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gascon-en-exil · 4 years

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I'm genuinely curious about your "Black Eagles most to least favourite" list.

Here you are.

#1: Hubert

Could there be any other? I remember back when there was a promo introducing the house retainers (well, Lorenz for the Deer) and everyone was saying that Hubert looked so obviously evil that there had to be some deeper explanation, that someone who took design cues from a two-dimensional villain like Fates’s Iago couldn’t possibly be Edelgard’s retainer. Then the game came out, and we all realized that Hubert was exactly as advertised and then some: a cold and calculating murderer and war criminal with his fingerprints all over almost every terrible thing that happens over the course of the story, as comfortable with chloroform and a razor as dark magic and down to perform unspeakable experiments on innocent civilians to turn them into war machines and then backstab his co-conspirators because he will suffer no rivals for his title of the Most Evil Man in Fòdlan. And yep, he looks like Dracula and Severus Snape had a one-night stand and their mpreg love child went to an anime convention...but when Ferdinand looks at Hubert he sees Mr. Darcy and the Phantom of the Opera and Edward Cullen/Christian Grey, and soon enough that snake in Hubert’s breeches will be singing quite the aria indeed. You do you, Ferdinand.

Ok, I’ve already rambled at length on Hubert’s bisexuality and the interesting things it reveals about both him and his two primary love interests, but I do also have to admire the sheer audacity both of Hubert as an incel/Nice Guy-flavored romantic false lead for Edelgard who never had a serious chance because of the self-insert fantasy and of the decision to follow that up with a trope-laden queer romance that perfectly counterbalances Hubert’s attraction to Edelgard and puts Ferdinand firmly in the place he was destined to occupy by choosing to side with the Empire. It’s nearly as outrageous as just how casually evil Hubert gets to be, as well as the immense potential for dark humor that lies with that. You have to bend over backwards to say that Hubert isn’t unapologetically, irredeemably evil, and if you try there will be significantly more fans just waiting to tell you that you’re wrong - myself included. He’s the Manfroy to Edelgard’s Arvis but so much than that, and I look forward to the point in the CF postgame where he effectively takes over the Empire in true evil chancellor fashion and unleashes the full extent of his horrors upon Fòdlan. He somehow got even better in the DLC too despite being absent from CS and getting no new supports, because the Abyssians in CF just can’t stop talking about his nefarious antics down there. I just can’t get enough of how good this guy is at being bad, and I love that FE gave us exactly what was advertised here.

#2: Ferdinand

Now here’s a case of the opposite, where what’s on the packaging didn’t prepare me for what was to come. If I remarked on Ferdinand at all during pre-release it was only to think that he might be part of a Christmas knight duo with Sylvain since the game looked like it wouldn’t have one of those. Early on there wasn’t much else to be said about Ferdinand; he was like Claude in that his popularity ran off a meme (except just the one rather than several), and in appearance and personality he was basically Lorenz with less ridiculous hair. But then came his supports, and his post-timeskip look, and suddenly Ferdinand blossomed into the subtext-laden fem with very bizarre taste in men - see above - that he could have only dreamed of being if he’d stuck to such well-trod ground as the Christmas knight archetype. We learn of his love for opera, his complicated relationship with his father, his worship of the hot mess diva Manuela and how he learned swordplay specifically to imitate her roles on the stage, and - yes - how some backhanded compliments and expensive gifts of tea turn him into a blushing Regency heroine. It all casts his unusually rote romances with women in a performative light (as opposed to Lorenz who is similarly performative but seems genuinely interested in the marriage market), to say nothing of his one-sided rivalry with Edelgard that brushes against jealousy over Hubert’s devotion to her more often than against romantic attraction to her, and that toys around with gendered behavior in a manner complementary to Edelgard’s own bucking of the gender status quo.

And while not to the same extent as Felix, I do appreciate that Ferdinand has two distinct arcs depending on the route - and unlike some who feel that one or the other detracts from his character as a whole I personally find that they complement each other well. In SS and if recruited to AM and VW he makes the hard choice to oppose his homeland, spending the timeskip waging a solitary battle against the Empire with his private militia and then joining back up with Byleth’s army at Garreg Mach because he knows Edelgard is in the wrong even as it pains him to depose the Adrestian emperor and leave his own status uncertain...not to mention fight Hubert, which merits a curious boss conversation as well as some extra lines in SS (plus the infamous Huge Hole™ remark that I will never stop referencing because it is hilarious) that, while not elevating Ferdibert anywhere near the level of Dimidue in terms of cross-route canon endorsement, nonetheless are suggestive of something deeper between them that exists even if they find themselves on opposite sides of a war. In CF by contrast Ferdinand gives into his craving for the title and holdings that Edelgard has just stripped from his father and embraces nationalism and his long-held ideal of what the office of the prime minister should to do as a means of justifying the Empire’s conquests. Of course in the process he also succumbs to Hubert’s, er, charms(?) and becomes the charismatic bureaucrat who is presumably saddled with the task of putting a positive spin on the Empire’s dystopian atrocities while Edelgard and Hubert do all the actual work...and Hubert does all the actual actual work, which includes a lot of murder and kidnapping and all manner of other things that he doesn’t share with his pretty lover and about which Ferdinand quickly learns not to ask. Two Jewels of the Empire, indeed.

#3-4: Edelgard and Dorothea

I go back and forth on these so I’m not going to bother putting them in a definitive order, particularly because I like them for very different reasons that are difficult to compare. For Edelgard, it would be most accurate to say that I enjoy her potential much more than her execution; she gets some meaty material to work with as a lord and as the driving antagonist of the whole game outside of CF, and while I still prefer Micaiah for female lords there’s something darkly satisfying about her need for control and domination and her utter refusal to compromise or remain stagnant...except where Byleth is concerned, and Edeleth drags her down so badly that it would be painful if I cared more about that type of strong female character. Had the game axed the self-insert obsession (even if that meant axing her bisexuality along with it) and focused on her experiences during the Insurrection as the source of her worldview and motivations I’d be inclined to like the final product far more, because that’s a hell of a lot more in line with what she actually does and conveniently also maps to the life of a real world ruler with whom I’m relatively familiar and whom history regards in appropriately ambivalent terms.

Dorothea on the other hand is someone I can relate to on a more personal level, mostly as a sex worker. She’s similar to Primrose from Octopath Traveler, both of them prostitutes and playing coy with the implications of the RPG dancer class archetype, although Primrose hits a few more of my buttons for being former nobility and being motivated by revenge. Then again, I fully understand Dorothea’s anxieties about growing old without a man to take care of her, even if she loses me (and Yuri picks up from where she leaves off) when she dips into lesbianism as an alternative option. She’s got her ups and downs for me - I love that she brings up incest kink with Caspar as opposed to this series’s usual outright incest, while I love less her strange Ferdinand supports that are suspended oddly between friendship and romance and...something else undefinable - and I don’t have much to say on her life as an opera diva except that it doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that she’s been turning tricks on the side and even got a sugar daddy to pay her way into the academy. Theatre and sex work have always gone hand-in-hand like that.

#5-7: Linhardt, Caspar, and Petra

This is why I couldn’t make up a list like this for the Lions or Deer, because most of their students would be in big clumps like this. I have no strong opinions on any of these characters; they each have their moments, but not enough to elevate them to where I actively like them or drop them down into real dislike. I suppose you could say I’m disappointed by how Caspar and Linhardt are visual allusions to Ike/Soren who do absolutely nothing else with that similarity except eloping in their paired ending...which is preceded by virtually nothing in the way of real chemistry. If I enjoy them for anything in particular it’s Linhardt’s wit and Caspar’s occasional bouts of emotional vulnerability, like his mini-arc in AM where he has to deal with his feelings surrounding Randolph’s death and then later gets an apology from Dimitri for it.

Petra is awkward all around as the game dances around her delicate political situation, and I also happen to agree with the VA who (if I recall) thought the character should have some sort of accent but wasn’t allowed to do one. (If anyone is wondering, based on her last name and Brigid being an island nation I headcanon it as a Celtic-derived culture, but as with my personal reading of Dedue and Duscur I know that doesn’t play well to the fandom at large). All in all Petra feels like a more self-aware rendition of the exotic swordswoman archetype begun by Ayra in Jugdral, but there’s clearly still some work to be done on that front.

#8: Bernadetta

Ugh. With apologies to @capriciouscorvid for explaining how even unintentional disability representation can be taken as a positive, I just don’t see how Bernadetta’s character could possibly be considered a good thing when she’s so grating in almost all of her supports and most of her story and exploration presence outside of CF. All the screaming and high-pitched pronouncements of impending death get very old very quickly, and the part where she’s meant to be romantically appealing in her neediness and isolation is as lost on me as it would have been had it stemmed instead from a massive rack. Her supposedly sympathetic backstory doesn’t help much either, as it leaves me mostly with the thought that her father is an idiot because his methods obviously did not make her suitable to be a good wife. I also don’t care for how she’s one of several characters used to soften Jeritza (and that the way she does so is I think rather insulting to people with social anxiety, to liken it to a compulsion to commit murder), or even worse that people point to her Hubert support to try and say that he’s not such a bad guy and they’d be total besties just like Ferdinand and Dorothea (another pairing that doesn’t exactly scream BFFs). I mean, really....

#Fire Emblem #FE16 #Fire Emblem Three Houses #Black Eagles

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casual568a · 5 years

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30 day One Piece challenge, day 1

01. Favourite Straw Hat

I regret doing this challenge already, it's incredibly hard for me to name just one favourite, especially out of the Straw Hats.

But if I really had to choose, it'd be somewhat of a tie between Zoro and Brook, with Zoro winning with the fact that he doesn’t ask to see panties every so often (Brook, mate, it’s gotten a bit old).

Many people already like Zoro, and most of us like him for the same reasons; His loyalty, his personality, his idiocy with the directions(which I find extremely relatable), his amazing fights and simply incredible character design. I mean, is there anything to dislike about Zoro?

So despite Zoro being my favourite, let me tell you about Brook instead, and why he shouldn’t be as underrated as he is in the One Piece community. The skeleton grandpa deserves more love than he’s getting right now.

1. His unique visual design

I mean, seriously?

A 277cm/9 ft tall skeleton in a suit, an afro and a sword hidden in a cane. The idea of a skeleton with no vocal chords being the singing musician of the crew. A skeleton who can play pretty much every possible instrument with his bony fingers. The idea that a skeleton has still hair, and it’s an afro? Everything about him screams uniqueness and I just adore it.

2. His loyalty

Brook is, quite possibly, the second most loyal of the Straw Hats, right after Zoro. We don't know the exact amount of time he spent with the Straw Hats before timeskip, but we can assume few weeks at absolute most. After this he spends two years away from them, becoming a world famous artist. We all know that he's ultimate goal is to reunite with Laboon, and I can imagine that he could quite effortlessly use his newly gained wealth and fame to make someone take him to Laboon.

Despite this, he decides not to do anything of sort, and instead returns to the Straw Hats, with whom he spent only mere moments of his life. I mean when Franky was born Brook had already been sailing alone for 14 years.

So not only did he return, but he dedicated his two years to train for Luffys sake. For the sake of a man, whom he had known for barely weeks. He even selflessly protects the crew members by throwing himself in Kumas way.

In addition to this, he is the only Straw Hat to kneel in front of Luffy when he joins the crew and he is the only one who vows to lay his life down for Luffys sake(When joining, mind you), which I hold in very high regard. This scene shows his dedication and fierce loyalty to Luffy, the man he has known for barely a day.

3. Experience and wisdom

Brook is 90 years old and has been a pirate longer than many others in the series. Granted that he spent 50 years alone, that age has still given him wisdom and experience like no other. Brook pledges his life and existance to the 19-year-old boy who suddenly showed up because he can see Luffy is like no ordinary pirate. His years have made him become a good judge of character(seeing how Sanji is kind, seeing how prideful Zoro is etc. despite knowing them for quite a short time). He knows when to act mature, and when to play goofy. The way he During Whole Cake Island he delivers one of the best lines in the entirity of the series, serving Big Mom some real wisdom that comes with age;

(CoughTrafalgarDWaterLawCough)

4. Strength of heart and mind

This man spent 50 years alone, surrounded by the remains of his late crewmembers. He spent every day for fifty years in the very place that he himself and his precious friends died a slow, painful and horrifying death. And the place of his grave was still none other than Grand Line, the place known from its dangerous climate.

The willpower and mental strength of this man is on an entirely another level, and how he values his promises and the people who are dear to him is overwhelming. Despite being lonely and definitely scared, he keeps his head up, his eyes focused on his goal. A lesser man would’ve been broken years before, but Brook kept going, which is yet another reason to love him.

4. Kindness and compassion

While I believe that by a landslide the kindest Straw Hat is Sanji, Brook is, to me, the second kindest. Friendly by nature, he more often than not puts the others in front of him. During his flashback, he was the one who communicated with baby Laboon. He was being sentimental about seeing the same sky as Laboon, only to be mocked by his captain. During Fishman Island arc he protects his enemies who are being attacked by their own side. When Pedro died he cried bitter tears, cursing he wasn’t strong enough. When Jimbei was the voice of reason and told them to stop crying, Brook lashed out at him for being cruel and unsentimental.

This skeleton Grandpa is way more kind than people give him credit for, and he is not afraid to show his emotions to the world.

5. Skull jokes and running gags

I love how Brook interacts with Zoro the crew, and the way he jokes around with them. His skull jokes are seriously funny (fight me) and make me laugh. I love how much of an idiot he is, and how you can see that he is a different brand of an idiot when compared to Luffy or Zoro. The way he runs on top of water because he is just so light. They way he is a messy eater, the way he gets depressed when someone messed up his skull jokes. The way he acts like the younger members of the crew even though he is at least 4 times their age. There’s too many things to love about Brook that it’s difficult to mention them all.

It was way back in Davy back fight arc Sanji told us that one should not underestimate the soul power of an afro, and years later, Brook indeed is the Soul King we don’t deserve.

#one piece #one piece challenge #one piece graphics #brook #568A talks #more love for brook

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britbrodcast · 7 years

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A Mind of Metal Pt.3

Tags: @pattonscardigan @silly-aesthetic-me @sakurahayasaki @fandomsandanythingelse @lackingroman @prinxiety-logicality-ss @cefmua56 @princeyandanxiety @prinxietytrash @what-even-is-thiss @here-to-vent @kitsuneprideleader @01001100-01010011 @nerd-in-space @prplzorua

(Patton POV) Everyone was amazed by the style and design of the AI, Androids are rare but AIs, those are a different level or scarcity, all AIs had to be handbuilt and this one was made by a mechanical genius, I grabbed the skull section of the hologram and enlarged it, I then made the metal skull see through and my jaw hit the floor with shock, this technology was ancient, almost all of these wires were made from real copper, now copper wires are hard to come by since they stopped making them fifty years ago, the findings of the liquid conductor Energie is way better for the environment and is much cheaper.

I turned to Logan, “do we still have copper wires in our inventory?” Logan nodded, “The last time I checked we haven't used those things since that old man with the vomiting microwave. Roman scrunched up his nose in disgust, “That’s nasty, and how does that even work?!”

“For some wild reason the man decided to pour Fruit Soda inside of the machine and the gasses made all of the components inside shootout, it was quite a mess.” “That I guessed,” Ro mumbled, “anyways, what are we going to do now?”

Logan’s bionic eye swiveled around in it’s socket so it was now looking through the back of his own skull, after a few moments he located what he needed, his mechanical arm seemed to grow in length as it snaked over to the other side of the room and grabbed a small black box.

“Object Found.” said the weird default robot voice, Logan’s arm retracted and his eye moved back to it’s normal position, Roman shuddered, “No matter how many times you do that it still creeps me out.” I laughed, “I’ve lived with him for ten years and it still creeps me out.”

Logan smirked and let his eye roll back in his head once more. “I’m sorry my ear must be malfunctioning, what were you saying again?” “NOTHING!!” Roman and I shouted, Lo gave us a rare smile and looked down at the box, I noticed what the device was and ran over to the table and grabbed the head, I put it down next to the Solo Vocal Box Speak Unit and set the frequency to the vocal unit inside the AI, a heavily metallic voice spoke, “Engaging introduction protocol, I am V.I.R.G.I.L or VIsual Repair and StrenGth InteLligence AI model #2694239, If this is activated please know that this AI is highly emotional and has experienced failure, their emotional chips are over flooded with negative emotions and-”

All of us put our hands to our ears from the giant feedback noise coming from the VBU, just before I was about to turn it off a robotic voice spoke, it wasn’t the one we had heard before, it sounded less metallic and more human, a male voice spoke as if it was stuck on a looping audio chip, “Please fix me. Please fix me. Please fix me. Please fix me. Please fix me. Please fix me. Ple-” Logan turned off the box.

“Well then,” i said, trying to not sound shaken from what we had just heard. “Let’s fix an AI.”

*Timeskip*

The past three weeks were a blur, whenever we had any free time we worked on the head of the AI, it was hard work but Logan, Roman, and I all stood in front of the head, following the exact instructions from the blueprint the face looked incredibly realistic, if I didn’t know that the head was a part of a machine I would’ve thought It was a decapitated head lying on our work table.

The now fixed eye was sitting on table next to the AI, Logan’s fingers turned into small grabbers and carefully inserted the eye into the socket, the metal around the eye then closed around it to seem as if it was a normal eye and not a giant circle in the metal skull.

I checked the blueprint on how to activate the AI, when I found the instructions I read them out loud, “VIsual Repair and StrenGth InteLligence unit Power on.”

A whirring noise came from the skull, faint purple light was now emitting from the closed eyelids of the machine, the eyes opened to reveal glowing purple irises, the AI smirked, and spoke in an eerily humanlike voice.

“Hello, I am V.I.R.G.I.L how may I be of assistance?”

#A mind of metal series #series #fic #my fic #sander sides

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stillness-in-green · 7 years

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Misery Loves Company

Woke up with this in my head this morning, and got it out as quickly as I could. IBO, Chad and Yamagi, spoilers for the entire season. Set during the last episode’s timeskip, right towards the beginning.

So, I’ve been wanting to write about Yamagi and Chad dating since that last episode came out. This fic is definitely NOT that. It might be a prelude, though.

It is, regardless of anything else, my guess on how two people who never so much as glanced at each other in their series might have had a chance to spend a bit more time together. Note that nobody’s very happy here, as this is set just after the Tekkadan survivors get off-planet courtesy of Azee and Echo.

After the third time Yamagi misses an instruction, the mechanic—a girl Yamagi doesn’t know, now that Echo’s back on ship piloting duties—tips back and sighs hard.

“Look, no offense?” she begins, in a tone that’s straining not to be sharp but clearly ran out patience half a million miles ago. “But you’re clearly not all here right now, and at this rate, you’re either going to get hurt, or mess something up that gets someone else hurt down the line. We’ve got our own mechanics. Why don’t you go be with your friends?”

He doesn’t want to be anywhere near his friends, but Yamagi lets go of the wrench he’s holding, wishing fleetingly that it could at least clang satisfyingly to the ground, and turns away, pushing off from the ground hard towards the exit.

He thinks he hears his name spoken from somewhere in the din—Yukinojo, probably—but turns his head away, and leaves the hangar.

He doesn’t know the Sawback’s layout, not like he does—did, he thinks, heart clenching with yet another grief—the Isaribi’s, but it’s an armored ship, like the Hotarubi had been; there are only so many design plans it can have. He wanders, looking for an observation deck or private room.

He finally finds a deserted deck near the bottom level. Why it’s so empty is obvious right away: aside from the view being partly blocked by the gunmetal gray curve of one of the transport bays, the walkway drops off into a sheer metal wall, a fall of some twenty or thirty feet down to the next level. Too, the engine room is nearby, so the sound of every tiny course adjustment the ship makes reverberates through the walls, much louder than it does topside. If someone didn’t spend their every waking moment around machines, diving off of catwalks with total confidence in the absence of gravity, they’d probably find it all ridiculously distracting. As it is, Yamagi sighs, long and slow, letting the tension leak out of him. In the most basic possible nod to safety protocols, there is in fact a handrail protecting the walkway. He leans back on it, lets his eyes fall half-closed, and watches the stars.

Time passes. If he were on the Isaribi, he’d would be able to tell how much just by listening to the hum of the engine. As it is… He’ll stay until he gets hungry, he decides.

In the belly of the ship, the engine cycles to a lower output mode, and the ever-present hum quiets. Then, and only then, does Yamagi hear the sound of someone else in the room breathing. He turns towards the thready, uneven exhalations with an ugly start.

The passage stretches out in front of him, empty as it was when he walked in. Yamagi stands quite still, listening. Gradually, it dawns on him that the breathing is coming from above him. Wounded temper still brimming, he looks up and scans the dim ceiling. Sure enough, up along the far back of the room, one of the Tekkadan lilies stares at him from the back of someone’s jacket, its petals fuzzy and gray in the deep shadows. Whoever-it-is is perched on a maintenance deck, a square sheet of metal that slides in and out of the wall near a local control panel, meant to set a tool chest on or brace against in low gravity. Other than the deck, though, nothing’s been pulled aside or opened up along the wall, and the person doesn’t have so much as a tool belt, much less a crate full of wrenches and pliers. He also hasn’t moved, one hand and a dark head all that’s visible where he’s curled in on himself over tucked-up knees.

Yamagi goes on staring for a while longer. The boy’s hand is twitching intermittently, which could mean he’s asleep and dreaming, maybe about something innocuous, but more likely about events of the last few days. If that’s the case, well, he’s not unique for having nightmares, and Yamagi can slip away with no more than a second or two of guilt.

Unfortunately, it might also be a sign of feedback from the Alaya-Vijnana implant, lingering involuntary nerve firing caused by links to machines that hadn’t been tuned properly, or which had slipped out of sync somehow. The mechanics here don’t have the data—probably not even the equipment—to give all of Tekkadan’s A-V users the regular check-ups Miss Merribit had instituted. Regardless of how much Yamagi wants to claim himself a crawlspace and never come back out to have to face human interaction again, if someone’s implant is giving them trouble, Yamagi needs to bring them to Miss Merribit or the old man.

He sighs, and kicks himself towards the ceiling.

“Hey,” he says softly as he approaches. “You awake?”

The boy doesn’t stir as Yamagi gets close enough to recognize him—Yamagi used to see lots of people clutching the controls of Tekkadan’s mobile suits, but there’s only one who matches a skin tone so dark to hands so oversized for the bony wrists they’re affixed to.

He’d assumed it was a boy, from the coiled posture and the hideaway, but as far as he knows, Chad is older than him by at least a year or two.

“…Chad?” Yamagi tries speaking, reaching out to catch himself on the wall before he drifts straight into the ceiling.

Chad twitches again, a full-body flinch this time, so sharp and sudden that Yamagi himself winces in sympathy. As it passes, though, Chad’s head lifts, slowly, like someone peeking over a wall that might or might not have unknown threats lurking on the other side. His gaze finds Yamagi’s feet, and trains slowly up until it lands on Yamagi’s face. Beneath the dim, uneven illumination of the overhead running light, Chad’s cheeks look every bit as hollow as they had back in the CGS days. The skin beneath his eyes is bruise-dark and puffy, and Yamagi feels a pinprick of regret for waking him. His eyes are clear, though, if not… Not hard, Yamagi thinks, staring back at him in the widening gap of silence, just braced, like he’s never been woken a day in his life for something other than bad news, and whatever the world is about to lay at his feet, it almost certainly isn’t going to be the worst thing he’s seen.

The silence goes on for a few more unheard beats, a tempo of exhaustion, before finally Chad lifts his head up a bit more, his back straightening, even as his shoulders tense and bow.

“Did something happen?” he asks.

The desire to escape thrums in Yamagi’s skin like engine noise, an unreasoning wave of shame that’s so much stronger than the momentary guilt he’d been contemplating back down below, when he’d had that opportunity to just leave and hadn’t taken it. But Chad is Responsible—Yamagi has never exchanged more than three words with him, but even he knows that much—and if Yamagi turned tail and ran away, Chad would get worried and follow. As if he needs any more stress.

Yamagi lets his eyes slide away, turning his head and leaving Chad to stare instead at the fall of his hair.

“You were dreaming,” is all he says. “That’s all. You don’t have to get up.”

“…Ah,” Chad says, the single syllable tangled somewhere between confusion, relief, and simple weariness. After a few more seconds, he adds, “Sorry you had to bother.”

“It’s fine.” The words taste mechanical in Yamagi’s mouth. He parrots them out, and the moment of shame drains away, back into the empty weight of having nothing to do and less drive to do it. Orga is dead. Shino is dead. Mikazuki, dead. Barbatos, dead. Tekkadan is dead. He can’t protect any of what’s left, but there’s so little left in any case. People like Kudelia and Eugene will be planning what to do from here on out. He has time, still, to drag himself into caring again, but right now…

“I just wanted to be alone somewhere for a while,” he finds himself saying. “I didn’t think of trying the ceiling.”

Another measure of quiet follows this, then Chad hums, a low, barely audible sound. He shifts, and the sound of his voice comes bouncing back from different walls as he turns his face away. “Human Debris get good at staying out of sight.”

That’s Chad’s version of taking the compliment, Yamagi supposes, and he feels an awful, tiny curve at the corner of his mouth at the black humor of the whole situation.

“Eugene told me to go get some sleep,” Chad goes on after another silent moment. “He ordered me to, actually.”

“Why not the barracks?” Yamagi looks down towards the observation window. At this angle, he can’t see the transport bay anymore, just the starfields, endless and glittering and cold.

“I tried there. But the kids are still upset, and…” He trails off, and the silence creeps back in, skulking around the perimeters of the conversation like a starving something at the edge of firelight. It gets so close Yamagi imagines he can feel the breath of it on the back of his neck, then Chad sighs, and his words chase it away again. “Dante caught me trying to help. He ran me off.”

Yamagi doesn’t respond, and Chad fills in the space with, “He knows I can sleep anywhere out of sight. He told me to check down here.” Another pause, shorter this time, and then a rueful sound, not anything concrete enough to be a chuckle. “Though now that I’ve gotten used to it, I wish I’d thought to grab a blanket.”

Yamagi dips his head into another smile, feeling the soft hitch of amusement in his breath. “Hindsight,” he whispers.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

They both fall silent again, and if it isn’t any warmer, at least it doesn’t feel so empty. Yamagi glances behind him, gaze skimming over the wall. A rectangular outline in the metal suggests there’s another maintenance deck not far away—this one for accessing the ventilation system, judging by the proximity to a grated shaft. Yamagi reaches out and rests his gloved fingertips over it.

“Do you mind?” he asks, barely a breath, and feels Chad’s gaze return to him; sees, out of the corner of his eyes, the other boy lean forward to look at where he’s placed his hand.

“Oh. No, it’s fine.”

“Mm.” Yamagi presses lightly at the shape in the wall. It gives inward, then clicks and ejects back outwards, a thin metal deck. He tugs himself onto it, mirroring Chad’s posture from before—arms around his legs, chin tucked onto his knees. He flips up the collar of his jacket, and turns to lean against the wall.

“It’s—all right if I stay too, right?” Chad asks, a whisper in the shadows, uncertain, not half as conspiratorial as Yamagi thinks the situation warrants.

He tugs his jacket tighter around himself. In its pocket, still, a clump of bandages knots his stomach with their presence, and with grief. He blinks hard, willfully, and forces his voice to an even, level softness. “Yes. It’s fine.”

“Okay. I—will, then.” Chad shifts again, maybe laying down, maybe turning away. “Good—night?”

“…Good night,” Yamagi answers, and closes his eyes, listening to the hum of the ship’s engine, and the slowly evening sound of Chad’s breath.

#gundam ibo #mobile suit gundam: iron-blooded orphans #g tekketsu #yamagi gilmerton #chad chadan #my writing #ficcing

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blundergato · 5 years

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big boy fire emblem three houses spoilers below

i sided with edelgard because rhea always gave me big creep vibes.

then after i decided, rhea was like YOU ARE GARBAGE AND I WILL KILL YOU

then she turned into some giant dragon monster beast.

wild shit

though edelgard seems pretty tyrannical herself. bad choices all around.

how do i join a resistance movement led by me and petra and just beat up the both of them?

the game feels like it took a pretty wild turn. some of the revelations in the game i didnt seem coming, like edelgard being the flame emperor. that kind of blew my mind.

the fight to take the monastery was fun though. it was long and i actually lost two units, hubert (who cares) and marianne (NOOOOOO). good thing im playing on casual MOTHERF**KERS. i actually think thats the first time ive lost a unit outside of maybe the very beginning of the game where i didnt know how to play. and the only reason i lost marianne is because i have her as a calvary unit so she can level her riding and lance skills and shes not so tough right now.

petra is still beyond broken though. she never gets hit and always counterhits twice and almost always instakills everyone. she can also move across like half the map in one go. SHE RULES SO HARD.

im liking the timeskip designs for most of the characters. ingrids hair doesnt look as good imo, but i was a big fan of the braid. bernadetta looks WAY better now that she got her hair done. that shit was a mess before.

i almost didnt recognize linhardt. ferdinand looks better with the long hair. hubert looks better with short hair, but he still looks like a pervert. marianne looks almost the exact same. i kinda miss caspars old hairstyle, but i dont mind his new one. dorothea looks about the same.

petra also looks about the same outside of her clothing. she was one of the best designed characters before and she remains so after the timeskip.

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theycallmeshaggyrogers · 6 years

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Essay One: ‘Anastasia’ Probably Could Have Been Great

This post will contain spoilers. There, I'm guiltless.

Have you ever heard a premise or logline to a movie that sounded so promising that there was no conceivable way in your mind that it could fail? And were you absolutely bewildered when you watched said movie your hopes were slowly choked out of you? Well, that's what watching Don Bluth's 1997 animated musical Anastasia feels like. Now, despite being a 90s fetus and having grown up watching French-dubbed Disney Renaissance films from relatively the same time period this film was released, I had not watched Anastasia until last December. It was the Tuesday night before my final exams/presentations/seminars went into full swing, and rather than dutifully studying like a good boy trying to retain his scholarship and federal grants so he can attend an out-of-state college for half the price, I decided to watch a couple animated movies that had been on my bucket list for well over a year at that point (though I only got around to watching two).

The first was Ralph Bakshi's Fritz the Cat, and while Fritz's plot is kind of a disconnected mess, it was quite enjoyable thematically and aesthetically. I had also went in with very little context. Sure, I saw the opening scene of those dumb college girls fawning over the crow dude just cause he was African-American, I knew it was famous for being a raunchy, animated movie intended for adults, and on more than one occasion I have had to draw in Robert Crumb's style for class, but that's all I really knew about Fritz.

Anastasia on the other hand has perplexed me. I knew of it, which is to say, all I knew was the premise, that of the sole surviving heir of the Romanov Dynasty living in secret after the Bolsheviks deposed her father during the Russian Revolution. I don't recall watching it as a child. However, as I got older and began transitioning into high school, I started taking an interest in the Edwardian period, Tsarist Russia, World War I and tons and tons and tons amateur alternate history stories I found online. I specifically became curious about what led to the fall of the 300 year-old Romanov dynasty.

I even wrote a similar story going off Anastasia's premise because I was so infatuated with the idea that the Romanovs were able to survive such a violent deposition effort, just as the House of Bourbon did following the French Revolution (the first one at least). Like your average American Civil War buff, I like this idea of putting a “what-if?” spin on history that is fairly recent in the grand scheme of things, but has long since left cultural memory on account of those living at the time slowly dying off, and it seems that modern American media agrees with me on that sentiment, even if the more maintstream content is centered almost exclusively about Nazis and World War II.

But yeah, Anastasia has a premise that I'm sold on, is set in a country that I love for a bajillion and one reasons during a rather recent period in European history that I am genuinely fascinated by.

And guess what? It sucks.

Anastasia, for all that it does stylistically to emulate the story, aesthetic and pacing of a Disney film, is just mediocre, its premise wasted. It very much feels like a knock-off or a mockbuster with an extraordinarily high budget to match that of your average 1990s animated feature. Those who have watched Anastasia before reading this post probably assumed that the film's budget was remarkably lower than that of other big-budget animated movies being produced at the time, and I am here to dispel that assumption with the help of a series of simple Google searches.

For context, 1995's Pocahontas had a budget of $55 million, 1991's Beauty and the Beast had approximately half the budget of Pocahontas, and 1994's The Lion King, arguably the most well-remembered of the Renaissance Disney films according to my generation in particular, had a budget of $45 million. Anastasia had a budget of $50 million. And I am using Disney films as a comparison because Anastasia is very much trying to look and feel like a Disney film, and it's falling embarrassingly flat. Its character designs look like Disney knock-offs, its score feels like imitation-Alan Menkin, and even its use of 3D renders feels like Don Bluth was trying to 1-up the technological marvels done well by Beauty and the Beast. Hell, you can even tell based off Anastasia's character designs who fits into which archetype in your big-budget kids movie.

The titular Anya is the unquestionably feminine but nonetheless strong-willed female lead, as well as the “Princess™”, and her design by the third act of the movie reminds me strongly of 1953's Cinderella. Vlad is the obligatory comic relief because... well, cause he's older and fat. You think he's gonna be the protagonist? As much as that would have been cool, considering his background as a former member of the exterminated nobility and the emotional implications the Russian Revolution may have left on him and all, this movie had to be marketed towards kids, ergo, young leads in their twenties. But I digress. That annoying little dog-looking creature (whose name I forget even after re-watching the movie to write this) is the mute comic-relief animal sidekick who can be pushed heavily in the marketing, and Bartok is the other animal sidekick who is cute enough to be memorable and/or marketable for the movie's sake, but not cute enough to make you forget that he's technically an antagonist. Bartok's master Rasputin is self-explanatory, though that said, the over-exaggeration of facial features to make the antagonist inhuman is kind of par for the course regarding animated movies from this time and the eras preceding it. I don't feel that I need to explain myself in too much depth here, especially since the Don Bluth take on Grigori Rasputin has the emotional depth of the Sea of Azov.

However, Dmitri appears to be the exception to this rule of taking well-established Disney archetypes and making knock-off characters from them. Obviously he's the dude half of this movie's forced breeding pair on account of his youthful charm (that translates into hideously rotoscoped facial features), but I don't think he really embodies any direct resemblance to a male Disney lead or even the generic handsome princes characters of Snow White, Cinderella and The Little Mermaid. Maybe he's meant to be modeled off all those lookalike, generic handsome prince characters with a hint of Aladdin on account of his street smarts and non-royal status. Or maybe, just maybe, Dmitri's design makes him less an archetypal Disney rip-off and instead, a carefully-crafted prettyboy meant to catch the eye of the average preteen girl in 1997, one who probably listened to a lot of boy bands with pasty, broody, Dmitri-looking skinny white dudes on the cover with his exact haircut. This is honestly just speculation with no further research on my part, but I genuinely think Don Bluth was going for a 90s-boy band look for his strapping male lead, or was otherwise convinced by some focus group during pre-production that this was a sound decision. And I have to repeat myself here: it's shame that in trying to capture the essence of a moody bad boy, Bluth went the extra mile and made him as awkwardly-animated as possible, which is saying something considering how awkwardly-animated every other proportionally-realistic character is to begin with.

The animation quality of Anastasia is probably the most glaring indicator that you're not actually watching a Disney movie, not because it's awful, but because its quality varies from character model to character model. Dmitri's character design is probably the closest in resemblance to a real person, but that benefit, if you can even call it that, is immediately squandered when you put a more stylized character like Vlad (or really any one-note side character from the film) in the same shot. Members of the royal family suffer from this issue too. Their designs seem to be based off real models rather than possess the stylization Don Bluth is famous for. Nicholas II and Anya's sisters in this regard are alright since they are minor characters with only a few speaking lines if any at all, but in the case of Empress Marie, a major supporting character, she ends up animating in the same janky manner as Dmitri. I don't think Bluth could decide whether or not to go with the exaggerated caricatures he is so accustomed to, or committing to realistic character models that would likely be hard to animate consistently. The end result that was reached seems to be this loose middle-ground where everything just feels awkward and inconsistent.

I also wanna touch on the liberal use of 3D animation a bit too, because it is probably my biggest issue with this movie's overall aesthetic. This isn't to say I have an issue with 3D, and if you can make it work in your movie, then more power to you. This issue with 3D in Anastasia however is simply the fact that it does not mesh well with the 2D setting at all. This movie has all these beautiful hand-painted backgrounds for nearly every shot but once we've moved on from the abandoned Catherine Palace (why wasn't that touched at all by the Bolsheviks again? It's been a solid decade post-timeskip right?) and onto the the train, the fact that the entire locomotive itself is a CG render will not be able to leave your head, because it is just that obvious. The one time the CG isn't blatantly tacked-on is the opening shot, depicting two music box figurines of the tsar and his wife, and that's where I think this then-budding animation technology worked the best. It did not work for a model as big as an noticeably unmanned ocean liner being battered by painstakingly-animated 2D waves.

Now, this isn't to say that CG animation was not viable for animated motion pictures of the 1990s; it very well was. The Hunchback of Notre Dame uses it quite excellently throughout the film to render large crowds of Parisians as well as various exterior shots of the eponymous cathedral itself, and are perhaps the most memorable shots of that movie. Beauty and the Beast famously used the new technology to great effect as well during the famous ballroom scene. But in these two particular cases, the 3D was used largely as a backdrop to save the animators time when working on a particular shot. They were not necessarily the point of attention in the shots they appeared in; the protagonists were.

When Quasimodo is expressing his desire to attend the Festival of Fools at the beginning of Hunchback and is climbing all about the cathedral singing all angelically and whatnot, he is always the center of attention in each shot. Meanwhile, in Anastasia, many of the ship scenes during the storm are wide shots which go on for long enough that the viewer is able to identify that these backgrounds, are in fact, 3D. In all of these instances, 3D rendering was used as a crutch that made production easier. In the better-executed examples however, the directors demonstrated a degree of restraint.

Don't even get me started with that CG pegasus statue either.

Now this entire post so far has been me harping on the technical blunders of Anastasia, but if a movie looked a bit goofy at times due to inexperienced animators, the grandiose expectations of a director, time constraints or experimental technology that just wasn't there yet, it can probably make up for that with a cohesive and engaging story, of which Anastasia does not have any of these things. My first glaring issue going into this movie was how the movie introduces and frames Rasputin. There is no explanation given as to how or why he's a necromancer. In fact, necromancy seems inappropriate for Rasputin's character considering from a historic basis, he was believed to be a spiritual healer blessed by God, who I'm pretty sure frowns upon pagan magic regardless of one's denomination. I will admit that it is an interesting take on Rasputin's character given the fact that he is remembered pretty negatively by history, but with that said, if he was a necromancer, how would he have been able to convince the extremely religious, extremely superstitious Tsarevna Alexandra that he was in fact this God-blessed mystic who could cure her son of hemophilia? What could have made this work was if Rasputin was in fact used his infamously adept persuasion to convince the tsar that his dark powers were actually good powers, allowing the suspicions held by his detractors in court to appear far less warranted than they were in reality.

Regardless, the nature of Rasputin's powers go unexplained in the movie and is hand-waived by Empress Marie as “oh, we trusted him but he turned out to be hella fake lol”. It is also never explained in Anastasia how Rasputin lost favor with the Russian court, which is arguably the inciting incident of the film and happens within the first five or so minutes of its runtime. That is an issue in of itself. These thoughts immediately came to mind as I was watching Anastasia, breaking the immersion even more with each raised question gone unanswered. Would I have known Dmitri was going to be an integral character from the split-second shot where he was introduced? That's the biggest issue with the plot of Anastasia itself: it does not give you any breathing room.

The first five minutes throw story beat after story beat at you; Russian aristocrats are celebrating the 300th anniversary of the Romanov Dynasty, Dowager Empress Marie confides in her granddaughter that she will be leaving for Paris and hands her the plot-device music box, Rasputin storms in, crashes the party, curses Tsar Nicholas II, the Bolsheviks immediately attack the Catherine Palace, and Anya escapes, only to contract amnesia while fleeing. Ideally, these beats are meant for the first half of a first act, spanning about ten to fifteen minutes at most, not the first five!

The opening scenes of this movie feel insanely rushed, and it just keeps happening and happening. Rasputin destroyed the train? Fuck it, Anya, Vlad, Dmitri and Annoying Dog will just walk to the nearest port city instead, and it'll be a merry old trip where Anya's groomed for her inevitable reunion with her grandmother! Not a single beat in this story felt organic, which in turn, as someone who has watched enough family-friendly animated features as an adult to pick up on particular narrative beats, made it predictable. By the time the climactic confrontation between Anya and Rasputin had commenced, I was so disinterested with what was happening because I knew where this story was going: Rasputin was gonna die in some way, be it through hubris, being outwitted by Anya, or a deliberate fake-out (guess what, it was behind door #3!). My only respite throughout this entire movie was the fact that Anya and Dmitri's endless exchange of sarky retorts never got tired for me for some odd reason. I understand that giving both of these characters sardonic, witty personalities was meant to show chemistry between the two, but it all feels like filler dialogue when their inevitable union at the end of the movie barely feels earned, especially when I'm 20 minutes into the movie and I still can't figure out if this animated musical is supposed to be an intense historical drama or a romantic comedy. I can barely remember anything about Anya's personality beyond her snark. She's humble, pretty without trying, and a well-meaning person, but so was Cinderella. She's witty and sharp-tongued to a degree, but so was Beauty's Belle and Hercules' Megara.

Finally, no criticism of Anastasia is complete without examining the ethics behind basing a story off a violent major event in a nation's already violent history. Anyone who has read up on the causes of the Russian Revolution would be made aware of the empire's horrible mismanagement at the hands of Nicholas II. They would know that at the time of World War I, Russia was bankrupting itself, it was conscripting young men my age into a losing war without even being provided the proper equipment, and the Romanovs were effectively sitting on their hands the whole time. Listening to a grandiose opening musical number sung by the citizens of St. Petersburg bemoaning their lives under Soviet leadership all the while exchanging hopeful whispers of Anastasia's survival just puts a bad taste in my mouth.

Moreover, on the opposite side of the social hierarchy, I was hoping to see surviving members of the old regime expressing how they felt after losing their power, and how it might have changed them, namely Vlad as well as Anya's grandmother, Empress Marie. I was hoping, from premise alone, that this movie would explore some more mature themes about power and how one comes to terms with losing it. Family-friendly movies don't have to be sanitized to be family-friendly, no matter what the hypersensitive, suburban white mom may tell you. Hunchback approached themes of infanticide, emotional manipulation, racism and religious zealotry through its villain, Claude Frollo, while Beauty and the Beast confronted hypermasculinity and human cruelty through Gaston. With that in mind, why did this film, predicated on a violent revolution with horrifying consequences in the form of a civil war, purges and genocide, have end up as thematically sterile as it did?

Admittedly, what I was hoping from Anastasia was probably too much for the production team at Twentieth Century Fox to get away with, because after all, when you make media that is meant to have a broad appeal, it means you have to make thematic sacrifices mandated by corporate. Sometimes, you can't write the story you want to write. I was expecting the very same story I wrote for myself all those years ago, one of a lost royal who must come to terms with the fact that the old empire has fallen and things will never be the same again. I was hoping that the true villain would be a former revolutionary or a member of Lenin's cabinet whose hatred of the monarchy spurred him to ruthlessly pursue any Romanov survivors, and not the one-note Rasputin whose motivation we don't even completely understand.

Apparently, Bluth never considered to use Bolsheviks as the antagonist faction of the film, though at one point it was bounced around that a fictional vigilante police officer with a grudge towards the old regime would be the central antagonist rather than Rasputin. And you know what? I'd dig that! But while a communist police officer taking the law into his own hands doesn't seem nearly as menacing as a corrupt priest turned-evil wizard, I definitely think it would have been a step in the right direction. If the writers went for the “vigilante police” angle, I think that aspect alone would be enough to warrant less egregious comparison to Disney at the time, at least from a characterization standpoint. We could probably have had this officer villain be multifaceted a villain with a complex sense of justice, or even a redeemable one at that! Not even Hunchback's Frollo had that narrative luxury!

I honestly think this movie could have been great, but it could only have been great had it chose to stand on its own two feet instead. It tried to be a Disney movie at Disney's then-artistic height since the 1950s. it tried to make use of 3D, it tried to make use of diegetic, catchy musical numbers, it tried to play into appealing character archetypes right down to their designs, and it tried to copy the broad-appeal narrative trappings of your average well-received Disney film. I think what Anastasia proves the most about itself is that while the ��Disney style” can easily be replicated on account of its ubiquity and impact on western culture, that doesn't mean imitating the formula will always be a successful endeavor.

#shaggy essays

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