strike back!"

It's Octavian's voice coming from the hill that harbors Thalia's tree - and Perseus sighs. He looks at himself - he needs a shower, and sleep, and food. They need traps. They don't need a second war.

He is in no condition to fight right now. So he'll have to put his diplomatic skills to use - just the reminder of his father's death sparks a dull pain in his chest - still covered in ichor and dust, his ax slung over his shoulder.

Cerberus stays by his side. Perseus sends Small Bob to Persephone through the old Labyrinth entrance - he needs the big dog, but the skeleton tiger would just be easy prey.

"TWELVE LEGION, STOP"

Perseus looks mightly tired as he takes on the scene - the greeks following Clarisse, Connor, and Lou, the Romans following Octavian and Mike Kahale. Reyna between them, with the gigantic statue.

The demigod looks between his first and his second family, none that he ever fit right, both of which he was the leader, and hold on to Cerberus.

"We - and by we, I mean nine of us, greeks and Romans, the Amazons, and the hunters - just defeated fifteen giants, with the gods. In Athens. We could've - and should've - had reinforcements."

"Percy-" Connor starts, but Percy raises a hand to stop him. There are shadows curling against his arms - his celestial bronze leg shines under the Athena Parthenos.

"I may have been gone for a while, but I'm still your leader - and their Praetor. You choose me to lead - both of you. Me, and Reyna, and Annabeth, and Frank, and Jason."

"Praetor Jackson-"

"Shut the hell up Octavian, this is all your fucking fault" Intercedes Reyna.

"I went through Tartarus - for a month - because of that damned statue, to close the Doors so you could be safe. I don't care about your petty little problems now - Earth has risen."

"IT'S A LIE, IT'S ALL LIES" Screeches Octavian.

"How can you know? You were here, raising trouble and creating unnecessary problems while we went on the freaking mission to save the world."

Octavian tries to reply, but Reyna's sword in his throat stops him.

"My father is dead. The gods are coming - but we need to stall Gaea. There's no time for this."

"I say kill him." Replies Reyna.

"I agree." Says Perseus, to the surprise of no one "We're the Praetors of Nova Roma. Our word is the law. For treason against our people, you're condemned to death, Octavian Simmons."

"Apollo will curse you for this!" Are his last words as Reyna cuts his head off. Mike Kahale backs down - no one would dare to go against them, not when Perseus is holding the symbol of his father in his hands and the Guardian of Hell in his side.

"Now that... that was solved, let's prepare for the true war. Gaea is coming - in hours from now. We have to hold on until the gods come."

They enter the Camp - the Greeks and the Romans aren't a unit, but at least they all trust Perseus, who sits on the top of the amphitheater with Reyna, and they wait until the others get there. Jason is the first to come to sit down by them - followed by the other six.

"I won't ask you to trust each other. I ask you to fight - with all that you can. Juno and Pluto, or Hera and Hades, are dead." Cries erupt from that, but silence quickly at Reyna's fulminant look "Nike, or Victory, has also fallen. Pray for your parents - burn food, whatever - so that they can take strength. They should be here in a few hours. We just need to hold on."

"Romans and Greeks - no one will survive if we don't fight. Together. For now, you take your orders from Reyna and Clarisse." It's Jason who completes.

Reyna and Clarisse sit down to discuss ideas - they don't trust each other, but are both daughters of war - and their objectives are simple. Lou goes to call her brother as Connor joins the table - Alabaster apparently refused to join the battle against the Romans.

While Romans and Greeks trade strategies and weapons, the travelers rest. Perseus is the first to fall asleep - holding his father's Helm of Darkness like a teddy bear, while most of the others keep their distance from it.

Cerberus makes the campers stay away from the eight. Two of his heads sleep and one keeps growling at whoever gets too close.

Annabeth is the last to fall asleep - she joins the strategy group for about thirty minutes before joining her quest mates behind the giant dog - it sniffs at her. She wonders if remembers the red rubber ball.

They have eleven hours to plan and rest. It's a miracle - Leo managed to knock Gaea down for 21 hours, almost a day.

At least is enough time for everyone to sleep and eat and plan traps. It won't be enough against the primordial, but it might just hold her for a while. They have no way of causing explosions to Leo's proportion - at least they have numbers.

Gaea rises from the earth like an evil mountain - she is the ground. Some of them - the ones on bare earth - die immediately, sucked into the mud as it turns to quicksand.

Frank takes the lead as the whole army charges against the goddess, striking again and again in every part they can find.

They last the three hours before the gods appear - but they lose two-thirds of their forces. Mangled corpses are everywhere on the battlefield.

The gods win - against a tired Gaea - without major losses for themselves. There's no need to recount their battle, for they will lord about it for many centuries.

What counts, however, is the deaths on the demigods' side - the ones who will be forgotten in the shadow of their parents' victory.

Connor sobs over the almost unrecognizable body of his brother, who died holding hands with Katie Gardner, being veiled by her sister, Miranda.

Hazel is helping Alabaster to find his sister, who missing somewhere in the rubble with the other 56 demigods, who are unaccounted for. The first they find is Clarisse - her still hot corpse trying in vain to protect Chris Rodriguez.

Jason holds Thalia's circlet - the only remaining thing of the Lieutenant of Artemis, who came into the battle with her mistress and died to save her. There are just two hunters alive. The sister he barely knows - and won't ever have the chance now.

Piper holds on to him - she can't bear to look as Mitchell and Ariel mourn little Lacy, killed by a fallen tree. Drew died taking a stone to the head for Piper - she doesn't know how to feel about it.

Will would help - but sadness devours him. Of his whole Cabin, he is the sole survivor. All greek children of Apollo are gone. His boyfriend is also dead - his metal foot caught on the quicksand, and he was swallowed by the earth.

Nyssa mourns her siblings - Jake, Leo, Thalassa, Kira. There's only six of them now - back to where they were just after the first war.

Reyna is alive - although with half of her face burned. Hylla - the last of the Amazons - hovers over her, tending to her injuries.

The smaller cabins help each other - there wasn't a lot of them at first, and now there is even less. Cabin 17 has no demigod alive - and won't ever house one again.

Frank is helping the legion to unearth the bodies and rescue the survivors - it's weird to see a giant mole with only an eye. He is the one who holds Hazel's hand as they have to break Lou Ellen's arm to take her from under a pillar.

Grover died protecting Juniper from Gaea's earthquakes. He became a little juniper tree, side by side with hers. Coach Hedge is the only satyr from Camp Half-Blood left.

But maybe the worst scene is where the Pavillion once was - Perseus Jackson is flicking in and off, large gashes in his torso. Hazel is the one to find him. Most of the survivors - and the eight travelers - stop to look. It's their leader, their savior.

Nico holds his head as blood pools under them - the irony, Perseus took a boulder in the chest for him, flying across the Camp at the end of the battle, and Nico was again unable to catch the hero.

Annabeth sobs over his body, screaming. She lost Luke to the gods. She lost Thalia to the gods. She lost Malcolm to the gods. She lost Leo to the gods. She lost Grover to the gods. Everyone is gone - she won't lose Perseus too.

"FIX HIM" She screams at Apollo "FIX HIM"

Apollo shakes his head sadly. In his benefit, he managed to save all demigods who still held on after battle - and most of their limbs - but Perseus is too far gone.

"FIX HIM! HE SAVED YOU. ALL OF YOU. HE DESERVES TO LIVE!"

"Annabeth, he is beyond-"

"YOU ARE GODS! WHAT ARE YOU FOR?"

"We can't, child"

Annabeth doesn't relent. She lost too much. She lost everything. They took all she was, all she had. She won't fail Perseus.

"Immortalize him."

"Annabeth, no-"

"Shut up, Nico" She barks. There's a mad look in her eyes. "You didn't let Heracles die, and he deserved it far less. Save Percy. Make him a god. You have the Fates right there."

Most of the gods look uncertain. Perseus denied immortality the last time - but they couldn't let the hero die.

"DO IT"

No one disagrees with her. Most of their friends - the ones who know Perseus better, who aren't blinded by grief - look horrified.

Nico would argue strongly - but he promised himself that no harm would come upon Perseus after Tartarus. So he backs off - better than he hates them forever than dead.

Zeus is the one who finally takes a step forward. Perseus soul is almost leaving him - it's now or never.

"All in agreement?"

The gods nod and raise their hands over his prone body. It burns so brightly everyone has to look away

When they look again, there's Perseus - still missing a leg, but better than ever. He looks like his father - uncannily so. There are tears in the corners of Ceres's eyes. Poseidon can't look.

Juventa brings the jar of nectar - she is the one who can grant eternal life, the one who guards over her mother's apples. She puts the jar to his lips, and the boy - the god - wakes up, disoriented.

"W-what... h-how am I here? I-I was with Charles and... and Ethan..." He mumbles under his breath, looking lost.

The Fates look at him - but there's no pity in their eyes. He sees again the blue line being cut - is his life. It's gone. Even before they speak, he knows what happened.

"Earthopener, The Silent One, The Rich One, Lord of the Dead. Hail Perseus, the Underworld God"

#percy jackson #jason grace #pjo #nico di angelo #au #heroes of olympus #percy jackson son of hades #nico di angelo son of zeus #annabeth chase #reyna avila ramirez arellano #frank zhang #hazel levesque daughter of jupiter #hazel levesque #leo valdez #calypso #will solace #piper mclean #trans piper mclean #poc percy jackson #jercy #nicercy #percabeth #frazeleo #blood of olympus #epilogue? yes #argo ii #the gods #character death #a lot of people die on this #battle

[sheirukitriesfandom]

6, 7, 17 and 19 for the OCs - i-was-nereva-rine-here

6. What OC is the Mom Friend?

Eyvindr is the no. 1 mum friend. He is very responsible and always looks out for the younger vigilants (And later Dawnguard recruits). He's also a great person to talk to if you're looking for an honest, well-meaning opinion.

Licette is also a mum friend, but she's too strict to fully embody the trope, I think. Rashkan looked up to her though.

Speaking of Rashkan, he also possesses some mum friend traits, but apart from Savos and later Rethul, most people don't get to see those.

7. What OC really needs the Mom Friend around?

Most notably Ma'jhal-jo, my dear smart-of-brain but dumb-of-ass khajiit. Lucky for him he's got Mazi to keep him from some of his bullshit.

Corentin should have a mum friend because of his tendency to not think things through. He's got Valcarion, but that's different bc Valci is his adoptive dad.

Ironically, Rashkan could use a mum friend during the Dragonborn questline. Don't leave that bookworm unsupervised in a daedric library. 

17. Which OCs don’t know each other, but would hate each other if they did?

Eyvindr and Rashkan. Eyvindr is a Vigilant of Stendarr and zealously anti-vampire and Rashkan is, well, a vampire and he hates people who prejudge him.

Ramiath and any of my Dominion characters, but especially Tulondil. Tulondil never fought against the Blacksap Rebellion, but he was a Dominion general and knew general Endare personally, which, in Ramiath's eyes, makes him just as guilty. Tulondil would feel pity for Ramiath, but he'd condemn his unwillingness to listen and his hatred of people for guilt by association.

19. What’s the strangest way two (or more) OCs have met?

That would be Corentin and Valcarion. After the attack on Sunhold, a traumatised, exhausted, and disoriented Corentin erred through Alinor. The city guard quickly arrested the poor nonsense rambling boy. Valcarion was then tasked with questioning him and got very angry that they'd put that obviously traumatised youth behind bars. Valci took him in after his name was cleared.

#elder scrolls #skyrim #elder scrolls online #my ocs #Rashkan Atheron #Eyvindr #Licette Vantieve #Ma'jhal-jo #Valcarion #Corentin #Tulondil #Ramiath #Rethul Balasi

[5lazarus]

some rambling thoughts on writing ensemble casts & huge expanded universes

I think I’ve articulated my discomfort with DA4, Dragon Age at large, and the trailer, after watching the new episode of The Mandalorian and thinking about why that series feels so good vs how I feel about Dragon Age and especially new Star Trek, with the exception of Lower Decks.

The Mass Effect teaser shows a more coherent plot and world than the DA4 teaser, though of course the scope of the games is very different. Even though I haven’t personally played ME, I can already tell that this is going to address the loose strings of the trilogy and link this to Andromeda. It’s going to make the story stronger and the narrative chronology more coherent, and develop the characters more deeply. Liara links the emotional heart of the trilogy to Andromeda, and bridges the gap that the plot left. Similarly, The Mandalorian fleshes out the wide canon of Star Wars, living fully in the world and linking comics, movies, and animated series into a coherence the fans understand. No character is wasted. Everyone comes back. The secondary and tertiary characters have their own arcs, and everyone intersects. Mass Effect and The Mandalorian know how to do an ensemble cast in an expanded universe. Likewise, Lower Decks, even though it is a comedy and an animated series, fills in the gaps. The characters are fully fleshed out, “aliens of the week” from throwaway TNG episodes are brought back and teased, and the writers even make a joke about how the network told them they’re not allowed to write about the Dominion War! It adds a wonderful new cast & crew, where even the extra looks like people (because the animators put themselves in :) ). Picard doesn’t talk about Lal or the Dominion War, even though Lal is integral to Data’s character arc and the Dominion War (and the Maquis) shake up Starfleet irrevocably and set Discovery up to make the haphazard critique it does. Discovery is alright, and a much, much stronger show than Picard. I still feel like it pulls its punches. I like it fine, though I feel like the writers think the fans are dumb and don’t watch other trek shows. It feels weaker, because it doesn’t really link the broader events of Star Trek, even with the time travel gap. And it doesn’t develop its secondary characters as deeply as previous Trek has, as even Lower Decks manages to do in 20 minute episodes--because the show is defined by Michael Burnham, where TOS, TNG, DS9, and Lower Decks are defined by the crew. It’s fine if you want a show defined by a main character, but I like ensemble casts, and that’s why I prefer DS9 to it. Now, onto Dragon Age 4. I love ensemble casts, I love the world, but what I dislike about Inquisition vs the other games is that it sprawls too much without tying everyone back together. I know they did their best under the truly heinous conditions they were working under, and it is a testament to the game developers’ and writers’ skills it turned out excellent. but the strength of Dragon Age is its story, and having Varric narrate it does not mean that the plot is under control. What makes ensemble casts with sprawling canon succeed is when each character and reference ties the story back tighter to its center, and when no line & secondary and tertiary character appearance is wasted. Lower Decks works because Mariner has her own story, her own amicable ex, but still connects to the greater canon via Riker--and you can see that with Rutherford, with Boimler, with Tendi, fucking around at Quark’s during shore leave, pulling together to take the Borg seriously for five minutes, and then spending the rest of the arc bitching while they clean up the ship. The Mandalorian repurposes clone wars era technology and shows how tech develops, characters who you think are throwaway come back for entire episodes, and you can feel how intensely they storyboarded every moment and line. It’s gorgeously written. It is very clearly intensely edited, and that’s why it’s so good--they thought everything through. What I fear about Dragon Age is that they will not address huge worldbuilding moments they tuck away in expanded canon and just keep adding on bits without actually explaining how they work within the world they establish--the Annulment of the Circle in Dairsmuid, the persistent mien’harel in Halamshiral, how many times the Denerim Alienage has been purged (twice in Dragon Age: Origins, potentially a third time if you consider the epilogues canon). Each culture they write feels separate and isolated from each other, even though that’s not how people work. Roman coins show up in Hokkaido. Vikings visited Istanbul. A Chinese ambassador came to Rome and pointed out the lack of hygiene. The Tlingit have been working Japanese iron for a long damn time. What I want from Dragon Age is a world and characters that are tied to each other, and for those connections to be in the foreground, not tucked away in war table missions. If you are going to add in endless amounts of new characters, you cannot make them disposable--they need to flesh the world out, at the very least. I want an Avvar companion and a Dalish elf companion to talk about their relationship to Ferelden and Andrastianism, but more important historic interactions with each other. I want more worldbuilding about House Cadash and how their ancestors hid refugees from Arlathan. A fully realized world is a world where we realize everyone is connected, throughout all time, that borders are porous and no nation is a race in of itself. I want the connections and intersections, not the isolate parts.

#meta #thoughts on ensemble casts and expanded canon #thoughts on writing #writing #centrifugal force does not exist #it just tosses things out of control #dragon age needs to tap into some centripedal force if that makes sense #not a scientist though just a failed archaeologist

[nuttyrabbit]

Why does greenyvertekins accuse Sally of having favoritism?

I’m going to mostly touch on Ian Flynn’s handling of Sally here because frankly that’s where I see the most complaints about Sally favoritism directed (whether it be Greeny or others)

Honestly, I can kinda see where she and others  coming from, because at certain points it does seem like Ian favored her heavily, but at the same time, after reading the comics again, I think in Ian’s case  it comes less from that and more the fact that not only was Sally a major part of the comics from day one, but she also needed a lot of work to make her likable again after what Penders and Bollers did to her.  

And as for Sonally, I think that also falls under the same umbrella since, whether you like it as a ship or as something platonic or even not at all, it’s not like you really ignore the dynamic in its entireity, especially after The Slap and especially since, like Sally, it’s been there in some form or fashion since day one.   Does that mean that everything surrounding it written by Ian was well written? Absolutely not. I think certain parts of Issue 222 for example did seem a bit OOC and at its worst, it led to some really dumb moments in general (Sonic being a jealous little bitch throughout all of Iron Dominion for example).   I will say on that point however that  the cover to issue 222 is incredibly nonoffensive and I really, really don’t get the issue with it. It’s not like the cover has Sonic or Sally being dickish to Amy or anything like that, it’s just meant to be a playful cover. But I digress.

In general, I think the thing about Ian’s supposed Sally favoritism is that a lot of it is really based in the context of the comic’s history and handling of Sally as a character. Again, that’s not to say that there weren’t moments where it was clear that Ian cared about Sally in particular, but rather that a lot of it is context-based and sort of weird.  Also keep in mind that a LOT of what I’m saying is exclusively applicable to the pre-reboot, as that’s where most of the complaints I’ve seen are directed.   I’ve seen some for the post-reboot but honestly, I don’t think many of those have any real merit, especially since Sally is far less important in that continuity in general

Briefly touching on the other writers, the likes of Gallagher and Bollers saw her as the main female lead and treated her as such, nothing more nothing less. And if you think Penders played favorites with Sally you’re fucking insane, end of story. 

#asks #Archie Sonic #This was a long one but I hope it makes sense #There's a LOT to talk about with this stuff #Honestly I think the best way to talk about pre-reboot Sonic specifically is as its own thing because trying to put it in the context of e #But I digress

[crimethinc]

Life in “Mueller Time”: The Politics of Waiting and the Spectacle of Investigation

For almost two years now, faithful Democrats have waited for special counsel Robert Mueller to file his report about collusion between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russian attempts to interfere in the US election, not to mention Trump’s involvement in obstruction of justice. Whenever Trump’s activity provokes them or a subterranean rumbling within the Justice Department emboldens them, the faithful take to the streets and social media with hand-held cardboard signs and internet memes to proclaim that Mueller Time is close at hand. Yet even if the Mueller investigation concludes with Trump’s impeachment, the spectacle of the investigation has served to immobilize millions who have a stake in systemic social change, ensuring that what comes next in the United States will be politics as usual—not liberation.

When you’ve fallen on the highway And you’re lying in the rain, And they ask you how you’re doing Of course you’ll say you can’t complain If you’re squeezed for information, That’s when you’ve got to play it dumb You just say you’re out there waiting For the miracle, for the miracle to come

-The 20th century’s greatest messianic thinker, Leonard Cohen

Within weeks of the beginning of the investigation, there were already think pieces and t-shirts proclaiming “It’s Mueller Time.” Let’s take the t-shirts at their word: maybe it’s been Mueller Time all along. Maybe Mueller Time is not a specific date that is about to arrive, but the era we’ve been experiencing these past two years.

In that case, Mueller Time is not an hour on the clock, but a way of experiencing time, a kind of time—like crunch time or quality time or go time, but the opposite of all of them. It is not a scale of time, like geologic time, or a time zone, like Eastern Standard Time—Mueller Time is more like the End Times, perpetually anticipated.

To be precise, Mueller Time is the political suspended animation in which the Democrats have waited for a repeatedly deferred deus ex machina to deliver them from this unbearable pres(id)ent. This condition of waiting, itself, rather than any of the grievous injustices that have taken place during it, is the very essence of hell.

Dante, the Marco Polo of the Abyss, located Limbo, the residence of those who wait, in Inferno, not in Purgatory. Waiting is not transformative or redemptive—it is the sort of sin for which the punishment is the crime. “Limbo” shares a Latin root with liminal—it is homeland of those who tarry on the threshold, those who are on the fence.

If you can get people used to waiting, you can get them used to anything.

To understand Mueller Time better, we can begin with its namesake. “Miller time” is a time to take a load off, to ease our pain by drugging ourselves into oblivion. It’s a profound expression of despair—“I can only relax in this world by deadening my senses”—disguised not just as relief but as celebration. What is the glee with which Democrats invoke Mueller Time if not an admission of their own abject powerlessness and dependence? “Rejoice,” says the Democrat, “Justice will be done! And thank goodness, as usual, the FBI will take care of everything.”

Miller Time and Mueller Time are both chronotopes, to use the term popularized by literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin: they are specific relationships to time. You cannot understand a group of people without understanding how they experience the passing of time. Peering between chronotopes produces strange refractions, like looking through a glass of water. How different the world appears to a person whose activism consists chiefly of waiting, in contrast to how it appears to those for whom waiting and acting are opposites! It is the difference between spectator and athlete, between the consumer and the inventor, between those who suffer history as if it were weather and those who make history as a side effect of understanding themselves as the protagonists of their time.

And Miller Time and Mueller Time are both marketed chronotopes. Miller Time is the “5 o’clock somewhere” that unites wage labor and intoxication in a mutually reinforcing false opposition—but even more importantly, it is the branded colonization of that time. Likewise, Mueller Time is not just the “he’ll get his” which all people of conscience wish for Trump, but a particular deferral of responsibility. Both are successful advertising campaigns that concentrate capital in certain hands precisely by inducing people not to take their problems into their own hands.

“The politicians’ stubborn faith in progress, their confidence in their ‘mass basis,’ and, finally, their servile integration in an uncontrollable apparatus have been three aspects of the same thing.”

-Walter Benjamin on how Social Democrats permitted the Third Reich to come to power in Germany

All this is familiar to those who were raised as Adventists, believing that the outrageous sinfulness of the prevailing world order indicates the imminence of the Resurrection and the necessity of repentance before authority. Mueller Time is the redemption, the arrival of the Millennium, when the legitimate authorities will reassert their dominion and the obedient will be rewarded for their patience. Good Christians have awaited this for two thousand years; they have made a religion out of waiting. You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.

To keep people waiting for salvation indefinitely, it helps to shift every once in a while from one source of dramatic tension to another. Some hoped Trump would run the country “like a business.” Now that the signature forms of evil associated with capitalism—nepotism, profiteering, corruption, race baiting, sexual harassment, misinformation—characterize the presidency, Democrats are proposing to return to the good-old-fashioned signature forms of evil previously associated with government: bureaucracy, clientelism, experts deciding the fates of millions behind closed doors. All the things that helped Trump come to office.

For the purposes of relegitimizing government, it is ideal that Robert Mueller is not just a “good” authority figure, but specifically, a white male Republican—an FBI director who first made a name for himself overseeing the killing of Vietnamese people. He is everything the average Democrat would oppose if Trump had not moved the goal posts by pursuing the same Republican agenda by potentially extra-legal means. Mueller represents the same FBI that attempted to make Martin Luther King, Jr. commit suicide, that set out to destroy the Occupy movement. Under Mueller’s leadership, the FBI determined that the number one domestic terror threat in the United States was environmental activism.

Mueller Time is a way of inhabiting the eternally renewed amnesia that is America. This is the real “deep state”—the part of each Democrat’s heart that will accept any amount of senseless violence and murder and oppression, as long as it adheres to the letter of the law.

“Definitions of basic historical concepts: Catastrophe—to have missed the opportunity. Critical moment—the status quo threatens to preserve itself. Progress—the first revolutionary measure taken.”

-Walter Benjamin

What will be the fruits of Mueller’s labors?

Rank-and-file Democrats still don’t understand how power works. Crime is not the violation of the rules, but the stigma attached to those who break rules without the power to make them. (As they say, steal $25, go to jail; steal $25 million, go to Congress.) At the height of Genghis Khan’s reign, it would have been pointless to accuse the famous tyrant of breaking the laws of the Mongol Empire; as long as Trump has enough of Washington behind him, the same goes for him. Laws don’t exist in some transcendent realm. They are simply the product of power struggles among the elite—not to mention the passivity of the governed—and they are enforced according to the prevailing balance of power. To fetishize the law is to accept that might makes right. It means abdicating the responsibility to do what is ethical regardless of what the laws happen to be.

In the struggle to control the law-making and law-enforcing apparatus of the US government, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have secured a solid majority. They remain at an impasse. The most likely explanation for Mueller’s delays is that he has been biding his time, waiting to see if the balance of power in the US government would shift enough that there could be some consequences to his report.

The wait The wait The wait The wait

The wait The wait The wait The wait

-Killing Joke, “The Wait”

Ironically, the only thing that could guarantee that Mueller’s report will have an effect would be if this impasse were disturbed by forces outside the halls of power—for example, by a real social movement utilizing direct action. If millions of people were in the streets preventing the Trump administration from accomplishing its agenda, then the power brokers in Washington would consider sacrificing Donald Trump to preserve business as usual.

In standing back and waiting, affirming the authority of the FBI and Congress to take care of matters, Mueller’s fans make it less likely that his investigation will pose a serious threat to the administration. The rank and file Democrats are left gazing at their screens, watching the bureaucratic equivalent of the spinning wheel of death.

In this case, the more you clap your hands, the less Tinkerbell exists.

I’m in the waiting room I don’t want the news—I cannot use it I don’t want the news—I won’t live by it

But I don’t sit idly by I’m planning a big surprise I’m gonna fight for what I wanna be And I won’t make the same mistakes Because I know how much time that wastes

-Fugazi “Waiting Room”

The arc of history is long, but it curves towards—death. There is no excuse to delay. Tomorrow will use you the way we use today.

What would it mean to stop waiting?

It would mean to stop looking to others to solve our problems, no longer permitting a series of presidents, Speakers of the House, FBI directors, presidential candidates, and other bullies and hucksters to play good cop/bad cop with us.

It would mean figuring out how to deal with the catastrophes that Trump’s presidency is causing directly, rather than through the mediation of other authority figures. It would mean building up social movements powerful enough to block the construction of a border wall, to liberate children from migrant detention facilities and reunite them with their families, to feed the hungry and care for the sick without waiting for legislators to give us permission to make use of the resources that we and others like us maintain on a daily basis.

Remember when we shut down the airports immediately after Trump took office? It would mean doing more of that, and less sitting around waiting on politicians and bureaucrats. That was our proudest moment. Since then, we have only grown weaker, distracted by the array of champions competing to represent us—the various media outlets and Democratic presidential candidates—all surrogates for our own agency.

Let’s stop killing time. Or rather—let’s stop permitting it to kill us.

“We live the whole of our lives provisionally,” he said. “We think that for the time being things are bad, that for the time being we must make the best of them and adapt or humiliate ourselves, but that it’s all only provisional and that one day real life will begin. We prepare for death complaining that we have never lived. Of all the people I know, not one lives in the present. No one gets any pleasure from what he does every day. No one is in a condition to say On that day, at that moment, my life began. Believe me, even those who have power and take advantage of it are plagued with anxieties and disgusted at the dominant stupidity. They too live provisionally and spend their whole lives waiting.”

“Those who flee the country also spend their lives waiting,” Pietro said. “That’s the trouble. But one mustn’t wait, one must act. One must say Enough, from this very day.”

“But if you do not have the freedom to act?” Nunzio said.

“Freedom is not a thing you can receive as a gift,” Pietro said. “You can be free even under a dictatorship on the simple condition that you struggle against it. A person who thinks with his own mind and remains uncorrupted is free. A person who struggles for what she believes to be right is free. You might live in the most democratic country in the world, but if you are lazy, callous, and servile, you are not free—in spite of the absence of violence and coercion, you are a slave. Freedom is not a thing that can be begged from others. You must take it for yourself, in whatever share you can.”

-Ignazio Silone, Bread and Wine

Further Reading

Take Your Pick: Law or Freedom

The Centrists

[thewrongexecution]

Scrambled Thoughts

hey how does bein’, like. exited about a thing, but coherently, work? ‘cos like. P5S was announced, and it’s not what some people necessarily wanted or expected, but. I think it’ll be good? in ways those same disappointed folks might enjoy, but aren’t necessarily considering? man where do I even start with this

(long)

so way back in the day, when the Wii U was still relevant, Koei Tecmo came out with Hyrule Warriors basically outta nowhere. now, I never played any warriors games and I think my first zelda was Twilight Princess? Skyward Sword? spent plenty of time watching my brother play them titles and consider majora’s mask one of the greatest games of all time, but I ain’t never touched ‘em, and because I already experienced them vicariously, ain’t ever likely to. but I was big on diablo, on that experience of mowing down hordes of enemies with a big overpowered hero, so I was like, yeah, sure I’ll keep an eye out

(maybe  I was able to latch onto Hyrule Warriors because I was more invested in the characters and story than the gameplay? I don’t know how zelda fans recieved it; I wasn’t as deep in The ‘Net as I am now. doesn’t matter.)

turns out just about everything in that game is great. the long-term gameplay isn’t anything to write home about; it’s all level grinding and weapons farming, but like it’s not necessarily a game for that. it’s a buncha dumb fun! hit things with big flashy attacks! watch actual dozens of bodies ragdoll off into the distance! play as your favorite heroes and and villains and then also some npcs we added for the hell of it!

That, see, is what I remember about Hyrule Warriors. the whole draw of the game, what I love about it, is the warriors and their weapons and their fighting style and fighting with style. like, each character can have multiple weapons, and each weapon is its own moveset-- relatively simple, but still pretty involved, and built around slaughtering a buncha dudes really flashily. and it just-- they went through like every zelda game, and went like, who’s important and how do they fight, and then they made them ALL fun to play as

there are forty two fighting styles to choose from and none of them are bad

actually no that’s a lie; the dominion rod, the summon gates, and agitha’s parasols are bad. maybe also the great fairy and sometimes the wind waker? and I never unlocked all the toon-era weaponry, but it doesn’t matter because there are like thirty-five other ways to play That Are All Fun

that’s the first thing. the second thing, which you may have noticed from the list of weapons I don’t much care for, is that some of these weapons get way dumb. like agitha’s parasols. you remember agitha, right? from twilight princess? the incidental, out-of-the-way npc with the completely optional sidequest to find extremely rare bugs? the character that hangs out at home all day and does not interact with any character outside of link? yeah lets make her a playable character in a game where you literally beat up entire armies, she can hit people with a shitty umbrella and also summon bugs, like a giant beetle to crush people with or a giant butterfly to ride on and dive-bomb, that makes sense lol

and the thing is! I think that’s great! it’s legitimately hilarious! and she’s viable!!! I don’t like her fighting style; she’s short range with long recovery times and her special mode relies on getting enemies airborne to actually hit anything with-- but she’s not unusable, her inclusion is a joke but she’s not a joke character, y’know?

and then they went ahead and did that with like every character and every weapon in the zelda series. like Impa, you know Impa, right? protector of the royal line, shows up in Ocarina of Time to teach you a lullaby, never actually displays any combat skills on screen? let’s give her one-a them slab-of-metal ultragreatswords, that seems reasonable. sheik plays a harp and is mysterious, let’s turn them into a ninja with kunai and shit and also a magic harp which does magic based on the songs from OoT that they teach you. how ‘bout Fi, the ghost inside the master sword that exists primarily to interrupt you with unskippable dialogue? well, she can turn into a sword, sure, but her main form of attack is interpretative dance, you know, like she does when you beat a temple. or the king of hyrule, who is a boat! very aggressively. hey why don’t we turn volvagia into a dude with a spear who can just turn back into a dragon while we’re at it

and that’s not even touching link, who has:

sword (obvious)

horse (obvious)

fire rod (flamethrower, giant laser, and most powerfully, axe)

great fairy (carries link in a bottle)

spinner (niche late-game mobility tool from Twilight Princess; 3rd best weapon in Warriors)

and gauntlets (support item that lets you carry heavy things throughout the series; 2nd best weapon in Warriors)

(the best weapon is ganon’s dual greatswords, but that’s aside the point)

and as though that wasn’t enough, they invented Link But A Girl so they could include the iron boots, which makes sense, and, fuckin’, dual crossbows.

you know, crossbows? link’s iconic weapon? that he uses exactly once?? in the game link’s crossbow training??? a throwaway motion-control-centric game for the wii???????

now. everyone is different. so I feel the need to clarify.

all of that? that’s praise. that’s adoration. this game is a love-letter to the zelda series, all of the zelda series, no matter how ridiculous, because it’s ridiculous. I love that, I aspire to that! to that dedication, that passion for a thing, the ability to take a joke and make it real, to make you forget it’s a joke because of how good it is. like when they announced pirahna plant for smash brothers, and then made him good? that emotion, informing the design of an entire game. let me stick this flail in the ground, and then use it to swing the entire earth around to hit you with, and then also, incidentally, because Link’s Awakening existed, because we can, the flail is a chain chomp!!

VIDEOGAMES!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*breathe in*

*breathe out*

and then I think

the people that made that

are doing one with persona

and people have the gall to be disappointed?

like, no, okay, I know, that’s too harsh. I know this isn’t what everyone wanted. I know some feel lied to and betrayed, and my inability to relate to that means y’all might not relate to this. and I know the excitement I feel now is the same as the excitement y’all felt before y’all got let down. I know that.

and yet...

if these guys can pull 42 different combat styles outta the legend of zelda series, from people without even theoretical combat experience, and then you give them the cast of persona 5?

like yakuza man, who's in the yakuza? or guns child, who dual-wields guns? or the doctor, who plausibly has needles and scalpels and doctor-y stuff? or the already extremely anime shogi player, who, fuck it, let’s turn her into a summoner archetype, run people down with cavalry an’ shit! or the fortune teller, she reads tarot, let’s arbitrarily give her tarot-based powers, drop The Tower on some hapless goons, doesn’t gotta make sense if it’s fun!!

VIDEOGAMES!!!

but maybe that’s unreasonable.

I dunno how much creative control nintendo exerted over hyrule warriors, I dunno how much atlus is gonna exert over P5S. maybe they want a more serious experience, maybe chihaya won’t be playable. chihaya being playable doesn’t make sense, and I know that, that’s fine

but even then

I also think

persona 4 arena had the 4 in it

but they still had dudes from 3

so

you know

we’ll see.

#VIDEOGAMES #long post #blatant speculation #persona 5 #p5s #basically: I am excited and hopeful #but I know that might be unfounded #and my hope and excitement do not negate whatever you're feelin' #but I also hope you can overcome frustration at what this isn't #and take it for what it may be and will be #even if what it ends up being is Not Great #also worth pointing out: #this doesn't preclude P5 onna switch #(it could be a means to gauge the profitability of a p5 switch release #''do enough switch users care enough about a spinoff to drop the full thing?'' #but I dunno if that's how people in business think)

[robotnik-mun]

Ok, now I think I'd like to ask: What about the Iron Dominion Arc was so bad? (Also, if you have the time how do you feel Flynn mistreated Rotor?)

In my opinion? The following reasons, which will probably get repeated/elaborated upon when @robotnikholmescomicblog finally gets around to reviewing the arc. 

They are as follows-

1) Snively handing over the reigns to The Iron Queen and her group feels out of character for Snively given how long he has wanted his uncle out of the picture and to take control for himself. Particularly given how quickly he was dispatched after Endgame (ugh), it feels like his character got cheated out of finally having a go at being the man in charge for an extended amount of time, all so that a one shot villain barely remembered by anyone could get pushed to the forefront, all at Snively’s own expense as a character. 

2) Monkey Khan getting strawmanned for being ticked off that the FF’s won’t even consider executing Eggman. Given that Monkey Khan was literally flayed alive and had his internals replaced with machinery after witnessing his entire village killed by the same way, only to lose yet another village thanks to Eggman, having Sonic telling him he was in the wrong felt… achingly tone-deaf, and I didn’t appreciate that Khan received this treatment given what he had suffered at the hands of Robotnik and later Eggman. Having someone like, oh say, Bunnie talk sense into him would have made a great deal more sense, but the bottom line is that Sonic was essentially telling Monkey Khan he was wrong for wanting the person who had heinously wronged him dead. I’m not the biggest fan of Khan, but I felt it was kind of messed up. 

3) The Iron Dominion got pushed way, way too hard- early on they were virtually unstoppable. Not helping matters is that they were hyped IN-Universe as well, at one point having things mentioned as ‘being worse’ now than it was under the Original Robotnik. Given thatl Robotnik 1.0 came within a hair’s breadth of killing ALL of them, with only sheer dumb luck by way of Snively to save their lives, it felt like there was too much effort going into convincing the readers that these were a legit big threat. It’s not helped that not long before that, Eggman had succeeded in obliterating Knothole and very nearly condemned EVERYONE to perish in the Egg Grapes. That’s two instances of things being way more dire, so again, it felt like a point only brought up to insist upon the idea of the Iron Dominion TOTALLY being THAT dangerous, u gaiz. 

4) It dragged on way, way too long. The novelty wore off quickly and after a point it just felt like a chore to slug through everything.

5) The revelations regarding Espio’s backstory and his subsequent re-acceptance into the Chaotix afterwards. While I know it was done in order to justify him suddenly being a ninja, there were better ways to go about it than revealing that his entire life he’d been lying to his friends and gathering information on them, and was so good at it that he was privy to all their secrets and keeping information from them. It throws everything about him into question, and I can’t accept that the rest of the team would be so willing to let bygones be bygones. 

6) The prominence of the Ninja Clans. The clans are not something in of itself I object to, but I’m not too fond of the whole ‘China and Japan are Interchangeable’ thing rearing its head again. Furthermore, I found the idea that ESPIO’S clan just HAPPENED to be the ‘good’ clan to be an eye-rolling development- Ninja at heart are thieves and murderers for hire, and trying to pretty things up in such a way left me with a bad taste in my mouth. 

7) Regina’s laugh. This isn’t a ‘real’ criticism, I just feel an unspeakable rage when I try to envision how it sounds. 

8) Making Sally and Khan an actual thing. While it only happened briefly, this still felt like a baffling decision given the circumstances under which the two originally met, and the development of the moment felt way too rushed for them to reconcile and actually kiss each other. While it mercifully didn’t go anywhere, it still brought back shades of the Love Triangle nonsense that had plagued the book pre-Flynn, as well as gave fresh ammo to those jackasses who screamed about Sally being a Mary-Sue. 

As for Rotor, I don’t think ‘mistreated’ is the right word, so much as Flynn not knowing what to do with him and his solutions not really being all that helpful. Flynn seemed to struggle with the notion of Rotor being a fairly peaceful and sensible member of the FFs, and him being taken out of commission via the back injury and the council felt like a cheat, and the power suit he was later given was just ill conceived, especially since there had to be a bullcrap reason for why he couldn’t build another for Bunnie after she’d been De-Robo’d. 

Post-REboot wasn’t much better for me, given his ‘upgrade’ into a brawler and his new design (which to this day I despise with the fury of a thousand suns)- while the developments with Tundra were quite excellent, at the end of the day it felt less like he actually wanted to write Rotor and refused to really work with what made the character who he is. The fact that it was stated that one reason Rotor was taken off for a while was due to there being ‘too many tech guys’ likewise fell flat when Muttski was arbitrarily updated to be a Mobian lab assistant to Chuck, yet ANOTHER tech guy. 

So yeah, the Iron Dominion arc is easily one of my least favored arcs for those reasons, and I really don’t appreciate all the stuff that happened to Rotor. I’m not a super huge Rotor fan, but to me it’d be like if Big were to suddenly become a svelte melee-monster who quipped all the time because a writer didn’t really want to use Big as he was or try to make the character work with what he had. It misses the point, very badly. 

Hope that answers your questions. 

[gamesdoneslow]

PlayLog - LoZ: Twighlight Princess (2006) #6

And done. So what I figured would be ~30 hours of game came in at closer to 50 (topping the average complete time by 10 hours, which is where’n I got the name for this here blog). I’ll save my thoughts on the story for the next post, cuz I have a bunch. For now let’s talk about the final hours and some overall feelings.

The game’s greatest strengths - lie in its visuals and its puzzles. I talked about this way back in the first post, but the attention to detail in the world and character design is wonderful. Everything I said then is still true, so I won’t repeat myself too much. I always forget this, but the meat of the 3D Zeldas (at least, in my experience) are the puzzles. The combat is fine, it works, and I’d say the same for the story. The challenge are the puzzles, and overall I was rarely too stuck to get frustrated or too clever to get bored with them.

The greatest weaknesses - There’s a lot of little frustrations I have with the game, but if I boiled it down, many of them have to do with the context controls, actually. I’ll talk in detail about this in the final boss section, but sometimes your entire success or failure depends on whether you can catch the writing on the context button prompt in the 3 frames that it is active on screen. Similarly, it feels like having the Navi/Midna buddy system in place is ideal for providing puzzle hints (a-la codec calls in Metal Gear), but nine out of ten times they have nothing useful to say. And you know what else I’d consider a weakness? The goddamn mounted combat. We’ll get to this in a second.

Clever touches - I like that the goat-catching section at the very beginning of the game is echoed in the Goron mini-games, and then again during the final fight with Beast Ganon. I like that the Beast Ganon fight becomes a beast vs. beast thing. I like that Link’s relationship with animals is part of his defining characteristics this go-around, and that it pops up in interesting ways throughout the game, whether he’s riding them, wrangling them, talking to them or collecting them.

Items and the using thereof - I heard a complaint by a friend of mine that the item interaction in this game isn’t great when compared to other Zelda games. I can see the potential for more interesting applications and interactions of these items, but in general I liked what the game had to offer. Top three for me, in no order, are the Dominion Staff, the Spinner, and the Lamp. Dominion staff would be a clear winner if not for it’s very limited use cases. The Spinner was just dumb fun, I only wish it had more combat applications. The lamp feels very true to the spirit of the franchise, and was one of the few items that had recurring applications from start to finish. Iron boots get honorable mention as well for their many varied use-cases. In terms of worst item, I feel like the slingshot not only doesn’t do much when you have it, but becomes completely obsolete when you get the bow.  It could have hidden applications, but I don’t think I touched it after the third hour of the game.

Biggest boss - I’m conflicted. When I think about the final boss fights conceptually, I really like what they’re doing. Between Zant and Ganon, they recall a majority of the item tricks learned throughout the game, and that’s good. They’re tricky enough to keep things interesting - I didn’t die to either, but if not for a hidden fairy in the very last Ganon bout, I totally would have. These are all good things on paper, AND YET... I found myself gritting my teeth through most of it. The Beast Ganon fight should be great, but it’s one case where Midna has to talk you through the trick to have any shot at figuring it out (see the bad context control argument above). Also, even when you’re doing the right thing, it’s very easy to get stun locked and miss your attack window completely. 

Wild stallions - And you know what? Maybe if horse riding was going to be such a key feature of the game, they could have made it suck slightly less. Legitimately, the horseback sections were terrible for me. Yeah, maybe this is a me problem. But also, I’d like to point out that this particular horse-riding system was introduced in 1998. The gameplay of these sections is about matching speed with mounted enemies, something that is very hard to do when your only control is an awkward turning speed and a “boost” button.  I’ll admit, there’s nothing that gets the heroic juices flowing like seeing Link and Zelda riding tandem on horseback, weapons drawn. Marginally less heroic, however, is slowly crawling back into the saddle for the fifteenth time, only to be side-swiped again by an off-screen Ganon. Over... and over... Someone get the license plate number of that black mustang.  If the mounted combat leading up to this point had done anything to prepare me, then maybe... but no. It’s simple enough to bounce off enemies randomly for most of the game, failing forwards through escort missions and the completely baffling bridge-jousts.

Armchair design moment - Put a throttle on that horse. Some way to slow down without grinding to a halt would make the handling on these sections so much better. Not great, mind you, but I understand that there is a degree of verisimilitude in the controls that you wouldn’t want to give up. Maybe increase the damage on hits received while mounted and decrease the chance of being knocked off - which is something that quickly steps on the neck of the encounter pacing. Whatever, the horse riding is in the past now, where it belongs.

Games Done Slow is a play log where I record thoughts and criticisms through a game-design lens as I play through videogames new and old. More to come!

#legend of zelda #twilight princess #video games

[thomasroach]

Anthem: Final Impressions Review

The post Anthem: Final Impressions Review appeared first on Fextralife.

The following post is this author’s opinion and does not reflect the thoughts and feelings of Fextralife as a whole nor the individual content creators associated with the site. Any link that goes outside of Fextralife are owned by their respective authors.

Let’s address the title of this article right away, this is my final impression of Anthem, and it is based on about 15 hours of gameplay. I will probably finish the game eventually but that is far more due to professional curiosity, than actual enjoyment of the game. I don’t feel that Anthem is necessarily a bad game, in fact there were moments when I had a lot of fun with it. Unfortunately that fun struggles to emerge through a thick layer of tedium.

Anthem: Final Impressions Review

Genre: action-RPG/Shoot ’em up Developed by: Bioware Published by: Electronic Arts Release Date: February 22nd Platforms: Playstation 4, Xbox One, PC (Review Platform) Price at the time of the review: $60

The Whiplash of a Story

Players will venture into a harsh environment that threatens humanity. Choose powerful Javelin exosuits, each with great abilities to help even the playing field, with the masses of beasts and creatures that have inhabited the land. The lore focuses on mythical gods that created a planet but disappear before it was finished, and a mighty power called Anthem.

Story isn’t exactly a critical component of a looter-shooter in my opinion, though it is nice to have. However this is a BioWare game and there are certain expectations in terms of quality when it comes to their stories. For me, the best way I can describe the story in one word is whiplash. I’ll be enjoying the narrative, starting to care about the characters, and then Bam! Something dumb is said. Or a setup is utterly forced, a very vague description I know, but I do not want to spoil anything.

Behold the pinnacle of branching dialog

Every time it started getting good, something happened to break my enjoyment of the story, a good example of this is the the “Tombs of the Legionnaires” quest. I will simply say that it is an objective storyline telling facts, but the placement of a sudden massive grindy block in the middle of the story kills pacing and immersion. Yes I know the patch helps alleviate this issue a bit, but depending on your play style, you could still be facing a massive grind here. It makes me sad the story is so erratic, because the world BioWare have created is a very interesting one. Hopefully future content will better highlight this as it’s something I feel players will enjoy.

UI

First let me address that the UI sucks, it really, really does. In nearly every aspect. I will give BioWare credit where credit is due, they greatly improved the mission launch UI since its VIP demo. It was a confusing mess on day 1, and the patch greatly improved many aspects of this. However the rest of the UI still remains in disarray on PC. Far too many clicks required to navigate through settings, confusing layouts, slow response times, and it is just aggravating to find the information needed.

Er, where’s my stat summery?

The crowning UI failure though? This is a looter-shooter, you have stats, your gear has stats, your gear has stat modifiers, and yet there is no singular screen you can open at a glance and to see all your stats with ease. This is a critical UI failure, and hopefully something they address quickly. Why does this all matter? Well if you even remotely care about looking up your daily/weekly/monthly tasks, or if you want to checkout the codex, you will be dealing multiple windows in this UI, making you work harder than you really have to.

Mission Design

The most stunning of mission designs is on display here, note the intense sarcasm. Go play hot-and-cold and find three orbs, then bring them back to a location. Then, you will need to find a further 6 orbs, and low and behold, bring them back to location. You can’t relax though, because before you have time to recover from all this staggering innovations, you are sent to find 12 orbs and yet again bring then them back.

You do this three times in the Tyrant Mine stronghold. Three. Times.

Oh and they have the occasional kill all the things and defend this point as well.  Sigh.  What I feared from the demo came true, the mission design is not well varied at all. It doesn’t help that 90% of the time you are fighting two enemy types, the Scar and the Dominion, and there’s little difference between them. Toss in the occasional bullet black hole (I mean they should be named this as this is where all the bullets just disappear into) and you have your mission design.

Flight and Combat – The Deal Maker / Breaker

Here it is, ladies and gentlemen, here is the part that will either sell you on this game or cause you to run away, it comes down to combat and movement. How badly do you want to be Iron Man? Once again I will give credit where credit is due: BioWare greatly improved the flight mechanics on PC with a mouse and keyboard. It is amazing to fly around the world, abilities are enjoyable to experience, some of the guns are fun to use, and movement in combat is very fluid. The AI is about as smart as a bag of rocks but eh, whatever, makes ‘em easier to blow up.

A still image cannot capture how fast and fluid this can get

Final Thoughts

The big question is…is it enough? Will you enjoy the combat and flight mechanics enough to cover up the flaws and endure the load screens as you grind the same three strongholds over and over and over again? I personally don’t think so.

Anthem needed at least another 2-4 months in development, while this would not have fixed all the problems, it could have led to more variation in mission types. More time could have improved enemy AI to make the two enemy factions feel noticeably different, and add additional end-game content which I felt was lacking. Hopefully BioWare has been given time by EA to get things fixed as there’s a decent game here underneath all this mess.

If you enjoyed reading about Anthem be sure to check out VIP Demo Preview as well as more content in Anthem Producer Reaffirms Loot Boxes Will Not Be In The Game and Bioware Shares How Anthem Could Influence New Dragon Age And Mass Effect Games. You can also check out more Bioware in Bioware Teases Announcement Next Dragon Age Game At TGA 2018.

The post Anthem: Final Impressions Review appeared first on Fextralife.

Anthem: Final Impressions Review published first on https://juanaframi.tumblr.com/

[filtration-products]

Prayers for Open Doors, and Open Heaven

Aggressively pray the doors of heaven open for divine favors, prosperity, peace, health, business success and good relationships. Pray the flood gates of heaven open and experience open doors and divine victories. As it rains, the land will yield her increase for your turnaround, break open, breakout and breakthrough. Declare these anointed prayer points when heaven seem to be brass and the land of productivity is iron.

God is not a God of failure. The Lord causes us always to triumph in Christ Jesus. Therefore, every certified child of God should experience open heaven and open doors engineered by these prayer points:

1. Lord. open the doors of heavenly blessings and breakthrough upon my life, ministry, business, profession, health, income, and relationships. In the name of Jesus Christ.

2. I cut off by Holy Ghost fire, every satanic forces, demonic blockage, remote control, gadgets, and monitoring devices, militating against my open doors. No man or devil can shut the open doors before me and open heaven over my life, in Jesus Name.

3. I decree, declare, proclaim that the doors of heavenly treasures are open permanently to me in Jesus Name. I claim perpetual open heaven over my life, my family, my ministry,workplace and everything I do.

4. Lord, open the flood gates of heaven and rain avalanche of blessing upon me as angels ascend and descend unto me, in Jesus Name.

5. In the name of Jesus Christ, I seal all back doors and windows that give the enemy access into my blessings or divine treasures.

6. I cancel, reverse, neutralize, veto and counter any demonic decrees, spells, ordinances, enchantment, plans, ploy, plot and pronouncements against my open doors. I declare and decree that my open door blessings, divine favors, and open heaven remain permanent in Jesus Name.

7. In the name of Jesus Christ, I command every demonic door or doorway designed to cart away my blessings to burn to ashes by Holy Ghost fire.

8. Lord, because of your open door blessing over my life, bypass policies, politics, protocols, procedures, process and routines to favor me in Jesus Name.

9. I decree, declare, pronounce and proclaim that every closed doors of favor by the devil, familiar spirits, witchcraft and marine spirits be open by Holy Ghost fire, in Jesus Name.

10. I shatter, scatter and set ablaze by Holy Ghost fire, every satanic doors, brass doors, cursed ancestral doors, iron and limitation doors, closed against my progress and my family, in Jesus Name.

11. I consume by Holy Ghost fire all roadblocks, barricades, hindrances, chains, iron bars, and padlock at the entrance of my open door, in the might name of Jesus Christ.

12. I walk through destiny-promotion open doors designed by the Holy Ghost and seal by fire any cursed demonic door, In Jesus Name.

13. By the Holy Ghost, I station guard angels and warrior angels of fire to man my open doors and divine favors, in Jesus mighty Name.

14. Let the angelic watchers, prosperity and worshipping angels guard and guide my open doors continuously. In Jesus Name.

15. Lord, open wide all doors you have ordained and close permanently all hell’s doors. And let me discern the difference, in Jesus Name.

16. By Holy Ghost fire, I burn to ashes, all demonic thrones, authorities and dominions sitting at the door of my blessings, in Jesus name.

17. Lord, open the doors of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus and set me from the door of the shadow of death. In Jesus Name.

18. By the Holy Ghost, I sprinkle the protective blood of Jesus Christ on every door posts of my house, office or workplace.

19. Lord Jesus Christ, I open the door of my heart to you and cut off the enemy’s access by Holy Ghost fire.

20. Lift your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of Glory shall come in.

21. Lord, I ask you to restore all that I have lost as a result of ignorance, witchcraft and closed doors by the enemy.

22. By Holy Ghost Fire, I make these declarations and offer these anointed prayers in the majestic name of Jesus Christ.

Because praise is the language of faith, begin to thank God for open doors, accelerated promotions, divine favors, dumb-founding miracles and breakthroughs.

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[nuttyrabbit]

also, Ian and the Council felt like some kinda hot take on politics he tried to put in. And with everything that happened up to that point, you'd think he expect that adding in even more non-action drama would just hamper an already ailing comic. The rogues effectively fucking nuking mobotropolis and pissing off sonic so bad is a good example of action drama. A bunch of woodland critters debating whether or not to fight should be saved for Akira Manga atmosphere.

Exactly. Most of the time it felt like drama for its own sake/an excuse to pull off an otherwise dumb idea. It dragged down the pacing so much especially post Iron Dominion and it's a shame too because there are some great arcs in King Naugus but almost every one didn't need the Council or didn't have them

[tanolikhan1]

Queen and the chach

it.it.ntents The queen falls in love with Chach who becomes the Ruler through her love. The Brahman Chach was a young man with a beautiful face and fair complexion. He was of a tall stature, and well proportioned with an argent person and ruby cheeks When she looked at his handsome features and cypress-like stature, she fell in love with him a thousand fold with her heart and soul. She was fascinated and infatuated, and was struck dumb by his beauty, his form and his vesture. She was overpowered by his striking delivery and marvellous handwriting; and love for Chach obtained an abiding place in her soul, and the tree of affection found a firm footing in the land of her heart. The king had no offspring. The queen had no issue by him. She therefore sent a message to Chach through a cunning go-between in the following words:—“O Chach, the arrows of your eye-lashes have pierced the target of my heart and wounded it, and the chain of separation from you has been fastened on my neck. You will there­fore be kind enough to administer some medicine from the dispensary of your union, and to remove the chain from my neck with the hand of your society. Adorn my neck and ears with the necklace of your love and with the ear-rings of your devotion. If you will not comply with my request, I shall kill myself. Quatrain—May it occur to you to make this my heart happy and to free it from the pangs of your separation. But, O beloved, if you turn your face away from me, I shall raise a cry, that you are doing injustice to me.” When the old woman delivered the above message Chach expressed his abliorrence, and thought it proper to reject the proposal. “Disloyalty,” said he, “in the seraglio of monarchs means (immediate) danger to life, punish­ment in the next world, and a bad name in this world. When the wrath of kings reaches its climax, it cannot be checked or resisted with any screen or any medicine. Therefore, let this alone. We, moreover, are Brahmans and my father and brother are ascetics, and are still sitting in their praying place resigning every thing to God. I do not approve of such infidelity. I am in the service of the king, and I should live between hope and fear. Such a thing is disapproved by wise men. One should not place any confidence in four things, viz., a sovereign, fire, wind,* and water. I would not bring this contempt on my head. You will never gain this object from me.” When this message was brought to the queen, she became calmer and quieter and sent back the follow­ing reply:—“If you shrink from familiarity and intimacy with me, at least give me my due by showing your face to me every day, in season and out of season, so that the thought of your beauty may remain fresh in my mind and I may console myself by cherishing hopes of your union with me. Verse—Happy shall I be if I see you year in and year out, or even if I see you in imagination one single night in the whole period of my life. O my idol! I shall never be despondent in thinking of you; I shall see at least the night of your union one day.” When the eye began to play its part in the affair, and the heart was seized with (desire for) union of the beloved, a sympathy ultimately sprang up between them, which reached its consummation in morning meetings; and their love and intimacy increased beyond measure, and was confirmed by a solemn compact of permanent union. The king had no knowledge of their relations. There was indeed a party of their opponents who entertained evil suspicions regarding them, from the glances of the two, but as no one had observed anything (more suspicious), their secret was maintained. Some of the (said) enemies did inform the king and divulged (all that they knew), but he refused to accept their word, (saying) that such things were not likely to happen at his palace, and that the Chamberlain Chach was not likely to allow himself to be so ungrateful or do such an iniquitous thing. Thus, in the course of time the entire kingdom came under the sway of Chach. Whatever he did was to the liking of the king, and king Sáhasi Rái did not dispose of any important business without first consulting him. In this way, every order issued by Chach, whether positive or prohibitive, came to be strictly obeyed throughout the dominion. The passing away of Sáhasi Rái from this world. At length, the divine decree burst into light from the curtains of mystery. The king fell ill, and his illness took a lingering turn. (By and bye), the signs of death changed the face of his life for the worse. The king's wife became very anxious. She called Chach and told him:—“ The king's life is about to come to its close, and the signs of the cessation of his breath have already appeared. If the king dies, there is no issue of his to inherit the kingdom. His near relations, therefore, will secure all his property and his country. There is no doubt that they will disin­herit and distress me, owing to their estrangement (from me). When even during the life-time of the king, they called me ugly names, they will at such a time as this deprive me of my life and property. One plan occurs to me, and I think it will turn out the right one, and if it is so destined, our wishes will be perfectly gratified and this kingdom will devolve upon you. My opinion is that, if we show our courage, the great God will hand over this kingdom to you, and its honour and glory will long remain with you, and all the people will pay allegiance to you.” Chach said: “I am ready to obey you with all my heart, and whatever you propose must be very good. But it is a well­known maxim that consultation with upright servants is a duty. You must therefore acquaint me with what you have in your mind.” Queen Suhandí said: “Issue an order that fifty chains and fetters be made. Bring them secretly at night, conceal them in the house and keep them ready for use when required.” Accordingly, under the orders of Chach, some heavy chains and fetters were made. They were brought into the innermost apartments of the palace under cover of night, and kept secure in a corner. When the king's last moments arrived and the death agony ensued, the physicians rose to leave. (But) Queen Suhandi asked them to wait in the house for a short time. At the same time, she directed a confidential servant to remove the king to an inner apartment and to close the gate, so that no one in the city should come to know that Sahasi was dead. She then asked him to bring a large number of her followers and dependents into the house. When these men were all brought in, she ordered her servant to call those near relations of the king, who were claimants to the throne (and whom she named one by one). In this way, every one was brought in separately, on the pretext that the king was better that day and wanted to consult him. When each came, he was sent to the appointed apartment where the queen's confidential men put each into chains. Thus, all of her rivals were imprisoned and secured in irons. Next, she sent for those relations of the king who were poor and in want. Each of these, as he came, was told: “To-day, the king is annoyed with such and such a relation of yours, owing to whose ill-treatment and misbehaviour he did not sleep soundly, and has imprisoned him. If you wish to be free from poverty and hunger, and acquire strength by means of wealth and property, go to that prison-room and remove the head of your enemy. Then put yourself in firm possession of his house, his property, his followers and his estates.” In this manner, every one went to the room, and killed that relation of his who was on bad terms with him, and made himself master of his house, cattle, riches, and domestics. Thus, in one single night, they (Suhandí and Chach) made all their troublesome opponents the food of the blood-thirsty sword, and their heart was at ease in regard to their enemies. No competi­tor now remained in the kingdom to claim the inheritance. Chach son of Seláij as­cends the throne. After the friendly followers and dependents were thus pledged, and after the poorer chiefs did the bloody work of the sword, they ranged themselves in a line in front of the palace, and stood there ready with their arms. All the merchants and the artisans, the plebians and the nobles (were also) brought by them, and the royal throne was well adorned. Then queen Suhandi came be­hind a curtain, and sent the following message to them through wazir Budhiman: “Speak to the peers and nobles of the State and convey to them the wishes of their sovereign. Tell them that, though His Majesty is much better and his illness is fast disappearing, still owing to the shock caused, by (the recent) vindictive disturbance, he is unable to come to the public audience hall, and the affairs of the people, high and low, rich and poor, who have not received justice, will remain pending. He is therefore pleased to appoint the Chamberlain Chaeh, in his life-time, as his vireg??ent to carry on the ad­ministration in his name, so that no mischief may find its way into the country, owing to injustice done to the people, whose destinies have been com­mitted to his care by the Creator.” (Hearing these words), all those who were present bent low respect­fully and rubbed their heads on the ground, and said with one voice: “We are ready to obey the command of the king. The Chamberlain Chach is in every way qualified for such a great office, and possesses many good qualities and virtues, as he has already put the State affairs on a firm footing.” Then queen Suhandí Devi presented costly dresses of honour, adorned with ornaments inlaid with jewels, to a thousand of her faithful dependents and friends, who were among the heads of tribes and leaders of armies. At the same time, she placed the crown of the country on the head of Chach, and seated him on the throne. The whole assemblage felt much gratified, and bound themselves to do the service required of them. She then ordered the wazir to be elected anew for the same post, and the chief officers were encouraged in their faithful service with plenty of rewards. New orders about the grant of estates were (also) passed in favour of several nobles. And thus the whole kingdom rested en­tirely on Chach for its administration.* Six months elapsed in this manner. After that period, the news of Rai Sáhasi's death coming to the ear of his brother Maharat, the king of Chitór, the latter prepared an expedition, and with a large army and followers, and furious elephants, and brave warriors, marched out to fight with Chach. He encamped within a league of Alor, and sent a number of his private servants and favourite domestics to Chach with the following message:—“ I am the rightful heir to this kingdom, and this country is the property of my fathers and grandfathers. It is but right that I should have for my own my brother's heritage: to you that same post of chamberlain and lieute­nant will be awarded, and every endeavour will be made to trent you liberally.”*